He sat at the counter in Hughson’s Tavern, drawing circles on the polished wood with the spillage from his glass. He had taken the long way around from the Tontine, not wanting to bump into Jake Hays. He had written a brief report and left it on the High Constable’s desk, but he knew Hays would have a great many more questions. About Gorton, about Umar, and about Jericho. He had questions for Hays, too, but they would have to wait.
Because he still had to find out who killed the girl. Lars was right, he could not let it go. It would nag at him, every day, until he was able to put together all the pieces of the puzzle in his head. Rumi had rebelled. She had slept with an Irish boy, become pregnant, and been discovered by her father. His religion required that she be killed by stoning, but he had whored her instead.
Was that all he knew?
He had the sick feeling that he was as far from the truth as when he had started. The biggest pieces of the puzzle were held by Umar, but he was dead. Sahar might be able to offer more that she knew, but she was gone. And yet he was sure he knew more himself, just that he hadn’t seen it yet.
He felt a familiar weight on his shoulders. Lars squeezed his neck and eased onto the chair beside him. He mimed to the barman to bring him a tankard. “I heard what happened with your man Gorton.”
“News travels fast,” Justy said.
“Not really. I was sat right here when they came and hauled poor Hardluck away in his nightshirt.”
“So you were up all night drinking?”
“Well, not just drinking.” Lars winked. “How did your account of things play down at the Hall?”
“I’ve no idea. I wrote a report and got out of it before Hays came in. I did go to see Riker, though.”
The barman arrived with a tankard. Lars sucked the froth noisily off the top of the beer. “And how was that?”
Justy told him. Lars chuckled. “You’ve made an enemy there, lad.”
“I’ll just add him to the list.”
“Do you think he killed this fella Beaulieu?”
“It was a bit convenient, wasn’t it? The inside man in this scrap of Riker’s suddenly going facedown in the river? And only hours after he whispers to me that he wants to meet.”
Lars grunted. “Convenient’s one word for it.” He swallowed a mouthful of ale.
“Exactly. But I’ve no proof. So I have to let it go.”
Lars looked sympathetically at him. “Leaves a bad taste, I suppose.”
“The kind all the ale in the world can’t wash away.”
They sat for a while, looking at the shelves of cups and crockery on the wall opposite.
“What about the other thing?” Lars asked, eventually.
“The girl?” Justy shrugged. “I’m stuck on speaking to the mother. She’s the key to the whole affair, I’d say. But I don’t expect I’ll ever see her again.”
“And why not? She’s sure to be in the city still. It’s just a question of finding her.”
“Why would she still be here?”
Lars scoffed. “Because she’s a Negro and a woman and a Mohammedan, of course. It’s not easy to get about this glorious country of ours with just one of those handicaps. No. She’ll be here, somewhere, hiding out.”
“You think Owens knows where she is?”
“Not if she has any sense at all. She’ll steer clear, now that she’s no use to him. And that means staying clear of her people, too. If he wanted to quiet her, that’s the first place he’d look.”
“So where, then?”
Lars looked sidelong at Justy. “Your noggin really is baked today, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t get much sleep last night either, remember.”
Lars grunted. “Well, I’d say she’s with a friend. Someone who’s not of the religion, if you’re with me.”
“But Umar kept his women locked up like caged birds. Sahar doesn’t know anyone outside of the religion.”
Lars picked up his tankard. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed half the pint. He belched softly. “Except that she does now, doesn’t she?”
Kerry opened her door at the second knock. She was wearing a man’s breeches, hose, and shirt, but her hair was loose, hanging coiled over her right shoulder like a chestnut rope.
For a moment, Justy felt lost. Kerry leaned on the jamb of the doorway and folded her arms. Her green eyes looked somewhere between wary and amused.
“Been reading?” Justy asked.
“Not much else to do now,” she replied.
“Can we come in?”
She stood aside and they walked into the tiny front room. Her bedroom door was closed. Justy and Lars sat down, and Kerry poured water out of an urn into three cups. She put them on the table in the center of the room and sat down, her back straight as a rod. “So.”
Justy nodded to the closed door. “Do you have a guest staying?”
An eyebrow ticked up. “And if I did?”
“I’m only asking.”
She flicked dust off the knee of her breeches. “Well, it’s none of your business either way.”
He sighed. “Is it Sahar?”
She burst out laughing. “In this house? With Lew Owens a step away? Are you spooney?”
“I thought they were friends. Allies, at least.”
