Let the Dead Keep Their Secrets

by Rosemary Simpson

  Felicia had done her job. The hotel foyer was empty, the desk clerk gone off somewhere with the incompetent new maid. Sorensen and Monroe met no one as they climbed the staircase to the third-floor suite Miranda Prosper had rented. Where she had entertained an eager suitor at tea. Where Prudence MacKenzie had dared try to make a fool of Aaron Sorensen.

  Monroe hung Prudence’s secretary’s suit neatly in the armoire, arranged her shoes beneath it, left her stretched out on the bed in loosened corset, petticoats, and stockings.

  “It should look as though her companion helped her disrobe, then gave her a drink laced with laudanum. She lies down on the bed, where she’s given another dose.” Monroe had staged so many death scene photos that he knew exactly how to achieve the effect he wanted.

  “The overdose has to look accidental,” Sorensen reminded him.

  “It will. Laudanum is tricky. The police see this kind of thing every day.” It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Sorensen that Prudence MacKenzie’s widowed stepmother had died of a laudanum overdose, but at the last moment he decided to keep that bit of information to himself. Felicia had whispered into her brother’s ear the few particulars she’d remembered from the newspaper account nearly a year ago, wondering if the two deaths might not seem too coincidental when the stepdaughter’s true identity was discovered. As it would be. Monroe had scolded her for letting her nerves run away with her, and she’d quickly fallen silent. Half or more of the women he photographed died with a small brown bottle on their bedside tables.

  “All right,” Sorensen agreed, emptying the contents of Prudence’s jewelry box into a sack he’d brought from Monroe’s basement. He took the bills and coins out of her reticule, ran his hand over the top of the dressing table as though a search had been made, opened a few drawers and scattered some of the contents onto the rug. “One last thing.” He held the brown bottle against Prudence’s nose so that a few more drops of laudanum slid down her throat and pooled on her lips. “That should do it,” he said, stepping back to admire his handiwork.

  Prudence had moments of clarity when she was fully aware of what was being done to and around her, but she also drifted in and out of a light laudanum sleep. Don’t fight it, she told herself. They have to be convinced you’re unconscious. She clung to the belief that her tolerance to laudanum would save her, that she’d be able to summon help. Please don’t let them disable the telephone.

  There had never been any doubt in her mind that Sorensen would kill her if she tried to resist him. She wasn’t strong enough to beat off either of the men, let alone two of them working together. If she forced his hand, Sorensen would strangle her or run a knife into her belly. Her only chance to escape was to swallow every dose of laudanum he gave her, then force herself to vomit up as much of it as she could the moment she was alone. She was counting on Monroe’s eagerness to get back to the cellar, where he had left Lydia. So confident would Sorensen be, so eaten up by his own hubris, that instead of waiting until Prudence breathed her last, he would yield to Monroe’s impatience. What could go wrong? Hadn’t he already disposed of at least two wives with no one the wiser?

  She focused her thoughts on Lydia. Her friend’s life depended on how quickly Prudence was able to summon help when her attackers left the suite. She had heard enough of what they discussed in the cellar to remind her that Monroe was one of those photographers who believed it should be possible to capture the image of a departing soul at the moment of death. He would keep Lydia alive long enough to set up his experiment. She suspected Lydia had been aware of nothing after the first large dose of laudanum had rendered her unconscious. When she awoke, she would have no idea what lay in store for her.

  “One more look around,” Monroe said. He had a photographer’s eye for details, a sharp instinct for what belonged and what didn’t belong in a photograph. Or in a murder scene dressed up to mislead the police.

  Sorensen leaned over Prudence. “She’s still breathing,” he complained.

  “We can’t wait. We need to be off the streets and back at the gallery before the early-morning deliveries start. We don’t want anyone remembering that he saw us or the van.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “How much more did you give her?”

  Sorensen lifted Prudence’s head and emptied the bottle of laudanum into her mouth. He smiled. “Enough.”

  “Then let’s go. Unless you think you’ve botched it.”

