Barbara Hambly - Dead water

The Colonel set down the clothes and said, “It sounds as though Mr. Weems died shortly before midnight. Or shortly after.”

“I'd say so.” January knelt by the bunk and tucked Weems's protruding hand back under the sheet, pausing as he did so to feel the joints of the fingers. On the right hand they were stiff down to the wrist. On the left, the arm that had been caught in something, the joints of all but the smallest had been broken. That smallest finger was also locked in rigor.

“Then perhaps we had best find out,” said Colonel Davis, still turning the pick-locks over in his hands, “where Mr. Weems's enemies—whoever they might have been—were at that time.”

THIRTEEN

Immediately upon their return to the Saloon, Davis sent for Mr. Souter from the pilot-house. “It's next to useless dealing with that arrogant boor Molloy,” remarked the Colonel, and January wondered if Molloy had seen Miss Skippen's attempts to claim the young widower's attention with dropped handkerchiefs and worshipful gazes.

By this time rain was hammering down in earnest, churning the brown water with fluttering white-edged waves. All the male cabin passengers had sought shelter in the long, gloomy room, drinking coffee or whiskey as their natures dictated, and playing cards. The sole exception was Mr. Quince. He as usual remained as a guest in the Ladies' Parlor, entertaining them—if the word could be used—with his views on Vegetarianism and the organization of the spiritual hierarchies.

Passing the open door of that small chamber, January felt a pang of sympathy for Miss Skippen, who sat in a corner by the window, gazing bleakly out at the rain, clearly bored to sobs. Mr. Quince, finding the company of his own sex unbearable and vice versa, had the option of ingratiating himself with Mrs. Tredgold and being invited to hold court among the ladies. For a woman to spend the day in the Main Saloon chatting with the men would have marked her as inerasably as if she'd sewn a scarlet A on her dress.

At least she had a dry room to sit in, thought January. Most of his pity went to Rose, sheltering among the wood-piles, and to the chained slaves and to the immigrant women huddled with their children in the doubtful cover of the bow. It did not, of course, occur to Mrs. Tredgold or anyone else to extend an invitation to them to come up and stay dry.

Nick the barkeep lit the whale-oil lamps in the Saloon, and the men pretended to talk or play cards. But the planters Roberson and Lockhart, the two slave-dealers, and the New Englander Dodd all kept glancing up from their cards or their newspapers at the corner table where Davis established his headquarters.

At least, reflected January, they'd all be in one place to be questioned.

“Molloy cursed somethin' wonderful,” asserted the junior pilot in response to Davis's question. “Went on for five minutes about unprintable expletive-deleted branches from trees that'd grown out of the Devil's toenails—although toenails might not have been the word he used—snaggin' up his rudder, and how if he had his way he'd turn crews of niggers loose on the banks to shave 'em to the ground five miles on either side, and him pullin' and wrestlin' with the wheel all the time, with the smoke of his cigar rollin' around his head like Satan's own breath.”

The young man chuckled, fresh-faced, long-jawed, and rather plump, with big dark eyes under long lashes, a bit like a friendly cow. “Not much trash in the river when she's low like she was last night, but now and then you'll get branches and leaves caught up on a snag. When I took over the wheel I could see what he meant, and it was a struggle, keeping to the center of the channel and easing off 'round the bends where she gets strong. . . . Even in low water she can be strong around Magna Vista Point. And it was blind foggy. Couldn't see hardly down to the nose of the boat.”

“When did the rudder snag, do you know?” asked Davis. “How soon before Molloy went off at midnight?”

“Fairly soon. I came in maybe fifteen, twenty minutes of midnight, just as we come opposite Ulee's wood-yard, and it was maybe five-ten minutes after that.”

“If it was blind foggy,” asked Davis, curious, “how do you know you were opposite Mr. Ulee's wood-yard?”

“Oh, there's an eddy backs under the point just below the yard,” replied Souter. “Even in low water you can feel her.”

“Surely there are other eddies along the shore?”

“'Course there are! But they all feel a tad different—you can tell the voices of one of your niggers from another in the dark, can't you? Well, I can feel the difference in the way she pulls, between that little eddy under Ulee's yard and, for instance, that cantankersome bull-bitch you got under Dead Man's Bend, for God's sake. Besides, where else would I be, that time of night? I'd just heard old Fergusson's dogs barking when we passed his place, we'd made the crossing over Magna Vista, so where the hell else would I be gettin' a little eddy 'cept opposite Ulee's?”

Lightning flared, a white explosion in all the high clerestories of the Saloon; thunder cracked like the sky splitting. Souter listened, then nodded approvingly. “About time we got a rise. Be a hell of a lot of trash in the stream, but the rise'll be a help.”

“Did you hear anything?” asked Davis. “You say you heard dogs barking on the bank. . . .”

“'Bout a mile and a half the other side of the levee, actually,” corrected Souter. “Fergusson has this mastiff bitch, you see, name of Penelope. . . .”

“If you heard dogs barking a mile and a half away,” persisted Davis, “it must have been a very still night. Did you hear voices on the deck? Or the sound of argument?”

Souter frowned, then shook his head. “Oh, I heard those deck-passengers, laughin' and tellin' jokes as they played cards as I came up the stairs, and a nigger gal singin' to her pickaninny. . . . Say, it's been twenty years since I heard ‘House Carpenter.' My Grandma used to play it on her cheeks, slappin' her own face and making mouths to change the pitch. . . .”

“When did Weems leave dinner?” asked January softly, leaning down to where Hannibal sat at the other side of the table.

“Almost before the pudding was served.” The fiddler scratched a corner of his gray-flecked mustache. “And he was fidgeting throughout it like a fly in a tar-box. Mrs. Fischer was most insistent that I stay and play for them—one would almost think she'd forgotten about swearing out a warrant for my arrest in Natchez. She was overpoweringly gracious, and exerted her charms on every man at table, I think, to get them to stay on as well. I didn't think much of it at the time—well, in fact I suspected she'd had a falling-out with Weems—but now I realize she must have been trying to keep as many people as possible in the Saloon while Weems searched their staterooms.”

“That's what it sounds like.” January turned his head at the drawling whine of Ned Gleet's voice.

“I was here till about two, weren't we, Jubal?” The two slave-dealers had taken Souter's place in front of Davis's table. “Us and Byrne . . .” Gleet nodded in the direction of the gambler, who was dealing a game of whist for Roberson, Lockhart, and Dodd, none of whom had apparently learned his lesson yet about playing with the so-called “dry-goods importer,” who invariably seemed to win.

“Davis played until one,” supplied Hannibal in an undervoice. “Gleet proposed the game—he usually does—and as usual insisted that I play. As usual I dumped most of the liquor he plied me with into the spittoon. After several hours heaving at a capstan, I assure you it was not easy, but the last thing you'd need after the day you had yesterday was to wake up this morning and be told I'd lost you to Gleet at vingt-et-un.”