What the Dead Leave Behind

by Rosemary Simpson

  More crumpled handkerchiefs. Collarless shirts and underwear gray with age and use. Neckcloths stained yellow with old sweat. Shuddering in distaste, Prudence shook each repulsive garment, then dropped it onto the bed. When the case lay empty before her, she ran her hands along its faded lining, but felt nothing suspicious or unexpected. No irregularities that would suggest a hiding place for documents or jewelry one wanted to keep from the curious eyes of servants. She bent closer, eyes concentrating on the seams, looking for a break in the stitching, a different hand with the needle, a contrasting thread color. Still nothing. Perhaps Donald was exactly what he seemed to be—a man who ate and drank to excess, whose habits of personal cleanliness left a great deal to be desired, who was happy to live off the charity of his more ambitious and talented sister.

  Prudence found it when she was closing the suitcase, as her fingers brushed against a section of stitching that seemed not quite as deep as the rest. There it was. Thick thread sunk to a depth that didn’t quite match if one looked carefully. The leather had been slit along the side, then glued down again. She could feel the cracked, dried-out glue with her fingernail. She would need something thin and sharp to slide between the leather covering and the body of the case. A letter opener on Donald’s untidy desk. That would do, would have to do. Slowly, being careful not to leave scratches, she pried her way along the glued strip, catching in one hand the bits of dessicated adhesive that fell out as she worked. The slit was no more than eight or ten inches in length; she thought it might have begun its life as a genuine rip, enlarged by someone desperate to hide something.

  Using the letter opener, she felt inside the narrow gap, her heart beating faster when the white corner of a piece of paper was teased out far enough for her to hold it in her fingers. A second piece of paper, and then a small photograph, only as large as the palm of her hand. Nothing else. She ran the letter opener from side to side, listening intently for a telltale rustle, held the leather up while she peered beneath. Nothing else. She had everything that Donald had thought to hide.

  Menus. Two menus. One of them was dated April 30, 1881, and listed the luncheon choices at the Grand Central Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. The second, dated June 10, 1880, touted that day’s evening fare and festivities aboard the Mississippi riverboat Natchez VIII, with an illustration of stained-glass windows depicting dancing Indians. Scribbling down names, places, and dates on the back of an envelope she found in the jumble atop Donald’s small writing desk, Prudence eased the two menus back under the leather covering, then turned her attention to the photograph, the date 1881 neatly inked on the back.

  She recognized Victoria and Donald immediately; both looked younger, but there was no mistaking their features. They stood on the wide veranda of a large private home or hotel, its entryway flanked by tall white columns. Between them, sitting in a chair that had wheels mounted on either side, was a handsome, elderly man wearing the mustache and closely trimmed beard popular in the South of General Robert E. Lee. For a moment, Prudence wondered if she were looking at a picture of the famous general, then she remembered that he had died five years after the war’s end. Not the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia then, but clearly someone who had chosen to look as much like him as possible. An elderly, wounded veteran of that terrible war?

  Making her mind up on the spot, Prudence nestled the photograph inside her bedgown, then concentrated on reclosing the leather flap she had opened, spitting repeatedly to moisten the old glue, using the letter opener to press down on the two edges she was trying to fuse together again. It might not hold under rough handling, but it would have to do. She mentally thanked the severe Mrs. Barstow for frightening the maids into dusting every surface until a white glove stroked across it came up clean. There wouldn’t be telltale streaks to give her away. She pushed the small suitcase back until she felt it stop against the wall. Standing below, looking up, you couldn’t be sure anything was there.

  Thank you, Donald, she breathed. She was certain he had held on to the menus and the photograph for a reason, most likely to be used against the formidable Victoria. They had to be the opening wedges of a future campaign to control or bring her down. Donald thought them important enough to keep and hide; they must be keys to the past his sister was determined to hold secret. Thank you, Donald, for being greedy, callous, and a would-be blackmailer.

  It was going to make all the difference in the world.

