Let the Dead Keep Their Secrets

by Rosemary Simpson

  Mr. Sorensen had left the gaslight burning in the corridor outside his bedroom. She could see the yellowish glow of it as she started down the bare wood stairs toward the open door. Maybe she should step into the hallway and turn it down a bit. She never felt comfortable when too much gas burned during the night.

  She could see the bolt clearly, below it an additional lock, its key firmly in place. At least there was a railing to hold on to, Mrs. Hopkins thought as she inched her way down. Some servants’ stairways were death traps.

  * * *

  Prudence reached the bottom of the wide, curving staircase without making a sound. She’d hugged the outer edge of each step; Geoffrey had told her once that a board was more likely to creak in the middle than at either end. She’d had to let the narrow skirt of her secretary’s suit drag on the carpet behind her and hope the slight rustle was too faint to penetrate Sorensen’s bedroom door. One of her hands held the oil lamp, the other gripped the banister. She set the lamp down on the narrow sideboard, then turned to signal an “all clear” to Lydia.

  Kerosene lamp in hand, Lydia crept through the door of Ethel’s bedroom and turned to close it tightly behind her.

  A scream echoed the length of the hallway. Lydia lost her grip on the lamp. The crash of shattering glass mingled with another scream, and then the sharp stench of lamp oil filled the air. Without thinking, Prudence rushed up the stairs just as Mrs. Hopkins ran toward the female intruder she had seen when she turned the corner from the servants’ staircase. They collided in mid-corridor, the housekeeper shrieking and beating with both hands at the woman who fell on top of her.

  A shot rang out, and a man’s deep voice shouted for everyone to stand still. Not to move. The smell of hot gunpowder mingled with the lamp oil.

  Lydia froze, staring in horror at the half-naked man pointing a gun at the two women on the floor. She thought of edging back into Ethel’s bedroom before he noticed her in the semidarkness, but it was too late. Blue eyes took her in at a glance and the gun motioned her away from the wall.

  “Miranda?” For a long moment Aaron Sorensen stared at Prudence and said nothing else. “Miranda, what are you doing here?”

  “Her name is Penelope Mason.” Mrs. Hopkins was panting as she struggled to her feet, drawing her dressing gown around her and tying it tightly at the waist. Her eyes glanced at her employer’s broad, blond-haired chest and bare legs. “I recognize her, though her hair was a different color and she wore spectacles when she passed herself off as a lady’s companion to Mrs. Sorensen. Poor lady, may she rest in peace.” Her right hand sketched a quick sign of the cross.

  “My late wife never had a lady’s companion,” Sorensen corrected her.

  “She did, sir, just for a few days when you were out of town on one of your trips. Miss Mason wrote a note saying she had to leave because her sister’s husband died and there were children to look after.” She patted stray hair into place and tugged at the long gray braid reaching to her waist. “We all thought it very strange at the time, but Mrs. Ethel cautioned us not to say a word about it. I think she suspected she’d been duped and was embarrassed. Nothing was missing, though, thank the Lord. We counted all the silver pieces.”

  Sorensen looked at the housekeeper as if she’d lost her mind. He stared hard at Prudence, then came to a decision.

  “Mrs. Hopkins, take the cords off the drapes at the end of the hallway and tie their hands behind their backs,” he ordered, punctuating his commands with sharp jabs of the silver-plated revolver. “Good, tight knots.”

  The housekeeper scurried to the end of the corridor and returned with two lengths of twisted crimson cord. When Prudence refused to put her hands behind her back, staring defiantly at Sorensen, he swung the gun around to point it at Lydia’s head. The message was clear. Prudence had no choice but to do what she was told.

  Mrs. Hopkins wound the cord around her wrists the way she’d been taught to truss a chicken when she’d been starting out in service as a kitchen maid. Around, over, under, between, over again, around once more for good measure. When she pulled it tight and tied the knot, Prudence knew her hands would soon begin to tingle as impeded blood flow made them useless. She watched Lydia’s face as her hands were also tied. Their eyes met, then skittered away. The last thing either of them wanted was for Sorensen to realize that they were more than unlucky con artists caught in what they’d believed to be an empty house.

