What the Dead Leave Behind

by Rosemary Simpson

  There was so much to discuss. How long would Prudence mourn dear Charles before coming back into society? So many things had changed since the war, so many customs modified or even done away with entirely because there had simply been too many killed, too many young men who would never come home to wives, mothers, and fiancées. What on earth had possessed Charles to go out into the blizzard like that? So many questions to ask, so many stories to tell. Everyone in New York City had become an expert on the Great Blizzard, everyone would tell his own adventures over and over until even the storyteller grew bored. But that hadn’t happened yet; it was too soon. And so when the weather turned springlike again, the social rituals resumed, none pursued more eagerly than the formal afternoon call.

  Prudence was counting on a flock of chattering ladies to keep her stepmother occupied, and since Donald could not take refuge in the Judge’s study, he was almost certain to be out of the house. Etiquette prescribed that a caller take her leave soon after another caller arrived, but New Yorkers did not always observe English etiquette to the letter, especially when there was so much to talk about. Prudence sent word she had a headache and would therefore have luncheon on a tray, then kept her bedroom door cracked as the hours crawled slowly by. One did not pay or receive calls until well past the midday meal.

  She wasn’t disappointed. At precisely two o’clock, the earliest possible hour to call without giving serious offense, the first of the afternoon’s ladies was ushered into the parlor. It was as though a jolt of that new electricity had been sent throughout the house. Tea had to be brewed, small cakes and crust-trimmed tiny sandwiches arranged on silver platters, carried into the parlor, served, and replenished. God help the manservant or maid who spilled a drop or allowed a crumb to slide onto a guest’s clothing; Mrs. Barstow would have words to say about anything so untoward. The staff would be far too busy attending to Mrs. MacKenzie’s callers to notice any unusual movement upstairs.

  * * *

  As soon as she closed the attic door behind her, Prudence realized that one visit might not be enough. The vast attic stretched across the entire width of the house and for half its length, a cavernous storage area dimly lit by small dormer windows, peopled by ghostly sheet-draped mounds of furniture of all shapes and sizes, trunks piled one atop the other, and heaven only knew what else. Closer to the door were the larger and more recently discarded items, many of them unprotected by the ubiquitous white sheets, including the rolltop desk on which Colleen had placed the letter cases.

  Where to start? And what was she looking for? She could have thrown up her hands and shrieked or stamped a foot in frustration, but she dared not make an unnecessary sound. Think. She had to think logically. Had to organize this search as though it were germane to a case, as though she were building an evidentiary structure to be laid before a jury. Let’s hide something, Prudence, her father’s voice whispered. Close your eyes and count to ten. Then see if you can find it. How many times had they played the game together, the Judge delighting in trying to baffle her? She’d eventually gotten very good at reading his mind. She forced her breathing to slow down, forced her eyes to stop darting from side to side and into the far distance, counted very slowly to ten, clenched and unclenched her fingers.

  Except for the rolltop desk, whatever was closest to the door had probably been ordered put there by Victoria and no doubt been thoroughly examined before being carried into the oblivion of the attic. Just like the letter cases that had told her nothing. Therefore, the logical place to start was as deep into the space as she could penetrate.

  Someone had been charged with seeing that dirt and dust did not accumulate up here, that spiders were not allowed to spin their webs, that mice would be trapped before they could multiply and forage under the sheets. A narrow passage led the length of the attic, just wide enough for one person to pass along, but nothing caught at her skirts or crunched underfoot as Prudence made her way toward the farthest dormer window.

  Care had been taken to arrange methodically what were objects that had been important to someone; these were not the hoarded and broken bits that filled most attics, items a family should have consigned to the rubbish bin but somehow never did. This attic was meant to be visited, meant to be someone’s treasure trove. Yet Prudence realized with a start that even as a lively, curious child, she had never set foot in this part of the house. Strange. So strange. Had there been orders to keep her out? Or had she simply never explored this far up? Privacy was a virtue inculcated into her for as long as she could remember. The servants’ quarters were private to them and strictly off-limits to an inquisitive little girl. Was that the answer? Had she never climbed the last set of stairs because good manners forbade it? Could it be that simple?

