Let the Dead Keep Their Secrets

by Rosemary Simpson

  He’d told her that not every death was a murder. Unless you’re the person asking about it. He’d spoken the words in jest because Prudence was so serious and he’d wanted to see her smile. Now he rapped on the roof of the carriage and told his coachman to take him to the United Bank Building at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway. If Prudence wasn’t in the offices of Hunter and MacKenzie, Investigative Law, he’d go to her home off Fifth Avenue.

  It suddenly seemed vitally important that Prudence and her ex-Pinkerton partner know about the second Mrs. Sorensen’s death.

  CHAPTER 20

  “The cabby you sent to bring me here said it was urgent, Prudence.”

  “His name is Danny Dennis. We have him on retainer. There’s no better hansom cab driver in all of New York City.” Prudence took a deep breath. She and Geoffrey had debated how to break the news, knowing how tightly wound the singer was. Best to get it over with as quickly as possible. “I have to tell you something I couldn’t put in a note, Claire. A doctor brought me the news less than an hour ago.”

  Claire Buchanan sat motionless, staring at the polished surface of Prudence’s desk. Then she raised her head and closed her eyes against what she was about to hear. “You’d better tell me,” she whispered.

  “Ethel Sorensen has died in childbirth. The infant she carried was stillborn.”

  Claire opened her eyes and stared straight ahead as if visualizing the deaths. “Poor creatures. Two more of Sorensen’s victims.” She looked directly at Prudence as she made her accusation. “It wasn’t a member of the company who had Lucinda killed. It was him, Aaron Sorensen. I was a fool to believe anything else.”

  “Geoffrey put one of his ex-Pinkerton operatives on you as soon as he saw the cut rope in Jacob Riis’s photographs.”

  “Aaron must need money very badly,” Claire said. “He had to have known that my will named Catherine and her heirs as my beneficiaries. Somehow he found out I hadn’t changed it after she died. I made myself a target when I wrote to tell him I was back in New York covering at the Met and that I wanted to see him. He knew I’d be onstage for every rehearsal. All he had to do was find a sailor working the flies who needed money badly enough to agree to cut loose that sandbag. The man is probably long gone by now. Back to sea, out of reach.”

  “We don’t have any proof of that.”

  “Aaron must have been furious. The sandbag missed only because Lucinda pushed me out of the way. He killed an innocent woman for nothing. Before he could try again, I’d taken steps to make sure he wouldn’t profit from my death. I’ve been safe ever since my lawyer informed him he could no longer expect to inherit any of my estate.”

  “He has gambling debts. Geoffrey suspects he’s been cheating at his clubs.”

  “He killed her,” Claire said. “When he couldn’t get my money, Aaron murdered that poor woman he married two months after he ended Catherine’s life. She was an heiress, wasn’t she, Prudence? She had to have been. He made sure she became pregnant right away so she couldn’t escape if she found out what he was.”

  Prudence didn’t contradict her.

  “It’s my fault she’s dead.” The torture of experiencing the guilt of being alive at another’s expense twisted the features of Claire’s face. “If I had died instead of Lucinda, two blameless women would have been spared. He would have had the money he needed. There would have been no reason to kill his wife.”

  “Ethel was doomed the day she signed her marriage certificate,” Prudence said. “And if you hadn’t come to us with suspicions about your sister’s death, no one would have thought to look into Catherine’s passing. Claire, there may have been others.”

  “Before Catherine?”

  She hesitated, tempted to tell her client about the items she’d stolen from Sorensen’s desk. Josiah had begun tracing what she had brought back, but it was far too early in the investigation to expect results. “Evidence shared is evidence lost,” her father had often said. “Don’t make a move unless you know what the result will be.”

  “It’s only a theory,” she temporized, knowing how unsatisfactory an answer that was.

  “When is the funeral?” Claire asked. She squared her shoulders and held her head high. Tears had streaked, then dried on her cheeks.

  “There’s to be a viewing tomorrow afternoon, but no funeral here in New York. The bodies are being taken by train to Philadelphia to be interred beside Mrs. Sorensen’s father. Our secretary just confirmed the details with the mortuary handling the transportation.”

