Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans

The Mystery of Madame Vaquer

(1860} The Mystery of Madame Vaquer The news was out. All along Customhouse street (which is now Bienville), eyes peered cautiously from V'd shutters, ears listening eagerly for a fresh morsel of luscious scandal, and tongues wagged in an incessant whispering. It was thus-and-so, such-and-such actually had taken place, somebody had heard something else, maybe the other thing was true. . . . And amid it all, Madame Jean Vaquer, small and grayhaired and precise, walked to the French Market and returned with her basket of greens and yams and sweet herbs. Sometimes there wasa poulette in the basket, or artichokes and wine and oil. Madame did not herself carry the basket, of course. That was borne on the head of young Sara, Madame's slave. Madame did not know about the whispering. But the black girl did. It had been going on for a week or more now, and Sara was daily contributing her mite. Indeed, it was this mite for which the gossipers waited and hungered, figuratively licking their chops after each tasty crumb. It was Sara alone who knew exactly what was going on in Madame's house— and Sara alone who could tell them. True, Sara had but one confidante—Debby, Madame Turin's slave cook. Debby's tongue was infinitely more industrious than her hands. Every slave in the neighborhood knew all that Debby knew. And what the slaves knew, the mistresses presently knew also. It all had to do with Rosine, a slave of eighteen years or thereabouts, belonging to Madame Vaquer. This Rosine had been purchased in February of that year—1860—from one 16 The Mystery of Madame Vaquer 17 Jacques Derviche, a Saint-Jean Baptiste parish planter, who had guaranteed her to be sound and healthy. Madame had bought Sara at the same time, considering the two of them a good bargain. Very shortly, however, Rosine began to grow listless and thin. She ate ravenously; but one day, late in April, they found her lying dead in the courtyard. Miss Abigail Mason, Madame's friend and paying guest, was the one who quieted the hubbub, saying that, after all, it was only a dead nigger. The commotion arose, she observed, because there was no man at the head of the household. A man never would have tolerated such nonsense—he would have had the carcass scooped up and carted off and buried, and that would have been the end of the matter. Miss Abbie, as the neighborhood called her, smiled calmly through it all. But Madame was not satisfied to let the Negress' death go unaccounted for. She had paid good money for Rosine, with the guarantee that the slave's health was perfect. She had been cheated. She would sue Jacques' Derviche for damages. So, in order to establish her claim, she sent for Doctor Leclerc, her family physician. He must examine Rosine's body, and furnish her with his written statement as to the ailment which had caused death. The doctor announced that, while the dead slave seemed extraordinarily light for a wench of her size, there had been apparently nothing specific the matter with her. Quite likely she had died of a sudden heart attack, for which no one was responsible. There was a queer sort of birthmark on her back, he added—a white, hook-shaped mark, just between the shoulder blades. Madame reproached herself for not having inspected the wench's back herself, before buying—she could have compelled Monsieur Derviche to throw off something on account of the blemish. Sara was caught listening at the door when Madame and the doctor emerged from the gallery room where the body lay. Madame cuffed her ears soundly, and hate boiled within the slave. That night she managed to get a word with black Debby. She told a weird tale of Madame's having sizzled Rosine's poor 18 Ghost Stones of Old New Orleans back to a crisp with hot irons, as punishment for laziness. She told also of Rosine's having been starved until she dropped dead—punishment inflicted by Madame for wasting food. She added that when Rosine died, Madame was frightened lest the facts become known—therefore she had called in her doctor to make a statement that Rosine had died of heart failure. The tales spread with lightning-like rapidity. The white folks of the neighborhood heard them almost...