What the Dead Leave Behind

by Rosemary Simpson

  “If it had been left to her, I’d have been out on the street with one suitcase and an old umbrella in my hand. But the Judge wouldn’t stand for that. He couldn’t refuse her, though I’ll never understand why, but he did what he could to soften the blow. He knew I’d lived my life for him and for Miss Sarah and Miss Prudence, and he calculated that what I’d given away he’d give back to me. This house and the chance to start a new life, an independent life. Josiah, bless his heart, he was the one who brought me out here, who found the house and knew it was going to be put up for sale. Someone had died, and the heirs didn’t want it. Mr. Conkling made the offer and negotiated the contract, and all I had to do was drive across the bridge and step through my very own front door. That was a little more than two years ago now. I miss not seeing Miss Prudence every day, but I’m truly happy with my family of gentlefolk.”

  Geoffrey turned to Ian Cameron. “Your name doesn’t appear in the Judge’s will, Mr. Cameron.”

  “The Judge didn’t intend for me to have to fight over what he wanted to give me, and I know for a fact he didn’t trust the former Miss Morley. So we rode down to Mr. Conkling’s office one day and he signed over some stock to me. Josiah had all of the paperwork ready and he was one of the witnesses. The Judge made a deposit at the First National Bank of New York in my name; he said the worst thing an investor could do was have to sell his stock because he needed walking around money. So he took good care of me, too, Mr. Hunter. And I don’t think she knows about it to this day.”

  “The Judge kept secrets from Mrs. MacKenzie? If I understand correctly, that’s what both of you are telling me.”

  “Not only did he keep secrets from her, Mr. Hunter, he hardly talked to her at all. He’d keep a conversation going at the dinner table, and he knew all the right things to say whenever anyone else was around or they went out socially for an evening. But he’d close his mouth tighter than a fist when it was just the two of them.”

  “How do you know that, Mr. Cameron?”

  “What I said about when it was just the two of them? You know people never see their servants, Mr. Hunter, and a good butler learns early on to make himself unnoticeable. Many a time I’d come into the parlor to bring a nightcap or see to the fire or inquire if there were any special orders for that night or the next morning. And there they’d be, the two of them alone, not speaking, him reading his newspaper, she staring into space or reading one of those trashy novels she was always buying. If Mr. Morley was there, he and his sister might be talking or playing cards, but the Judge was as silent as a stone statue. He wasn’t rude, and I never heard an argument; he just disengaged himself from her as though she’d turned invisible.”

  “Her rooms were at the opposite end of the second-floor hallway from his.” As far as Kathleen Dailey was concerned, a couple’s sleeping arrangements either supported a happy marriage or sounded its death knell. “Miss Sarah’s rooms stayed untouched, not a thing moved or packed away since she died. There’s a connecting door between her bedroom and the Judge’s, but there was never a key in the lock. Never.” She wiped a tear from her eye with a fine lawn handkerchief. “He put the second one as far away from him as he could, and when the brother moved in, he had to go up to the third floor where the guest rooms are.”

  “When was that? When did Donald Morley become a member of the household?”

  “Right after they married. They didn’t go on a honeymoon trip, then or later, and it seems to me that Mr. Morley was up there on the third floor almost from the beginning.”

  “What about Miss Prudence?”

  “She has her own rooms on the second floor, but they’re on the front side of the house, facing Fifth Avenue. Even when she was a little girl she loved to curl up on the cushions of her window seat and watch the people and the carriages going by. The second Mrs. MacKenzie has bigger rooms, but they face the gardens and the stable out back.”

  “The Judge paid the bills when she redecorated, but I can’t recall a single time when he asked to see what she’d done. I’d dress him sometimes in the evening, when his valet had a day off or was under the weather. She never came into his dressing room and he never went to hers. Unnatural, if you ask me. Miss Sarah liked to pick out his cuff links, and sometimes she’d drink a glass of champagne and chatter on about where they were going while I brushed him down. They were always finding excuses to be in one another’s company.”

