Dead water

properly in mourning for dinner. I've offered to help her—a measure of my dedication to the purposes of justice, as I cannot sew a stitch and detest the exercise.”

“Then let me strengthen your fingers by an invigorating kiss.” January took her hand and pressed his lips gently to every long, slender finger. “Am I included in the incarnation of evil? Or would you ladies like a little gallant company while you gossip?”

She gave him her quickflash smile. “I came out for that very reason. Only remember you're as puzzled by Hannibal's infamous conduct as anyone—you have no idea whether he's telling the truth or not.”

“I'll just run along, shall I?” suggested Hannibal. “Perhaps before supper I can catch the Tredgold children and tear out and devour their hearts.”

Rose said, “You do that and Cissy will be forever your friend.”

As Hannibal turned to go, and Rose disappeared up the stair once more, January laid a staying hand on the fiddler's frayed sleeve. “I hesitate to keep you from slaughtering the Tredgold children,” he said, “but if you're not too tired, you might idle your way up to the pilot-house instead and have a chat with Mr. Souter. I have no reason to think Mr. Lundy would have killed Weems—or that he could have, for that matter—but with both Fischer and Molloy trying to get us off the boat dead or alive, I think it's time we started checking on everyone aboard who wasn't somewhere at midnight last night.”

Sophie glanced up quickly as January's tall form blotted the last twilight from the open door. January creased his brow in a look of deepest concern and said, “Miss Rose, I'm glad I found you—good evenin', Miss Sophie. Miss Rose, what in the name of Heaven's goin' on around here? Michie Hannibal givin' me a tongue-lashin', that gold he's been talkin' about since we left New Orleans not bein' where he said it was. . . .” He shook his head in helpless bafflement. “An' now they're talkin' accusin' me of harmin' Mr. Weems. I swear”—he turned to Sophie appealingly—“I didn't know nuthin' about the man, 'cept what Michie Hannibal said. 'Cept I don't think anybody can be as sly an' sneaky as Michie Hannibal says he was.”

“Well, Mr. Weems was no saint with a halo on his head,” said Sophie primly, her needle flying in the neat, tight stitches that Ayasha would have approved of and that Rose couldn't have produced at gunpoint. “And I know that what he and Madame did was wrong. But her husband used her cruelly. . . .”

January realized that Sophie was referring to the Seventh Commandment, not the Eighth.

“. . . forcing her to flee from his house one night in a rainstorm, taking nothing but the clothes on her back and her jewelry. Surely she can be forgiven for running from such a man as that. How she has suffered! And poor Mr. Weems was very good to me, giving me a little extra money—for my inconvenience, he said, wasn't that sweet?— every time I had to sleep on the deck, and making sure that I had a good blanket, and fruit from dinner. I had only known him three months—since I came into Mrs. Fischer's house—but he was always so kind. Oh, how could you have done what you did, Ben? Cut him up, like a . . . like an animal? My poor mistress wept and wept. . . .”

“It cut up my heart to do it, M'am,” January assured her. “Just as bad as it cut up him. But he's dead, and felt nuthin'. An' my old master, that was a doctor, he taught me how to tell if a man'd been murdered. Without me doin' what I did, no one would have known, and Mr. Weems would have gone to his grave cryin' out to be avenged, an' no one knowing.”

Sophie sniffed, and wiped those immense brown eyes. “And to think that the murderer might be your own master!”

“I don't see how it could, M'am,” said January earnestly. “Michie Hannibal, he was playin' cards all that night in the Saloon.”

“Mrs. Fischer says he's sly, and dangerous, and clever,” replied Sophie, her voice sinking dramatically. “He could surely have slipped away to do the awful deed, while the others were engrossed in their game. She even thinks you might have done it, but if you had, why would you have cut up his body, to prove the murder? No.” She shook her head decidedly. “It was your master, in the pay of Mr. Fischer, seeking revenge upon Madame, and after she and poor Mr. Weems had tried so hard to achieve happiness. Oh, my poor Madame!”

A tear fell on the pieced-together crape of the black dress in her lap, and left its stain, like a sad echo, on the slave-woman's gray skirt beneath.

Refraining from taking issue with this unlikely scenario, Rose asked, “Were they together at all on that last night? I know you came down to the deck to sleep, after you helped poor Julie. . . .”

“Oh, poor Julie!” Sophie shook her head, and pressed a delicate hand to her brow. “I feel so guilty for having helped her instead of waiting for Mr. Weems! I might have been able to do something, to say something. . . .”

“But Mrs. Fischer sent you away,” pointed out Rose, “didn't she?”

“Yes.” Sophie sighed tragically and removed her hand, the stains from the crape on her fingers leaving a long, sooty smudge beneath the edge of her pink tignon. “Yes, she did. There was nothing, really, that I could have done. But I should have been able to. I brushed out her hair for her, and folded up her clothes and locked up her jewelry. She settled down in her wrapper to wait for . . . for Mr. Weems. . . .” A blush suffused the girl's ivory cheeks. “I'd made up a bundle, you see, for Julie, while I was waiting for Mrs. Fischer to come back from dinner. Some food, and a dress Mrs. Fischer had given me, which didn't fit me, and shoes. I took it out of the stateroom with me just as Julie came out of Miss Skippen's stateroom crying. I put my arms around her and tried to comfort her, and it was then that the boat ran on the bar. We clung to each other—I was afraid the boat would sink . . . !”

January blinked for a moment at this concept—by running onto the bar the boat had in effect touched the bottom of the river, and couldn't sink—but Sophie went on breathlessly.

“Then Julie said, ‘I'm going now! We must be near shore, and the water shallow, to run on a bar. I can get to shore, I know it!' Oh, poor Julie! I only hope she made it to shore!”

Eleven o'clock, then, thought January, unless something delayed her . . . But what would have delayed Julie for the hour that it took to walk the boat over the bar?

Which left, unfortunately, only one other black culprit with reason to wish Weems harm, and without an alibi.

Benjamin January.

“Do you know if Mr. Weems came to see your mistress at all?” asked Rose sympathetically.