  Sorensen’s hand crept to the revolver in his pocket. He yearned to put a bullet into Bartholomew Monroe’s hard and greedy excuse for a heart. But he didn’t dare. The noise would wake up half the guests on this floor. They’d be out in the hallway demanding to know what was going on before he could reach the staircase at the end of the corridor.

  There was another reason he couldn’t kill him yet. Monroe had stolen a piece of evidence from Catherine’s deathbed that would send Sorensen to the gallows. The photographer had demanded the first blackmail payment six months ago. And every month thereafter. Gambling wasn’t the only thing that had bled the widower dry.

  Aaron Sorensen walked out of Prudence’s suite without another word.

  Bartholomew Monroe followed, a broad smile on his face.

  He locked the door behind him and pocketed the key.

  CHAPTER 30

  Wake up. Wake up, Prudence. Crawl to the phone. Call Geoffrey. Call Geoffrey.

  Prudence rolled onto her side, pulling at the sheets with her fists to help her body twist its way to the edge of the bed. If she passed out again it would be forever. Her eyelids began to close; her fingers relaxed their grip on the bed linens. Fight! Fight it! Keep moving!

  She knew what she had to do. She’d repeated the commands over and over; as she swam in and out of consciousness, the words danced in front of her eyes. Wake up! Wake up! Keep moving! Fight it! Fight it!

  She obeyed the voice barking orders inside her head. Prudence clawed her way across the bed. When her body would have rolled off onto the floor, she pushed and grabbed at the mattress, forcing herself not to pitch forward, letting just her head hang over. She jammed two fingers into her throat, felt the nails scratch as they probed their way down past her tongue. Her gorge rose; her stomach convulsed. A wracking pain surged past her heart and lungs as laudanum gushed from her stomach into her mouth and out onto the rug. Her abdomen contracted until it felt like her belly slammed into her backbone. A mixture of acid digestive fluids and laudanum spurted between her lips and from her nostrils. She pounded with clenched fists against her gut, thrust fingers past her teeth and into her throat again, thrashed like a landed fish trying to escape the hook.

  When the spasms no longer produced fluid, Prudence allowed herself to slide from the bed. She crawled toward the delicate writing desk on which sat the suite’s brass-plated candlestick telephone. So far away. Drawing closer by inches as she struggled toward it. She tried to hoist herself into the chair in front of the desk. It overturned, crashing down on the arms she raised to protect her head. She could feel tears of anger and frustration leaking from her eyes. Don’t give up. Never give up.

  If she couldn’t reach the phone, she’d have to bring it to where she lay on the floor. Prudence tugged on the cord, trying to slide the phone off the desk as gently as she could. But it was getting harder and harder to force her muscles to obey her commands; what was meant to be a steady pull turned into intermittent jerks. The phone fell, the heavy base striking her on the side of the head, sending waves of pain to all the sensitive places behind her eyes. Clutching the shaft of the apparatus in one hand, she pressed a finger up and down repeatedly on the cradle where the earpiece hung. The operator’s voice asked her what number she wanted.

  She tried to speak. And couldn’t. Garbled a string of incomprehensible sounds that were meant to be words. She lay on her side, lips inches from the phone’s daffodil-shaped mouthpiece, earpiece wedged between the carpet and her head, powerless to make herself understood to the woman at the other end of t
he line.

  Over and over, the operator asked what number she wanted. Then she called her supervisor to listen. The two women conferred. Again Prudence was asked her party’s number.

  “Someone has knocked the receiver off its cradle,” an authoritative voice said. “Children getting into mischief or someone’s dog. Break the connection.”

  A loud click as the cable linking Prudence with the outside world was pulled from the telephone company’s switchboard. Then nothing.

  * * *

  Little Eddie nearly fell asleep waiting for the big Scandinavian and the even bigger black-headed man to come out of Miss Prudence’s hotel suite. He’d been embarrassed for her when he saw how much help she needed to climb out of the photographer’s van that appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the night at the rich man’s house. He was used to seeing men much the worse for drink, and women of the streets also, but not a lady like Miss Prudence.