  “I’m going to the viewing,” Claire said. “It’s at the house?”

  “Yes. Are you sure you want to meet your former brother-in-law under such circumstances?”

  “Someone has to stand in front of him as witness to what he’s done. He won’t be able to hide it from me. I’ll read it in his eyes. I’m going to put the fear of God into what passes for his soul, Prudence. He’ll never be able to look over his shoulder again without fearing that I’ll be following him.”

  “If he’s the murderer we think he might be, that could be extremely dangerous.”

  “I won’t be alone with him. There will be other people there.”

  “Geoffrey and I will go with you, but you have to promise you won’t provoke him.”

  “I’m not a fool, Prudence. I know what he could do if I accuse him without proof. I just want him to look at me and understand that he has no secrets. He has to begin living in fear of discovery.”

  Prudence picked up the speaking tube attached to the side of her desk. “Josiah,” she said, enunciating carefully, “where has Mr. Hunter gone?”

  “I’m not sure, miss,” came the answer. Josiah’s voice sounded hollow. “He mentioned something about meeting Mr. Hayes.”

  “We’ll pick you up at your hotel tomorrow afternoon,” Prudence said, returning the speaking tube to its hook. “Don’t leave without us.”

  “You can call off your bodyguard,” Claire instructed.

  But Prudence knew she wouldn’t.

  * * *

  Knotted swags of black sateen hung above the ground floor windows and over the massive recessed oak door of what had once been the Buchanan mansion in Lower Manhattan. The four-story home, luxurious by the standards of the prewar era in which it had been built, stood just north of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where Geoffrey Hunter rented a suite. Dimmed gaslight shimmered faintly behind drawn drapes. Men passing by tipped their hats in recognition of Death’s presence; women quickened their pace to avoid its menace. Straw had been layered over the cobblestones in front of the house to deaden the sound of horse hooves and carriage wheels.

  “We were very happy here for a while,” Claire Buchanan said as the carriage approached. “Even after my mother died. It was emptier without her, but still home, still the place to find comfort. I wonder if our voices echo off the walls late at night when no one is awake to hear them.”

  “Yours and Catherine’s?” Prudence asked. She glanced at Geoffrey, who was studiously avoiding any comment that would interrupt their client’s reminiscences. Next to him Josiah, deprived of his usual stenographer’s pad, was mentally taking notes. It had been decided that the secretary would accompany Prudence and Claire to the viewing, while Geoffrey waited outside in the carriage, available if there should be a problem, but safely out of sight of the man whose cheating he had thwarted at the Union Club.

  “I know I’ve told you many times what an extraordinary voice she possessed, but you had to have heard her to fully appreciate it. Have you ever worried that the soprano you’re listening to won’t make the pitch when she reaches for her next high note? No one ever doubted Catherine’s ability and range. It was like watching a bird soar effortlessly into the sky and out of sight. Pure delight.”

  “I cannot imagine how someone so gifted could be persuaded to renounce that talent,” Prudence said. “Was it a sudden decision? Did she simply stop singing one day? Without warning or discussion?”

  “I wasn’t here.
So I don’t know the answer to your question. I’ve asked myself the same thing, over and over again. From what Lucinda said, her withdrawal wasn’t complete until after our father’s death. She stopped taking lessons, she no longer spoke of the roles she would be studying, she very seldom and then almost never left the house when Sorensen was in town. That’s all I was able to learn.”

  “Yet we know she picked up the threads of her professional life after she became pregnant.”

  “Not right away, Prudence. Lucinda believed it wasn’t until shortly before the child was to be born that she began her lessons again.”

  The carriage pulled to the curb in front of the house where Catherine and Ethel Sorensen and their infant children had died, where a lady’s companion named Penelope Mason had disappeared after being in the household less than a week. Prudence lowered her thick mourning veil to hide her features; Claire did not. Her face paled and the ridges of her cheekbones stood out in stark white relief against her skin; her eyes blazed with anger and accusation.