  “I’ve kept this close to hand for nearly four years now,” Kathleen Dailey said, taking a calling card out of her pocket. “I couldn’t ask the Judge about it, and then when he retired me, I thought about showing it to Josiah or Mr. Conkling, but that didn’t seem right either. I told myself, Kathleen, I said, you’ll know when the time is ripe and you’ll recognize who’s meant to find out what it means. That’s what I’ve told myself every single day since I found this lying underneath the Judge’s desk in his study. I could have put it with his papers, or maybe in the drawer where he kept the cards people left when they came calling, but I didn’t. I knew it didn’t belong there, and I knew it was too important to take a chance on never seeing it again.” She handed the card to Geoffrey as ceremoniously as if it were the sacred Host on a gold paten.

  It was one of the Judge’s own cards, his name and title engraved in Gothic script on an expensive card stock that only the wealthy could afford. Nothing else. Geoffrey turned it over and saw one word. McGlory. Written in that thick black ink that could only have flowed from the nib of the Judge’s favorite pen. Thomas MacKenzie’s handwriting was as distinctive as everything else about him. McGlory. A fine spray of minuscule black ink spots rayed out from the name. He’d borne down heavily as he wrote, either in anger or determination, enough to splay open the delicate nib. McGlory.

  “You don’t have to be Irish to know that name, Mr. Hunter. McGlory’s Armory Hall on Hester Street. The Irish gangs used to hang out there; now every pimp, pickpocket, and murdering thug in the city calls it home. I’ve nephews who know no better and couldn’t be bothered to do an honest day’s work. All you need is money in your pocket; McGlory will sell you anything from rotgut whiskey to women. Whenever some newspaper reporter decides to write an article on the depravity of New York City, you can be sure he’ll devote at least half the story to Billy McGlory.”

  “Why would the Judge have written Billy McGlory’s name on the back of his visiting card?”

  “I’ve my suspicions, but no, I won’t tell you what they are. You need to come to them on your own.”

  “Mr. Cameron?”

  “Don’t go to McGlory’s alone, Mr. Hunter. That’s the best advice I can give.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Don’t go to McGlory’s alone.

  Geoffrey Hunter knew of only one person in New York City who didn’t fear the notorious saloonkeeper, one individual out of its million and a half inhabitants who could call on McGlory day or night and be made welcome. No questions asked. There’d been a time a few years back when the names Billy McGlory and Ned Hayes had been linked together in every newspaper you picked up. Not the best publicity for a New York City police detective. Hayes had been allowed to resign without any charges brought against him after the McGlory debacle, but he was ruined nonetheless.

  Geoffrey hadn’t seen Ned Hayes in over a year, but he had no trouble finding him. Josiah confirmed that the former policeman hadn’t moved from the Lower Manhattan brownstone where he had lived alone since the end of the war.

  “Ned’s mother didn’t come back after the surrender; I don’t know that she’s even still alive. Other than her relatives, he doesn’t have any family. Once he was forced out of the police department, he cut off all contact with everybody he’d worked with. Except you. Tyrus is still with him, of course.”

  Geoffrey didn’t ask how Josiah gathered the information he carried around at his fingertips. Conkling’s secretary was a force unto himself, with contacts reaching out through all levels of New York social life and across all geographical boundaries.
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  “He’s not doing well, Mr. Hunter. I hear he’s taking opium by needle now. Which means he doesn’t have much time left. What he did for McGlory is what’s making it possible for him to get what he needs, a clean product that won’t poison him outright until the day or night he decides to take too much. I’ll miss him. He’s a fine man. What happened to him shouldn’t happen to a dog.”

  “We had drinks together in the Fifth Avenue Hotel bar. At least a year ago. Maybe a few months more than a year. He didn’t look bad that day. Drank champagne instead of whiskey, which for Ned is like drinking nothing at all. He wanted to talk about the South.”

  “He loves it and he hates it. I’m not telling tales out of school. I heard him say so many a time.”

