What the Dead Leave Behind

by Rosemary Simpson

  “What is it, Colleen?” Hunter drew the maid back from the door he’d been about to open, seated her at the table where he had been drinking his morning coffee when she arrived. Tears stood in her bright blue eyes; she bit at her lip to keep them from falling.

  “Miss Prudence made me swear not to tell you.”

  “Then I think you’d better. If it’s that important, I won’t be able to help unless I know what the problem is. Don’t you agree?”

  Colleen nodded, miserably aware that Miss Prudence was going to be furious.

  “All right, then. Start at the beginning.” He took a clean white handkerchief from his jacket pocket and handed it to Prudence’s servant.

  “Miss Prudence had a terrible headache when she woke up on Saturday morning.”

  “Is she all right now?”

  “Yes, sir. But Miss Prudence hasn’t had headaches since she stopped dosing herself with laudanum. That’s why I thought of the gas. It’s always leaking down in the tenements, you see. Babies and old people die of it all the time. They sleep more than them what goes out to work and they don’t know what’s happening to them. The ones who don’t die are damaged in the head; they’re never the same again.”

  “Take your time, Colleen. Tell me exactly what happened. Don’t leave anything out.” Hunter reached for his half-filled coffee cup, then changed his mind. He was likely to crush the china into shards if Colleen confirmed what he now suspected.

  “When I brought Miss Prudence’s tray up to her on Saturday morning, the room was cold. She’d opened the window during the night, she said, because she woke up and there was a funny smell, as if the gas were still on. She got up and checked it, but the knob was as closed as could be. I felt it myself, right away, but it wasn’t loose, and the lamps were all as tight as a drum. German Clara had cleaned everything the day before. She’s the upstairs maid, sir. We call her German Clara because her English isn’t very good.”

  “So you and Miss Prudence checked the gaslights on the wall and the lamps, too.”

  “Yes, sir. She got out of bed and stood right next to me while I fiddled with the knobs.”

  “Had she turned the gaslights on the night before?”

  “Only one, sir, and just for a few minutes. She likes the lamplight better.”

  “How many wall fixtures are in that room?”

  “Two, sir. One just inside the door, the other on the wall opposite.”

  “And which one had she turned on?”

  “The one by the door just as you come into the room. She turned it off as soon as she lit a lamp.”

  “Did you smell gas, Colleen?”

  “I’m not sure, sir. With the window open it was hard to tell. So when German Clara came upstairs to make the bed, I made her show me how she’d cleaned the gaslights. There was nothing wrong with them, sir, nothing I could find, anyway. I told her to leave Miss Prudence’s window open to air out the room, and she did. Every time I got the chance that morning, I stuck my head in the door.”

  “Did you tell Miss Prudence what you suspected, that there’d been a gas leak?”

  “I did, sir. She didn’t say a word, just put her hand over her mouth, like this.” Colleen mimicked the gesture. “She was thinking, sir, I could tell by the look on her face. That’s when we checked the gaslight she’d turned on. I swear to you, sir, I couldn’t feel anything loose or not catching.”

  “Tell me what happened next.”

  “Mrs. MacKenzie and Mr. Morley went out for a drive after luncheon. Miss Prudence said she was tired and would lie down for a nap. So I went up to check on her as soon as I could. She was standing on her dressing table chair, using her metal nail file on one of the gaslights. She had the strangest look on her face. She reminded me of the Judge when he’d had a bad day in court. We all knew to stay out of his way.”

  “Did she explain what she was doing?”

  “I asked her, sir, didn’t I?”

  “And what did she say?”

  “‘Be careful, Colleen. Someone’s watching.’ She wouldn’t say much else, except that I wasn’t to tell anyone about the gas, but I knew right away someone needed to know. She thinks she’s fixed whatever was done to that gaslight, but it wasn’t just the one; she had both fixtures opened up and she’d been at the valves with her nail file, so it couldn’t have been an accident if both valves stuck. What if that’s not the end of it? What if someone is trying to harm her, Mr. Hunter? What if he tries again?”

