What the Dead Leave Behind

by Rosemary Simpson

  He howled and swung from side to side like the injured animal he was; then he barreled past the startled Cameron and disappeared out the kitchen door.

  “Let him go,” Prudence said. “Where’s Mrs. Dailey?”

  Cameron found her crumpled on the kitchen floor, struggling to get to her knees.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, bending over to help her into a sitting position. “Kathleen, can you hear me?”

  “There’s a block of ice in the ice box. Chip off a few pieces and hand them to me in a towel,” she directed. “I’m fine. Did he get to Colleen?”

  “He was after Miss Prudence. He didn’t lay a hand on either one of them.”

  “Holy Mother of God.”

  “Colleen is whimpering and shaking, but she’s safe. No harm done. I hit him over the head with the baseball bat hard enough to take out any other man. That one’s got a skull like iron. Miss Prudence shot him.”

  “I’ll go see to her.”

  “No, you won’t, Kathleen. I’ll help you up into a chair, but there you’ll sit until Mr. Kincaid gets here. Miss Prudence has gone out onto the porch to wave at him. He’ll have heard the shot and known what it was.”

  “I wish you’d swung the bat harder,” Mrs. Dailey said. “God save me, I wish you’d swung it harder.” She made the sign of the cross on forehead, breast, and shoulders, then lowered her head into her hands and gave over to quiet sobbing.

  * * *

  Jackson lurched his way along the shore, rallying when the cool salt air and an occasional spray from the river washed across his face. He was afraid to slow down, terrified that if he stopped, he would not be able to get his feet to move again. Down the shore road, across the park toward Fourth Avenue. Then right in front of him, looming large in all of its cantilevered glory, rose the Brooklyn Bridge. He had to get back to Manhattan, to Little Five Points where he’d grown up, where he knew the streets and the neighborhood, where he could lose himself in the crowds. Where he could find somebody to help and hide him until he could try again.

  His head felt as though a company of miners were banging against it with sharp pickaxes. There wasn’t a hansom cab in sight, but the bridge rose up against the blue and crimson of the sunset sky. On either side of the roadway along which traveled hundreds of horse-drawn vehicles every day stretched the pedestrian walkways used by workers who couldn’t afford any transportation but their own feet.

  He’d find a cab on the other side of the bridge. All he had to do was walk across the East River, holding on to the railing when the dizziness threatened to overwhelm him. Fresh air and exercise would restore him; by the time he reached the other side he’d be himself again. What was it that had happened? Why was his head hurting so much? Jackson couldn’t remember. No matter. One foot in front of the other. Lift it up, place it down, lift it up, place it down.

  At the last possible moment he hesitated, leaning against the bridge railing, staring across to Manhattan outlined against a fiery orb. If he took the carriageway instead of the walkway, he might be able to stop an empty cab. The city was so far away, his head hurt so much he couldn’t think, and his legs were going weak on him. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it on foot after all.

  * * *

  Danny Dennis made the turn off the bridge at nearly the same moment Prudence MacKenzie fired the loaded derringer she’d found under Mrs. Dailey’s pillow. He was driving too fast to pay much attention to the man staggering through the park toward the roadway. The drink was a terrible curse, especially for the Irish. He hoped the poor bastard made it home in one piece. Danny hadn’t taken a drop in years, not since the night he’d been so far gone he’d put Mr. Washington up without removing his head harness and blinders or checking for feed and fresh water.

  Kincaid burst out of Mrs. Dailey’s front door as soon as he recognized Danny’s hansom cab. “They’re all right,” he yelled, running toward them, “but the bastard got away. It was Jackson.”

  “You go ahead, Mr. Hunter. Find out what he’s talking about.” Danny knew right away that the figure tottering his way toward the Brooklyn Bridge wasn’t your ordinary drunk.

  “I’m coming with you,” Hunter said.

  “Miss Prudence needs you,” Kincaid said. “I’ll go with Danny. We’ll get him, Mr. Hunter. You’ve got my word on that.”

  “We’re both coming.” Somehow Prudence had made it down Mrs. Dailey’s walkway and out onto the sidewalk. She stood there swaying from side to side, the gun she had used to shoot Jackson still clutched in her hand. Nobody inside the house had been able to persuade her to surrender it.