  Keeping his back turned to the windows of the house, Geoffrey handed the women out of the carriage, his gloved hand firm and steadying, his tall presence a reassuring bulwark against whatever awaited them. Prudence looked up at him gratefully, then allowed Josiah to lead her to the front door.

  Claire seemed oblivious to her surroundings. Her performer’s intensity was wholly focused toward the moment when she would finally be face-to-face with the man she believed had murdered her sister.

  * * *

  A greeter from the mortuary parlor ushered them into the two-story central hallway. The house was utterly silent. Felt pads had been attached to the soles of the servants’ shoes, ticking clocks had been stopped, and the lid of the grand piano in the music room lowered and locked. Tall vases of lilies and white chrysanthemums stood in every downstairs room. Black crepe covered the mirrors, photographs lay facedown on tables, and family portraits were turned toward the walls.

  The butler who escorted them into the heart of the house glanced more than once at Prudence, but her opaque mourning veil concealed her face and she gave no sign of recognizing him.

  The parlor was dim and chilly, the coffin resting on a cooling table draped in black to conceal the blocks of ice resting in metal trays beneath. A dozen chairs had been ranged near the coffin, others placed around the room against the walls. Candles burned on every surface, their waxy aroma warring with the heavy sweetness of cut flowers.

  Aaron Sorensen was not keeping watch over the bodies of his wife and stillborn son. He had relegated that duty to his housekeeper.

  Mrs. Hopkins, dressed in her best Sunday black, face composed but bearing traces of honest grief, stood beside the coffin. As she moved away to give them a moment of privacy, Josiah nodded politely, but did not volunteer their names. Prudence averted her veiled face and hunched her shoulders to appear shorter than she really was.

  Ethel Sorensen had been a small woman in life; in death she had shrunk to childlike proportions. Her lips and cheeks had been lightly rouged, her skin powdered, dark brown hair dressed to frame her face. Eyelashes long enough to cast shadows on the skin, a glimpse of pearl white teeth between lips that were beginning to pull back from each other. Long fingers, buffed nails, her son resting in the crook of her right arm, easily mistaken for one of the porcelain-headed baby dolls little girls were given for their birthdays. Cold air from the melting ice wafted up through the decorative piercings of the cooling table and its thin black linen cover.

  On a stand near the coffin lay a guestbook and fanned-out stacks of cartes de visite and cabinet photographs of the deceased. Josiah’s signature was the first one on the page, penned in an unintelligible scrawl. He slipped several of the cards into his pocket, then handed one of each to Prudence and Claire.

  Bartholomew Monroe had done his work well. It was easy to see why he was one of New York City’s most sought-after postmortem photographers. Ethel had been posed seated in a rocking chair, gazing down at the child in her arms as though she had just sung him to sleep. Not a hair out of place, not a fold of her dress disturbed, nothing to suggest that she was not about to place the child in his cradle and tiptoe out of the room where he lay sleeping.

  Prudence knew there would be other negatives stored in Monroe’s studio, but this was the public face of Ethel’s death, the one by which her husband had chosen to have her remembered. Peaceful and serene, she had become the lovely young wife and mother of every family’s dream. The tableau was eerily like the cabinet photo of Catherine Sorensen holding her infant daughter.

  A hiss of indrawn breath announced Aaron Sorensen’s arrival. He stood motionless in the doorway, staring into Claire Buchanan’s irate eyes and desolate face. The twice-widowed husband and his former sister-in-law exchanged not a word; then Sorensen swung his gaze toward Josiah and the veiled Prudence.

  “Kind of you to come,” he murmured as he approached. He plainly didn’t know who they were. Wasn’t even sure yet if they had accompanied the sister-in-law he’d been avoiding.

  Josiah nodded, spoke condolences so softly it was impossible to make out exactly what he said. He stood aside to allow Prudence to precede him into a middle row of chairs, then tugged gently on Claire’s sleeve until she also took a seat.

  “Watch him,” Prudence whispered. “Watch what he does and how he looks.”