  CHAPTER 20

  Victoria’s room was also unlocked, though not purposely so. Before leaving for Easter services, Prudence’s stepmother had shouted again at German Clara, one arm pointing toward the spot in the hallway where the maid was to set her chair, then stormed off to the parlor. Her bedroom door stood open half an inch from its frame; she’d been too angry to realize that she hadn’t turned the key in its lock. With a glance at the still peacefully snoring housemaid, Prudence slipped through the door and into Victoria’s private world.

  The scent was strong and cloying, a heavy attar of roses nauseating in its thickness, as if someone had mixed a concentrated flowery oil with the ether used in operating theaters. She had been in Victoria’s room many times, but Prudence had never grown used to its feeling of excess. She felt smothered by the deep pink satin, the gold-leafed French furniture, the inability to take a deep breath without tasting the perfume Victoria used so liberally. Reminding herself that she might not have much time, Prudence moved as quickly and as efficiently through her stepmother’s drawers and armoire as she had through Donald’s. With the same result. Nothing.

  Where Donald was careless and unorganized, Victoria was neat and compulsively unable to keep anything that was slightly worn or last year’s fashion. Whatever had been hanging in her armoire at the time of the Judge’s death was gone, replaced by a dozen black gowns, each one as close to being scandalously unmourn-ful as the widow dared. Every outdoor dress had its own hat and flowing black veil, its own pair of polished black boots. Prudence supposed that as the year of deep mourning drew to a close, Victoria would summon dressmakers to outfit her in whatever was being worn that season. One by one the black dresses would disappear. There was no small suitcase stored atop the armoire, not even a hatbox.

  The only time she allowed herself a stirring of anger was when she found some of her mother’s jewelry in the midnight blue velvet jewel case she had played with as a small child. She recognized the diamond and sapphire waterfall that had hung around her mother’s neck, the matching earrings that were long enough to graze her shoulders, and the twin bracelets she had twirled on her own four-year-old arms. An emerald and diamond ring her mother had tied on to her finger with silk thread, a dark pearl larger than any of the pebbles she had collected to decorate her sand castles at the beach, a rope of perfectly matched black pearls that could be twisted into a necklace of many strands or left to hang gloriously to the wearer’s knees. Other pieces so familiar, they brought tears to her eyes as she touched them. Her mother’s jewelry was supposed to come to her, and until it did, her father had said it would lie in the vault of one of the trust and safe deposit institutions that had begun to compete with banks for the safekeeping of their customers’ stock certificates and jewels.

  Mr. Conkling had alluded to this jewelry when he told her about Victoria’s control of her trust, but the full force of what he said hadn’t registered until now, now that she held in her hands what her mother had once worn, what should never, never have been allowed to adorn the person of her successor. A widow couldn’t wear any jewelry except her wedding ring and perhaps a mourning brooch containing a lock of the deceased’s hair, but Prudence knew that Victoria had not been content to bring this jewelry from the safe deposit box to lie unworn in its blue velvet case. She had slipped the rings onto her fingers, threaded the earrings into her ears, fastened the necklaces around her throat, slid the bracelets onto her arms. Admired herself reflected in the mirrors that were everywhere in this room, twirled to catch and reflect c
andle and gaslight, laughed aloud at the feel of so much wealth on her skin.

  She had been poor. Victoria had been born and brought up poor. Prudence knew it as surely as she knew her own name. It was the only explanation that fit, that clarified what was dark and murky in her stepmother’s character, in her refusal to answer questions that might shed light on her past. Somewhere, many years ago, Victoria had taught herself to deflect inquiry, to evade polite queries so adroitly that a conversation would be long over before the other party realized she knew no more at the end of it than she had at the beginning.

  “Miss Prudence? Miss Prudence?” A soft knock on her bedroom door just across the hall told Prudence that Clara had emerged from her laudanum nap. She heard the door open, Clara’s soft tut-tutting at the mounded-up covers under which she believed her mistress still lay sleeping. “I get more coffee,” the maid muttered. A moment later her footsteps thudded on the bare wood of the servants’ stairwell. Not even in an empty house would Clara presume to descend the main staircase.