  “Now that you’ve done that, Mrs. Hopkins, you can take yourself upstairs, get your things together, and leave the premises. I counted on you to protect this house from exactly what appears to have happened. I want you out of my sight.”

  “Sir, I . . .”

  “No excuses. Get dressed, pack your carpetbag, and be gone. You have ten minutes. Then I’m contacting the police to take these miscreants away. If you don’t want to be accused of complicity, you won’t be here when they arrive.”

  “Mrs. Hopkins . . . ,” Prudence began.

  “Not a word from either of you,” Sorensen snarled. “As a householder defending his property, no one would fault me for shooting either or both of you dead.”

  Mrs. Hopkins disappeared up the servants’ staircase to the attic. Less than her allotted ten minutes later, she was out the front door and halfway down the block, carpetbag and reticule bouncing against her legs as she ran through the night. Mr. Sorensen hadn’t thought to ask for his extra money back. By the time he remembered that she hadn’t earned it, she’d be at her sister’s house. Where she’d be safe. She’d intended to leave him a note in the morning, just in case he needed to get in touch with her about the removal people. The paper with her sister’s name and address written on it crackled in her skirt pocket.

  Imagine that Miss Mason turning out to be a housebreaker. It just went to prove that you couldn’t trust anyone, no matter how proper they looked or how well they spoke.

  * * *

  Sorensen hustled Prudence and Lydia down the stairs and into the library, gun always at the ready. He was clever. When Prudence lagged, he pointed the revolver at Lydia and cocked it. They both understood the threat.

  “On the floor,” he ordered. “Fold your legs crosswise in front of you.”

  It was all they could do to keep their balance, sit upright, and not fall over. Leaping at him in an attempt to knock the gun out of his hand was impossible from the position he’d made them assume.

  “You’ll tell me who you really are and what you’re doing in my house,” he said. “But first I’m going to make a call. Wonderful invention, the telephone.”

  Sorensen laid the gun down on the desk and picked up the candlestick phone. He gave a number to the operator, then waited. In the silence of the library, they could hear it ringing.

  “Monroe,” Sorensen said. “I need you. Bring laudanum and your van.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Lydia was quickly and deeply affected by the laudanum. Minutes after Bartholomew Monroe held the brown bottle to her lips and forced her to swallow, while Sorensen trained his gun at Prudence’s head, Lydia began to sway. Her pupils contracted as her head lolled on her neck and she rolled over on her side, hands still tied behind her back.

  “Not too much,” Sorensen cautioned.

  “I know what I’m doing,” Monroe replied. He jammed the bottle against Prudence’s lips, forcing them apart. When she shook her head violently from side to side, he grabbed her by the hair, forced her head back, and pressed two fingers so hard into the hollow of her throat that she gasped for breath. Almost immediately she tasted the well-remembered bitterness of the drug. The two fingers dug into her throat again; involuntarily she swallowed.

  The laudanum rushed into every cell of Prudence’s body; it was like sinking into a warm, comforting bath. Her head fell forward and she dropped into a boneless heap beside her friend.

  Every nerve ending tingled, begging for more of the opium mixture, but Prudence feigned unconsciousness, knowing it was her only hope of saving herself and Lydia. Sh
e was an addict who had built up a tolerance for laudanum during the months after her father’s and then her fiancé’s murder a year ago. No one knew how long the craving lasted, but the phenomenon of requiring more and more of the drug was a well-documented fact. Countless wounded soldiers who had been introduced to laudanum during the war regularly consumed amounts of the drug that would kill a first-time user right up to the moment of their deaths many years later.

  “You gave them too much,” Sorensen complained. “They can’t walk.”

  “Or scream for help.” Monroe gathered up Lydia in his arms. “I’ll leave the other one to you,” he said. “Whoever she is.”

  * * *

  “She’s Judge MacKenzie’s daughter,” Felicia Monroe said, lighting a lamp in the gallery basement, then untying Prudence’s hands. “The cord has left marks on her wrists. You tied it too tightly.”