  She ran her hand over what she thought must be a narrow armoire. The sheet draping it slid to the floor. Rosewood, beautiful, gleaming rosewood inlaid with rare woods of every imaginable color, decorated with swirled flower petals made of mother–of-pearl. A lady’s armoire of many small drawers, it stood chin high, as perfectly preserved and fragrant as the day it was made. Instinctively, before she opened a single drawer, she knew it had belonged to her mother, knew that the Judge had placed it here because he could not bear to look upon it every day for all of the long years he had been without her. Prudence had never seen anything as beautifully delicate, as perfectly conceived for a lady’s treasures, as this slender rosewood armoire.

  Which drawer to open first? Would it be empty? Would all of them be as empty as a daughter’s life without her mother? I have to know. I have to know. She thought she had forgotten her mother’s perfume, but the fragrance that poured from the open drawer was as comforting and as familiar as if she had smelled it only yesterday. Jasmine and sandalwood, the faintest hint of lilac and perhaps a very old heirloom rose.

  When her hand closed around a packet of letters tied with a satin hair ribbon, Prudence knew she had found the first of many missing pieces of herself.

  CHAPTER 11

  Time was running out. It would soon be too late in the afternoon for calls to be paid. When the last visitor left, quiet would descend on the house. Someone, perhaps Victoria herself, would come to Prudence’s bedroom to inquire after her headache, ask if she felt well enough to dress for dinner. She had barely another hour, no more.

  As Prudence opened the attic door, she heard the murmur of ladies’ voices in the entrance hall, Jackson answering a question, the sound of the front door opening, then closing again. She knew the butler would remain in the hallway until he was certain no one else would be leaving immediately. She didn’t dare a chance encounter. She eased the attic door closed, stood with her back leaning against its solid wood, willed herself not to panic. Five more minutes and she should be able to get safely down to the second floor.

  The rolltop desk was within arm’s reach, and as she laid a hand on its scarred surface, she suddenly remembered creeping over her father’s feet in and out of the magical cave where he pretended not to see her. She couldn’t have been more than three or four years old the first time she’d discovered the wonders of that desk, especially the banks of tiny drawers hidden behind the rolltop. Try though she might, she couldn’t remember where the desk had sat, whether it had been in an office somewhere or downstairs in this very house.

  She remembered seeing men carry in massive pieces of dark, highly polished furniture, easing them carefully through the front door, being cautioned by Cameron to mind they not scratch anything. So it must have been here. It seemed to her that those same men hauled other, smaller pieces of furniture up the staircase, probably all the way to the attic. The rolltop desk had been replaced by something much finer, much grander, much more suited to the dignity of a judge. Had she heard someone make that remark? He’s a judge now, isn’t he?

  The desk did have a slightly battered look to it, as if a young lawyer had dropped hot cigar ashes here and there, worried the nib of his pen until it dripped ink, absentmindedly scratched the letters that pro
claimed his profession with the same sharp penknife he’d used to open his mail. Prudence gave a short, quick tug; the rolltop disappeared without a sound, scrolled into its hiding place. There had to be at least a dozen small drawers, probably as many letter slots, taller vertical slots for documents, even a pipe rack that she remembered her father allowing her to fill with the thin Cuban cigars he liked to smoke. One by one she opened the drawers. All empty. Not even the smallest bit of paper in any of the cubbyholes or the faintest trace of tobacco where the cigars had once stood. Nothing. An emptiness that spoke of finality. She closed the rolltop. Turned to leave.