  “He thought because of my background I’d understand how you could be so divided about your birthplace, about the society in which you should have been proud to grow up. Lord help us, he sounded that day like he’d never left South Carolina. More than one head turned when they heard the accent. The war’s been over for more than twenty years, but people haven’t forgotten. It’ll take at least another generation for that to happen.”

  “North Carolina, Mr. Hunter?”

  “You can hear it?”

  “Just once in a while. Like now. Mr. Hayes will be glad to see you, grateful for the chance to help out, but I thought you should be warned. He might not look like you expect him to, as you remember him.”

  “I appreciate the warning, Josiah.” Hunter changed the subject. “You were worried about Mr. Conkling the last time I was here. I hope he’s doing better.”

  “He’s made up his mind. He won’t listen to me. He’s in court every day, all day long, at Delmonico’s every night. Won’t even discuss seeing a doctor about the pain I know he’s trying to rub out of his head. It’s like he’s rushing toward something, but I don’t know what it is.” Josiah’s eyes were bright with the unshed tears he didn’t try to conceal from Geoffrey. “He’s added a codicil to his will. That’s all I can say. I can’t tell you what it is.”

  * * *

  “You’re the last person I expected to see, and the only one I’d put up with. Welcome, Geoff, welcome.” Ned Hayes was formally and immaculately dressed, fawn trousers creased, white shirt starched, velvet burgundy smoking jacket the perfect foil for his blond good looks. The pale silvery gold curls showed no trace of gray, he was clean-shaven and only slightly flushed, but the once-muscular body had grown far too slender. The pinpoint pupils of his blue eyes told his friend everything he needed to know.

  “I’m here to get your help, Ned.”

  “You have it.”

  “Don’t you want to know why? Or what I’m asking?”

  “It won’t make any difference. You know that.” Hayes poured Kentucky bourbon for both of them, adding an infinitesimal splash of water. “Best whiskey there is.”

  The room in which Hayes and Hunter sat was exactly as Ned’s mother had decorated it before the war began, precisely as she had left it when she took her sixteen-year-old son south in 1862. His father had not changed it, nor had the son. Twenty-six years later, Elizabeth Lee Hayes would have recognized every chair, every bibelot, every antimacassar, even the weave of the Aubusson carpet. Furnishings that were faded and a bit shabby, but still showing the quality she had prized. No dust anywhere, just the wear of empty years passing.

  Anything new would be as jarring in this parlor as Ned himself, his clothes too fresh, too fashionable, his meticulous grooming sharp against the washed-out background in which he sat. He’d been a misfit in the Confederate Army, an oddity in the New York City Police Department, an outcast from the joys of ordinary, everyday life. Ned Hayes had never fit in anywhere, not from the moment of his birth. Was it any wonder he was hastening his death, albeit quietly, without fuss, simply doping himself gradually into oblivion?

  “What can you tell me about Billy McGlory, Ned? That I haven’t read in one of the newspapers.” The bourbon was good.

  “He fancies himself a dandy. Medium height, very slender, always wears a diamond stickpin and gold cuff links. Tall silk hat. Carries a cane that I know for a fact is a weapon, and sports a mustache he keeps waxed and trimmed so there’s never a hair out of place. Almost certainly a murderer, in the sense of personally dispatching whoever got in his way before he could afford to hire goons to do it for him. Born and grew up in Five Points. Ran with the Irish gangs in his younger days. Richer than any legitimate tavern owner could ever be. When I saved his life, he decided he was beholden to me. We get along quite well. I like his style and his audacity and he likes the fact that I never tell him anything but the truth. Why do you ask?”

  “I have a case.”

  “Are you with the Pinkertons again?”

  “No. I have no quarrel with Robert and William, and they offered to rehire me after Allan died, but working for somebody else doesn’t sit well with me anymore. When you work for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, you are a Pinkerton. There’s no other way to describe what’s expected of you.”

  “You seemed to thrive on it once.”

  “I was younger. I needed to learn.”