  “Are you sure German Clara didn’t unseat the valves when she was cleaning?”

  “Miss Prudence sent me downstairs to fetch Clara. She knew what she was being suspected of because I’d already made her show me how she cleaned the gaslights. She was scared to death, Mr. Hunter. I’d swear on my granny’s grave she didn’t tamper with those valves, not even accidentally. Miss Prudence gave her a quarter and told her not to say anything to anyone.”

  “What about the next day?”

  “I don’t think Miss Prudence slept a wink Saturday. From what I could see when I went to help her dress on Sunday morning, she’d been awake all night. With the gaslights on and the window cracked. Sitting there waiting to open it wider as soon as she smelled something. There’s a bad presence in that house, sir. I was thinking about it on my way here. I don’t know who or what it is causing the trouble, but I know it’s there.”

  “Do you have the sight?”

  “My granny did. She could look in a person’s face and name the day of his death.”

  “That’s a terrible gift.”

  “I don’t have it, Mr. Hunter. All I can tell you is that someone tampered with the gaslights in Miss Prudence’s room, and it wasn’t German Clara.”

  “I want you to tell Miss Prudence I pried the gas story out of you despite yourself, and that she’s to be very careful. Make sure she understands that I’m certain there will be another attempt.”

  “Do you really think someone is trying to harm her?”

  “Yes, Colleen, I do. And it’s up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen. I think she’s safe from the gas. Whoever tampered with the valves has to believe his plan didn’t work. He won’t try the same thing twice. It will be something different next time, and it won’t be right away. He’ll want to lull Miss Prudence into feeling she’s safe before he strikes again.”

  “How long, Mr. Hunter?”

  “I don’t know, Colleen. I haven’t the sight either.” He stood in the doorway to his suite watching her until she reached the stairwell, then with a final reassuring nod, stepped inside.

  Colleen hid the envelope in the pocket of her black skirt, took the stairs down to the lobby quickly but carefully. Her leather boots could slip on wet marble. She didn’t know when the staff mopped these spotless floors, but she didn’t dare risk a fall. No one seemed to notice her as she wove her way through the sitting areas of the lobby, half-hidden behind towering potted plants and high-backed leather chairs designed as much for privacy as comfort. The doorman spared her a quick, dismissive glance, then turned his attention back to the hotel’s paying guests.

  Even at this early morning hour, Fifth Avenue was a busy thoroughfare, horse-drawn vehicles of all kinds in the roadway, newsboys and crossing sweepers darting from one side of the street to the other through piles of fly-ridden dung and puddles of reeking urine. There were few girls or women on the sidewalks, no ladies at all. Colleen felt eyes on her back as she scurried along, staying as close to shop fronts as she dared. Just a few more blocks to go.

  This area of New York City was relatively safe, though no street was entirely free of pickpockets and casual whores. Hotels and businesses hired private security firms to ensure that their customers and clients would be free from harassment both inside and outside their premises, but the most wily of the city’s petty criminals were expert at evading notice. At least the physical assaults that were common on the Lower East Side seldom happened in the more rarified atmosphere of Fifth Avenue.

  By the time
she could see the ivy-covered walls of the MacKenzie mansion, Colleen had nearly conquered her fears. No one had accosted her, she hadn’t been greeted by anyone who knew her by sight, and now she doubted that her absence had even been noticed. All she had to do was slip back into the house through the basement entrance, hang her shawl in the servants’ coatroom, and take the letter up to Miss Prudence. The quarter Mr. Hunter had given her would go into the box where she saved her wages. It wasn’t much, but she never tired of counting the coins. They represented a future that was bound to be better than the past.