  “How do you know who she is?” Sorensen snapped. The underground storage room of Monroe’s gallery and studio was like every other space of its kind on Manhattan Island, darkly ominous, smelling strongly of mold, and so damp his skin quickly grew clammy. But there was nowhere else they could bring their two captives; leaving them in the Buchanan mansion was out of the question.

  “She was pointed out to me. I was delivering more cartes de visite to a viewing. I think it was that set of twins who died of diphtheria before Christmas. Miss MacKenzie was leaving just as I was coming in. One of the funeral parlor attendants told me her story.” Felicia rubbed Prudence’s wrists, nodding in satisfaction as the blood returned and the cold white flesh warmed up. “That’s better,” she said. “You can hardly see where the cord was now. Her full name is Prudence MacKenzie. She scandalized society by going into business with an ex-Pinkerton. Investigative law is how they describe what they do, but it’s plain old snooping, if you ask me.”

  She reached for Lydia’s hands.

  “No, leave her,” Monroe said. “She’s staying here.”

  “Arsenic?” Felicia asked, turning to a tray full of chemicals, needles, and tubing.

  “I haven’t decided yet. And it won’t be until after we’ve dealt with the MacKenzie woman. I want to take my time with her.”

  “She may wake up,” Felicia warned.

  “Put a gag on her and tie her feet together. We have a better chance of capturing what we’re after if she’s not as drugged as she is now. There will only be a second or two in which to catch the soul’s image.” Monroe’s voice rang with excitement. It was rare to be present at the moment of death without family members hovering nearby. He began calculating the contrast of light and dark and the precise timing of the exposure. So much could go wrong.

  Sorensen and Monroe carried Lydia to a battered cot on which lay a thin, stained mattress and a blanket that stank of mildew. Monroe thumbed her eyelid and grunted in satisfaction. The woman was unconscious, but her breathing was steady and the pupils of her eyes, though constricted, were still clear. He covered her to the chin with the blanket, being careful to tuck it tightly around her shoulders in case she came around and started thrashing to free herself. He didn’t want an accident to rob him of what could be the greatest achievement any photographer had ever attained.

  “We have to take Miss MacKenzie back to the Fifth Avenue Hotel,” Sorensen said. He kept his eyes on her as he talked; she was as insensible as her friend. “Do you have anything that reverses the effect of the laudanum?”

  “Smelling salts,” Felicia offered. “But they only work for a few minutes. She’ll fall back unconscious again, unless the laudanum is wearing off naturally.”

  “Spill some strong wine on her skirt where it won’t be noticed, except for the smell. Just in case we run into another guest,” Monroe said. “We’ll prop her up between us and get her upstairs as quickly as we can. Felicia can go in first and distract the desk clerk. He’ll probably be half asleep.”

  “How do I keep him from seeing you?” Felicia asked.

  “Tell him you’re a new maid on the night shift and that the staff entrance around back is locked and no one answered your knock. He’ll be furious that you’ve come into the lobby, so he’ll hustle you out of sight right away. All we need are a few minutes to get to the staircase.”

  “I don’t have a uniform.”

  “You can say you were told the hotel was providing the uniform and cap. Better yet, don’t open your coat.” There were times when Bartholomew Monroe thought his sister’s basic intelligence was questionable. If he didn’t need her to chaperone deceased females, he’d be tempted to shove a needle in one of her veins and focus his camera lens on that stupid mouth of hers.

  “The timing is important,” Sorensen said. “And how we set it up will determine what the person who finds her thinks happened. Once a plausible story is accepted, the investigation will peter out of its own accord. She has to be half dressed, as though she climbed onto the bed intending to rest for a while. Do we leave the laudanum bottle in her hand?”

  “No,” Monroe decided. “Leave it on the bedside table with a glass and a spoon. We grab whatever jewelry and money are in the suite so it will look as though the lady’s companion coaxed her employer to take a nap, gave her an overdose, then absconded with everything of value. The companion disappears, so there won’t be any evidence to contradict that assumption. And Miss MacKenzie doesn’t wake up. I hate not taking advantage of an opportunity like this, but I can’t lug camera equipment into the hotel in the middle of the night.”

