What the Dead Leave Behind

by Rosemary Simpson

  “What are you saying, Frances?”

  “Only that if there was anything to know about that death, she would be the one who would know it.”

  “You think Victoria killed him, killed her husband?”

  “I think she’s an evil woman, Billy. I don’t know why you sent me there, but you were right to do it.” She had her own suspicions, which she was sure he would never confirm. Victoria MacKenzie had taken something personal from Billy; he was biding his time before taking it back or exacting a price Frances didn’t want to know about. “If Victoria did help the Judge into his grave, and if she persuaded someone to push the maid down the stairs, then she’s cleaning house, getting rid of anyone who stands in the way of what she wants. I can’t imagine that she’s stupid enough to go after you, if that’s what you’re waiting for.” Molly twitched and moaned; it meant nothing, but Frances always hoped. “Her stepdaughter is next. Miss Prudence.”

  “What does the rest of the staff think?”

  “No one will say a word if it means losing a position. Mrs. MacKenzie is the kind of employer who wouldn’t think twice about letting a servant go without a reference. A maid or a manservant without a reference would never work again.”

  “Tell me about the maid who fell down the stairs.”

  “I think she was pushed, Billy, and I think it was Obediah Jackson who did it.”

  “Who is Obediah Jackson?”

  “All I know about him is that he appeared the same day Ian Cameron was given the boot. Cameron had been the Judge’s butler for years; he was supposedly like one of the family. Victoria had him out the door and Jackson in his place before any of us knew what was happening. No explanation.”

  “You’re right. She’s cleaning house.” He’d never intended allowing Victoria to walk away from what she’d done to him, but he was a careful man. The reformers were howling for his blood and his livelihood; he was keeping his head down, biding his time. The longer he waited, the safer Victoria would feel, and the sweeter the taste of his revenge. He thought it might be time to set things in motion. No hurry. Nobody ever escaped from Billy McGlory.

  “Miss Prudence is next. And that would be a terrible shame.”

  “It would be, Frances. From what I’ve heard of her, it would be a significant loss to at least one interesting gentleman of my recent acquaintance. Perhaps two.”

  * * *

  “How often does Donald Morley come in?”

  “He mostly goes to the Haymarket now. I have a friend there who takes care of him.” T-Boy had never been in Mr. McGlory’s private office before. The smell and feel of the soft leather cradling his body was nearly as sweet as swamp grass in an early Louisiana spring. He was definitely going to have to go back home sometime soon.

  “I need to know everything about him, T-Boy. From how he takes his coffee in the morning to what he wears to bed at night. He has a sister. I want him to tell you everything there is to know about her, too. If you have to make a choice, she’s more important than he is. Do you understand?”

  “My friend is good at finding things out, but if I tell him to make himself unavailable and spread the word, Morley will come back here to the Armory. It may not be until Thursday or Friday though.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t think Mr. Morley is going to give me anything to worry about for a while yet. But it’s always best to be prepared.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “As long as you know what you have to do.”

  Billy McGlory handed T-Boy a heavy leather wallet. T-Boy didn’t dare open it right then and there, but he couldn’t resist a surreptitious heft. Defnitely good money for what he would have done for free. Everybody knew that McGlory paid his debts. And collected on what was owed him. That was the part that frightened most people.

  * * *

  “I don’t want you leaving the house again today, Prudence. What will people think?” Victoria looked to Donald for encouragement and support. He was slicing the top off his second boiled egg and reading the morning paper.

  “I agree,” he mumbled.

  “I won’t then. I’ll work in my father’s library.” Prudence sighed, measured out eight drops of dark, bitter liquid from the laudanum bottle she’d brought with her to the breakfast table and stirred them into her coffee.

  “Eight, Prudence? Is that wise?”

  “This must be a weak solution, Victoria.” She held the bottle out to her stepmother, as if urging her to try it for herself, her eyes wide with innocence. Think calf, she told herself. Think wide eyes and a blank stare.

