Let the Dead Keep Their Secrets

by Rosemary Simpson

  “They were embalmed?”

  “Apparently, there at the house, as soon as the photographer finished taking his pictures. My uncle writes that when he was finally allowed to see them, Mrs. Sorensen and her infant lay together in the same coffin in the parlor. He noted the faint odor of arsenic not quite camouflaged by the scent of flowers, and concluded that they had been embalmed.”

  “I’m not asking out of a prurient curiosity, Doctor, but because it might impinge on our findings. How was the embalming done?”

  “He doesn’t go into details, but I’m sure it was the same method that came into favor during the war, when families desperately wanted the body of a loved one returned whenever possible. A preservative fluid is introduced into the blood vessels where the arm joins the chest. It’s not as thorough as the procedure performed nowadays in mortuary parlors, but it gets the job done.”

  “And you say that arsenic is used?”

  “It’s the most important ingredient in the preservative. Arsenic has many uses, Miss MacKenzie. It’s essential to modern life.” Dr. Norbert handed her the notes he had written.

  “I won’t take any more of your time, Doctor,” Prudence said.

  “Do remember me if you should begin to suffer any of the symptoms of hysteria. If you lose your appetite or experience excessive nervousness or the inability to sleep.”

  “I shall certainly think of you if I fall into a hysterical state,” Prudence promised. She had suddenly remembered the most common treatment for female hysteria and understood what the doctor was suggesting. Even though she still had her gloves on, she managed to leave his office without shaking hands.

  * * *

  “Ned thinks he knows a woman who will be able to give us information about Mrs. Emerson, the midwife.”

  “I’ll go see her as soon as I’ve written up my interview notes of Dr. Norbert,” Prudence said. She hadn’t mentioned to Geoffrey the doctor’s offer to treat her for hysteria.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “It’s best I do this one alone.”

  “May I ask why? I thought my questioning of Norbert was very thorough.”

  “I’m sure it was.”

  “Then why are you shutting me out?”

  Geoffrey did not answer.

  Ned knows a woman. Not a lady. Prudence’s hackles rose. She suddenly had more than an inkling of who it was Ned Hayes had suggested might help them find Mrs. Emerson. There were midwives who did more than deliver babies; they also aborted the unwanted or inconvenient accidents that a certain profession was prone to experience. Madame Jolene. That was who Geoffrey did not want her to interview.

  “You can’t protect me from what you think is unsuitable, Geoffrey. You’re neither my father nor my brother. And you are certainly not my guardian.”

  “That wasn’t my intention, Prudence.” He hoped one day to be so much more.

  “I suppose if women are ever admitted to the bar, you’ll want to limit the types of clients they can represent. Widows trying to reclaim their dower rights, orphans seeking proof of legitimacy, perhaps an odd divorce now and then. Certainly no one accused of a capital crime and definitely no woman who’s been obliged by poverty and ignorance to sell her body.”

  Prudence could feel herself trembling with anger. The detecting they were doing together was just a first step toward her ultimate goal. Geoffrey knew how much she dreamed of becoming the lawyer her father had educated her to be, how avidly she followed the arguments being made in favor of admitting women to the bar. The practice of law would be a farce if she couldn’t go where she wanted, take on any case that intrigued her, choose her own clients no matter who they were.

  She’d never raised her voice to Geoffrey Hunter before. This had been their first quarrel.

  CHAPTER 17

  It wasn’t precisely a battle, since neither party claimed victory. Geoffrey withdrew from the field because he knew Prudence was right. Hard as it was for him to admit that she was just as entitled as a man to throw herself into a compromising situation, he had to admit she had earned that privilege. No Southern woman of quality would put herself forward as Prudence did, but that was precisely what drew him to her. She was unlike any other woman he had ever known, North or South.