  Aaron Sorensen approached his wife’s coffin stiffly. He stood there, motionless, head bowed as if in prayer, one hand resting on the coffin as if loath to let her go. Claire’s eyes bored invisible holes into his back. The silence thickened, lengthened.

  Movement at the parlor door broke the tension. An older man and his wife drew near the widower, spoke to him, looked at Ethel and her baby, turned and sat down in the second row of chairs. Not family then. Prudence wondered if Ethel had cousins or aunts and uncles to mourn her passing; both her parents were now dead and she’d had no living siblings.

  A clergyman in Episcopal clerical collar and black suit stood beside the bereaved husband as he bent to kiss his wife farewell. When Sorensen took his place in the first row, his eyes were dry and empty.

  The prayers were brief, though recited with sincerity. The Episcopal priest did not pretend to have known the dead woman well; he spoke of her comparatively recent arrival in New York City, the joy of a couple awaiting the birth of their first child, and the potential sacrifice every mother had to face. He prayed again, inviting the mourners to join him. When he finished, he lowered the coffin lid and blessed for the last time the woman and child who lay within.

  Two men from the mortuary staff rolled the coffin out into the foyer of the house, then carried it down the front steps into the waiting hearse. No one was expected to accompany it to the railroad station; no one did.

  The older couple left without lingering longer than the few moments it took to shake Aaron Sorensen’s hand and whisper condolences again. Prudence stepped back into the parlor and glanced at the guestbook. Mr. and Mrs. William P. Sufferan, New York City. She wondered if they were fond of imported European antiques.

  “The house will be put up for sale,” Sorensen was saying to Claire Buchanan. “I planned to ask my lawyers to contact you, since it was your family home at one time. You did, however, sell your interest to Catherine.”

  “I’m aware of that.” Claire’s voice was coldly precise.

  “So while I can extend you right of first refusal, I’m afraid I cannot quote you anything but the market price.”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything other than that from you.”

  He handed her a card. “My lawyers. We have nothing more to say to one another. I think all future contact between us should be through them.”

  * * *

  “We have to go to Philadelphia,” Geoffrey said.

  As soon as they returned to the office, he sent Josiah out again in search of Philadelphia newspapers, anything he could find from the last two weeks. He came back with four issues of the Public Ledger, one of whi
ch contained the obituary of Ethel Sorensen’s father.

  “Here’s another article about Samuel Caswell. It’s more comprehensive than the obituary. Both his and his wife’s family are well-known. Their fortune is entirely inherited. Apparently, Ethel’s parents were neither of them strong. The mother died when their daughter was still a young woman, and the father appears to have been a semi-invalid.”

  “Which would explain why they were such easy prey for someone like Sorensen,” Geoffrey said. “A lonely young woman who probably seldom went out into society and an elderly and infirm father living largely in the past with his deceased wife.”

  “The law firm that managed the Caswell family affairs is mentioned,” Prudence said, reaching for a scissors to cut out the article.

  “The obituary doesn’t go into detail about funeral plans. That’s unusual. Most of the time people count on these things to tell them where and when to attend.”

  “A family crypt in Laurel Hill Cemetery. That’s according to the information Josiah was able to get from the mortuary company.” Prudence scanned the notes their secretary had provided. “Ethel’s coffin is being taken directly from the train to Laurel Hill. The mortuary parlor in Philadelphia is Mortensen’s.”

  “We’ve missed the afternoon train today,” Geoffrey said. “I’ll ask Josiah to get us two tickets on tomorrow morning’s run.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Anything that seems out of place or unexpected. We’ll interview anyone who talked with Aaron Sorensen while he was there. Definitely the lawyers who handled his father-in-law’s affairs and filed the will for probate. If they’re still around, any servants in the family home, especially if they were employed during the time when Sorensen was courting Ethel. One thread should lead to another.”

  “Geoffrey?” Prudence hesitated, unsure whether she really wanted to pursue what she was about to propose. “Ethel seemed very healthy to me during the four days I spent with her. Except for being short of breath after climbing the stairs to the nursery, I would have said there was nothing wrong with her that delivering her child wouldn’t cure.”