  “Prudence, give me the gun,” Geoffrey said.

  “No. I’m not finished with it. I’m not finished with him, either.”

  “Kincaid and Danny will take of Jackson. You need to tell me everything that’s happened, and you need to give me the gun.” He very slowly reached out, and when she made no move to raise the derringer and point it at him, eased it from her grip, handing it off to Kincaid.

  Prudence stared at him as though realizing for the first time what she had done, then she said his name. “Geoffrey?”

  He caught her in his arms as she collapsed. “I guess you are going without me,” he said. “Good luck. And don’t come back without him.”

  By the time he reached Mrs. Dailey’s front porch with Prudence in his arms, Ian Cameron had come out to help. He stepped back when he saw the look in Mr. Hunter’s eyes and let the former Pinkerton carry Miss Prudence into the house by himself.

  James Kincaid leaped onto the hansom cab and held on tightly as Danny pulled Mr. Washington into a tight turn, then set him off at a fast trot back in the direction from which they’d come.

  “What happened?”

  Kincaid repeated what he’d been told, described what he’d seen. “She shot him,” he marveled. “Took aim and got him right in the shoulder.”

  “She should have killed him,” Danny said. “In self-defense.”

  “She said it wasn’t the smart thing to do. Dead men can’t talk.”

  “She said that?”

  “Her exact words.” Kincaid pointed. “There he is. On the bridge.”

  “We’ve got him,” Danny said. “Now all we have to do is run him down.”

  A quarter of the way across the bridge Jackson heard the clip clop of a trotting horse behind him. It hurt to turn his head, but he did it. An enormous white horse grinned ugly yellow teeth at him, the driver flicking a whip through the air inches above the animal’s back. Jackson raised an arm to wave him down. Hansom cabs weren’t supposed to stop on the bridge, but a fare was a fare. If the cab were empty, it would stop. He could climb in, sink back against the cushioned seat, and try to concentrate on what had gone wrong.

  Someone had struck at him with a fire iron or a piece of firewood. No. He remembered now; it was a baseball bat, wielded by an aristocratic-looking old man. Cameron, who’d trained him when he was an underbutler. He’d taken the first few steps into the room where someone lay sleeping. Then a loud cracking sound; the worst pain in his head he had ever felt; another, sharper pain in his shoulder, darkness, confusion. Running. He had raced out of the house, down paved sidewalks, across grassy fields. Running and stumbling, getting up every time he fell because he had to. Running onto the bridge.

  Why wasn’t the hansom cab slowing down? Would it go right past him? Was the driver afraid he couldn’t pay? Jackson ignored the entrances to the railed-off pedestrian footpath, stumbling unsteadily along the farthest edge of the carriageway, flinging up first one arm then the other, as if he were warding off a host of stinging flies. If he lost his footing he’d veer out under the oncoming vehicles.

  None of the passengers in carriages or hansom cabs paid him any attention. A few drivers flicked their whips in his direction, others shouted to him to get on to the footpath where it was safe. But no one stopped. Drunks could be dangerous; best stay out of their way. He’d eventually fall down and sleep it off.

  Da
nny Dennis drove with two whips mounted beside his seat. One of them was short, light, meant more for the cracking sound it made than actual contact; the other was a vicious instrument that could strip the skin from a horse’s back or send him flying along the roadway so fast that his hoofs struck sparks from the cobblestones. Coachmen who traveled empty, dangerous roads at night kept the long, heavy whip handy to deal with human predators. Now Danny settled the wrapped leather handle into his right hand, let Mr. Washington’s reins lie loosely coiled around his left fist, and urged the horse on with the clucks and clicks that only they two understood.

  Kincaid held on to his seat and said nothing. It wasn’t his cab. One driver didn’t second-guess another, never interfered with a decision. The job was dangerous enough without distractions and arguments. He knew what Dennis was planning to do, and he approved.