  Victoria waved off the proffered brown bottle.

  “Jackson tells me you were out nearly all day last Thursday, and then again on Monday, but you didn’t take the carriage. I don’t like that, Prudence. I don’t like you going out alone. It smacks of deceit. If you need air, Kincaid can drive you to Central Park, though I’d much prefer we go together.”

  “I’m sorry, Victoria, it won’t happen again.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Please. Must I?”

  “I insist, Prudence. Where did you go?”

  She ducked her head and spoke into her crumpled napkin so the words were muffled and nearly unintelligible. “I went to visit Charles.” It was the only thing she could think of that would be impossible to prove or disprove.

  “Speak up. I can’t hear you.”

  “She said she went to the cemetery where Linwood is buried.” Donald laid down his newspaper.

  “Is that right? Is that what you did?”

  “Yes. There’s a bench near the family crypt. I don’t remember how long I sat there, but I couldn’t seem to leave. I just wanted to be near him for a while.”

  “I forbid you to go there again, Prudence. Anything could happen alone in a place like that.”

  “I was afraid if I requested the carriage, I’d have to tell you why I wanted it. There was no one I could ask to go with me. The Linwoods went to their country house right after the funeral.”

  “You knew very well what I would say, didn’t you? That was deliberate deceit on your part. Your father would be furious with you.”

  “Please, Victoria, may I be excused?”

  “Something is wrong with your stays,” Victoria scolded, pointing at a spot on her own perfectly smooth black silk bodice. “That German Clara has to be replaced.”

  “She does her best,” Prudence said. The emerald ring she was wearing on a gold chain around her neck had worked its way out of the spot where she had tucked it into her corset. She could feel the lump of it under her black mourning dress as she pushed it back down with one impatient finger. “She didn’t lace me tightly enough, that’s all. Please, may I go now?”

  Geoffrey had been right, of course, as he usually was. Prudence should have given him the emerald and diamond ring to lock in his safe. She had been headstrong and impulsive to insist on keeping it herself, foolish to imagine that Victoria wouldn’t notice the slightest imperfection in her dress. She thought the gold chain was thin enough to be invisible under the fabric of her gown, and thank God for high necklines, but she would have to find a way to keep the ring itself more secure. As soon as possible, she’d slip out of the house and walk to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. She had done it once before, she could do it again. This time she would hand him her mother’s ring without being asked for it.

  * * *

  “That was odd,” Victoria said.

  “What was odd?” Donald went back to his newspaper.

  “Spending all that time in the cemetery. I think she’s lying to us, Donald.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. Hand me her coffee cup.”

  “It’s empty.”

  “Then give me her spoon.”

  “Her spoon?”

  “Must you always repeat everything I say?”

  He rattled the paper to show his annoyance, but he also reached across the table and handed Prudence’s spoon to Victoria. He always ended up d
oing what she told him to.

  “And now here’s something else that’s odd,” Victoria said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Coffee on the spoon. Just coffee. I saw her stir in the laudanum, but there’s no trace of it on this spoon, Donald.” She put it into her mouth again to show him what she meant. “There should be at least a slight tinge of bitterness, but there isn’t.”

  “Coffee isn’t bitter, Victoria.”

  “Nothing completely masks the taste of laudanum, Donald. You know that as well as I do.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It means she’s taking us on. She thinks she’s being clever, but she has no idea what she’s up against. She has to go. I was planning to wait a few more weeks, until she was good and surely muddled, but there’s no chance of that now. She’s either watered down the laudanum I’ve been giving her or she replaced it entirely with something else. She has to go.”

  “It’s a good time for it.” He pointed to an article in the newspaper. “It says here that Conkling’s doctors are keeping him confined to his bed. His wife has come down from Utica.”

  “Which means he won’t be around to interfere. By the time he recovers, if he recovers, Prudence MacKenzie will be long gone. There won’t be anything to alarm the bank officers, and with a doctor’s certification of her nervous condition, no one will ask questions.”

