Read Good Man Friday for Free Online Page A

at mealtimes, but at least the Janvier family dined at a small table in the saloon at the same time as the white passengers, rather than being obliged to eat with the servants. On an American ship they’d have been sleeping in the cargo hold and eating with the crew.
    â€˜I was telling M’sieu Janvier,’ said Chloë, when Dominique dismissed her suitors and settled in an enormous sighing of lace petticoats on the sofa, ‘how poor M’sieu Singletary came to set sail for the United States after spending the first sixty-five years of his life adding up figures for Hurlstone and Ludd’s Private Commercial Bank. He wrote to me from Baltimore in the first week of October, to say he had just set foot on American soil and was setting forth for Charlottesville by way of Washington the following day. But he never reached Charlottesville.’
    â€˜Had he enemies?’ Dominique, her many-colored teacup cradled in slender hands, leaned forward eagerly. ‘People who might have lain in wait for him? Or lured him to some private place where they could make away with him?’
    In addition to gossip and millinery, Dominique was deeply fond of sensational fiction, of the Venetian daggers-in-the-dark variety. ‘As a man who audits the books for banks, he must have
thousands
of enemies!’ The dim lamplight glowed in her lovely brown eyes. ‘Those who have embezzled money and fear detection; or whom business reverses have driven mad. And if the wife of one such man committed suicide from despair at their ruin, I can easily see that the husband would have followed him on shipboard, waiting for his chance—’
    More reasonably, January inquired, ‘Did he know anyone in Washington or Charlottesville?’
    â€˜Well, Dr Applegrove on the University board,’ said Chloë. ‘Though they – like he and I – had never met. Another of his correspondents was a bookseller named Deaver in Charlottesville, whom I did know of to write to, when I didn’t hear from M’sieu Singletary in three weeks. It wasn’t like him, not to write. By the time M’sieu Deaver’s reply reached me, saying that M’sieu Singletary had never arrived, I had also received letters from a Dr Woolmer, who runs a boys’ school in Georgetown near Washington, and from a Mrs Bray, the married daughter of one of Mr Singletary’s banker employers, asking if I, as another of his correspondents, had heard anything of him? It was at that point,’ she said, her spectacle lenses flashing as she turned those large, pale-blue eyes back to January, ‘that Henri and I decided to speak to you. But by then he’d been missing for over ten weeks.’
    â€˜Does he drink?’
    â€˜Not that Uncle Veryl had ever heard of.’
    â€˜I suppose,’ said January thoughtfully, ‘that if he did, one of his correspondents – Applegrove, or Mrs Bray, or Dr Woolmer – would have mentioned it as a possible explanation for his disappearance. Did he have any illness that you know of? Something that might have flared up unexpectedly?’
    Her smile was like the glint of chipped glass. ‘Considering the detail with which he described his
mal de mer
on the voyage over, I assume had anything else been amiss I would have heard of it.’
    â€˜What about women?’ asked Minou. January had been dying to bring the subject up, but it was not a question that even a white man could ask a white lady, let alone a black one. ‘You say he was one of those odd old bachelors, but you know, dearest – or maybe you don’t …’ She frowned worriedly. ‘About how old gentlemen turn into
complete
imbeciles over pretty young girls?’
    Chloë tucked her smile away again, like a cat: ‘Only old gentlemen in someone else’s family.’ Her glance did not so much as flicker toward Herr Franck, whose snowy beard and numerous grandchildren did not