Days of the Dead.pdf - Upgrade Systems

of the women's courtyard and produce forged correspondence to prove it. Did you bring in tea?"
"I did." January stood, opened the chest, and brought out the little Sevres pot. "According to M'sieu
Guillenormand, this tea was Fernando's special blend. No one in the household was permitted to drink it,
and only Werther and Guillenormand had keys to the caddy-not that such locks can't be easily picked,
according to nearly every house-servant I've ever talked to. Did Fernando have tea after supper before
going into his study?"
"Not before going in," said Hannibal. "He said he wished to put in more work on his father's papers
that night, but he may just have wanted to get away from Señora Lorcha. But when I went in, there was a
tray on the desk. Meissen ware, apple-green-and-white with a gold rim: cup, saucer, pot, water-pot,
milk-pitcher, sugar-bowl, slop-jar, and spirit-lamp, with a little gold strainer and a gold spoon to match."
"Werther took it in," said Consuela decisively. "I re­member him coming out of the study door, silent as
a cat, and the look he gave Natividad as he passed her would have taken paint off a fence."
"That I can believe. My back was to the study door­, and I'm afraid I wasn't entirely sober myself.
What life is then to a man that is without wine? He must have come into the study with his tray from
the corredor. . . ."
"Which means," concluded Rose, "that anyone could have put anything into it while everyone else was
at supper."
"If you can think of a way anyone could have left the supper-table," remarked January, "without
everyone notic­ing. Did anyone leave, Hannibal? Consuela?"
They looked at each other blankly for a moment, then Consuela shook her head. "Except for the
servants, of course. They were in and out of the sala." She frowned a little, as if, for the first time, the
thought was moving in her mind that Hannibal might not have murdered her brother after all. "And Franz
was not popular among the indios of the village. He was like the Inquisition-not for God but for money.
He was full of plans to reorganize the villages as they are organized in Prussia. On the day of the
wedding-­feast, the villagers sent a delegation to Don Anastasio, beg­ging him to speak to my father
about Fernando, or to cure my father if he could. Don Anastasio is regarded as some­thing of a brujo in
the villages, and able to do such things. But it would take a brave servant to enter the study when
Fernando was sitting so close to its door."
"And the door into the corredor was bolted from the in­side," added Hannibal. "Franz had to get up
and unbolt it, to let me in." The muscles of his jaw twitched, and he settled back against the bedpost, his
arms wrapped around his knees.
"Hence my quest for Don Fernando's personal cache of tea," said January firmly. He stowed the
tea-pot carefully back in the chest and closed the lid. "I wonder if one of the kitchen-boys could be
bribed into stealing us one of M'sieu Guillenormand's rabbits. Or does someone raise them in the village?"
"Lupe does," said Consuela. "You should hear her on the subject of French mariquitas, for whom an
honest hare isn't good enough. She'll sell you one for a medio."
Footmen were still loading Doña Imelda's luggage-an amazing quantity considering the woman had
come only for an overnight stay-into the smaller of her two carriages, when January descended the
courtyard stair a few minutes later. The huge quadrangle was filled with not only the mounts of the de
Bujerio outriders-stoutly-built Andalusians and Hanoverian warmbloods who towered over the scrawny
mustangs of the vaqueros-but with those of the guards who would accompany Don Prospero's proposed