  * * *

  Keys were what Prudence needed, and keys were what she had asked Colleen to find for her. Now a dozen keys of all sizes lay on top of her dressing table, most of them retrieved from drawers in the servants’ hall where odds and ends were tossed until someone in authority decided what to do with them. None of them was tagged, and she suspected they had been presumed lost at some point, perhaps replaced before they turned up under a carpet or behind a piece of furniture. Servants found with keys in their possession were often accused of contemplating theft and unceremoniously turned out without a reference. The safest thing to do was let a key lie and risk being scolded for carelessness or toss the dangerous object in among others just like it. What she had to do now was fit these keys to the locks she wanted to open and hope that some of them would be a match.

  She sorted them into three piles. The larger, heavier keys were clearly to doors leading to the outside, to the cellars or the attic. Slightly smaller keys with decorated bows or shanks she thought must be to parlors and bedrooms. The three smallest keys would fit desk drawers or jewelry cases; they were thin and half the length of a finger. She wrapped several keys of the same type into a handkerchief, folding carefully so they wouldn’t make a metallic sound against each other. She hated the idea of sneaking around her own home trying keys in doors that should have been open to her without question. She tore pieces of paper from her journal, one for each key she hoped to identify, and added a pencil nub to the pile.

  Before she left her room, Prudence checked once more the corner of the wardrobe where she’d hidden the letters found in her mother’s rosewood chest of drawers. She had scattered them among birthday or holiday cards and letters received over the years from her father and from friends. Her hope was that anyone rifling through her old writing case would be looking for a packet set apart from the rest, would only glance casually at what seemed carelessly tossed together. She had taken the leather cover off the journal wedged in the hidden drawer of the rolltop desk and painstakingly separated its pages, inserting them into a battered copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Slipped the novel into a small bookcase amongst old schoolbooks and other volumes the Judge had given her over the years. As soon as Geoffrey Hunter sent word of where and how they could meet, she would smuggle both letters and journal pages out of the house.

  The strands of hair she had affixed to the gaslights with her saliva were still in place, invisible unless you knew to look for them. She might not be able to stop anyone from tampering with the gas, but at least she would know when it happened. Despite having extracted a promise of silence from Colleen, Prudence fully expected her maid to say something to Geoffrey Hunter. In fact, she was counting on it.

  Now for the keys.

  * * *

  “Something’s wrong upstairs, apart from the usual,” Cook said, rubbing mutton fat into her sore, reddened knuckles. She lowered her voice and leaned closer to Colleen. “Mr. Jackson has had a scowl on his face all day long. German Clara is on her way out, mark my words. Mrs. Barstow says she’s tired of yelling at her all the time. Doesn’t do much good to yell if the poor girl doesn’t understand much English in the first place, I say.”

  “She’s cried every night since she got here. Her room is next to mine. I can hear her through the walls.”

  “Best to let her go then. Maybe she can find something with her own kind.”

  “She’s a hard worker, I’ll say that for her. Once Clara understands what you want her to do, she goes right at it. Will they hire someone else in her place, do you think? I can’t do all the maiding by myself, not and see to Miss Prudence, too.”

  “There’s no telling what Mrs. MacKenzie will do. I’ve never heard of an establishment where the housekeeper was also the mistress’s personal ladies’ maid. Can you imagine Mrs. Astor or Mrs. Vanderbilt allowing a situation like that? It’s not the way things are done, and every lady in that Four Hundred knows it. There’s certain rules to running a household that can’t be changed.” Cook shook out that day’s Herald, flipping greasily through the pages until she reached the society section. She gulped down news of the city’s social elite with as much gusto as she did her first early-morning bowl of hot, milky coffee.

  “Are they here for tea?” Colleen looked up anxiously at the big clock that hung on the wall opposite the scrubbed pine worktable.

  “Tray’s all laid out in the pantry, and the kettle’s about to come to the boil,” Cook said, never lifting her eyes from the newspaper. “Just pour boiling water in the pot, swish it around a little, pour it out, spoon in the China leaves, add more water, and take the tray up. Try to get it to the parlor while it’s still hot.”

  No matter how many times Colleen prepared the afternoon tea tray, Cook gave her the same directions, as if a girl who had drunk hundreds of cups of tea in her life wouldn’t know how to scald the pot properly. Cook didn’t believe anyone was capable of doing anything in the kitchen without her supervision. For all her gruff ways, though, she was nearly as kind to the maids as Mrs. Dailey had been.

