“Do we know anything about the items Prudence took from Sorensen’s study?” Ned asked.
“Not yet,” Josiah said, laying a list of jewelry stores on the conference room table around which they had gathered. “All we’ve established so far is that the workmanship and condition of the stickpin indicates that it dates well before the war, but so far the operative who’s doing the legwork hasn’t located a jeweler who recognizes it. The pearl ring is newer and much more valuable, but again, the jewelers who have examined it haven’t claimed it as their own or been able to suggest the name of the craftsman who fashioned it.”
“And the letter?” Ned persisted.
“The woman’s name is Damaris, but the postmark on the envelope wasn’t legible,” Prudence said. “I tried as hard as I could to decipher it, but the ink was smudged too badly to make it out.”
“I asked an informant at city hall about the marriage and death certificates Prudence told us about,” Josiah said. “They were probably genuine. The right price will buy you anything down there. Sorensen may have intended at one time to fake a marriage rather than actually wed his victim, and perhaps he entertained the idea of presenting a phony death certificate to claim an inheritance. That’s the best we could come up with.”
“We have to keep Aaron Sorensen here in New York City. I don’t think any of you would quarrel with that,” Prudence said. “If he leaves, we may never be able to track him down again.” She looked around the conference table from one worried face to another. “I can buy us the time we need—”
“Miss Prudence,” Josiah interrupted, momentarily putting aside his stenographer’s notebook and pencil. “He’ll be suspicious the minute you approach him. Everybody in the city knows about Mr. Hunter taking over Mr. Conkling’s law practice and the two of you partnering in Hunter and MacKenzie, Investigative Law. Stories about it were in all the gossip and society columns. He’s bound to have seen them.”
“He’s right,” Geoffrey said. “And if Sorensen missed an item in one of the newspapers, there was plenty of talk in every club and at every women’s tea. Your conduct has been close to scandalous, Prudence.”
“Then I’ll meet him in disguise and under a different name,” she declared. “I’m not giving up on this idea. All of you know it’s a good plan and maybe the only way to keep him from getting away from us. I refuse to be wrapped in cotton wool for my own protection.” Her cheeks flamed red and she sat very straight in her chair.
“You’ll be recognized the first time you attend a social gathering. You’re too well-known, Prudence.” Geoffrey knew he was right.
“I can be someone’s cousin from Boston,” she said. “The important social events of the winter season are over. Lent begins next week. No one will be hosting anything but small dinner parties.”
“No young lady leaves her home unaccompanied, Miss Prudence.” Ned admired her independence and determination as much as Geoffrey did, but he knew that what Prudence was suggesting was a chancy adventure at best. What Aaron Sorensen would do to her if he discovered the scheme didn’t bear thinking about.
“Lydia Truitt,” she said, turning excitedly to Geoffrey. “She’s perfect.”
Prudence was right. They could have no more objections. She knew she’d won.
CHAPTER 23
“As it happens,” Lydia said, pouring another cup of tea to go with her excellent seed cake, “Father is deep in deciphering a new code. He’s having more difficulty than expected, so his temper is not the best. I’d be glad for an excuse to leave the house for a few hours every day.”
“Are you sure he can spare you?” Prudence asked.
Ben Truitt was a blinded veteran of the war that had devastated the country for four long years. He was also a cryptographer, whose exceptional skills were much in demand by the government and private clients. Ably helped by his war-widowed daughter, he had built a successful business out of cracking the codes governments and commercial empires used to keep their dealings secret from one another. Lydia was his eyes and his feet, reading aloud to him the alphabetic symbols he could no longer see, creating transcriptions in pinpricked Braille letters, donning disguises and delivering envelopes of documents wherever they needed to go.
“He has a bodyguard now,” she answered. “Another wounded soldier who decided the woman he hoped to marry couldn’t love a man with half a face. I don’t know how he tracked us down, or what he and Father said to one another when they first spoke after so many years, but Clyde moved himself and his haversack into our spare room that afternoon. He’s been with us ever since. That was three months ago.”