  “So you served an apprenticeship under the great Allan Pinkerton.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “And now you have your own agency?”

  “Yes, and no. Do you remember Charlie Linwood?”

  “I read about what happened to him in the Herald. Hard to believe.” Ned sipped at his bourbon, put the glass down with the precision of a man who knows he needs to take extra care with his movements. “Very hard to believe.”

  “You wouldn’t think so if you’d been out in that blizzard yourself.”

  “You were telling me about the agency you may or may not have.”

  “Charlie was bound and determined to make an honest, hardworking Yankee out of me.”

  “Waste of time.”

  “Be that as it may. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after I left the Pinkertons, after that quarrel Allan never forgave. I took a suite at the Fifth Avenue Hotel and settled in to being a gentleman of leisure.”

  “And you were bored before a week was out.”

  “You know me too well, Ned.”

  “We’re cut from the same bolt of cloth.”

  “The only time I really came alive was when Charles threw me a case. They were always what he referred to as extremely delicate. Which invariably meant that a wealthy gentleman had been doing things it were better he not do or a lady’s spotless reputation was about to be revealed for the stained garment it was.”

  “No murders? It takes a murder to season a good detective.”

  “There were murders.” Hunter took a small leather notebook from his jacket pocket, uncapped a gold-cased pen, and scribbled a name. He handed the paper to Hayes, then sat back in his chair to await the reaction.

  “This was your doing?”

  “I’m sworn not to speak about it. Ever. But yes, whatever little justice resulted from his not going to trial was mine to claim.”

  “I’m impressed, Geoff. I think even old Allan would approve of the way that was handled.”

  “As I said, I have a case and I need your help.” He handed the visiting card to Ned, who nodded his head at the two names on it. Thomas Pickering MacKenzie embossed in Gothic script on one side, the single slash of McGlory in black ink on the other. “You’re not surprised?”

  “To find a well-known judge and one of New York City’s most notorious criminals paired together? No, I’m not surprised. Billy McGlory has more public officials on his payroll than even he can count. He’s been left alone so far, but his luck won’t hold forever. There’s a tidal wave of reform gathering strength, and when it rolls over places like McGlory’s Armory Hall, it will wash them away in a howling hurricane of righteousness. Temporarily. McGlory and others like him will have to disappear for a while, until the ministers wear themselves out. Two, maybe three or four more years. That’s all he’s got until
it breaks. He’s never been a stupid man. He’s making his preparations; he knows what’s coming is inevitable.”

  “Can you get me to him?”

  “Why?”

  “I have to ask him a question.”

  “It would be safer if you’d let me ask it for you.”

  “I need to see the expression on his face when he answers.”

  “If he answers.”

  “I have a gut feeling about this, Ned. He’ll answer. He won’t be able not to. Why would the Judge write McGlory’s name on his visiting card? That’s what I have to find out.”

  “You’re sure it’s his handwriting?”

  “Everything else may be murky and hidden, but his handwriting and the ink he always used are distinctive. The woman who found the card and gave it to me wouldn’t make a mistake about that. There’s also a daughter. She confirmed it.”

  “I think you’ve arrived at the heart of the matter, Geoffrey. Cherchez la femme.”

  “I don’t have to look for her. She’s my client.”

  “All the better.”

  “Charlie Linwood was her fiancé. The judge whose card you’re holding was her father.”

  “Was her father?”

  “His heart gave out right after Christmas.”

  “I don’t think I was reading the newspapers around that time. I must have missed the obituary.”

  “The daughter’s name is Prudence. In the space of a few months she lost both father and fiancé. She’s a very wealthy young woman. Except that her father placed everything into a trust that’s administered by a stepmother.”

  “This is sounding more and more like an evil stepmother fairy tale.”

  “Victoria MacKenzie is barely ten years older than Prudence. She was the Judge’s second wife.”

  “How long did this second marriage last?” Ned Hayes reached for his glass, one finger sliding around the rim of the heavy crystal tumbler before he drew back his hand, the bourbon left untasted.

  “Two years.”