Resumo de Wet Grave - Barbara Hambly

ABSTRACT - HAMBLY, BARBARA ? WET GRAVE 2002 Bantam Books A mesmerizing tale set in ante bellum New Orleans, Wet Grave is a memorable evocation of a lost era from the history of America?s lost city. Nominally a murder mystery, the book brings alive the exotic demimonde world of plaçées (African courtesans of New Orleans? wealthy planters) and the mistresses of pirates and smugglers, told from the point of view of Benjamin January. January is the son of a plaçée and was educated in Paris by his mother?s protector. January returns to New Orleans, where his sister Olympe calls him to the scene of Hesione LeGros?s murder. Formerly the youthful and jewel-studded mistress of one of Jean Lafitte?s captains but since reduced to poverty, Hesione lies in a pool of blood, stabbed to death in her filthy shack. Police Lieutenant Abishag Shaw has been called away to investigate the murder of planter Guifford Avocet, and Hesione?s murder is ignored while the police focus on the murder in the prominent Avocet family. January is in love with Rose Vitrac, tutor to Artois St. Chinian, son of a plaçée. Artois is the half-brother of Chloe St. Chinian, the young heiress of the St. Chinian family, soon to be married to Henri Veillard, with whom January?s sister Dominique is plaçée. The lovely and flighty Dominque is pregnant by Henri, and her friends fear that Henri will cast off both Dominque and her child after his marriage to Chloe. January?s inquiries into Hesione?s murder begin to point to the involvement of tavern-keeper and gun-runner Frank Mulm. January learns, too, of an impending slave revolt engineered by Mulm?in which the slaves will be double-crossed. When Artois is murdered and there is an attempt on Rose?s life, January and Rose flee to Grand Isle. They are soon roused from their peaceful exile by the arrival of Dominique who, eight months pregnant, has traveled to Grand Isle to persuade January to warn Henri of the slave revolt. January and Rose travel to Bois D?Argent to warn Henri?to prevent Dominique from undertaking the journey herself. Rose and January soon realize that Mulm?s has instigated the slave revolt to gain access to the closely guarded St. Roche Plantation, where planter Joffrey DuQuille has lived as a recluse for 20 years. Rose and January realize that Mulm murdered Hesione after learning that she had hidden some of Jean Lafitte?s treasure at St. Roche. Traveling up the Mississippi while a hurricane is brewing, Rose and January discover that guns cached in sheds at the Avocet Plantation. Rose remains at the Bois D?Argent with Chloe St. Chinian, while January returns in the escalating hurricane to set fire to the sheds where the guns are cached. He finds the Avocet house in flames and the slave revolt already in progress. Abishag Shaw is among Avocet?s defenders, and January, pretending to be a part of the uprising, fakes murdering Shaw and persuades the slaves to keep the Avocet women alive as hostages. Shaw escapes, and January makes his way back towards Bois D?Argent, finding the plantations along his way already in flames: Mulm and his men are setting fire to the plantations all the way down the river, in advance of the revolting slaves, who will be blamed. At Bois D?Argent, January sees Mulm and his men looting and burning the plantation?and finds Dominique?s shawl. Dominque has traveled to Bois D?Argent to warn Henri, and now all have fled toward St. Roche. When January reaches St. Roche, he finds the inhabitants preparing to defend the plantation house. During the battle, Abishag Shaw runs through the rising hurricane towards the house with the rescued Avocet women, while holding off their pursuers. January joins Shaw to cover the Avocet women?s escape. They take cover in a shed and, as the flood waters begin to rise, the shed is ripped from its moorings and washed against the plantation house, so that the men are able to climb from the shed roof onto the house roof. On the roof, January is shot and awakens inside the attic to find that Mulm and his men have overwhelmed the defenders and are holding all the occupants of the house hostage. But gunfire coming mysteriously from behind an inner door of the attic overwhelms Mulm?s party. The shots were fired by Joffrey DuQuille and his two sons, who have lived as recluses for 20 years. Joffrey explains to the freed hostages?January, Rose, Dominique, the Avocet women, and the defending slaves?that he and his sons contracted leprosy 20 years before. Joffrey has allowed his slaves to live in freedom on the plantation while, in return, they care for him and his sons. Through a clever ruse, Shaw is able to flush out Annette Avocet as Guifford?s murderer. When the floodwaters of the hurricane recede, Rose and January find Lafitte?s treasure of jewels and gold, hidden by Hesione so many years before, crammed into a sealed cannon-barrel secured to a tree with a heavy chain and submerged in the marsh. Freed at last from poverty, January and Rose marry and use the money to open a school in their spacious, newly purchased home.

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