  “What about Geoffrey Hunter? He was at the church the day of Linwood’s funeral, and he stuck his nose in when Colleen had her accident.”

  “From what I’ve been told when I’ve asked about him, he’s a dilettante. No real profession. He and Linwood were at school together, so he felt an obligation to his friend’s fiancée. He’s supposed to have been a Pinkerton for a while, but he’s one of those people who’s easily bored. He’ll be more than happy to find out he no longer has to worry about Prudence MacKenzie, that she’s gone where proper care can be taken of her. And that will be the end of it.”

  “Good. I’m getting tired of always having her around.”

  “Patience, Donald. She’ll be out of here as soon as I can arrange things with Dr. Yarborough.” Victoria smiled at him. “You can have the Judge’s library all to yourself.”

  * * *

  “Clara, go up and tell Miss Prudence that the library is open,” Victoria directed, unlocking the door with the Judge’s key, still on its gold chain.

  “The extra packing boxes you asked for are downstairs in the luggage room,” Mrs. Barstow said. She watched the maid climb the stairs and hoped Clara had understood Mrs. MacKenzie’s instructions.

  “Good. They can stay there for the time being.”

  “If I may ask, madam, what is it we’ll be using them for?” If it hadn’t been for yesterday’s conversation with Billy, she would never have dared pose the question.

  “You’ll be told when you need to know,” Victoria said.

  Mrs. Barstow waited for a few moments, as if expecting further orders, then excused herself. “I’ll just check that the dining room has been cleared,” she explained unnecessarily. Mrs. MacKenzie’s silences made her nervous, as did her habit of exchanging as few words as possible with the household staff.

  By the time Prudence came downstairs, German Clara trailing after her, Victoria had disappeared into her bedroom, closing and locking the door behind her. Donald had gone into the parlor to smoke his morning pipe and doze over the newspaper. He would have preferred a snooze in bed, but Victoria insisted on keeping up appearances.

  The house was quiet, empty feeling, as though whoever lived there had gone away for a time. Prudence thought it had been like that ever since the Judge died, worse after Charles was lost to her. She waited until Clara started down the servants’ staircase, then quickly retrieved the hidden key from its hole in the coatrack. She needed the safety of a few moments of delay for what she intended to do; she couldn’t afford to have Victoria walk in on her with no warning.

  Prudence locked the library door behind her, then went straight to the shelf where the Lewis and Clark book had lain atop a pile of other outsized volumes of geography and exploration.

  The panel had been cut so skillfully into the grain of the wood and fitted so precisely that she had to search with her fingers to find it. Only if you already knew it was there could you see it. Remembering the mechanism of the hidden drawer in the rolltop desk, she tapped gently where she thought the spring must lie. The panel that concealed Judge MacKenzie’s safe popped open without a sound. Behind it was a lock whose combination Prudence devoutly hoped was a date her father had known she would never forget.

  Prudence tried her mother’s birthday first, forward and backward, then the date of her death. Her father’s birthday, her own. As each group of numbers failed, she grew more desperate. Her fingers slipped as she turned the dial, her mind went blank and refused to supply her with more possibilities. Finally, reduced to random twists, she was forced to admit defeat. Time was what she needed, but time was her enemy in this household. She closed the panel, checked to make sure it truly was invisible to the uninitiated eye, and slid the heavy, awkward stack of geographies in front of it, filling the rest of the shelf with smaller books.

  As quietly as she could, she unlocked the library door, but did not open it. She would ask Geoffrey to put Lydia and Ben Truitt to work on reasoning out the combination to the safe. In the meantime she would have to be satisfied with knowing it existed and that she had found it.

  Victoria was bound to come check on her soon. She had to be convinced by what she found that her stepdaughter was neither a threat nor even much of a challenge. Judge MacKenzie had believed that a deceptively meek appearance often won the day in the courtroom.

  Or in life.