  Danny wouldn’t be happy when Eddie made his report, but at least she was safe in her bed now and the two swells had left her alone. He didn’t know what he would have done if they’d tried to interfere with her, but they hadn’t. Not enough time, and the glimpse he caught of her face didn’t show any bruises. Her clothes looked all right; no rips or gaps in the row of tiny buttons still in their loops. Who would have thought a fancy lady like Miss Prudence MacKenzie would turn out to be susceptible to a gentleman’s flattery and liquor? Danny would make him keep his mouth shut. Too bad. It was the kind of story that could buy you awestruck respect from the pack of other runners who never saw anything half as interesting.

  When Little Eddie got to the stable where Mr. Washington was boarding, every lamp except one had been extinguished. Danny Dennis sat on a three-legged stool, a book of poetry no larger than the palm of his hand resting on his knee. He knew all of the poems by heart, but he liked the feel of the green leather cover embossed with a golden harp. The smooth pages with expensive gilt edges. He was humming the tune of “A Nation Once Again,” every now and then singing a verse as if to remind himself that although he’d come to America, there was a struggle building across the Atlantic. Young Irelanders, they were called, gifted in language, brave of heart, on fire with dreams of freedom.

  “Sorry to be so late, Mr. Dennis,” Little Eddie said, sidling toward the huge white horse, whose enormous rump stretched from one wall of his stall to the other.

  Danny raised a finger to his lips, rose from his stool, and smoothed a reassuring hand over Mr. Washington’s hindquarters.

  “We’ll talk over there, boyo,” he said, motioning toward the open door of the tack room.

  In one of the empty stalls slept a large red dog and his small master. Blossom and Kevin Carney. Rumor on the street had it that Kevin had stopped bedding down in Miss Prudence’s carriage barn because he was having more bad days than good. Danny would know what to do for him when the time came. His beardless face looked flushed against the sunset pillow of Blossom’s flank. The dog thumped her tail once, but didn’t disturb Kevin. She knew he needed his sleep.

  “Now where have you been all day?” Danny asked. He poured the boy a cup of hot tea, added two teaspoons of sugar and a slug of milk.

  “I didn’t let her out of my sight for a minute,” explained Little Eddie, gulping the scalding brew. “Not neither of the two ladies.”

  “The blond man’s name is Sorensen,” Danny said when Little Eddie had finished detailing where Miss Prudence and Miss Lydia had gone after they thought they’d escaped his surveillance. “And the other one, the dark-haired photographer, is Bartholomew Monroe. Now tell me again what you saw. Without all the distractions and the extra details.”

  “Miss Prudence and Miss Lydia had a long tea, then they waited until dark and went into the big house on the corner. I stayed outside. Mr. Sorensen came home, then a woman ran out the front door and up the street. Mr. Monroe drove up the alley in his photographer’s wagon and parked it in the back courtyard. The two gentlemen carried the ladies out and put them in the van—”

  “Are you sure they carried them?” Danny interrupted. “They weren’t just lending an arm?”

  “Carried them like this.” Little Eddie demonstrated.

  “All right, go on.”

  “They went to Mr. Monroe’s gallery, but around back, in the alley. I saw a lamp lit in the cellar. There’s a window at the sidewalk level, but it’s too dirty to see through.” He waited, but Mr. Dennis didn’t interrupt again. “Then they went to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where the gentlemen and Miss Prudence got out. Another lady drove the van around the corner, then came running back and went into the hotel before they did.”

  “It couldn’t have been Miss Lydia?”

  “No, sir, it wasn’t. I’ve seen Mr. Monroe before. Lots of times. It was his sister, Miss Felicia. She waved at him as she went up the hotel steps.”

  “Tell me about Miss Prudence.”

  “I’m sorry to say it about such a fine lady, Mr. Dennis, but she had to be helped to walk by Mr. Sorensen and Mr. Monroe. She was that far gone.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “I smelled the wine on her. Her skirt was soaked with it.”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “They took her right upstairs and into her suite. I hid at the end of the hallway. Then they were back out and away. It didn’t take long at all. Not more than a few minutes.”

  “And where was Miss Lydia?”

