Let the Dead Keep Their Secrets

by Rosemary Simpson

  Choosing carefully, she set aside two more negatives. One appeared to be a close-up of baby Ingrid’s face, the second a similar photograph of Claire lying in her bed. Prudence knew a moment of panic when she had to decide on the last glass plate. So much depended on the selections she made. There was one other photograph of Claire holding Ingrid, but this time the child lay on what appeared to be a folded blanket or pillow.

  Glancing toward the display that seemed to fascinate Josiah, who was holding the clerk captive with one question after another, Prudence made the final substitution. She coughed to signal Josiah that the exchanges had been completed.

  “What I don’t understand is how it happened that the dogs died at exactly the same time as their master.” Josiah turned from the large photograph he had been studying and walked back toward where Prudence sat. “Unless they were helped along, of course. One has heard of such things occurring.” He turned for a last look behind him. “It’s amazing how much some dogs and their owners resemble one another.”

  Prudence had been careful to leave the lid off the box containing the glass plate negatives. She wanted the clerk to be certain that all twelve of them were exactly as he had given them to her.

  “Were you able to decide on the prints you want to order?” Simon Payne asked, running a finger over the contents of the box. Each plate stood upright in its own wooden frame. He was used to speaking with women dressed in mourning, but he thought this lady’s veiling exceptionally opaque. He could barely make out a pale oval behind the black.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Prudence said, her voice not much above a whisper. “I found it more confusing than I thought it would be. I couldn’t make out what the photographs were supposed to look like.”

  “I don’t suppose you made up any extras of the cabinet photo we already have?” Josiah asked. “In excess of what was originally ordered? In case your client needed more of them in a hurry?”

  “Mr. Monroe does sometimes do that,” the clerk said. “I can check the print files, if you like.”

  “That would be very kind of you. Perhaps all we’ll need, after all, is a few more of the same print. What do you think, my dear?”

  Prudence nodded her head, choking back a heartbroken sob. “I can’t bear to look at those things again,” she said, pointing at the open box of glass negatives, her voice thick with unshed tears.

  The clerk closed the box and fastened the lid. The bills he had taken were burning a hole in his pocket, but luck might be on his side for a change. He was fairly certain there were extra copies of the cabinet photograph in the files. He remembered Monroe commenting at the time that he was sure the husband had not ordered enough and would be back for more. He’d put the negative box back where it belonged and never say a word about having shown it to a customer. Fortunately, the lady was wearing gloves. If Monroe did make more prints, there wouldn’t be any finger smudges on the glass surfaces.

  The photographer was a strange bird, a master at what he did, but difficult to please. Samuel Payne was counting the days until he could leave and set up on his own. Humming under his breath, he patted the pocket where the unexpected bounty of more than two weeks’ wages nestled.

  “If you do have additional copies, we’ll take five of them with us.” Josiah assisted his grieving niece to her feet, adroitly retrieving the leather satchel hidden beneath her skirts.

  “I’ll wrap them for you,” Samuel Payne offered, scurrying through the curtained doorway at the rear of the gallery.

  “Did you get them?” Josiah whispered.

  “The one Riis wanted, and three others. Two of the plates are close-ups of their faces, I think. It’s hard to tell what you’re looking at when everything is in reverse.”

  “He’s coming back,” Josiah warned.

  Prudence swayed just enough to suggest emotional distress.

  “Here we are.” The package was neatly tied with string, a large loop left for carrying. “If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll write you up a receipt.”

  “We have a cab waiting,” Josiah said. He pressed several bills into the clerk’s hand. “A receipt isn’t necessary, but there is one other request I would make.” He hesitated, as if uncertain whether to trust the clerk with personal information. “We are not on close familial terms with the deceased’s husband. I’d rather no one knew we had obtained additional copies of the memoriam photograph. He was deliberately parsimonious with them. I’m sure you’ve experienced situations like that before.”

