What the Dead Leave Behind

by Rosemary Simpson

  Prudence’s head jerked upward, a proud lift to her chin, anger in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I have to learn to accept it, but I haven’t yet. The very thought is painful, so I keep avoiding it. I shouldn’t.” Not if I want to bring down Victoria. I have to make myself as hard and as ruthless as she is.

  “She probably came to New York fairly soon after this photograph was taken. Which could mean that whatever profitable scheme she had in mind for the elderly gentleman in the wheeled chair was unsuccessful. Either he died or his family stepped in to save him. Something happened to make her and Donald travel north.”

  “What about the other menu? What does that tell you?” She had sketched out a close facsimile of what she had replaced in Donald’s suitcase, thanking the governess who insisted she learn to draw from life and then paint from memory every flower in her mother’s Fifth Avenue garden. Tedious work she never enjoyed, but she’d developed a good eye and a modest talent that helped to pass many a rainy afternoon. What she hadn’t realized until she put it to the test this morning, was that she’d also honed her memory so that all she had to do was close her eyes to recall accurately what she had seen.

  “One or the other of them may have started out working the Mississippi River steamboats. Some of them are as luxurious as anything you’ll find anywhere. There’s a lot of gambling, and where there’s gambling there’s also liquor and women. You never have just the one vice, it’s always a package of three.”

  Prudence didn’t know how to phrase it delicately, so she blurted out the question while she had the courage to ask it. “Was Victoria a kept woman? Did she sell herself?”

  “They call them ladies of the evening or ladies of the night. The French are more descriptive. Les grandes horizontales.”

  “My father married a woman who gave herself to anyone who could pay her price.”

  “It may not have been that tawdry, Miss MacKenzie.”

  “It was. You know it, I know it, and there are bound to be others who know it.” She had turned her mother’s emerald ring so the stone was pressed against the palm of her hand where she could feel it burning her skin with a cold green fire. Now she twisted it so the emerald and the diamonds lay atop her finger, and held out her hand for him to see. “I took this from Victoria’s room. It was my mother’s.”

  “Beautiful. It’s beautiful.”

  “My father gave it to her the day I was born. She wore it every day of her life until the end. I was lying on her bed nestled against her side the day she took it off her finger and gave it to me. She told me I was to give the ring to my father that night before I went to bed and he would put it away for me, but for the rest of the day I wore it or carried it around in my fist everywhere I went. I couldn’t bear to leave it in Victoria’s possession. So I took back what was mine.” She lifted her chin defiantly.

  “Bravo, Miss MacKenzie. I applaud your resourcefulness and your larceny.”

  “Not larceny, Mr. Hunter. It was never her personal property. It was always mine.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  “Please, before we go on, what did you find in the Lewis and Clark volume?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I couldn’t have been wrong. My father knew how much I loved that book, how many hours I spent poring over it, reading every word, imagining myself to be Sacagawea. If there were any place in his study he would have hidden something for me, it was there, in the folds of the map pages.”

  “I unfolded every one of them, Miss MacKenzie. More than once. If anything was hidden there, it’s been destroyed. I’m sorry.”

  “I was so sure.”

  “Your father wasn’t an obvious man.”

  “No. He told me that a good lawyer never argued a case the way his opponent expected.”

  “I have a theory about how he might have used this book.” Hunter opened to a page he’d marked with a slip of paper. “Look there, in the middle of the illustration. What do you see?”

  Prudence leaned over the table where the book lay. “It looks like a smudge, as if a drop of ink had been wiped off. Very faint, but still visible.”

  “What I think the Judge did was hide papers he knew Victoria would be looking for, perhaps duplicates of the information we found in the notebook. He made sure when he did it that the ink would be fresh enough to leave that smudge you see. Victoria would think she’d found what he was concealing from her, and she either wouldn’t notice that faint stain or she’d think it was an old smear. He trusted you to remember that no ink had ever been spilled on these pages despite your childhood fascination with Sacagawea.”

  “Two copies of the code. One for Victoria to find and destroy, one for me. And instead of more code, smudges of ink to tell me what he’d done. He was protecting me.”

  “He was. He was doing everything he could to make Victoria feel safe. As long as she doesn’t feel threatened, as long as she thinks she’s at no risk of losing out on the Judge’s fortune, you’re in no danger from her.”

  “So she burned whatever she thought might jeopardize the future she’d made for herself.”

  “She did. She’s gotten rid of anything that could possibly incriminate her or cast a bad light on any of the Judge’s decisions.”

  “That means everything we need is gone.”

  “We have the notebook, and we have to keep looking. No matter how slim a chance may be, we have to take it. So what I want you to do is to study that book page by page the way you did as a child.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Anything that’s different. Anything you don’t remember being there before. Words that look like a reader’s notations in the margins. The faint outline of writing that’s meant to be brought out with the application of lemon juice.”

  “It sounds fantastical.”

  “You had the imagination as a child to pretend to be Sacagawea. The Judge had to find a way to get information to you that he thought would succeed. He’s already deflected Victoria’s interest by giving her something to destroy. If there are other secrets embedded in the Lewis and Clark pages, you’re the only one who will be able to find them. He was a cautious man, remember. That’s why he hid the notebook in the rolltop desk. He counted on what was hidden here being lost, and made sure you’d have the other copy. In gambling, it’s called evening the odds.”