  “I never saw her again after they got to the gallery. Maybe she was too sick to go back to the hotel?” It sounded lame, even to Little Eddie.

  He watched, fascinated, as Mr. Dennis grabbed an instrument off the wall and began shouting into it. He’d heard of telephones and seen their wires strung all over the city, but he’d never seen one actually used before.

  * * *

  Ned Hayes nearly dropped the cards he was dealing when the infernal contraption an arm’s reach away from him shrilled into his ear. “I don’t ever want one of those things in my house, Tyrus,” he said. “And don’t you try to talk me into getting one. I don’t know what this hotel was thinking of, Geoffrey, putting a telephone in every suite. It’s the most intrusive thing I’ve ever had to put up with.”

  “You didn’t protest when I used it to call Prudence,” Geoffrey said, getting up from the table to pick up the earpiece and put an end to the ringing.

  “That was different. It was you doing the calling. I’ll bet you a dollar some fool gave the operator the wrong number.”

  “Call Worthington,” Geoffrey shouted, breaking the connection and shoving the candlestick phone in Ned’s general direction. “Tell him to get here as soon as he can. It’s Prudence.”

  He flung open the door. “Sorensen got to her!” he yelled over his shoulder as he raced into the hallway.

  Then he was gone, feet pounding a tattoo down the stairs to the floor below where Miss Miranda Prosper had entertained a murderer at tea three days ago. Tyrus followed close behind him, moving faster than he had in years.

  Geoffrey hurled his body against the double doors of Prudence’s suite. They gave way with a thunderous crack of breaking wood. He shoved his way past the wreckage, eyes searching frantically for what he dreaded to find.

  He was holding Prudence cradled in his arms when Tyrus tottered into the parlor, his old legs trembling with the effort of getting down the stairs. He smelled the laudanum vomit as soon as he crossed the threshold, took in the rumpled bedclothes and the phone on the floor. “She done the best she could,” he told Geoffrey. “That girl’s smart as a whip. Now let’s get her up on her feet and start walking her around.”

  Geoffrey nodded. Somehow Sorensen had forced Prudence to swallow a lethal dose of the drug, and she’d known it. Gambled on being able to survive if she could empty her stomach. Tried to call for help, but it had been too late. No telling how long Sorensen stood over her waiting for the laudanum to take effect. Lingering as long as he dared. Gloating as it began to kill her. He and Monroe.
>
  Figuring out that twisted relationship would have to wait; Geoffrey’s whole being was focused on not losing the woman he’d fallen in love with. Not allowing her to let go and leave him.

  “He’s coming,” Ned Hayes said from the doorway. “Dr. Worthington’s only a few blocks away and there isn’t any traffic this time of night, so he won’t be long. What happened?”

  “Master Ned, you need to get on that phone and order us up some black coffee,” Tyrus said. The kitchen wouldn’t take orders from a man of color and they both knew it.

  Ned wheeled around and ran for the newly installed elevator that would take him to the basement kitchens faster than the stairway. A voice over a telephone wire wouldn’t be enough. He’d have to bully and bribe whatever skeleton staff was napping downstairs to get what was needed. At least three big pots of the strongest brew they could concoct. Money would have to change hands to ensure silence. If word ever got out that Prudence MacKenzie had nearly killed herself in a hotel room, there’d be no end to the gossip. Her reputation would be in tatters; she’d be years trying to sew it back together.

  “Keep her walking, Mr. Geoffrey,” Tyrus said, staggering under the weight of the slender young woman. “We got to keep her moving.”

  * * *

  “You did the right thing to keep her on her feet,” Peter Worthington said, taking a long tube with a suction device attached to it out of his leather medical satchel. “But we can’t take any chances.”

  “This hotel’s got hot running water,” Tyrus volunteered.

  “Warm is what we want,” Dr. Worthington instructed. He’d heard about the old man who’d kept Ned Hayes alive when everyone else thought the ex-detective would lose his war with liquor and opium. If anyone had experience with what Worthington was about to do, it was Tyrus. Ned still alive was proof of his skill and dedication.