  She had never been less than determined and courageous from the first moment he met her, when he’d taken her arm at her fiancé’s funeral and rescued her from the clutches of a conniving stepmother. It galled him to think she intended to enter a house where women sold their bodies to strangers, but it vexed him even more to know that if she were a Pinkerton operative, he might have suggested just such a visit. In disguise and incognito, perhaps, which would make it all the more dangerous.

  Conflicting emotions weren’t something Geoffrey usually tolerated in himself. There were moments when he thought that time spent with Prudence was a threat to who and what he had always been. He felt himself changing, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. Until he thought of what life would be like without Prudence. Stating her mind. Saying exactly what she thought. Refusing to flatter him the way so many other women did. Challenging him. Just being herself. Confusing the hell out of him.

  Apologies weren’t exchanged, but neither did Prudence continue the discussion. She accepted Geoffrey’s capitulation with good grace and quickly changed the subject, salving what was left of his masculine pride.

  “Will Madame Jolene talk to us?”

  “I think so,” Geoffrey said. “She was grateful for what we were able to do when Sally Lynn Fannon was murdered, and she has a soft spot for Ned Hayes.”

  “Maybe we should have brought him with us.”

  “He’s gone off on a tangent of his own. Wouldn’t say what it was. But she’ll talk to us because she knows Ned will be pleased if she cooperates.”

  Madame Jolene’s brothel was housed in a respectable brownstone on a street just a stone’s throw from some of the most expensive real estate in town. It was protected by the New York City Police, whose upper-echelon officers enjoyed the pleasures of the establishment gratis. Ordinary coppers were served at an address that wasn’t nearly as posh, and by girls who were a trifle more worn. The madam knew how to butter her bread.

  “Good afternoon, George.” Geoffrey removed his hat as he stepped into the small foyer that concealed embossed red wallpaper and scantily clad ladies from anyone passing in the street. “Would you tell Madame Jolene that we’d like a few minutes of her time?” He didn’t mention Prudence’s name. That would have been crossing too far over the line of propriety; he was uncomfortable enough already.

  George Bright ushered them into the main parlor, then hurried off to Madame Jolene’s office. He was a muscular young man who took seriously his job of bouncer. He’d boxed bare-knuckled and gloved until his ears became injured and deformed, his nose hardly functioned anymore for breathing, and he had a hard time remembering things. Despite the ears and the nose, he was still handsome enough to make a woman catch her breath at the sight of him. Since George didn’t like women in that way, he and Madame Jolene had long ago agreed that the job she offered him suited both their needs.

  He passed through the parlor on his way back to his post at the front door, nodding to Geoffrey as he went, ignoring Prudence, which he thought was the only proper way to handle her appearance where she so obviously didn’t belong.

  Madame Jolene was as elegant as the madam of an exclusive brothel could be. Dressed always and entirely in embroidered black silk, she wore enough paint to conceal her age, but not enough to look raddled. Not a single gray strand disturbed the deep black of her upswept hair, where beads of jet sparkled and a feather waved over her curls. She was as Irish as Paddy’s pig, but since she’d spoken only Gaelic when she got off the boat, an immigration officer decided she must be French, and she agreed. It meant she could charge more for her services, since everyone knew that French whores were the best. She’d learned English easily, deformed it with an accent she thought sounded French, and voil�
�, there she was. Renamed, enthusiastically a citizen, on her way to becoming a wealthy woman. She loved everything about America.

  “I know you didn’t come for the usual,” Madame Jolene said, sweeping into the parlor with a swish of silk and a wave of expensive French perfume. She looked at Prudence the way a horse trader examines a mare he intends to breed. “We’ve managed to go a few months without a murder, Mr. Hunter. So what brings you to my doorstep?”

  “We’re looking for a midwife,” Geoffrey began.

  “I don’t keep one on the premises,” Madame Jolene interrupted. “Aren’t you going to introduce your companion?”

  “My name is Prudence MacKenzie.” She smiled and held out a hand, as composed and polite as if greeting one of the Vanderbilts or Astors.