  “I’ll need more coffee,” Prudence said. She had been about to tell him that she suspected the Judge had had another safe installed in his library, carefully hidden behind the handcrafted paneling of the bookshelves, but then she changed her mind. She’d been so sure they would find incriminating evidence in the Lewis and Clark book, but they hadn’t. How many other things had she been wrong about? To be so certain and then to be shown to be mistaken was more than embarrassing. It was humiliating. She decided she would wait until she had found the safe before saying anything about it.

  Watching her as she bent over the Lewis and Clark volume, Geoffrey wondered if she would trust him enough to let him put the emerald ring in his safe before she left. He decided to wait until the last moment to ask her for it.

  CHAPTER 21

  “I’m not in any danger, Mr. Hunter. Victoria can’t harm me without losing a great deal of money, and we know she’d never do that. She’s worked too hard for it.”

  “I’d feel better if you would let me keep your mother’s ring for you.”

  “You’re probably right, and I’m most likely being foolish not to give it to you for safekeeping.”

  “But you won’t.” They’d been arguing almost since climbing into Danny Dennis’s cab.

  “Victoria has taken everything from me that I valued. She may have hastened my father’s death. She certainly tried to make me a prisoner in my own home. That’s what I was becoming, Mr. Hunter. There’s no point denying it. Eventually, if she had her way, I would turn into one of those shadow women whose families make sure they are never seen in public. She’s destroyed whatever
she could find that would testify to the love between my mother and father. I think that was pure jealousy because Victoria isn’t the type of woman who will ever know what love is. She’s incapable of loving, I’m sure she considers it a weakness to be exploited. But deep down, she’s envious of anyone who is loved. She must hate my mother’s memory very much.

  “That’s why I took the ring. That’s why I’m keeping it close to me. Do you understand?”

  “Have you ever had any dealings with someone who’s desperate, Miss MacKenzie?”

  “Only myself.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I’m very much a novice at all of this, Mr. Hunter, but I have no intention of allowing Victoria to win. She doesn’t know I’ve been systematically searching the house, and she won’t find out. I’ve been very careful.” He might see her as inexperienced and naive, but there was more to Prudence MacKenzie than appearances. She had a rapidly stiffening backbone and a core of anger she hadn’t suspected was there until she had stood in her stepmother’s bedroom and taken back something that was hers.

  It took courage for someone like this proud young woman to reveal so much of herself. Under other circumstances she might have blundered on single-mindedly until she found answers to her questions or destroyed herself with laudanum. But the bond forged between them at Charlie’s funeral had grown stronger as they delved deeper into the mystery of who Victoria MacKenzie was and what she might have done. Prudence had asked Geoffrey several times to call her by her name; he decided it was time.

  “If you’re determined to do this, Prudence, I want to make it as safe for you as I can.”

  She flushed a lovely shade of pale crimson, like the beginning wash of a sunset over water.

  “Thank you, Geoffrey.”

  * * *

  Danny Dennis thought it was about time some of the social fences came down between Mr. Hunter and Miss MacKenzie though he never let on he’d listened to a word of what passed between them. He had the gift of keeping a stolid face no matter what he heard funneled through the small trap door in the roof through which passengers gave directions and handed up their fares. It never ceased to amuse him how quickly they forgot that the driver of their hansom cab was seated just above and behind them.

  The clop of Mr. Washington’s hooves and the clack of the cab’s wheels over the cobblestoned streets was background music to what Danny heard over the years. He could focus his hearing like a bat zoning in on the buzz of an insect. Very few of the talkative men and women who rode in his cab had any secrets left when they descended onto the street again. Eavesdropping helped pass the time.

  The other thing people took for granted was that a hansom cab driver knew every street, landmark, and address in the city. The best ones, like Danny Dennis, never forgot a passenger or where they’d taken him. He hadn’t driven the Judge more than a handful of times, but he decided he’d cast his mind back over those trips while he was waiting for Mr. Hunter and Miss MacKenzie to finish their business today. If something stuck out, if the Judge had gone to a place a man of his standing wouldn’t normally go, Danny would remember it.

  He thought Mr. Hunter handed Miss Prudence out with a new measure of gentle concern when Mr. Washington delivered them to the Brooklyn brownstone where the blind war veteran lived with his widowed daughter. Danny had asked around about Benjamin Truitt and liked what he heard.

  Truitt came back from the war nearly completely blind, bones and muscles so badly shaken by the concussive force of the shell that didn’t quite kill him, that for months he hadn’t been able to walk without the help of his two young sons. Who died before reaching manhood in one of the cholera epidemics that carried off so many every summer. The baby, too. Followed by his wife within the year. Yet no one ever heard him rail against God or his fellow man. He never asked why such suffering should be visited on him and not on someone else. No complaints. Ever. Silence was Ben Truitt’s defense against life, the silence of a withdrawal so complete that visitors who saw him in his chair often wondered if he were still breathing.