  “I’m off then.” Colleen balanced the heavy tray against her shoulder, fragrant tea steaming against her cheek.

  “Brigid will have the bread sliced and the butter and jam laid out when you get back. And there’s a nice chocolate cake I baked while you were out this morning,” Cook said.

  One foot faltered as Colleen turned toward the narrow, uncarpeted wooden stairs. Cook knew she’d left the house. Had she mentioned it to one of the other servants? Had someone else seen her in the cobbled yard? Been looking through one of the front basement windows that showed a passerby’s feet but precious little else until you leaned over and stared upward through the security grate? Should she say something to Miss Prudence? Warn her?

  She could feel beads of perspiration dribbling down the side of her face. Vapor from the hot tea and the sweat of fear. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she whispered. Phrases from the Hail Mary punctuated her steps until she finally reached the parlor door. She felt like a lamb on its way to slaughter.

  “Just put the tray down on the table, Colleen,” Mrs. MacKenzie said as she had directed dozens of times before. “We’ll serve ourselves.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “And you might check to see if Miss Prudence is coming down. We won’t wait for her, though.”

  Colleen thought there was a tight, expectant air about Victoria MacKenzie and her brother. Both of them looked at her as if in anticipation of something, even while dismissing her. She tried to think of a task she might have left undone, but she’d been too well trained to have forgotten anything. Eventually, since Cook had noted her absence this morning, someone would say something. Probably Mrs. Barstow.

  The door to the housekeeper’s parlor had been open when Colleen passed by with the tea tray, the room empty. Strange. It was unlike the housekeeper to leave her parlor door unlocked when she wasn’t there. By this time in the afternoon both Mrs. Barstow and Mr. Jackson would be walking together along the hall from their parlors toward the servants’ dining room, heads together discussing the day’s successes and failures. Minor infractions were usually dealt with over afternoon tea; corrections made in public had a way of not being repeated. But the housekeeper’s parlor and the hallway had been empty. Had there been the sound of two voices behind Mr. Jackson’s closed door?

  What was it Colleen’s mother said you heard when someone close to you was about to die? A howling sc
ream, a wail borne on the wind. The banshee, come to warn that Death was on its way. The skin at the nape of Colleen’s neck twitched and itched as though a scaly hand had run ragged fingernails over it. She clutched the rosary in her pocket and hurried up the staircase to the second floor.

  Miss Prudence came toward her, smiling the way she hadn’t smiled in months. One hand triumphantly raised a key above her head, then quickly tucked it into a handkerchief. “I’ll put these back in my room and go down to tea right away, Colleen. I suppose Mrs. MacKenzie sent you to look for me.”

  “Yes, miss,” she replied, giving over the envelope with Mr. Hunter’s note, “but she also said they wouldn’t wait.”

  “I won’t mind having tea with the witch and her brother today. In fact, I think I’ll rather enjoy it.”

  Miss Prudence was in and out of her bedroom again before Colleen had recovered from hearing Mrs. MacKenzie’s stepdaughter call her father’s widow a witch.

  “Run along to your own tea, Colleen. You’ve more than earned it.”

  There hadn’t been time to tell her what Mr. Hunter had said about another attempt to harm her. And Miss Prudence looked so happy with what she’d been able to do with the keys. Colleen would confess the entire conversation when she came upstairs again to dress Miss Prudence for dinner. Mr. Hunter had said nothing was likely to happen for a while.

  * * *

  As she pushed open the door to the servants’ staircase, the odd twitching and itching of the skin at the nape of Colleen’s neck started up again, but this time there was also a burning sensation that made her rub furiously as if to put out a fire. The stairway was well lit; she could see all the way to the turn where the last few steps reached the basement rooms below. From the servants’ hall echoed half a dozen voices and the sounds of food being served, chairs adjusted under the long table. Cook’s distinctive bark ordered someone to bring more hot water.