“They were until he was done with her. But if you lot up at Federal Hall make any kind of a rumpus about last night, she’ll be a problem for him, won’t she? Better to hush her now and be done with it, so she can’t tell any tales. That’s how Lew sees things.”
“You warned her?”
“Of course I did. The poor judy’s been tasked her whole life. It was about time someone looked out for her.”
“So who is in there?”
She folded her arms. “Who do you think?”
Justy remembered the glazed look on the young woman’s face the night before. The way Kerry had held her hand. “Your friend Tanny?”
“You’ll make a detective yet.”
Justy leaned forward in his chair. The horsehair made a creaking sound under him. “Where’s Sahar, Kerry?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“You know why. She’s the only one who can tell me what happened with her daughter.”
Kerry stood up and went to her window. The glass was screened with a muslin curtain, and she twitched it aside to look into the street. Then she turned to look at Justy. The light was behind her, silhouetting her and throwing her face into shadow.
“I’ve hidden her away. Somewhere you can’t get to her.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means she’s in as much danger from you as she is from Owens. I know you, Justy. You’re a law man, and the way you see it, Sahar broke the law when she killed that bastard.”
“And how do you see it?”
“That he got what was coming to him. He was a rapist and a pimp and a murderer. Sahar told me he killed the girls who couldn’t produce kinchen for him, or who tried to run away. He gave them to his men first, then he had them killed and buried up the island somewhere. God alone knows how many. He would have killed Sahar, after what she’d done, so as far as I’m concerned, it was self-defense.”
Justy looked at his hands. “I wasn’t going to arrest her.”
“Oh, you weren’t?” Kerry’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “You were just going to let her walk away, after she topped a man, right in front of you?”
“I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Because if I was going to arrest her, I’d have to arrest you, too. It was you put him on the ground, remember?”
She said nothing. Her eyes were hooded, but he could feel the anger radiating from them.
He sighed. “I swear, I don’t know what I was going to do. The report I wrote for Jake Hays last night? I left that part out. And you know what that makes me? An accessory.”
“You could write another report.”
“I could. And I should. Because what she did was murder, plain and simple. But right now I’m more concerned about another murder. Which is why I want to talk to her now.”
“You won’t arrest her.”
“Not today.”
She stepped towards him. “Not ever, Justy. You let her go free. Or she’s gone for good.”
Behind her, in the street, the sun came out from behind a cloud, and the light turned her hair into a dark halo. He felt as though someone had grabbed him by the throat. “You’d let Rumi’s killer go?”
“If it saved Sahar’s life, yes.”
“Jesus, Kerry!”
It was hot in the small room, stifling. He could feel the sweat soaking his shirt under his arms. He wanted to wrench the scarf from around his neck so that he could breathe. Kerry was like a statue, dark and cool as marble. He felt the mad urge to tear off his coat and press himself against her, to rest his burning cheek on hers.
He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. He twisted it in his hands, resisting the temptation to mop his face. “I won’t arrest her.”
“You swear it?”
“I swear.”
She waited for a moment, very still. And then she made up her mind. “I’ll take you.”
They waited in the street while she changed. Justy leaned on the wall of the warehouse building opposite and let the sweat dry on his forehead.
“Is it always like that with you two now?” Lars asked.
“Like what?”
“Like you looking like a wee puppy and her deciding or not whether to jump you?”
“What?”
Lars snorted. “I wish the two of yez would just get it over with and dab it up already. There’d be a good deal less tension.”
Kerry’s front door rattled and she stepped out. She had pulled her hair up and pinned it, so that it showed off her long neck above the ruff of the high collar of her black dress. She looked at them, sharp green eyes. “What are you two scheming?”
“Nothing.” Justy could feel the flush creeping over the top of his head.
She looked him up and down. “This way, then.”
They followed her down towards Chapel Street, and then into the lanes of Canvas Town. For a long time they walked through the busy markets, dodging shoppers carrying bags and messengers carrying loads as the lanes twisted left and right under the colored awnings.
And then they burst out of the shade and into the sunlight and Justy blinked. “Here?”
They were standing outside the waterfront entrance to Hughson’s Tavern. Kerry led them up the exterior staircase and through a first-floor doorway. A maid bobbed a curtsey as they passed her on the landing. Kerry tapped on a door.
There was a single bed, a small table with a three-spike candleholder, a threadbare wooden chair with spindly legs, and a wardrobe. And nothing else.
Justy felt his face redden. He spun around. “Where is she?”
Kerry leaned on the door. “No arrest. You swore it.”