  If Jackson reacted to the sight of the whip raised over his head the way most highwaymen did, he’d throw his hands in the air and give himself up. A man’s face could be sliced to ribbons by the steel tip that was sharper and more deadly than a knife. It was no longer Danny Dennis’s intention to kill Jackson, not even to maim him, though he was fully prepared to use the whip if he had to. His first thought had been to run him down, but knowing that Miss Prudence and Colleen were all right had cooled him off. Bringing Jackson to justice and watching the hangman fit the noose aound his neck would be far more satisfying. He was sure that was what Mr. Hunter and Miss Prudence expected him to do.

  Mr. Washington edged closer and closer to the railing, the bulk of the empty hansom cab rocking from side to side behind him. The oddly flailing human kept looking over his shoulder as he ran. He had gone from confused to frightened to terrified, and his face was so contorted that he hardly looked like a man anymore. His fear sweat filled the air with the acrid stench common to all hunted creatures just before they were brought down.

  For a moment they were neck and neck, the running, staggering man and the evenly trotting horse. Jackson looked to his left and saw to his horror a steel-tipped whip outlined against the sunset sky. He flung up an arm, but at the last moment he overbalanced. His feet slipped on the smooth roadway of the bridge, he turned to grab the harness of the huge horse beside him, then felt his knees buckle as his legs collapsed and he was dragged against the railing. A flash of bright light told him that the hansom cab had flung him loose and passed him; he shouted with relief.

  A private carriage swerved to miss him. Desperate, he made a grab for the horse’s bit, thinking to bring it to a halt and beg for assistance. But the animal snorted with the pain of the metal viciously jerked against its tender mouth and reared in its traces, dragging Jackson under dancing, destructive hooves. He felt the carriage stop, the driver descend to the roadway, heard voices explaining, arguing, coming to an agreement. He smelled horse and blood, felt the excruciating pain of broken bones and ligaments ripped from their moorings, lost consciousness as hands reached down to carry him to safety.

  He sensed a rough woolen blanket being wrapped around him, his body settled hurridly into a cab, the sound of leather curtains unfurling and being secured, a door slamming.

  By the time Danny Dennis and James Kincaid reached the Emergency Pavilion of Bellevue Hospital, Jackson had regained and lost consciousness more times than he could count. A crowd of familiar faces hovered over him. They seemed to have a lot to say, none of which he wanted to hear. It was too late to be called to account, too late to pay with anything but his own death for the lives he had taken. He’d never regretted them, never wasted a moment’s energy or thought on his victims. Even now, he brushed them away with supreme indifference.

  He’d made mistakes with Prudence MacKenzie because he’d wanted so badly to get it right, to give Artie a birthday gift like none other he’d ever gotten in his short life. So he’d played with her, tortured and teased her like a cat with a mouse, and none of it had worked. He should have pushed her harder on Fifth Avenue, should have allowed the gas to pour into her bedroom instead of trickle, should have killed both of them in the empty house when he had the chance. She and German Clara both. But he hadn’t. He’d tried too hard to make it perfect for Artie, and he’d ended up giving him nothing at all. He’d explain it when he saw him. His brother would probably laugh and tell him it didn’t matter. Artie never took anything seriously.

  He wasn’t supposed to be here at Bellevue. This was where Mrs. MacKenzie had ordered the maid Colleen taken. After she’d told him what she wanted done with her. So long ago. So very long ago.

  “We’ve lost him,” the doctor on duty told the cabby and his friend who had brought in the accident victim. “Given the extent and the type of his injuries, it’s probably for the best.”

  “He has no family, no resources,” Danny Dennis said.

  “We’ll bury him as a pauper then,” the doctor decided. “I don’t suppose you know his name?”

  “No idea,” Kincaid replied.

  CHAPTER 28

  “We’ll tell them tomorrow, Mr. Washington. Now that we’re certain.”

  Danny Dennis often preferred a talk with his horse to the chatter of his fellow humans. Tonight, when he and Kincaid returned to Mrs. Dailey’s from Bellevue, there had been so many questions and exclamations that his head soon ached with the noise and clamor of it.

  They’d told Mr. Hunter and Miss Prudence everything, except for one small detail they thought might trouble her. Jackson would lie in an unmarked pauper’s grave, in the potter’s field on Hart Island. And good riddance to him.