  “You have my promise, sir,” Samuel Payne assured them, one stained finger laid alongside his nose to seal the bargain. Josiah repressed a shudder.

  Bartholomew Monroe’s accommodating clerk ushered them toward the door and assisted them into the hansom cab pulled up to the curb before hurrying back inside. The last Prudence and Josiah saw of him he was carrying the heavy box of glass negatives through the curtained archway at the rear of the gallery.

  * * *

  “We got them, Geoffrey,” Prudence announced, taking off the heavy mourning veil that hung to her knees. “Danny Dennis is sending one of his friends to deliver the plates to Mr. Riis. He says Mr. Washington is too easily recognized if we want to keep our connection to him quiet. There isn’t a reporter in the city who doesn’t know that horse by sight.”

  “Congratulations to both of you. Was it dicey?” Geoffrey knew that Josiah was that kind of rare bird who thrilled to adventure while presenting himself as the most cautious of men. Prudence might not want to admit they’d encountered any danger, but their secretary thrived on sharing tales of dangerous exploits.

  “Not at all, sir,” Josiah said. He sounded disappointed. “We had the whole operation too well-planned for anything to go wrong. Danny kept watch outside in case Monroe came back early. But he didn’t.”

  “Were you able to talk to Claire?” Prudence asked.

  “I was. She’s convinced the sandbag was deliberately aimed at her.” Geoffrey had spent most of the morning at the Met. He had the gift of being able to make himself welcome wherever he chose to go.

  “If that’s true, whoever cut the rope had to have been hiding in the flies until exactly the right moment. It seems a chancy way to commit murder.”

  “I talked to the stage manager, too. He says it’s the first time he can recall anything like that happening. They use sailors on shore leave to work the sandbags because they’re good with knots and they’re used to heights. He said they scramble around up there like monkeys, yet none of the men working yesterday admitted to seeing anyone who shouldn’t have been there.”

  “Is Claire covering tonight?”

  “Not until Monday, when it’s Aïda again. There’s another rehearsal this afternoon. It’s probably started by now.”

  “I’m surprised the management didn’t give them a day or two to recover.”

  “She said it doesn’t work like that in opera or the theater. You perform or rehearse no matter what. I got the impression it was a point of pride as much as anything else.”

  “Theater people and opera singers aren’t like the rest of us, Miss Prudence,” Josiah said.

  “I told her we could arrange for protection if she wants it,” Geoffrey said.

  “A bodyguard?”

  “Nobody could get by the man I’m thinking of.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That she’d consider it.”

  “I thought she was frightened.”

  “She is. But something else is going on. If I had to place a bet on what she’s planning, I’d say she has the crazy idea that if she lets herself be seen as vulnerable, whoever wants to do away with her will try again. And somehow that will allow her to avenge her sister.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Josiah remarked. He still had nightmares about being trapped under the Central Park Carousel with a murderer.

  “She’s armed,” Geoffrey said. “She carries a small gun with her whenever she travels alone, and she claims to be a good shot.”

  “
Hire the bodyguard,” Prudence said. “If he’s as good as you say he is, she doesn’t have to know he’s watching her. Do we have yesterday’s prints of the Met from Mr. Riis yet?”

  Geoffrey handed her a large envelope stiffened with sheets of cardboard. “One of Danny’s cohorts was waiting outside as I came in.”

  Prudence slit the envelope with Josiah’s silver letter opener. The first print she extracted was of the back of Lucinda Pallazzo’s head, the frayed and cut end of the sandbag’s hemp rope lying just beyond the pool of blood. She laid the photographs on Josiah’s desk, one by one, each more graphic and disturbing than the last.

  “I don’t think there can be any doubt about it,” she said when the last photograph had joined the others. “This was murder. Someone tried to kill our client.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “I haven’t slept,” Claire Buchanan said. “All I’ve done is think.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Geoffrey told her, “to do some of the thinking for you.”

