Queen of Swords
Page 39

“Your first interview with him didn’t go well, I take it,” Hannah said. And to Paul: “I expect he won’t just go away. If he must see me, he can come in here. But give me a half hour with Jennet, first.”
Jennet sat to one side like a prim and disapproving chaperone while Urquhart took a chair without being invited. He drew a notebook and a stub of a carpenter’s pencil from inside his jacket, and looked at Hannah expectantly. Hannah met his gaze and kept her expression blank.
“If you could just relate the events of the night you were attacked.”
He had amazingly white and healthy teeth, so perfect that they might have been taken for false, though the lack of clicks and whistles in his speech made that unlikely. Everything about the man seemed many shades too bright: ruddy cheeks, red mouth, the curling blond beard and the green pea stuck in it. His vivid coloring stood in stark contrast to his demeanor, which was sober to the point of severity.
Urquhart was only here, Jennet had told her, because Livingston had showed an interest in the case for Luke’s sake. Otherwise an assault on an Indian woman would never have earned any kind of formal inquiry, much less this very unusual second visit.
“I spent the afternoon at the Livingstons’,” Hannah said.
“On what errand?”
“I was invited to take tea.”
If he was affronted by the idea that she had been a guest in the Livingstons’ parlor, he hid it well. It was a trick that Hannah knew, too; she would not show this man any weakness, no matter how far he tried her patience. Jennet was another matter, of course.
“And then?”
“Just after dark I walked back here in the company of a young boy called Leo.”
“We haven’t been able to locate this Leo,” Urquhart said.
Hannah raised an eyebrow in Jennet’s direction.
“It’s true,” Jennet said. “There’s no sign of him. I think Honoré may have scared him off.”
“Or worse,” Hannah said.
Urquhart frowned. “And then?” he prompted.
“When I came into the smaller courtyard—the one off the rue Toulouse—Honoré Poiterin was waiting in the dark. He put a gun to my back and forced me into the clinic.”
Urquhart looked up from his notebook, where he had yet to write down a word. “Clinic?”
“The little clinic, we call it,” Hannah said. “You probably have heard it called the Redbone Clinic. It is attached to the rue Dauphine kine-pox clinic by adjoining courtyards.”
He pursed his lips, and then nodded. “Go on.”
Hannah looked at him directly. “For the next ten hours or so he kept me there, bound by my wrists to a cot. You can see the extent of my injuries. Or Dr. Savard can provide you with a written list, if you need one.”
Urquhart considered his pencil. Finally he said, “It’s your statement that Honoré Poiterin attacked you, bound you, beat you, and raped you over a ten-hour period.”
Jennet drew in a sharp breath.
“Yes,” Hannah said. “That is my statement.”
“You want me to arrest the man?”
“Captain Urquhart,” Hannah said. “You asked for a statement. I made one. What you do with it is outside my sphere of influence.”
Urquhart scratched the corner of his mouth. His fingers were stained with tobacco and gunpowder and ink, and his nails were rimmed black. He said, “I heard rumors about you, but I didn’t believe half of them. Now that I hear you talk I guess a lot of what’s being said is true.”
Hannah gave Jennet a sharp look that said, Don’t. Urquhart was looking at her, too. “This was the same day you called the constables into Mrs. Livingston’s parlor to remove Mr. Poiterin’s grandmother.”
“That’s so,” Jennet said.
“The same Mrs. Poiterin who has filed a lawsuit claiming you’re unstable and that you should surrender her great-grandson to her care.”
Hannah had not heard this news. She saw that Jennet had not wanted to bother her with it yet.
“Captain Urquhart, that lawsuit was dismissed, as you well know,” Jennet said. “She has no claim on my son.”
He made a humming sound deep in his throat that might have been disapproval or dissent. “Whatever the facts, it looks to me as if you’ve got the upper hand in this feud you’ve got going with the Poiterins,” Urquhart said. “Why stir things up again?”
“Clearly you don’t know Honoré Poiterin,” Jennet said stiffly. “He is capable of things—” She broke off and turned her face away. “He will never stop. This assault on my sister-in-law won’t satisfy him. Until we can leave Louisiana we are in danger, all of us.”
Urquhart’s expression gave nothing away. He might believe Jennet or think her a hysteric; he might pity or despise her. He pushed out a great sigh.
“I’ll talk to the man,” he said. “And make it clear that if any more bad luck comes your way, he’ll have to deal with me. Will that do?”
Jennet hesitated. “No. But I understand it is all we can expect of you.”
Urquhart stood, put the unused notebook back into his jacket along with the pencil, and touched his brow with one finger. “Thank you for your time.”
“Wait,” Jennet said, her tone deceptively even. “Aren’t you going to write out the statement for her signature?”
Urquhart’s brow creased, but Jennet went on before he could respond.