  “You’re welcome in my house,” Jolene said. She liked a woman who was sure of herself and not afraid to treat a whore like the sister under the skin she was.

  “Jolene, the woman we’re looking for provided other services to women and girls who found themselves in a bad way. She calls herself Mrs. Emerson.” Geoffrey resolutely kept to the business that had brought them to the brothel. Prudence was looking unsuitably curious about her surroundings. He wouldn’t put it past her to ask for a tour of the house, a request whose consequences he didn’t want to contemplate. Josiah would be horrified.

  “And you thought I might be able to tell you about her because of these other services?”

  “That’s what I thought. So did Ned.”

  “Smart man. He played fair with me when he was on the force, one of the very few who did.”

  “Do you know her? Mrs. Emerson? Have you heard the name?”

  “Why are you looking for her?”

  “We’re trying to solve a murder she might know something about,” Geoffrey explained.

  “And save another woman’s life, if we’re quick enough,” added Prudence.

  “Paulina Kowalski is her real name. She uses Emerson because she thinks it’s less threatening, less foreign.”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “None of my girls ever used her. I wouldn’t allow it. She had a reputation for losing as many as she helped. Rumor was she’d do the job drunk or sober, but mostly drunk. She started out as a legitimate midwife, but she lost her husband and her two kids to the cholera. That’s what set her drinking. Nobody wants to be delivered by a woman who keeps a bottle in her apron pocket. But the girls who are desperate will pay anyone who promises to fix them up. That’s how she made her living, or at least made enough to keep herself in cheap gin and bad whiskey.”

  “Do you know where we can find her?”

  “I do. But the Mrs. Emerson I’ll send you to doesn’t drink anymore. I don’t know how long she’s been sober, or if she goes on a binge every now and then, but from what I’ve been told, she’s a far cry from what she used to be.”

  “Climbing out of the pit of addiction isn’t easy,” Prudence said. “Not everyone can do it.”

  “Paulina’s always been odd. When her husband and children were alive, she went to early Mass every morning as regular as clockwork. Didn’t go anywhere without a rosary in her pocket. When they died, she blamed God for not answering her prayers, so she took to the bottle and walked away from religion.”

  “And now?”

  “Now she calls herself a spiritualist, one of them that believes in being able to contact the dead and talk to them. She’s not a medium, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she decides someday that she’s got the gift.”

  “How do you know so much about her, Jolene?” Geoffrey asked.

  “Like I said, I wouldn’t let her near any of my girls while she was drinking, but there’s no denying she’s one of the best when she’s sober.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Spiritualists have some peculiar beliefs. Like the one about being able to sense or see the soul fly out of a dying person’s mouth on his last breath. There are some who think if they set up a camera, they can catch that soul in a photograph. It’s supposed to look like mist or fog in the shape of a person.”

  “There were pictures of the ghost of Lincoln standing behind his wife,” Prudence said. “But they were proven in court to be frauds.”

  “It’s just rumor, mind, but it’s said that Paulina makes extra money working with one of the photographers who makes cabinet photos and cartes de visite of the deceased. She lets him know when she thinks a woman isn’t going to survive delivery for long, or when it looks like a baby is born too early or too weak to survive.”

  “Surely, no family would let a photographer into their home at such a time,” Prudence exclaimed, remembering her father’s death and how he lay in his open coffin in the parlor so that friends and relatives could pay their last respects. There had been no photographs taken of Judge MacKenzie’s body.

  “You’d be surprised. If there’d never been time or money or an occasion important enough to justify having a photograph taken, this is the last opportunity to capture a likeness. She probably makes the suggestion, but has already forewarned the photographer so he arrives right away after the death.”

  “Perhaps before?”

  “That I wouldn’t know.”

  A clock bonged the hour and Madame Jolene rose to her feet, signaling that the interview was over. “I run a business,” she said. “Time is money.”

