Free Benjamin January 1 - A Free Man Of Color by Barbara Hambly

what I thought.”
    This room, like Froissart's office, had not been included when the building was converted to gaslight. Instead, branches of expensive wax candles burned against glass reflectors all around the walls. It was a haunted light, after the brilliance of the gas, as if the whole chamber had been preserved in amber long ago, and the woman who lay on the cloaks were no more than some beautiful, exotic relic of an antediluvian world. But under the eerie, tabby-cat face shoved up onto her forehead, there was no mistaking the bluish cast of the skin, the swollen tongue, and bulging, bruised-looking eyes. There was certainly no mistaking the marks around her neck. Behind them, Leon Froissart whispered, “My God, my God, what am I to do? All the gentlemen in the ballroom . . .”
    “Send someone for the police,” said January. “God have mercy on her.” He crossed himself and offered an inward prayer, then turned the lace-mitted hand over in his. There was blood under all her nails; two of them had been pulled almost clear of their beds in the struggle, and dabs of red stood on her skirt and sleeves like the fallen petals of a wilting rose.
    He was thinking fast: about the passageway from the ballroom to the Theatre, about the courtyard with its teeming, masked fantasies. About the Coleridge dreams ascending and descending the double stair to the lobby, and the double doors opening from lobby to gaming rooms, and from gaming rooms to the street.
    “Now, immediately, as soon as possible. Keep anyone from entering or leaving the building and send someone over to the Theatre and tell them to do the same. If anyone tries to leave tell them we've found a large sum of money and we have to identify the owner. But mostly just tell Hannibal and the others to play that Beethoven contradanse. It should keep everybody happy,” he added, turning to see the look of horror that swept Froissart's face.
    Belatedly, he remembered he was no longer in Paris, shifted his eyes quickly from the white man's eyes and modified the tone of command from his voice. “You know the police are going to want to talk to everyone.”
    “Police?” Froissart stared at him in horror. “We can't send for the police!”
    January looked up, startled into meeting his eyes. Froissart was a Frenchman of France, without the American's automatic contempt for persons of color, but he'd been in the country for years. Still, an American wouldn't have flushed or have turned his glance away in shame.
    “Some ... some of the most prominent men in the city are here tonight!” There was pleading in his voice.
    The most prominent men in the city and their colored mistresses, thought January. Any one of whom can be headed out the side door this minute, masked and disguised as who-knows-what.
    And French or not, Froissart was white. January looked down again and made his tone still more conciliating, like the wise old uncle common to so many of the plantations. “Believe me, Monsieur Froissart, if I had a choice between what your guests'11 say about your calling the police, and what the police'll say if you don't call—if it was me, I'd call.”
    Froissart said nothing, staring in fascinated horror down at the dead woman's face. The beautiful light skin of which she had been so vain was suffused with dark blood, the delicate features—indistinguishable from a white woman's—contorted almost beyond recognition.
    “I could be dismissed,” he whispered in a wan little voice. “M'sieu Davis wants no trouble in this house, not in the gaming rooms, not in the Theatre. . . .” He swallowed hard. “And bien sur, she is only a placee . . .”
    January could see where that was going. The custom of the country ... So could Dominique; she gestured toward the door with her eyes, and January bent down closer to the body, his motion deliberately drawing Froissart's attention. “You see how her neck's marked?” The man would have had to be an idiot not to note the