City of Secrets

by Victoria Thompson

  “At least we’re sure he didn’t commit suicide,” Elizabeth said, apropos of nothing.

  “Did you think he might have?” Gideon asked uneasily.

  “Not at all. But doesn’t it seem odd that he died just when Mr. Knight needed to marry a rich widow?”

  Did she really think Knight purposely dropped a gargoyle on DeForrest Jenks so he could marry his widow? “Most likely Knight only thought of his scheme after Jenks died. He saw a rich widow and took his chance.”

  “But didn’t everyone think Priscilla was penniless when her husband died?”

  “You’re right, they did,” his mother said. “How odd.”

  But he could see Elizabeth didn’t think it odd at all. “What do you think happened?”

  She gave him her dazzling smile. “I think Mr. Jenks died and Mr. Knight married Priscilla and squandered all her money, and then he died, too. I also think we should discuss what we’re going to ask Mr. Honesdale when he comes to see you tomorrow.”

  Mercifully, the maid tapped at the door at that moment to tell them supper was ready.

  * * *

  • • •

  “I CAN HARDLY SEE A THING,” ELIZABETH COMPLAINED WHEN MRS. Bates had adjusted the widow’s veil over her face. She had dressed Elizabeth in her severe widow’s weeds at the house but allowed her to make the journey to Gideon’s office without the veil. Now they’d reached the offices of Devoss and Van Aken, and Mrs. Bates was putting the finishing touches on her ensemble.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Mrs. Bates said. “The best part is that, while you can see out, it’s difficult for others to see in. You can stare at someone to your heart’s content and they’ll never know.”

  “Which is, of course, my main purpose in being here.”

  “Good heavens,” Gideon said when Alfred escorted her into his office.

  “Do I look properly bereaved?” she asked.

  “How would I know? I can’t see your face at all.”

  “Which is the purpose of the veil,” his mother reminded him. She’d followed Elizabeth in. She glanced around the room. “Move one of the client chairs over there.” She pointed to a space between Gideon’s desk and the wall. “Elizabeth will need a clear view of Mr. Honesdale, and she shouldn’t be seated beside him, in any case. I think the widow would want to remain unobtrusive.”

  When Alfred and Gideon had made the necessary furniture adjustments, Elizabeth took her seat and Mrs. Bates wished them luck and withdrew. The plan was for her to wait in one of the conference rooms, but Mr. Devoss had seen her come in and insisted on serving her tea in his office. Elizabeth would have to tease her mercilessly later.

  When they were alone, Gideon said, “Try not to speak any more than necessary. Priscilla would be much too well-bred and probably too intimidated to ask him a lot of questions.”

  “How do you know? She might interrogate him thoroughly if she thought he was blackmailing Knight.”

  “Because that’s how ladies behave in attorneys’ offices. Their husbands ask the questions.”

  He would know that better than she, naturally. “But my husband is dead, or at least Priscilla’s is. Does not having a husband mean she can’t get any information?”

  “I’ll ask the questions we decided on, so you should get all the information you want.”

  “What if he says something directly to me?”

  “You can answer him, if it’s a civil question, but if he says anything crude or insulting—”

  “I know, I’ll walk out, thoroughly offended. Don’t worry. I’m an expert at that.”

  Gideon rubbed a hand over his face. “I wish you’d let me handle this.”

  “You are going to handle it. I’m just going to sit here and grieve.”

  He muttered something that sounded like “Promises, promises,” but she didn’t ask him to repeat it.

  No sooner had Gideon taken his seat behind his desk than someone knocked on his office door.

  “Mr. Honesdale to see you, Mr. Bates,” Smith announced.

  Elizabeth drew a steadying breath and straightened her shoulders as Smith escorted Matthew Honesdale in.

  He was not at all what she had expected. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he was another of the attorneys in Gideon’s firm. He was a tall man of average build with brown hair parted in the middle and pomaded into submission. He wore a conservatively cut wool suit in a muted dark blue plaid with an unadorned gold watch chain stretched across his vest. His well-trimmed mustache gave him a kind of dignity.