“A bodyguard?”
“That’s what he calls himself. Clyde isn’t someone you want to contradict. He’s never without a whittling knife in his hand. I get the feeling he’d as soon use it on a human being as the piece of wood he’s working on. He only lets Father out of his sight when he goes into the yard to smoke or do a reconnaissance of the neighborhood. I have no idea what or who he’s on the lookout for, but Father seems to take him seriously.”
“I need to make the acquaintance of a man we suspect of killing at least two wives and their infants and convince him to make me his next victim,” Prudence blurted out. She’d rehearsed what to say all the long drive from Manhattan to Lydia’s home in Brooklyn, but the bare statement was as bald as though she’d never practiced at all.
“I assume you don’t intend to go as far as marrying him,” Lydia said. “I don’t think even Allan Pinkerton demanded that of his female operatives during the worse days of the war.”
“Our client is the sister of one of his victims,” Prudence continued. She’d come to appreciate Lydia’s dry wit and trenchant comments when Geoffrey had asked for Ben Truitt’s help on an earlier investigation. Though worlds apart in social status, the two women had much in common. Both were intelligent, fearless, and often frustrated by the restrictions society placed on them because they were female. “We’ve reason to believe he’s preparing to move on before we can gather enough evidence to prove a case against him. Geoffrey and I suspect there may have been others.”
“Delightful creature,” Lydia commented. “I smell money, as well as the stench of murder.”
“Both women were heiresses,” Prudence confirmed.
“As are you.”
“As am I.”
“What does Geoffrey think of this plan of yours?”
“He doesn’t like it.”
“But you’ve no doubt persuaded him that it might be the only way to trap the fellow.”
“I need a companion to be believable.”
“‘A lady never leaves her home unaccompanied,’ ” Lydia quoted from The Manual of Proper Etiquette for Young Ladies Desiring to Secure Their Places in Society. “Which is why I’ve never aspired to so lofty an appellation.”
“My only hope of succeeding is to attract his attention while staying well out of the reach and sight of everyone I know in the city.”
“I would say that’s impossible, Prudence.”
“He’s greedy, Lydia. He’s just paid off a shocking number of gambling debts, so he’s looking to recoup his losses. That may make him careless.”
“How much time does Geoffrey need? I suppose Ned Hayes is in on this, too?”
“He is,” Prudence confirmed. “I wish I knew how long it will take, but I don’t. It could be as little as a few days, or it might stretch into weeks. I have to convince him that I’m rich, lonely, and foolish enough to have fallen in love at first sight with a handsome stranger.”
“Then what?”
“He’ll likely try to persuade me to elope with him. Geoffrey thinks his gambling is ruining his chances of remaining acceptable to New York society. Sooner or later some of the men he’s cheated will catch on and make sure he’s ostracized. He has to have another wealthy wife before that happens.”
“And what’s my role to be in all of this?”
“I thought you could be an impoverished cousin taken int
o my household as companion after the tragic deaths of my parents.”
“And to safeguard your reputation I stick by your side everywhere you go.”
“Precisely.”
“Except that I drift out of earshot often and long enough for him to get on with his courting.”
“We’ll be going to museums, galleries, rides through Central Park, afternoon tea in places where I’m unlikely to run into anyone who might recognize me.”
“Shouldn’t you have a mansion somewhere?”
“Geoffrey suggested a suite at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. I’ll pretend to be visiting the city from somewhere upstate. Syracuse, perhaps.”
“On a shopping spree to the finest New York houses of fashion. How very like an heiress.”
“And if I have a suite, I can entertain him at tea as long as my faithful chaperone is there with us.”
“What is this monster’s name?” Lydia asked. She could feel herself entering into the excitement of what Prudence was proposing. Things had been decidedly quiet lately, despite the sudden appearance of her father’s self-appointed bodyguard.
“Aaron Sorensen. He passes himself off as a private dealer in European antiquities. We think they’re counterfeits.”
