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punish me somehow, but not everyone! Not LeRoy and
Ellie and all the others—They wouldn’t harm my child, would they?
She’s only a baby, surely they wouldn’t—”
    “Is she Michie Jérôme’s child?” It was
difficult to see in the darkness, but Rose had the impression that
this young maidservant was barely out of her teens.
    “No, M’am.” The hushed voice sank til barely
audible. “Her father was gone before Michie Jérôme ever saw
me.”
    Rose was generally not a vindictive woman,
but she experienced a sudden, overwhelming desire to take a
cane-stalk and thrash both Michie Jérôme and his scheming wife.
    “I’ve sent for a white policeman from town,”
she said after a moment. “He should be here tomorrow. His man name
is Michie Shaw, an American, very tall and spitting tobacco all
around him. But he’s an honest man, and a clever one. Tell him
everything. You can trust him, trust him with anything. This I know
of my own experience. He can keep you – all of you – from
harm.”
    “Only God can keep us from harm, Madame,”
said LeRoy’s deep voice. “I pray you’re right, and that this man is
his servant.”
     
    *
     
    Livia emerged from the shadows of the
sugar-mill as Rose and Hannibal came past. “What did the girl have
to say for herself?”
    The avidity in her voice made Rose think
about cane-stalks again, but she controlled herself and said, “Only
that she’s terrified. And that the overseer Moberly almost
certainly knew about flash-paper and where to get it. And that it
sounds like Leonie Neuville could have brought her substitute
victim here anytime after full-dark – stupefied with laudanum, I
suspect, since she had to get her to walk up the steps and into the
room—”
    “God knows in my laudanum days I walked
pretty much the length and breadth of Paris,” remarked Hannibal,
“conversing with angels and under the impression that I was
actually in London or Rome or Xanadu—”
    Livia nudged him sharply. “And more’s the
wonder someone didn’t murder you , sir.” Hooves crunched on
the shell-path, and a man’s voice called out,
    “Who’s that?”
    “Hannibal Sefton, at your service, sir,”
replied Hannibal, in his most lofty English. “I was just having a
few words with Lieutenant Parton—”
    Two militiamen drew rein, and held their
lanterns down long enough to identify him as a white man, while
Hannibal handed them his card and repeated the tale of Rose’s
relationship to Ariette. The men grunted acquiescence, and one of
them added, “Ain’t that the way of it? Man I knowed over to Mobile,
took to meddlin’ with the maid in the nursery, and sure enough that
girl smothered the baby in the cradle, first time her master had to
hit her a couple of licks for talkin’ back. You just can’t trust
‘em.”
    “That sound you hear,” commented Hannibal,
when the two militiamen had ridden on toward the slave-jail, “is my
mind boggling at the mental processes of any man who would rape a
woman in his household, hit her a couple of licks , and then leave her in charge of his infant – if indeed any portion of
that story is true.”
    “I’m sure the true part,” said Rose, blowing
on her spectacles and wiping the dust from the lenses, “is that
people believed that the girl did it. Which does lead me to hope
that once we inform Shaw of what we’ve found here – once he has a
look at that poor girl’s body—” She turned, to glance back at the
dark bulk of the house, now fading behind them in the river mists,
“—he’ll be able to find evidence in town of a red-haired girl’s
disappearance – the Second Municipality along Tchapitoulas Street
has quite a colony of Irish, I understand. Otherwise, since we
didn’t find any record of getaway money siphoned from the
plantation, a jury may not believe a case that hangs on a pair of
ill-fitting shoes.”
    “All he really needs to do,” returned
Hannibal, “is put up enough of a question for trial to be