  Gideon came around his desk to shake Honesdale’s hand. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Honesdale. It’s good to meet you.”

  “I must say, you got me curious, although I can guess why you wanted to . . .” He trailed off because he had noticed Elizabeth sitting by the desk.

  “Mrs. Knight wanted to sit in at our meeting,” Gideon said. It was the truth, or would have been if Priscilla had even known about the meeting, and he hadn’t actually said that Elizabeth was Priscilla. In point of fact, as Mrs. Bates had reminded them last night, no one should consider actually introducing a lady like Priscilla to a man who owned houses of ill repute, so this allowed Honesdale to know who Priscilla was without actually making an introduction.

  Honesdale seemed mildly surprised but he betrayed no other emotions. He merely nodded politely. “Mrs. Knight.”

  Elizabeth gave no sign of acknowledgment, which was entirely proper.

  “Please, sit down, Mr. Honesdale.”

  He did, and Gideon took his own seat back behind his desk.

  “Did you say you could guess why I asked you to meet with me?” Gideon asked.

  Honesdale had been looking at Elizabeth, his expression thoughtful, and he turned his attention back to Gideon. “When you said it had to do with an estate, I couldn’t think of anyone I knew who had recently died, or at least no one who might leave me any money, and then I remembered the mortgage.”

  “The mortgage,” Gideon echoed. Elizabeth knew he must be as surprised as she, but he somehow managed not to show it.

  “Yes.” Honesdale reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a packet of documents. “I was holding a mortgage for a man named Endicott Knight, and I’d seen his death notice in the newspaper.” His gazed flicked to Elizabeth. “My condolences, ma’am.” He turned back to Gideon again. “I thought this might be about him, and since Mrs. Knight is here, I assume I guessed correctly. If she wants to redeem the mortgage from me, I’ll have no objection.”

  He laid the packet on Gideon’s desk and slid it toward him. Gideon opened it and unfolded the papers. Elizabeth couldn’t read the type through the veil, but she could see the official gold seal and the flourish of signatures at the bottom.

  “May I ask how you came to hold a mortgage on Mr. Knight’s property?” Gideon asked when he was satisfied everything was in order.

  Mr. Honesdale leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. He was trying to appear relaxed, but Elizabeth could tell he didn’t want to answer the question. “Mr. Knight apparently found himself in need of funds, and a friend of mine asked if I would make him a loan in return for a mortgage on his house.”

  “And may I ask the name of your friend?” Gideon said.

  “No, you may not. I can’t see that it matters, in any case. All that matters is I own the mortgage, as you can plainly see.”

  This was not something they’d suspected, so they hadn’t planned for it. Gideon glanced at Elizabeth while he reorganized his thoughts. Elizabeth decided she’d give him some time to do so.

  “Are you planning to foreclose on the mortgage if I can’t pay it, Mr. Honesdale?” she asked. She used the icily formal tone the Old Man had taught her years ago and was pleased to see it had the desired effect on Honesdale.

  He blinked in surprise. “I can�
��t say I’ve given the matter any thought, Mrs. Knight, so I wasn’t planning to do anything at all.”

  “Mrs. Knight finds herself in straitened circumstances at the moment,” Gideon said. “I’m sure she would appreciate your forbearance.”

  “Ah, I see,” Honesdale said, although Elizabeth knew he didn’t see anything at all since he had no idea why he was really here. “I’m sorry to hear that, and I can assure you, I have no intention of putting you out in the street.”

  “That’s very benevolent of you, Mr. Honesdale,” Gideon said before Elizabeth could jump in again.

  “Oh yes, an act of true Christian charity,” Honesdale said with some amusement. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me about my name. People like you usually get around to it sooner or later. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” Gideon admitted. “My own pastor’s name is Honesdale.”

  “Uncle Nathan or Cousin Peter?”