  * * *

  The exteriors of the brick rooming houses on West Twenty-seventh Street were as neat and respectable looking as the brothels and businesses that shared the block, their only distinction being the signs in their windows advertising ROOMS TO LET. Mrs. Thompson’s establishment was four stories tall, a narrow building with space for only one window on each side of the front door.

  When their knock was answered, Prudence and Geoffrey found themselves in a long, dark hallway, with stairs to one side rising to the floors above. Except for a front parlor and the set of rooms Mrs. Thompson kept for herself on the ground floor, every square foot of the formerly single-family, upper-middle-class home had been converted into small bedrooms, where the only furniture was a narrow bed, a chair, and a commode just large enough to hold a water pitcher and basin. It was nearly as cold inside the house as outside in the street.

  “I’ll fetch her for you,” Mrs. Thompson said. “I know she’s in because I heard her go upstairs not half an hour ago. You can wait in the parlor.”

  Clean, cold, and barren of any unnecessary item of decoration, the parlor was a place where a guest would not be tempted to overstay his welcome. Two upholstered wingback chairs flanked a worn sofa, in front of which stood a low table, where a pot of ivy struggled to stay alive. The fireplace held an aspidistra plant, though there were signs that a coal fire had been lit there not too long ago.

  They waited in silence, certain that a landlady who recognized her roomers by their footsteps would also be able to overhear every conversation that took place beneath her roof. Prudence took out one of their business cards and slipped it beneath her glove. They would have to decide how much to tell Paulina Emerson after they’d had a chance to size her up.

  The woman who came into the parlor and introduced herself was as plump and harmless looking as a storybook grandmother. Her gray hair was twisted into a tight bun, her dress was of sturdy dark blue serge, and she wore an old-fashioned crocheted lace collar. Her landlady had no doubt described the visitors to her; Paulina Emerson showed no surprise that she had been called upon by two well-dressed members of the upper class.

  “I remember Mrs. Sorensen,” she said in answer to their question. “It wasn’t a difficult birth, but the infant wasn’t delivered until very late into the night. The mother begged me to stay with her until the baby nurse arrived the next day. That’s a bit unusual, but the child was early, so the arrangements for care had to be adjusted.”

  “And you did spend the night?” Prudence asked.

  “Yes. What was left of it. I hadn’t been looking forward to walking alone through the s
treets in the pitch-blackness, so staying for a few extra hours suited me fine.”

  “Could you tell us about the doctor? Did he deliver the child, or did you?”

  “I did,” Mrs. Emerson said. A hint of stubbornness shone in her pale blue eyes. “I’d already been engaged by the husband, you see, but the doctor had cared for Mrs. Sorensen’s family before she married. I don’t know who sent for him when the labor began. It might have been Mrs. Sorensen herself or one of the servants. Mr. Sorensen wasn’t there. At any rate there were two of us when there only needed to be one.”

  “That would be Dr. Jonathan Norbert,” Geoffrey contributed.

  “The uncle, not the nephew,” Mrs. Emerson elaborated. “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead.”

  “We wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.” Prudence watched as the midwife’s strong hands tightened in her lap until the knuckles turned white. She’s planning to lie or to hide something, and she’s nervous about it. “Dr. Norbert passed away a few months later. He was quite elderly at the time. We’ve been told by a colleague that he had a markedly irascible nature.”

  “If that means he had a temper, yes. I had more experience with birthing than he could ever hope for, but he ordered me around as if I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “Why did you stay then?”

  Mrs. Emerson flushed a deep, dark red. She tossed her head and clamped her lips tightly shut.

  “Was it because you knew Mr. Sorensen wouldn’t pay for your services if it was the doctor who delivered the child?” Prudence asked quietly. She nodded sympathetically, as if she knew what it was like to wonder where the next coin was coming from or if there would even be one.

  Mrs. Emerson sat in mulish silence.

  “Or maybe Mr. Sorensen wasn’t the only one who hired you? Is that it?”

  Despite the chill in the parlor, beads of moisture broke out on Mrs. Emerson’s forehead.