  * * *

  Behind the locked door of her bedroom, Victoria reread the commitment papers that would remove Prudence from her home. Permanently.

  She had counseled Donald to have patience, but she understood his eagerness to be rid of the Judge’s daughter. She herself was as annoyed and irritated by the girl as it was possible to get without losing her temper outright. And that was something Victoria tried very hard not to do. She had spent too many precious hours cultivating the calm demeanor of a society woman to risk it all for the indulgence of letting fly her anger. Unless Prudence provoked her beyond bearing. She felt the itch of a hard slap on the palm of her hand. She smiled, picturing the shock on her stepdaughter’s face when she delivered the stinging blow. Too bad it was unlikely to happen.

  She would speak to Dr. Yarborough, tell him she wanted the date of Prudence’s confinement advanced. The young woman was becoming more and more demanding and unreasonable with every passing day. She would have to fabricate a few telling incidents to demonstrate how very much Prudence was in need of the serene atmosphere in which Dr. Yarborough’s ladies found refuge from life’s burdens. No one had to ask for laudanum at his clinic; it was liberally and frequently dispensed.

  Victoria stayed in her bedroom only long enough to lull Prudence into thinking she would not be interrupted. It was important to her plan that the girl feel safe. But it was equally essential that she not be given the opportunity to slip away again. Did she really think she could fool anyone for very long with that absurd story of going to visit Charles Linwood in the cemetery?

  Victoria crept noiselessly down the thickly carpeted stairs. She smelled Donald’s pipe tobacco seeping under the parlor door; he’d very likely have pinpoint burns and flakes of ash strewn across his vest. She wondered if she’d ever succeed in making a gentleman of him.

  The library door opened easily, its massive brass knob cool in Victoria’s hand. She half expected to find a disheveled Prudence rummaging among her father’s few remaining books, fruitlessly searching for some final missive he might have left her.

  She needn’t have been concerned.

  Prudence had curled herself into the depths of a huge armchair. Tears had left telltale tracks down her cheeks. She looked lost, helpless, and f
orlorn. On her lap lay an open photo album of her childhood.

  Nothing suspicious. Nothing to worry about.

  Still, it would be easier for all concerned if Prudence’s trip to Dr. Yarborough’s clinic were made without fuss or protest.

  Victoria wondered if she could manage to slip a few drops of unadulterated laudanum into her stepdaughter’s afternoon tea. That’s all it would take. She understood human weaknesses very well; her greatest successes had come from taking advantage of them.

  CHAPTER 23

  The kind of police detective Ned Hayes had been was meat and drink to reporters who had to file inches of copy every day. Flamboyant and daring, handsome and well-spoken, he was far removed from the ordinary Irish beat cop and corrupt Tammany detective. He never laid a stick across a suspect’s back, never kicked out a drunk’s teeth, never availed himself of the sexual favors available free of charge to the city’s finest. The only rumor about him that reporters never managed to verify was whether or not Edwin “Ned” Hayes was a man of independent and substantial means. He was, of course, but that bit of information did not make it into the light of day. Nor did his war record. He’d paid good money to become a nobody before he became a copper.

  By the time Detective First Class Ned Hayes saved Billy McGlory’s life, he’d stepped into someone else’s limelight once too often, and he was too clean for Tammany Hall to ignore. Sooner or later he’d turn his attention to the bribes that kept his brother cops fat and happy, and when he did, he’d bring the New York press and the do-gooders along with him. So while Tammany was pleased that he’d saved McGlory, whose saloon paid dearly for the privilege of staying open, the bosses decided that Hayes would have to fall.

  He resigned before they fired him. Newsmen who had raised a glass or two with him in better times telegraphed their sympathy down the length of a bar or with a quick tilt of the head, but they wrote what they were told and paid to write. Roscoe Conkling sent Josiah Gregory around to offer the lawyer’s services should Hayes want to sue. It would have been a helluva scrappy fight, but Ned decided to withdraw quietly and gracefully.