  To his credit, Gideon looked only mildly surprised. Elizabeth had only barely managed not to yelp. “Peter. So you’re a relative.”

  “And the black sheep of the family, a fact of which I am very proud.”

  Gideon, bless him, soldiered on undaunted. “You’ll remember that I mentioned your name had come up in regard to Mr. Knight’s estate.”

  “You didn’t say it was Knight’s, but yes, that’s what you said.”

  “And I mentioned that Mrs. Knight is in straitened circumstances. That is because Mr. Knight had exhausted all their resources paying off a blackmailer.”

  This time it was Honesdale who straightened. “A blackmailer?” He seemed genuinely surprised, but maybe he was just surprised that they knew. “What do you mean, a blackmailer?”

  “I think I made myself clear. Mr. Knight was paying out large sums of money to someone who was threatening to expose his darkest secrets.”

  Now Honesdale simply looked confused. His glance darted from Gideon to Elizabeth and back again. “So when my name came up because of the mortgage, you naturally thought a man in my line of work would be a blackmailer, too.”

  Gideon let him wait for a moment before he said, “You must admit that a man in your line of work, as you put it, would have knowledge of a man’s darkest secrets.”

  Elizabeth had expected Honesdale to explode in anger. Instead he just stared at Gideon for a few seconds and then gave a bark of mirthless laughter. “That’s the trouble with you straight-arrow types. You make all kinds of assumptions about people like me that couldn’t possibly be true.”

  “But it’s certainly true that—”

  “That I know a lot of secrets, sure,” he said. “And what do you think would happen if I went around telling other people those secrets? Or even worse, blackmailing people by threatening to tell them? I’ll tell you what would happen. People would stop visiting my, uh, businesses.” He gave Elizabeth an uneasy glance. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Knight, but you must know what my business is or you wouldn’t think I blackmailed your husband.”

  Elizabeth gave him a regal nod of her head to acknowledge the truth of his suspicion.

  “My business depends on discretion. In a city like this, there are lots of places men can go for amusement. They go to my places because I cater to the carriage trade, and they pay me a pretty penny for the privilege. But those men talk to each other, and they’d leave me in a minute if they caught the slightest whiff of betrayal. Why would I jeopardize a business that has made me a fortune to get a few thousand dollars from a man like Knight?”

  They’d expected him to deny being the blackmailer, of course, but they hadn’t expected he could prove it. His argument was convincing, though. She could see Gideon thought so, too. Still, they had one more ace up their sleeves.

  “I’m glad to know you weren’t involved, Mr. Honesdale,” Gideon said. The Old Man would thoroughly approve of his nerve. He’d hardly blinked during Honesdale’s diatribe. “But my main reason in asking you to meet with me was to ask your expert opinion about something.”

  “That’s rich, a lawyer asking my opinion about something. What is it?”

  Gideon moved a folder from the edge of his desk to the middle and turned it around to face Honesdale. “When this lady”—he nodded to Elizabeth—“was going through Mr. Knight’s papers, she discovered this photograph.”

  Gideon lifted the cover of the folder in which he had placed the incriminating photograph. The cover blocked Elizabeth’s view of it but allowed Honesdale to see it.

  For all his worldly sophistication, even Honesdale could not suppress a grunt of surprise. Then he looked at Elizabeth with obvious dismay. “You saw this?”

  Elizabeth gave another regal nod.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but your husband should never have left something like that for you to find. It isn’t right.”

  Elizabeth managed a sniffle that made him think she was weeping, and his composure nearly broke. He turned back to Gideon, furious now. “Is that Knight?” He pointed to the photograph.

  “Yes. I don’t suppose you recognize the, uh, female?” Gideon had let the folder fall closed, but he made to open it again.

  “No, I don’t,” Honesdale said before he could. “No wonder he was paying the blackmail.”

  “I was hoping that a man in your line of work might be able to tell us where in the city someone would go for this kind of amusement.”

  “Not to one of my places, I can tell you that.”