  And then recalled what had so delighted her child’s imagination, the secret her father had shared with her and no one else. Our secret, he had whispered, forefinger stretched across his lips. Cross your heart and hope to die. It hadn’t seemed a prediction in those days, just a string of words you chanted whenever you made a promise, a hasty sign sketched on your chest. Dropping to her knees, Prudence inched her way under the desk, feeling with her fingers for the outline of the hidden drawer. She had put the cracked ball from her set of jacks into that drawer one day. Had she left it there? She couldn’t remember the last time she played here or even how old she had been. Everything changed when her mother got sick. Mama went to heaven. Died of consumption. Coughed until her lungs bled, burned with afternoon fevers that radiated heat and turned cool cloths warm within minutes. Some doctors believed it ran in families.

  Nothing. Her hand, her fingers found nothing that felt like the thin edge of a wooden ruler. Only a few inches long, with a round depression at one end. You pushed against that shallow concavity and the drawer popped open. Or did it slide? She’d been too delighted every time it opened to notice. Don’t give up, never give up, her father had urged. A child’s fingers were so much smaller than an adult’s, the nails shorter. She tapped very lightly, barely touching the wooden surface with her fingertips, as if her woman’s hand had shrunk to the size of a girl’s. As if a cat’s paw were softly patting the delicate skin of her cheek to wake her up. Eyes closed, fingertips grown exquisitely sensitive, she tapped and patted again and again.

  And almost missed it. Almost missed the tiny ridge that then abruptly seemed familiar.

  Seconds later the drawer slid open, raining down a shower of old dust. She felt inside for the cracked ball and felt something else. Her forefinger traced the outline of a leather-bound notebook scarcely larger than her outstretched hand, wedged so tightly in that small space that at first she couldn’t get her fingers far enough around it to pull it out. She took one of the ebony combs from her upswept hair, slid the teeth beneath the small book, lifted, and pried until she felt it move. She couldn’t see what she was doing, could only judge success by what her fingers told her. The leather cover had adhered to the drawer in which it had lain for who knew how long, but as she continued to work the comb along its length, she could feel it loosening, could finally hear the sucking sound of leather coming loose from wood. Moments later she was on her feet again, the secret drawer closed, the leather notebook shoved down into the stack of letters. The only pocket in the skirt she wore today wasn’t large enough to hold it. She patted her hair into place, slid the ebony comb back where it belonged, and tried to look as though her head ached.

  She had one more place to search.

  * * *

  “I do hope dear Prudence doesn’t go into a decline. Her mother was never strong, you know, and she’s very much like Sarah.” Annabelle North sipped her tea, though she preferred a light China blend to whatever it was Victoria’s cook had brewed. India, probably. “Sarah and I were great friends, and of course Brantly and Prudence have known one another since they were children, although he is four years older than she.”

  For any other woman in society, that would have been declaration enough of a mother’s intentions, but Annabelle wasn’t sure Victoria was quite like the other women of her acquaintance. Nothing she could put her finger on, just a vague sense that the Judge’s widow was not entirely at her ease. Which she should have been, especially here in her own home.

  Annabelle had been raised in society, had debuted in society, married, and lived her entire life in society. Knowing what to do and what to say no longer required any thought at all. One simply was. And that was the crux of what was bothering her. Victoria MacKenzie wasn’t. The only thing Annabelle could think of was that Prudence’s stepmother must have a past. Which seemed utterly absurd. The Judge would never have married a woman about whom the slightest whiff of scandal could be detected. It was really very troubling, this slight uneasiness. She resolutely put it aside. Brantly was her youngest child and would require a mother’s extra attention to get him suitably married. The sooner the better. He had developed some habits that were better not to think about.

  “It’s very kind of you to inquire about her, Mrs. North.”

  “Dr. Worthington is seeing to her, I presume.”

  “He has said that we have only to send for him, no matter the hour.” Victoria heard the lovely bongs of the longcase clock in the entrance hall. Another fifteen or twenty minutes and Annabelle North would have to leave. A call could last no more than half an hour at the absolute most. Only very close friends or family members were permitted to stay longer.

  “Don’t be tempted to skimp on the laudanum, Mrs. MacKenzie. Young girls are all at sixes and sevens even without the double tragedy that Prudence has had to bear.”

  “She’s very brave.”