  The stable was clean and warm, quiet except for James Kincaid’s rhythmic snoring and the occasional stomp of a hoof. They’d agreed that it was too late and too dark to drive back to Manhattan; there was plenty of room where the grays had been boarded for another horse and two tired drivers.

  Danny couldn’t sleep. He’d finally remembered where he had taken Judge MacKenzie one afternoon nearly a year ago, and he’d gone back there himself. To the premises of the Peerless Safe Company, where a check of their ledgers confirmed that they had constructed a most unusual type of safe for the Judge. They wouldn’t tell him where in the house they’d built it, nor how it was concealed, but their records were excellent. If the Judge’s daughter would present herself at their offices with suitable proof of her rights of inheritance, they would provide her with details of its exact location and the combination.

  He’d intended to tell Josiah Gregory first, so Conkling’s secretary could supply Miss Prudence with the papers she’d need, but then all holy hell broke loose and there hadn’t been either time or opportunity. With all that had happened today, he thought the young miss needed to hear some good news. And tomorrow Mr. Hunter was planning to confront Mrs. MacKenzie and Mr. Morley. She’d definitely need strengthening.

  He’d overheard her telling Mr. Hunter what she had expected to find that was still missing. Letters, she’d said. A lifetime of love poured into letters the Judge had written her mother, the woman whose mortal illness he’d tried to stave off by selling his integrity. Danny could hear in her voice how badly she wanted to find those letters and how certain she had been that her father would have found a safe place for them.

  And he had, Danny believed. A very safe place.

  Danny Dennis stretched out in the hay he’d piled in front of Mr. Washington’s stall. He had no doubt whatsoever that he’d ferreted out one of the last missing pieces of what he’d come to think of as the MacKenzie mystery. He wasn’t a former Pinkerton like Mr. Hunter, but he was the next best thing.

  * * *

  “I still don’t understand why you had to bring Yarborough into it,” Donald Morley complained. “We could have handled Prudence ourselves, Victoria.” It had turned out all right in the end, but his way would have been so much easier. He could feel the parlor walls closing in on him.

  “I don’t want her in the house.”

  “Why not? That’s where people expect her to be. The grief-stricken orphan being looked after by her
loving stepmother and her uncle by marriage. She wouldn’t have been that much trouble.”

  “She got entirely too close to Conkling and that ex-Pinkerton who works with him. It’s better for us if she’s in a place where there’s no chance she can contact either of them. Pinkertons are always a concern. I can smell one from a hundred yards away.”

  “What do they smell like?”

  “Trouble. They stink like trouble.”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  “I’m going to explain this to you one more time, Donald. As long as Prudence stays in the city, Hunter will come sniffing around her. You know I’m right about that. He’ll give up once he gets used to the idea that she’s gone. He won’t know where to look, and I have no intention of telling him. We’ll close down the house except for a few servants and go to Europe. He’ll lose interest in a matter of months.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Have I ever been wrong?”

  “I recall a certain wheelchair-bound Confederate colonel from Charleston, South Carolina. You let him get away from you.”

  “I underestimated how fast a Southern gentleman’s family can move when they sense someone poaching on their private preserve. That never happened again.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “We’ll make one visit to Pinestone Manor before we leave. To make sure Dr. Yarborough is carrying out the orders I’ve given him.”

  “Is he really a doctor?”

  “I didn’t ask to see his credentials.”

  “Both of us don’t need to go.”

  “So far today you’ve contradicted everything I’ve said. Every single thing.”

  “Then cut me loose.”

  “Don’t come home until you’re in a better mood, Donald. And watch yourself, wherever you go.”

  “My dear sister.” Morley raised one of her delicate hands to his lips and bowed over it as gallantly as a suitor. He’d picked and poked at her deliberately, impatient to be off to the Haymarket. Or perhaps he’d chance Billy McGlory’s Armory Hall, which was where he really wanted to go. What were the odds McGlory would be down on the floor? Or that he’d recognize Donald after all this time? There was also the matter of Josiah Gregory to see to. Victoria’s way of dealing with potentially dangerous obstacles was too slow and uncertain for his liking. He much preferred the more direct method. He was very good at it. He hadn’t been caught yet, and he didn’t intend to be. “Don’t wait up for me.”