  “I would never suggest such a thing.”

  Honesdale glared at Gideon across the polished surface of his desk. “I’d have to give it some thought.”

  “But there are places that cater to this kind of thing, aren’t there?”

  Honesdale started to speak, then caught himself. “Let me see that photograph again.”

  Gideon obligingly lifted the cover of the folder.

  This time Honesdale studied the picture more closely. “This isn’t a . . .” He cast Elizabeth an apologetic glance. “. . . a brothel.”

  “What do you mean? Of course it is,” Gideon said.

  “No, look at that. The painting on the wall.”

  Elizabeth wanted to jump up and take another look herself, but she forced herself to sit tight and wait.

  Gideon turned the folder and looked at it more closely himself. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s a landscape. You can’t see it very clearly, but it looks like a hunting scene, maybe. You know, horses and hounds. That’s not the kind of pictures we put in whore . . . uh, the places I own. This is somebody’s house.”

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN HONESDALE HAD GONE WITHOUT REVEALING anything else of interest, Gideon escorted Elizabeth to one of the conference rooms and rescued his grateful mother from Mr. Devoss. When the three of them were settled in the meeting room, his mother turned to Elizabeth. “What was he like?”

  “I was surprised. He looked like an ordinary businessman. He acted like one, too.”

  His mother turned to him. “What did you think of him?”

  “If I hadn’t known who he was, I would have taken him for a perfectly respectable gentleman.”

  “I take it he didn’t say anything offensive to Elizabeth, either.”

  “He was very careful to not offend me,” Elizabeth mused. “He obviously knows how to conduct himself in polite company.”

  “Which he may have learned from his Uncle Nathan,” Gideon said.

  This revelation had the expected effect on his mother.

  “He’s Nathan Honesdale’s nephew?” she exclaimed. “He admitted it?”

  “It’s more likely Nathan would be the one to deny it, I’d think,” Elizabeth said. “I suppose being his nephew is less shocking than our original theory, which had him as his son.”

  “That’s true, but it does explain
why he knows how to behave properly,” his mother said. “I can’t imagine how a young man from a good family could become so depraved, though.”

  “I’m sure he’d be happy to explain it to you, Mother,” Gideon said.

  “He probably would. Perhaps I’ll pay him a visit and ask him,” she countered archly.

  Gideon decided to change the subject. “Did you think he was telling the truth when he said he didn’t know Knight?” he asked Elizabeth.

  “I did. He seemed genuinely surprised when you mentioned blackmail, too. Did you think so?”

  “Yes. He actually seemed insulted that we’d accuse him. He pointed out that a man in his line of work had to be discreet or his clients would desert him,” he explained to his mother.

  “I hadn’t thought of that, but I suppose it’s true,” she said. “Honor among thieves and all that, I guess.”

  “I believe the saying is ‘there’s no honor among thieves,’” Elizabeth pointed out with some amusement.

  “Is it? Well, whatever it is, this doesn’t sound like you think he’s the blackmailer, which is too bad, because it would have made everything simpler. Was he able to tell you where Mr. Knight might have gone for his . . . activities?”

  “He claimed he needed to think about it,” Gideon said, “but he did point out something we hadn’t noticed in the photograph.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what it was,” his mother said, feigning disappointment.

  “Actually, we can,” Elizabeth said gleefully. “He noticed that there’s a painting on the wall of the room where the photograph was taken. It’s some sort of landscape.”

  “Why would that be important?”

  “Because,” Gideon said before Elizabeth could answer, “apparently, houses of ill repute have much more salacious pictures hanging on their walls.”

  “And never landscapes,” Elizabeth added. “He suggested the photograph was taken in someone’s house.”

  “Someone’s house? Good heavens, you don’t think it was Priscilla’s house, do you?”

  “I can’t imagine how it could have been done without her knowledge,” Elizabeth said. “You’d know if a strange woman and a photographer came to your house and spent time locked away with your husband, wouldn’t you?”