  There was only one more place Prudence hadn’t searched, but a quick glance told her that Victoria’s Louis XV writing table was unlikely to hold any secrets. The shallow drawers contained monogrammed letter paper, envelopes, black bordered visiting cards to use in the sixth month of her widowhood when she could begin making calls again. A journal whose pages were blank. A gift from someone who hadn’t known that a woman like Victoria would never confide her thoughts to paper? A gold filigreed tray containing inkpot, pens, a sand shaker, and a very sharp gold letter opener. Each item precisely positioned, like a row of military cadets.

  To one side was a stack of letters to be answered, invitations Victoria was expected to decline, household bills to look over and send on to the housekeeper for verification, menus to approve. Prudence rifled through them quickly, searching for anything that did not belong. Nothing. Nothing.

  The anger she had beaten back when she held her mother’s jewelry in her hands and realized that Victoria had been wearing the pieces Sarah had bequeathed her daughter nearly strangled Prudence with its sudden violence. She had been so certain she would find something she could use to prove her stepmother guilty of moral turpitude, so sure that Victoria would have kept a piece of incriminating evidence from her past. But she hadn’t. The only clues to what Victoria and her brother might have been and where they had come from were two menus and a photograph that Donald had hidden from his sister. Prudence felt sick to her stomach; the rage and the helplessness nauseated her, made her head throb and her hands tremble.

  The last thing she did before she left Victoria’s pink silk lair was to take the emerald ring from the blue velvet jewel case and slip it on to the ring finger of her right hand. It fit perfectly. When she held her hand out to admire the square-cut emerald and its two flanking diamonds, she thought there was another way in which she resembled her mother. Their hands. Sarah had bestowed pale gray eyes, soft brown hair, and long, slender fingers on her beloved daughter.

  What she would do if or when Victoria missed the ring was something Prudence decided she would deal with when the moment came. The only important thing today was that she had managed to steal back from Victoria one of her mother’s precious belongings. For the time being, one would have to be enough.

  The hallway was empty when Prudence closed Victoria’s door behind her. She tiptoed to the servants’ staircase and eased the door open. No sound of tired feet climbing the uncarpeted stairs. Clara must still be in the kitchen two floors below, grinding coffee beans and heating water. Prudence would have a few moments to study the picture she had taken from Donald’s room before the maid returned.

  There was an odd scent in the corridor, a lingering odor of maleness that shouldn’t be there. Donald smelled of tobacco, whiskey, and bay rum cologne; this faint aroma was of strong soap and sweet Macassar oil. Donald didn’t use Macassar oil to slick back his hair; Victoria refused to cover the backs and arms of every upholstered chair with linen protectors to absorb the stains. Could one of the male servants have remained at the house? Did German Clara, made fun of by the other servants for her heavy accent, have an unsuspected beau?

  Smiling to herself at the thought of what might be taking place in the kitchen, Prudence opened her bedroom door.

  And screamed.

  The man who whipped around to face her had been standing at the foot of her bed, staring down at the mound of pillows and rolled blankets meant to trick the maid into believing her mistress was still asleep.

  “What are you doing in here?” Prudence demanded.

  Jackson looked from the bed to the barefoot, angry young woman clad in nightgown and robe, slippers sticking out of the robe’s pockets, a huge emerald and diamond ring glittering on the hand she’d automatically raised to protect her bare throat. He took his time answering, as though he were memorizing every detail of the scene.

  “I thought it might not be a good idea for you and Clara to be alone in the house, Miss Prudence,” he finally said. “So I came back.”

  “What made you think you could come into my bedroom?” She was trembling with her father’s temper, feeling the violation of Jackson’s presence with every breath she took. She nearly choked on the faint but nauseating smell of the coconut and cananga oils used in the manufacture of Rowland’s Macassar Oil.

  “Clara was worried. I came up to check that you were all right.” Jackson smiled, began moving in her direction.

  Prudence would have to edge out into the hallway to avoid him, but that felt too much like retreat. This was her house. She wouldn’t allow a servant to intimidate her, especially not one of Victoria’s creatures.