  “Of course she is. She’s her father’s daughter. And I’m sure you set her a good example, bearing your own grief as well as you do. We older women have a duty to teach the next generation. Thank you, I believe I will take a bit more tea. It’s quite delicious. You must tell me the name of the blend.”

  Victoria was sorely tempted to pour the newly refreshed pot of extremely hot tea into Annabelle North’s ample lap and watch her scramble frantically to try to save the mauve silk dress that would certainly be ruined no matter what she did. Twenty more minutes at the outside. She could put up with anything for twenty minutes.

  * * *

  The Judge’s suite of rooms on the second floor looked out over Fifth Avenue. Bedroom, dressing room, private bath, smoking parlor that he had also used as a small study, each connecting one with the other, but with only two doors that gave onto the hallway. A door into the bedroom, another into the dressing room, the latter used almost exclusively by his valet. Adjoining the Judge’s bedroom was first wife Sarah’s bedroom, her sitting room, dressing room, and private bath facing the gardens. The entire U-shaped north wing of the second floor had been theirs alone. No one except the maid who cleaned the rooms and the housekeeper who unlocked the doors for her went there anymore. It was as though death had never left.

  The doorknob to the Judge’s bedchamber turned easily in Prudence’s hand. Silently. Curtains and drapes covered every window from ceiling to floor, shutting out light, sound, and fresh air. The room smelled of nothing in particular, but of everything that had happened within its walls. An acrid miasma of uncorked medicine bottles, the smell of flesh that had begun to rot too soon, of teeth that no longer chewed food, of breath grown fetid somewhere deep in the lungs. Urine, feces, blood. Faint traces, but enough to call up vivid pictures of the Judge’s last few weeks. Prudence had sat by his bed all day and half the night, leaving it only when she collapsed from exhaustion and had to be helped to her room. By Victoria. By Donald. Undressed and tucked into bed by Colleen, who then sat to keep watch over her as she had watched over the Judge.

  The bed was stripped of its sheets after the body had been placed into its mahogany coffin. Then remade, the dark gray satin coverlet drawn up over the pillows, smoothed free of wrinkles, tugged down tightly at the corners. As if a dying man had never struggled under its weight, never grown thin and weak and pallid in the cold, dark weeks between the beginning and the end of December. The book he had been reading when he could still read lay on a bedside table, fringed boo
kmark imprisoned on the last page he had been able to absorb. Empty water pitcher and glass, a pair of reading glasses he was usually too vain to wear, a candle in case he woke in the night and didn’t want to fiddle with the oil lamp.

  So sterile now, where once there had been a forest of brown bottles vying for every inch of available space, sticky spoons cradled in stained glasses until a maid took them away. Prudence could just make out shapes in the dim light. She pulled back one set of drapes the width of her hand, enough to see, not enough to be seen from the street. She was thinking of every possibility now, as alert and cautious as a fox on the hunt.

  I have to be able to come back. I need more time. She went from her father’s bedroom into his dressing room, where armoires lined two walls and a narrow bed allowed his valet to nap while waiting for the Judge to come home from a late-night engagement. Or keep vigil when he fell ill. The drawers were still full of his neatly folded clothing, his suits and shirts hung perfectly pressed from padded hangers, his judicial robes occupying a special place of their own. Shoes polished and fitted with shoe trees to hold their shape. Gold cuff links, diamond tie tacks and clasps, the ring marking him as a Harvard man, his thick gold wedding band. He had been buried without the rings he wore every day, as if someone decided they were worth too much to hide in the dirt. And Prudence had never noticed, never really looked at the empty hands tucked along the length of his body.

  The smoking room smelled of his cigars. The desk at which he wrote private letters and sipped brandy when he couldn’t sleep looked newly polished, the books kept there because they were his favorites piled more neatly than any dedicated reader could manage. His shaving cup and razor strop, hairbrush and comb, toothbrush and powder remained in the bathroom as though waiting for him to return at any minute and pick them up. The bathtub sparkled, towels hung ruler straight, the dressing gown on the back of the door seemed to hold the shape of his body.