  “I must look terrible.” She raised both hands to the masses of pale hair coiled atop her head, patting stray tendrils into place, pushing loose pins back into the curls they were meant to control. Unlike most blondes her deep green eyes were accentuated by dark lashes. The fair skin beneath them looked bruised.

  The Aïda rehearsal was over, its exhausted cast ending a long day in their dressing rooms, Lucinda Pallazzo’s death yesterday on the stage they had just vacated still preying on their minds. Assistants to the stage manager knocked on doors and shouted their message along dark, narrow corridors. “No rehearsal call tomorrow. Lockup in thirty.”

  “What does that mean?” Prudence asked. She’d never been in a theatrical dressing room before. The smell of greasepaint and sweat-stained costumes was heady, the noise and bustle of hurrying feet enervating, and the close quarters of the small room Claire had shared with the dead woman claustrophobic.

  “There won’t be another rehearsal of Aïda tomorrow and everyone needs to be out of the theater in thirty minutes or risk being locked in,” Claire explained. She squeezed the juice of half a lemon into a cup of hot water, added two teaspoons of honey and a dollop of brandy. “For the throat,” she said. “The lemon cleanses, the honey soothes, and the brandy relaxes the muscles. Every singer has a favorite remedy. This one is mine.”

  “Were you singing this afternoon?” Geoffrey asked.

  “Just the cue bars,” she said, “some of them over and over again. It was a very ragged rehearsal. Every time I looked down at the stage floor, I remembered Lucinda lying there in a pool of her own blood. I wasn’t the only one.”

  “The memory will fade,” Prudence promised. “I know it seems impossible now, but I can tell you from my own experience that the horrors we manage to live through gradually lose their power. If you’re lucky, one day you wake up and what was bedeviling you is gone.”

  “I’m going to choose to believe you,” Claire said, sipping her concoction of watered lemon juice, honey, and brandy. “I apologize for not wanting to see you last night. It was rude and unforgivable, but after I answered that detective’s questions, I couldn’t bear to talk anymore about what happened to Lucinda.”

  “Steven Phelan is very thorough.”

  “You know him?”

  “He’s a bulldog detective,” Geoffrey said, avoiding a direct answer to the question. “Once Phelan sinks his teeth into a case, he doesn’t let go until he solves it. Or the chief of detectives calls him off.”

  “I didn’t mean he was discourteous or offensive. He wasn’t,” Claire said. “But Lucinda and I talked about Catherine before we went onstage. I kept thinking there had to be a connection.” She shuddered, one fist pressed against her lips to still their trembling.

  “Did you tell Detective Phelan that?”

  “No. I thought it sounded melodramatic, as if I were trying to push myself into the center of attention. I’m not, I promise you. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the sandbag was meant for me. Does that make any sense?”

  Geoffrey nodded. “What did Miss Pallazzo have to say about your sister?”

  “She told me that Catherine was planning a return to the opera stage. I had no idea.”

  “The impression Miss MacKenzie and I got was that your sister abandoned any thought of a career after she married.”

  “Sorensen insisted. She withdrew from all contact with other performers, some of whom had been friends for years. Her husband feared they might influence her. Catherine didn’t say as much—she was loyal to him. But I know that was the case.”

  “What made Miss Pallazzo so sure your sister intended to sing again?”

  “Catherine was taking vocal lessons from a diva who retired from the Met some years ago. A friend of Lucinda’s saw my sister outside Madame Strauss’s apartment. Catherine begged her not to tell anyone. The friend only broke her promise when she knew I would be coming to New York and she would be leaving for San Francisco. She thought I should know, even though Catherine was dead. She trusted Lucinda to tell me.”

  “Is this Madame Strauss still in New York?” Geoffrey asked.

  “Lucinda said she returned to Europe perhaps half a year ago. And I didn’t think to ask for the friend’s name. That was stupid of me.”

  “You couldn’t have known what was about to happen.”

