"Half-sister. Sir."

"Beautiful gal." The words might have been spoken of a Ming vase or a Brittany sunset, an admiring compliment without a touch of the lascivious. He turned back to the assembled planters, bankers, and merchants crowded in the ballroom door. "Gentlemen," he said, "as a representative of equal justice in this city, I can't say I approve of divagatin' from the law, but I understand yore reasons, and I'm bound to say I accepts "em." He shoved back the too-long forelock with fingers like cotton-loom spindles. "With your permission, then, I'll note down what any of you saw anonymously, and I thank you for doin' your duty as citizens in figurin' out the circumstances of this poor girl's death and findin' the man what killed her. I will ask that you be patient, since this'll take some little time."

There was an angry murmur from the ballroom. January saw several of the men-mostly Americans-glance toward the curtained passageway and guessed they'd have a number of desertions the moment Shaw was out of sight. "Mr. Froissart," said Shaw softly, "could you be so kind as to lend us your office for the interviews? It'll likely take most of the night, there bein" so many. Would it trouble you too much to make coffee for the folks here? Boechter," he added, motioning one of his constables near, "see to it nobody wanders in off n the street, would you?"

Or wanders out, thought January, though he guessed Constable Boechter wasn't going to be much of a deterrent if Peralta or Destrehan grew impatient and decided to quit the premises. Shaw motioned him over and said, "Maestro? I'd purely take it as a favor if while you're waitin' you'd play some music, give 'em somethin' to listen to. Sounds silly, but music doth have charms an' all that."

January nodded. He wondered whether it was chance, or whether this upriver barbarian truly knew the Creole mind well enough to understand that by turning the nuisance into a social occasion with food, coffee, and music, he would keep his witnesses in the room. "If it's as well for you, Dominique and I can wait to be interviewed last. Sir. You may want to get through as many of these as you can before they get bored and start walking out."

The lieutenant smiled for the first time, and it changed his whole slab-sided face. "You may have a point, Maestro. I think I'll need to talk to your sister first off, to get the shape of what it is I'm askin'." He spoke softly enough to exclude not only the men grouped in the ballroom doorway, but Froissart and his own constables. "I take it your sister's here with her man?"

"He'll have gone by this time," said January. "Half the men here tonight just slipped back through to the Theatre; their wives and mothers are going to swear they were with them all night on that side. I doubt there's anything you can do about that."

Shaw spat again-he had yet to make his target- but other than that kept his opinion to himself. "Well, we can only do what we can. You may be waitin' a piece... What is your name?"

"January. Benjamin January." He handed him his card.

Shaw slipped it into the sagging pocket of his green corduroy coat. "Like they say, it's the custom of the country."

From his post on the dais, January could watch the entire long ballroom and hear the surge and babble of

talk as now one masked gentleman, now another, exited for questioning. Those who really didn't want to be questioned slipped off the moment Shaw was out of sight, but the Kalmuck's instinct had been a wise one: Romulus Valle replenished the collation on the tables with fresh oysters, beignets, and tarts newly baked from the market, and the somber glory of coffee, and this, combined with the light, calming airs of Mozart and Haydn, Schubert, and Rossini, created a partylike atmosphere. No Creole, January knew, was going to leave a party, certainly not if doing so would rob him of the chance to talk about it later. Secure in the knowledge that they were masked, wouldn't be identified, and that none of this really had anything to do with them, most stayed, and in fact more than a few returned from the Theatre rather than lose out on the novelty.

Augustus Mayerling set up a faro bank in a corner and systematically fleeced everyone in sight. A slighdy spindle-shanked Apollo got into a furious argument with one of the several Uncases present and had to be separated by three of Mayerling's students before another duel ensued. Jean Bouille quoted to everyone who would listen the exact content of the letters William Granger had written to the Courier about him, and verbatim accounts of what he had written in return in the Bee.

The older women like Agnes Pellicot, and the daughters they had brought to show, had the best time: The men took the opportunity of a new experience to flirt with the young girls, and the mothers gossiped to their hearts' content. January reflected that his own mother would burst a blood vessel to think that she hadn't deigned to show up tonight and so had missed something her cronies would be discussing for weeks.

Only now and then could Euphrasie Dreuze's weeping be heard. Once Hannibal turned his head a little and remarked, "That was a good one." And when January frowned, puzzled, he explained, "You have to have lungs like an opera singer to make your grief carry through two closed doors and the corridor."

"She did lose her daughter," said January.

"She lost a son in the cholera last summer and went to a ball the same night she heard the news. Got up in black like an undertaker's mute, true, leaving streaks of it on every chair in the Pontchartrain Ballroom and telling everyone present how prostrate she was with grief, but she stayed till the last waltz and went out for oysters afterward. I was there."

Old Xavier Peralta evidently hadn't been apprised of this piece of gossip, however, for he gathered up a cup of coffee and slipped quietly from the ballroom; January saw him turn in the direction of the corridor from the lobby. Whatever he felt about the woman during negotiations for her daughter's contract, grief was grief.

His was the only sign of bereavement. Men sipped whisky from silver hip flasks or from the tiny bottles concealed in the heads of their canes and flirted with the girls. Probably fearing that he'd be asked to pay for all four if they stayed, Monsieur Froissart released Jacques and Uncle Bichet, but after he was questioned by the guards, Hannibal returned with another bottle of champagne and continued to accompany January's arias and sonatinas with the air of a man amusing himself. January suspected that the other two had only gone as far as the kitchens anyway, where they would sit trading speculations with Romulus Valle until almost morning.

As people moved in and out of the ballroom or through the lobby past the doorways, January kept watching the crowd, searching for the golden buckskin gown and the silly crown of black cock feathers. It would have been insanity for her to remain, but he could not put from his mind the fleeting impression he had had of her presence in the ballroom after he'd begun to play; could not forget the hard desperation in her eyes as she'd said, I must see her... I MUST. He wondered what she so urgently needed to discuss with the dead woman, and whether Angelique's death would make matters better for her, or

worse.

Taking his advice-or perhaps simply following the dictates of logic-Shaw questioned all the men first and turned them out of the building, then the women, who were quite content to remain; though after the departure of the men most of the buffet vanished as well. Monsieur Froissart was under no illusions about which group constituted his more important clientele. A few gentlemen waited for their placees in the lobby downstairs or in the gambling rooms. Others, conscious of wives, mothers, and fiancees in the other side of the building, simply left instructions with coachmen-or in some cases employees of the ballroom-to see the ladies home. Few of the placees complained or expressed either indignation or annoyance. They were used to looking after themselves.