“So he’s both a swindler and a murderer. He should be stopped, Prudence.”
“I hoped you’d say that.”
* * *
The New York City Post Office stood opposite City Hall Park on a trapezoidal block that snarled traffic and created monumental delays as delivery wagons, drays, carriages, and hansom cabs vied for passage on badly congested Broadway. Barely eight years after its completion, the post office building was already derided by New Yorkers for its pretentious French Second Empire design and Doric columns that were out of place in busy, bustling Lower Manhattan. An enormous mansard roof formed its fifth story and would have graced the Paris skyline; in America it had come to define the building people ridiculed as Mullett’s Monstrosity.
Josiah Gregory loved it.
“The boxes have combination locks,” he told Geoffrey Hunter. Sometimes he dropped off the firm’s outgoing mail rather than giving it to the carrier just so he could linger in the splendor of the building’s interior. “And there’s a uniformed guard walking up and down in front of them, keeping an eye on the customers.”
“You’ll have to distract him,” Geoffrey said. “Just for a few minutes. It shouldn’t take me long.”
“It’s noisy,” Josiah warned. “The floor and the walls are tiled in marble and the ceiling is vaulted, so there’s always an echo.”
Geoffrey took a small black tube flared at both ends out of his pocket. It was the most useful weapon in a safecracker’s arsenal, but it was also exactly what an alert guard would be watching for. Very few cracksmen could break a combination by the sensitivity of their fingertips alone. No matter how acute their hearing, even the best of them needed to magnify the sound of the brass or steel cams clicking into place as he turned the dials.
“I’ll drop my carrying case,” Josiah offered. “Unlatched. The noise of it hitting the floor should make him look in my direction. If I have trouble picking up the papers that spill out, he’ll come over to help. That’s another thing about the post office. It’s never empty, always full of people and lines in front of every window. If I stand still, someone’s likely to bump into me. The guard will want to get me out of the way.”
Geoffrey handed him the piece of paper on which Prudence had written the information copied from the envelope she hadn’t dared steal from Aaron Sorensen’s desk. No name, no return address, just a post office box number penned in an elegant, feminine hand she’d done her best to duplicate. “This is the number we’re looking for.”
“There are hundreds of boxes,” Josiah said. “When the light strikes them just right, it looks like a wall of gold with crystal inlays.”
“Brass facings with small glass windows where the numbers are written,” Geoffrey interpreted. “Do you have any idea where this number is located?”
Josiah thought for a moment, picturing the wall of boxes. “If I had to guess, I’d say nearer the left than the other side. And probably in one of the middle rows.”
“Let’s hope you’re right.”
* * *
The post office guard wouldn’t remember much about the fussy little man who spilled the contents of his carrying case onto the floor when the morning crowd was at its busiest, except that he tipped him generously for helping clean up the mess he’d made. The fellow was clumsy, repeatedly dropping half of what he picked up, clucking worriedly over the state of the papers that landed in mud tracked from outside. By the time he’d reclaimed the last of them and secured the case’s leather strap, the tall gentleman the guard had glimpsed heading for the mailboxes had finished his business and gone.
Once they were safely back in Danny’s hansom cab, Geoffrey showed Josiah the three envelopes he’d removed from Aaron Sorensen’s box. “I couldn’t take everything or it would look suspicious if he stops by. I don’t think he’s gotten his mail in at least a week or so. He’s bound to pick it up soon.”
“He’s been doing other things,” Josiah said. Like murder.
“You can take them back as soon as we’re finished with them.” Geoffrey chuckled at Josiah’s alarmed expression. “You won’t have to break into the box,” he said. “I’ll give you the combination.”
“This one has a return address,” Josiah said, holding the envelope at arm’s length to read what was written on it.
“It’s a law firm. The letter Prudence copied for us mentioned that the writer would be contacting her bank on Sorensen’s behalf,” Geoffrey reminded him. “If the sum she requested was excessive, the bank might have alerted its lawyers.” He handed Josiah a smaller envelope addressed in a woman’s handwriting. “This looks very much like the sample Prudence tried to reproduce. It may tell us who she is.”