“Yes. I swore. Now produce her, Kerry.”
She smirked at him, and opened the door.
It was a moment before Justy recognized Sahar. She seemed smaller than the night before, without her bright robes. She was dressed in a maid’s uniform, and the white of her mob cap made her skin look darker. She looked just like a hundred other black servants in the city. Justy might walk right past her in the street and never notice. He smiled, despite himself.
“She was on the landing, when we came in, wasn’t she?”
Kerry nodded. “Did you twig her then?”
“No. I never would have. It’s a good disguise.”
Sahar sat on the bed, Kerry beside her. Lars leaned his bulk against the door.
Justy sat carefully on the spindle-legged chair and faced Sahar. “You’re in no danger from me. I’m not here to arrest you. Has Kerry told you that?”
Sahar nodded. She had a small, heart-shaped face, with large, oval eyes and dramatically arched brows, a long, thin nose, and a tiny purse of a mouth. Justy had calculated she must be nearly thirty years old, but she looked at least ten years younger. She was looking at her hands, folded in her lap, narrow palms and long fingers, lighter close to the knuckles where she had taken off her rings. That gave Justy an idea.
“Sahar, I need you to tell me everything you can about the night Rumi was killed. Can you do that?”
“Yes. But I know very little. I was locked in a room.”
“Why?”
“Because Absalom wanted to be sure I would not try to stop him whoring my daughter.”
He saw the fire in her eyes then, the strength she had used to cut Umar’s throat. “Last night, he said he saved her from being stoned to death. Did that happen often?”
“Only once. A few years ago. A man was stoned for raping a boy.”
“I see. And Rumi’s crime was bad enough for her to be stoned?”
“So he said.”
“So why wasn’t she?”
“Because he wanted the child.”
Justy nodded. “He had to punish her, though. To keep everyone else in line.”
“He disowned her,” she spat. “He wanted to put her in her place. He told her he would whore her, then take her child and make her a serf, cleaning the bog houses.”
Kerry took one of her hands.
“So what happened?” Justy asked.
“I don’t know. I was locked in. But I heard the noise. A crashing sound, like glass breaking. People shouting. I was told Rumi had stabbed the man and run away.” She looked down. “It was only later I heard it was not she who had stabbed him, but the other way around.”
She gripped Kerry’s hand, skin on her knuckles turning pale. Justy waited for a moment.
“Do you know who the man was?”
She shook her head. “One of the wealthy men that came up every few weeks, to drink and smoke and plough the white women. I never saw their faces. I don’t know their names. The angels served them.”
“But Rumi wasn’t white.”
Sahar’s eyes filled with tears again, so that her pupils looked magnified. “When Absalom locked me up, he said one of his visitors wanted a dark-skinned woman for a change. But he feared getting the pox from a Canvas Town whore. Rumi was perfect because she was clean.” Her voice wobbled.
“Thank you, Sahar.” He sat back, gingerly. He had the feeling the chair was going to collapse under him, but it was surprisingly sturdy. “Now it’s my turn to try and help you.”
A faint smile. “How can you help me?”
“Umar … Absalom … was Rumi’s father. But was he your husband also? Were you pledged to each other?”
She looked up. The whites of her eyes were brilliant, as though her tears had washed them clean. “Why do you want to know this?”
“It may help you.”
She shrugged. “He took my innocence when I was young. We had a child together later.”
“Was there a formal marriage? Some kind of ceremony?”
“When Rumi was born, there was a ceremony. We were pledged to each other then.”
“Who witnessed it?”
“Everyone.”
“And did Umar have any other children? Or was Rumi the only one?”
“She was the only one.”
Justy nodded. “That’s very good, Sahar. Now we need to find some of the other people who were at the ceremony. They can testify that you and Umar were husband and wife.”
“And why would I want this?”
“Because if you are his wife, in the eyes of the law, you will inherit an estate that could be worth a great deal of money. Enough to get to a safe place and build a new life. For you, and anyone else you wanted to bring with you.”
She looked at Kerry. Kerry nodded, and squeezed her hand.
Sahar’s face darkened. “But what about Owens?”
“You will have to be careful. Stay hidden. Have Kerry look for your witnesses. You and they have to see a lawyer and sign some papers.”
He made to leave.
“One thing.” Sahar was standing by the bed, holding her head up. “When my friend came to tell me Rumi had stabbed the man, she said the angels, the white women, gave him a nickname.”
“What was it?” Justy asked.
“Firkin.”