  “Does Mrs. MacKenzie know you came back? Did you tell Mr. Morley?”

  “No, miss. They’d already gone.”

  Jackson was within arm’s reach now, so close she could read menace in his odd yellow brown eyes. Avarice, too, as the eyes flickered to the emerald and diamond ring on the hand she had not lowered from her throat.

  “I bring coffee, Miss Prudence,” said German Clara from behind her. The maid halted in the doorway, not sure whether she should enter.

  “Thank you, Clara,” Prudence said. “You can put it on my dressing table. Jackson is just leaving. He came back to make sure we were safe. Wasn’t that thoughtful of him?”

  “Yes, miss.” Clara sidled past her mistress and the butler, set down the coffee, then stood with clasped hands, waiting to be told what to do next.

  “There was no need to worry, though. You didn’t need to send him up to check on me.”

  Jackson scowled at German Clara, who looked startled, confused, and then frightened. She bobbed her head, but said nothing, even after he left and they heard the door to the servants’ staircase open and close again.

  Prudence understood without asking that German Clara hadn’t known Jackson was in the house until she’d seen him in her mistress’s bedroom.

  * * *

  The last person Geoffrey Hunter expected to see standing outside his rooms at the Fifth Avenue Hotel late on Easter Sunday morning was Prudence MacKenzie. Yet there she was, dressed in the drab gray outfit she had worn to the Dakota. She had learned to make herself invisible, the first lesson every Pinkerton operative was required to master.

  “I hoped I’d find you in.”

  “Is something wrong?” A quick look in both directions assured him the hallway was empty.

  “I didn’t inquire at the desk. No one noticed me.” She brushed past him into the parlor, striding to the windows that overlooked Fifth Avenue, pulling aside the curtains to scan the street. “I didn’t think anyone would be out for the parade yet. It’s still too early.”

  “There’s coffee on the sideboard.”

  She removed her gloves, laid her purse on the large round table where he had eaten his breakfast, hesitated a moment, then took the pins from her hat and placed it beside the purse. Clearly a woman preparing to work.

  “Colleen?” she asked.

  “I
s up and walking. Dennis brought me a message last night.”

  “Mr. Conkling?”

  “Furious that he’s been confined to his bed. Josiah says the pain in his head was bad enough to bring in a doctor who diagnosed exhaustion and an abscess in the right ear, both brought on by his trek through the blizzard. Mr. Conkling doesn’t entirely believe him.”

  “I’d like that coffee you offered,” Prudence said. She poured herself a cup from the silver pot on the sideboard, added cream and sugar. Brought it back to the table. “I searched Victoria’s and Donald’s rooms this morning. I found a menu from a hotel or resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, another from a Mississippi River steamboat, and a photograph.”

  Between sips of the hot coffee she told him the whole story, omitting only the odd confrontation with Jackson. The butler’s explanation had been plausible and she’d soon gotten over her fright at finding him in her bedroom. Prudence didn’t want to have to waste time and energy arguing with Geoffrey Hunter about her safety. Hadn’t she already proved that she could take care of herself? “I don’t know what I would have done if Clara hadn’t proved susceptible to the laudanum. There weren’t more than a couple of drops left in the bottle.” She wanted desperately to ask him if the Judge had left anything for his Sacagawea in the Lewis and Clark book, but forced herself not to ask the question. Not yet.

  “I know this place,” Geoffrey said, smiling nostalgically as he read the copy of the Grand Central Hotel menu she had reproduced from memory. “We used to spend the hot summer months there before the war. I was just a child, but I remember it. Sometimes we stayed in one of the cottages on the grounds, other summers in the hotel itself. Everyone who was anyone in the South in those years went to White Sulphur Springs. It was the equivalent of Saratoga Springs to Yankees. Northerners,” he corrected himself. “1881. Victoria married the Judge two years ago; she’d already been living at the Dakota for a year before that. The latest she could have come to New York City would be the summer of 1884, but I think it had to have been earlier than that. She knew about McGlory’s troubles with the law, knew enough about how the city works to suspect he’d had to have bribed at least one judge.”