“I’ll put the kettle on as soon as we get back. We’ll have them steamed open in no time.”
“Miss Prudence will be at the Fifth Avenue Hotel booking a suite this afternoon. We won’t wait for her.”
“I can have copies finished by the end of the day and the originals back at the post office before it closes,” Josiah said. He knew Danny Dennis was listening through the trapdoor in the hansom’s ceiling; he’d show up in plenty of time to get Sorensen’s mail back into the box where he expected to find it.
Twenty minutes after clambering out of the cab, Geoffrey was reading the letter from Damaris Tavistock’s lawyers while Josiah copied the note written in a feminine hand. Something had gone wrong at the bank; her guardian had been notified of the uncharacteristically large transaction she had initiated. The envelope she had addressed to Aaron’s post office box had been found, but despite vigorous questioning, she had not revealed Aaron’s name. Nor would she. She trusted that her silence would be partnered by his own. In closing she urged him to burn this, her last communication to him, as she had destroyed all of his letters to her. She signed it Damaris T. The Tavistock who had signed the letter from the law firm was obviously a relative and her guardian.
The third envelope contained a list of items now available from someone who signed himself Philippe and provided no other identification. The stamp was French, the blue stationery cheap, flimsy, and foreign. Josiah clucked worriedly to himself as he struggled to decipher the curlicue numbers and oddly slanted handwriting. “I think I’ve got it all,” he finally said, waving the copy to dry the ink. There was still time before Danny would be back to take him to the post office, but it never hurt to be ready well in advance. Being late, in Josiah’s opinion, said a great deal about a man’s character. Or lack thereof.
Regluing the envelopes might leave a telltale unevenness, so Josiah held them one by one over the still-steaming kettle, securing each flap with a single quick, heavy stroke, then laying a thick law book atop the weakened but still effective seal. When they dried, there’d be nothing to indicate that an
yone had interfered with them.
“Will you go to visit Miss Tavistock?” he asked, pouring his employer a cup of strong coffee.
“There’s just time to catch the afternoon train, if I hurry,” Geoffrey said. The return address for Miss Tavistock’s lawyers was Saratoga Springs, almost two hundred miles north of New York City.
“Shall I send a telegram?” Josiah asked.
“No. The element of surprise may be the only advantage I have,” Geoffrey said. “Can you make another copy of each of the three letters? I’d like to take these with me, but I want Miss Prudence to read them before she beards Sorensen, and there’s no telling how many days I’ll be out of the city.”
“I’ll make a shorthand transcription and write her out a copy as soon as I can,” Josiah said, his pencil flying over the pages of his stenographer’s notebook. Learning the new Gregg shorthand was one of the smartest things he’d ever done. It cut copying time by at least half.
Geoffrey checked the bag he kept packed and stored at the office, then wrote a note to Prudence. “I’ll hail a hansom,” he told the still-furiously-scribbling Josiah. “Let Mr. Hayes know where I’ve gone and why.” He folded and pocketed the letters Josiah handed him. He’d read them again many times on the train, trying to tease out hidden meaning from between the lines. He suspected he’d learn more from young Damaris Tavistock’s legal guardian than from the targeted victim herself.
He was gone before Josiah thought to tell him to be careful. But that wasn’t a sentiment to which Geoffrey Hunter would pay attention anyway.
CHAPTER 24
“Mr. Hunter isn’t going to be happy about this, Miss Prudence.” Josiah winced as the judge’s daughter took two of the three envelopes destined for Aaron Sorensen’s post office box and set them firmly aside.
“You can take Philippe’s list,” Prudence told him, “but I have the germ of an idea sprouting and its success depends on replacing the Damaris letter with something that will set the stage to our advantage. Don’t you think so, Lydia?”
Let the Dead Keep Their Secrets Page 21