  Sorensen coiled the drapery cords that had been used to bind Prudence’s hands and feet. “Burn these,” he ordered, handing them to Felicia.

  She nodded, laying them atop the coal scuttle. They were too pretty to be burned, she decided. As soon as the two men had gone upstairs, she’d hide them somewhere. She thought the rich crimson color would look beautiful in her own modest bedroom. Bartholomew was so parsimonious when it came to rewarding her little whims that Felicia had to take what she could get. He had no idea how many souvenirs she’d secreted away over the years.

  * * *

  “I still think we should take a bottle of this champagne down to Miss Prudence’s suite,” Ned Hayes said, rolling some of the vintage golden liquid over his tongue. “It’s much too early for anyone of good taste to retire for the night.”

  More than anything else, Ned enjoyed an evening of witty conversation that began at dusk and continued to dawn. Prudence’s friend Lydia was one of the most intriguing women he’d met; something about her hinted at dark secrets and a mind that might be the equal of his own. Which was a singularly odd thought, given the fact that well-bred women were not encouraged to develop their intellect. Still, her father was arguably the best cryptographer in the country. Some of that fascination with solving enigmas seemed to have rubbed off on her.

  “I suppose I could ring,” Geoffrey said. The Fifth Avenue Hotel had modernized to an astounding degree; many of the suites were equipped with individual telephones, a convenience not even most homes could boast of having, though the craze was rapidly spreading.

  He might as well acquiesce to Ned’s several-times-repeated suggestion. The former detective of the New York City Police had obviously settled in for the evening. He slept very little, and if he were to continue reining in his twin addictions to alcohol and opium, he needed distraction.

  Earlier tonight, when Geoffrey answered the knock on his door, Tyrus, Ned’s minder and former slave, had marched purposefully in behind his master. Now he dozed in a straight chair he’d set in a far corner of the parlor. Every now and then, one ancient eye opened, assessed the state of Master Ned’s sobriety, then closed again.

  “There’s no answer.” Geoffrey murmured his thanks to the operator, then replaced the candlestick telephone on his desk. “I think they’ve made good on their plan to have an early night.”

  “How boring,” Ned said, taking a deck of cards out of his jacket pocket.

  “Is that the deck you took from the steward at the Lotos Club?” Geoffrey
asked. “It’s marked, Ned.”

  “You need practice reading the cards with your fingertips,” Ned replied, shuffling and fanning so fast that Geoffrey couldn’t follow the cards he was palming and inserting exactly where he wanted them in the deck.

  Tyrus rose from his chair in the corner and sauntered slowly to the table where Ned was dealing out three hands of poker. “You ain’t gonna get away with none of them fancy tricks tonight, Master Ned. Mister Geoffrey see right through you.” The eighty-two-year-old ex-slave settled into one of the cushioned chairs with a sigh of satisfaction. He cracked his knuckles and nodded his head in delight. “Master Ned, I’m gonna have to teach you a lesson. Yessir, I surely am.”

  * * *

  Prudence let her legs go loose and her feet drag as Sorensen and Monroe lifted her out of the photographer’s van onto the pavement. They were half a block away from the entrance to the main lobby of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Streetlights glimmered, pools of darkness spreading out between them. Every other streetlight had been extinguished by the lamplighter making his rounds after midnight; no point running up the city’s bill when respectable folk were home sleeping in their beds.

  “Take the van around into the alley,” Monroe instructed his sister. “Then get yourself back out here as fast as you can.”

  Felicia nodded, flicked her whip, and drove to the end of the block and out of sight.

  Sorensen leaned Prudence against a lamppost and pressed his body close to hers, as though she were a lady of the night and he her customer.

  “Here she comes,” Monroe said. Felicia had nearly reached the hotel’s huge main doors. She stopped for a moment, jerked her coat tightly around her body, then disappeared.

  “Let’s go,” Sorensen whispered. He slipped one arm around Prudence’s waist, let her head rest on his shoulder, and signaled Monroe to take his place on her other side. Together they alternately lifted and dragged her down the block. To anyone passing by, including the beat copper, they were two gentlemen helping a lady in distress make her way home. And whatever happened after that was nobody’s business but theirs.