Death on the Moon by Barbara Hambly

Author:Barbara Hambly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, historical, benjamin january, barbara hambly, moon hoax of 1836
Publisher: Barbara Hambly

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“Ah.” Old La Violette nodded, her wrinkled face like a dark rose-hip beneath a pink-and-blue tignon easily the size of a watermelon. “Li ’tite Mamzelle in the blue dress.” Steam from her tin barrow, with its bed of glowing charcoal, wreathed her face and drifted away among the chiaroscuro of lamp-light among the brick arches of the market.

In the daytime – even on Sunday (to the disgust of the American preachers) – the covered arcade that stretched down-river along the levee from the Place des Armes was the site of gay-colored chaos, barrows of apples and pears and Mexican oranges vivid against the velvety garnets and browns of yams and potatoes; market-women in gaudy head-cloths wailing the virtues of their onions and cauliflower; and everywhere, clay jars of oil, and bins and barrels and buckets of fish, shrimp, crabs brought up from the Gulf. With fall of night most of the marchandes had gone, leaving only scattered blots of leaves and peelings, and the occasional fish too stale to vend on the morrow. The shadows were blacker under the hanging oil-lamps, and the dresses of the women brighter.

But at the rough tables around La Violette’s stand – and those of the other coffee-sellers, pastry-women, vendors of pralines or pan dulce – men and women sat at all hours, sipping coffee, smoking, watching the passers-by.

“I was her sister,” said Philomène Pilchard, keeping her voice steady with an effort, and Rose saw the old woman’s glance rake the dwarf, perhaps identifying the fabric and color of her dress as the same, perhaps seeing an echo of Alys’s small stature in that of her sister, or a similarity in their faces or their beautiful brown eyes. “She has come to… misfortune.”

“We think she would meet a friend here,” said Rose, who was a regular customer of La Violette’s stand, known to her as a part of her life and her world. “He will not know what happened to her—”

The coffee-seller nodded. “He waited here last night,” she said. “Baptiste Mercier, the banker, that also owns the steamboat Mirielle and the cotton-press on Rue du Levee. They had a rendezvous, I think – he looked half a dozen times at his watch, before he left.” She nodded toward a man alone at a table near a woman selling the last bunches of dried lavender from a basket. The man looked at his watch again even as she spoke, and then around him, scanning the passers-by who were emerging, now, from late Mass and crossing to the market for a final gossip before going home.

Rose paid for two tin cups of La Violette’s brew, and the old lady slipped her a praline wrapped in newspaper, for lagniappe. Even before they reached the table the plain dark indigo of Philomène’s dress must have caught the gentleman’s eye, for he turned sharply in his chair, and Rose saw first the hope that flooded his face, and then how his grizzled eyebrows yanked together in consternation as he realized who Philomène had to be.

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