  Claire squared her shoulders, raised her head, and looked challengingly at Geoffrey. “Mr. Hunter, the sandbag wasn’t meant to fall on Lucinda. It was aimed at me.”

  “Convince me of that, Miss Buchanan.”

  “Lucinda wasn’t a threat to anyone. She was a contralto, so the number of roles she could sing or cover was limited. Most of the major roles for women are written for a higher range.”

  “You’re saying that jealousy would not be a motive to kill Miss Pallazzo, but it might be a reason to want to injure you?”

  “You saw the Times review.”

  “The scenery and the costumes made a more favorable impression on the reviewer than the performance.”

  “I could feel it all around me as soon as I arrived backstage yesterday. There was a buzz of gossip and excitement that usually only happens on opening night. This time there was talk in the company that Frau Schröder-Hanfstängl had taken to her bed and might not perform next Monday. Do you know what that means to a cover singer? It’s a dream come true, maybe the only chance you’ll ever have to make your mark in the opera world. It’s everything, Mr. Hunter, everything.”

  “You’re saying that someone wanted to guarantee you wouldn’t be able to sing, no matter what Frau Schröder-Hanfstängl’s circumstances.”

  Claire nodded.

  “I understand what happens if a singer can’t perform because of illness, but are there other circumstances when a cover might substitute?” Prudence asked. “Someone other than the performer herself who decides she won’t go on?”

  “Anton Seidl is our conductor. He’s also the final authority for any decisions made this season.” Claire shook her head. “I won’t name names and I won’t make accusations I can’t prove,” she said.

  “Have you ever known malicious mischief to be done that would prevent a singer from performing? In all of the companies of which you’ve been a member, has that kind of thing ever happened?”

  She laughed. “Everything from deliberately tainted chocolates to loose heels that break off and make someone stumble. Itching powder in a costume, alcohol in a water glass, cues that are never given. If you can imagine it, Mr. Hunter, someone has tried it.”

  “But murder, Miss Buchanan? Murder is carrying jealousy and ambition to an extreme.”

  “That’s what every opera is about. Jealousy, revenge, murder. I was terrified last night. My first thought was that what happened to Lucinda was somehow tied to Catherine, that someone found out I had hired you to investigate the truth of her death. But I’ve had time to think it through, and I don’t believe I’m in any danger now. That’s why I temporized when you suggested a
bodyguard. Whoever let loose the sandbag won’t try again. He or she meant to frighten me into breaking my contract so someone else could take my place if Frau Schröder-Hanfstängl can’t or won’t go on. Murder was never the intention. This has nothing to do with my sister. The timing is pure coincidence.”

  Geoffrey didn’t agree with her, but he hadn’t any proof to contradict the argument she was making.

  * * *

  They were too late to catch the last breath, despite having expected the death for more than a week.

  “She passed away toward dawn, we think.” Pauline Anderson’s daughter-in-law had already seen to the external signs of mourning. A black-ribboned wreath hung on the front door of the house, all of the mirrors had been covered, and the servants wore black armbands over their uniforms. She was loath to admit that the family had gone to bed as usual the night before and the maid charged with sitting at the elder Mrs. Anderson’s bedside had fallen asleep in her chair.

  “You have our deepest condolences.” Bartholomew Monroe handed his heaviest cases to a footman, who would carry them up to the deceased woman’s bedroom. “May I present my sister, Miss Felicia Monroe? She will be assisting me.”

  “Then you won’t need my presence?” Thalia Anderson had been determined not to shirk her duty, but now that a woman accompanied the photographer, the proprieties would be observed without her having to remain in the room. Mother Anderson had withered during her final illness, and though the housekeeper had done most of the actual washing of the body this morning, Thalia had assisted with dressing her husband’s late mother in the gown and widow’s lace cap in which she would be buried. She had averted her eyes as frequently as possible from wrinkled, sagging flesh that was already acquiring the odor of decay; it hadn’t been a pleasant task.