  Lydia had been married and widowed in the same month, so they settled in together to live quietly in the shadow of their fates. Father and daughter. All that was left of what should have been a happy, growing family. She took back her maiden name and for years they didn’t speak of those they had lost, touching the wounds ever so gently and privately to feel if they’d grown hard scabs. When they did give themselves permission to begin to remember, they also started to smile and laugh again, though neither of them would be bold or daring enough to look for other loves. They had each other and their memories. Apparently that was not quite enough happiness to tempt the Fates. The gods were no longer jealous; they left them alone.

  * * *

  “Now that I know the cipher your father used, Miss MacKenzie, I’m embarrassed that it took me all of four days to work my way through. It’s not one that’s commonly employed, but I have seen a variation of the Wildflower once before.”

  “The Wildflower?”

  “Cryptographers are sometimes rather fanciful creatures.” Ben raised a hand to his smoked glasses, reassuring himself they still sat securely on his nose. He had asked Lydia to describe his eyes to him once, long ago. After that day he was seldom if ever without the concealing protection of the dark lenses. “The man who invented this cipher named it Wildflower because if you were to map out its patterns, you might think you were looking at a sketch of a ragged petal wildflower done all in separate numbers and letters rather than the flowing lines of a typical pen and ink drawing.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “Nevertheless, you intuitively guessed at the general type of information the Judge was trying to conceal. You saw that pattern.”

  “Only because I already had some idea of what it might be. I knew my father’s habit of recording his every thought and action. He bought his journals from the same stationer every year; there was an entire bookshelf of them in the small writing and smoking room just off his bedroom. All gone, of course. I’m sure those were the first things my stepmother consigned to the flames.”

  “Once I realized what we were dealing with I was able to dictate the several permutations to Lydia. Wildflower was so named because the cipher goes through various stages before it begins to resolve itself, rather like a plant that sprouts from a single seed. Any mistake made during any of those sequences destroys the meaning. It’s actually quite a clever idea.”

  “The substitution values change frequently, as you would expect in any good cipher.” Lydia smiled as warmly at Prudence as though they two had worked together through the long hours of Benjamin Truitt’s careful reasoning. She handed her a neatly written list of dates, names, and trial results. “This is the final transcription. I went over everything twice, from beginning to end. Father never makes a mistake, but I can’t say the same for the person who must take down his very rapid dictation.”

  “If you compare the original cipher with the permutations you’ll see that the same letter or number can be represented by any one of the other twenty-five letters or nine numbers. What you tried to do in your substitutions was make the values constant; that’s why the meaning remained hidden.” Ben’s explanation was matter of fact and without embellishment.

  “Do you understand this, Geoffrey?” It was lovely to say his name out loud like that, as though it were entirely expected and completely proper.

  “I pretend that I do,” he said, accepting another copy of the transcription from Lydia.

  “I matched the underlining, of course, since that’s the part of the notebook he really wanted you to know about.” She pointed to the entries that stood out from all of the others.

  “The Judge threw out the first case on September 24, 1873, a Wednesday. The defendant’s name was Patrick Monoghan, the charge murder. Dismissed for insufficient evidence. The number fifty was added later, when the underlining was done.” Benjamin leaned back in his chair so that his head was supported
, his legs stretched out on a horsehair hassock. He looked as though he were reading off the ceiling, one finger tracing an invisible line of letters in the empty air. “The numeral fifty wasn’t part of the original code.”

  “He wanted me to know the amount of the bribe. Fifty thousand dollars.”

  “I wish I could tell you more about the cases he underlined. A good many of them, I’m afraid, Miss MacKenzie. I thought to go to a newspaper office to read the back issues, but there wasn’t enough time.” Lydia reached out to touch Prudence’s hand, thought better of the presumption, and poured tea instead.

  “That’s why we’ve got a bakery cake today. I’ve kept my dear daughter too busy to work her usual marvels in the kitchen. It’s not nearly as good as your lemon bars, Lydia, but it isn’t bad. I’ll have another slice, if you don’t mind cutting it for me.”

  “Of course not, Father.” She folded his fingers around the edge of the plate and the silver fork so quickly and skillfully that you had to be paying close attention to see how she had made it possible for Ben to appear as independent as a sighted man.

  “There’s one notation that deserves special attention,” Ben said. “It’s different from all the others.”

  “Different in what way?” Geoffrey asked.

  “It’s the very last entry,” explained Lydia. “Not underlined, so perhaps not one the Judge considered important.”

  “Lydia believes he changed his mind about this case. I agree with her.”

  “I don’t understand, Mr. Truitt,” Prudence said.

  “You won’t know for sure until you’ve found the relevant newspaper article, but I think the Judge accepted a bribe to dismiss the case, then decided he could no longer collude with whoever was paying him. There are two sets of code, the first one scratched through. Both indicate that the crime was a double murder, but whereas the first reads dismissal of all charges for insufficient evidence, the second records that the defendant was sent to Sing Sing to serve a life sentence. What’s interesting to me is when a man is convicted of two murders, he always hangs. But not in this case. And it was the Judge, remember, who decided and imposed sentence.”