What the Dead Leave Behind

by Rosemary Simpson

  “Mitigating circumstances?” asked Geoffrey, the lawyer.

  “The defendant’s age is given as nineteen.”

  “Younger men have been hanged. Many of them.”

  “You said this was the last entry?” asked Prudence. She turned to the final page of the transcription. “The date is April 1886. Two months after he married Victoria. My stepmother,” she explained.

  “There may not be any connection,” Geoffrey warned. “Let’s not speculate too soon. We need newspaper accounts for all of these entries. Now that we have court dates, initials of the defendants, and sentences imposed, it shouldn’t be difficult. The Herald has good records of its back issues. Ned Hayes knows some of the reporters there from when he was on the force. He’ll be able to persuade one of them to go into the archives for him. They call it the morgue.”

  “How is he?” asked Truitt.

  “Not well.”

  “Do all of the war veterans know one another?” asked Prudence.

  “Many of us met in infirmaries or hospitals. Or crammed into a railroad car making its way toward home or a cemetery. You tend to dispense with the niceties when you think you’re dying.” Again Ben Truitt felt for the smoked glasses hiding his eyes. “Lydia and I followed Ned’s short-lived career in the police department through the newspaper. He was a Confederate officer, but he was paroled on his word of honor after he recovered from his wounds. He used to read to me; we were in the same hospital ward for months. The difference was that my injuries were easily seen; his were deeper, slashed into the soul of who he was. I doubt he’d remember me.”

  “Father makes personal secrecy a part of every project he accepts,” explained Lydia to Prudence. “He’s devised his own elaborate code system to conceal his identity.”

  “It amuses me.”

  “Protects you, you mean.”

  “You’re frowning, Lydia. I can always tell when you try to put a note of false cheerfulness into what you say.” Ben sat up as straight in his chair as a man in a witness box. “We had some disturbing encounters when I first got into this business. It seemed best to work in the shadows.”

  “What my father is hinting at is that attempts were made on his life. Two of them. If it hadn’t been for his extraordinary hearing and my own good aim with a pistol, they might have succeeded. The United States government is not his only client, certainly not one of the best paying.”

  “That would be the railroads?” Geoffrey guessed.

  “The railroads, of course. They hold the keys to the country’s future prosperity, and they know it. The men who own and run them are more ruthless than any of the celebrated conquerors of antiquity. A man’s life means less than nothing. Money and power are their meat and drink.” Ben held out his empty cake plate.

  “Father helps them keep their secrets from one another,” Lydia explained. “At a price.”

  “You would have made a good Pinkerton, Ben.”

  “Pinkertons need eyes, Geoffrey. There were plenty of them spying for the Union during the war, but not a single one of their operatives was blind. And none since, as far as I know.”

  “Miss Lydia.” Prudence put down her teacup, glancing hesitantly at Geoffrey for a moment. She had an idea, a scheme she’d have to broach without consulting him. “Miss Lydia, do you act as courier for your father’s business?”

  “I do. Not always, but often enough. Respectable women aren’t likely to be closely watched. I’ve learned ways to disguise myself and disappear from a street or a hotel lobby before anyone realizes I’ve gone. Most of the time it’s a matter of picking up or leaving a package. I’ve been followed, but never successfully.” She didn’t bother to hide the pride that was evident in the quiet boast.

  “Does this have to do with what we decoded?” The breaking of the code was all Ben, but over the years he had come to consider his daughter’s eyes as very nearly his own, her safety as paramount. He usually preferred to know as little as possible about the context of the enigmas he was unraveling. In this case, a Judge had made a ciphered record of his cases. That was all Hunter and Miss MacKenzie had told him. He hadn’t asked for any additional details.

  “It does.” Quickly and succinctly, Prudence told them about the Judge’s second marriage, explained their suspicions, described how she had searched the house and what she had found in Donald Morley’s bedroom. She handed the photograph and the copies she had made of the menus to Lydia.

  “Are you having her followed?” Ben directed his question to Geoffrey.

  “Lightly followed.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Prudence.

  “I have a man watching the house. He keeps a record of where Victoria and Donald go, how long they stay, when they return. But he doesn’t always or even usually follow them inside their destinations. That’s the lightly part.”

  “You’re thinking that someone needs to go to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, aren’t you, Miss Prudence?” Lydia said. “To the Grand Central Hotel. I assume that’s where the photograph was taken. It looks like the front veranda of a hotel.” Still holding the copies of the menus and the photograph, she turned slightly in her chair and spoke directly to Prudence. “Your stepmother was trolling for a rich husband. An elderly rich husband who could be depended upon to trouble her very little and die conveniently soon after the wedding. Women are a great deal crueler and more clever than men ever give them credit for being.” She glanced at her silent but attentive father, then turned back to Prudence. “Have you ever heard of The Lost Cause?”

  “It refers to the chivalry of those who lost the recent war despite their courage and dedication to preserving a nobler way of life,” Geoffrey explained. The muscles along his jawline tightened.

  “I don’t understand,” Prudence said.

  “West Virginia is at least a two-day journey, if you make all of the rail connections through Washington City,” Lydia said. “Another two or three days to question the hotel staff and exchange gossip with whatever guests are willing to talk to one of us, then two days back. A week spent chasing down a photograph and a menu, with no guarantee of success. There’s an easier and much faster way to find the information you need.”

  “Bravo, my dear. Very clever.” Ben Truitt saluted his daughter with a raised teacup.

  “Ned Hayes would know how to get in touch with them,” Geoffrey mused. “He was one of the youngest officers ever to command troops for the Confederacy. Wounded and captured at some no-account skirmish in North Carolina. I don’t think he was more than eighteen or nineteen years old at the time you met him, Ben. His mother took him south with her when he was sixteen. He did his duty as she saw it, but after his capture he never went back. I always wondered if that’s what he’s trying so hard to forget.”

  “Ned isn’t the only ex-Confederate living in New York City,” Lydia continued. “What you have to remember is that families were torn apart in the war. After it was all over and peace was declared, they had to mend and forgive each other as best they could. Many refused, of course, but for others it was enough to know that someone of their blood had survived, whatever side he fought on. It can’t be easy, living in your conqueror’s country, so a lot of these deeply wounded men and women have formed societies that meet to keep the old dreams alive and honor the memories of those who fell because of them. What I’m proposing is that you show this photograph where it’s most likely to stir old memories.”

  “If someone recognizes the gentleman in the wheeled chair, it’s possible they’ll also know his story,” Prudence said.

  “And how it intersects with Victoria,” Ben finished.

  “I can’t imagine they would welcome a Yankee in their midst,” Prudence said.

  “I was born and bred in North Carolina,” Geoffrey said. “The only thing that kept me from putting on a Confederate uniform was the accident of age.”

  “Do you think Ned Hayes will help?”

  “He will. Ned has a burning thirst for justice. That’s anot
her reason he was encouraged to leave the New York City Police Department.”

  “Many a loyal Confederate gave his parole rather than be sent to one of the prison camps,” Ben contributed. “It’s never been held against them. People will calculate how young Ned was when he fought his first battle. They’ll honor that in him and overlook the rest.”

  Prudence took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “We should have told you everything from the very beginning.”

  “Need to know,” Lydia said. “In the world of ciphers and codes it’s much safer to operate with as little overall knowledge as possible. My father has always said that his life hangs from the slender strand of need to know.”

  “Yet one of the greatest pieces of advice ever given to a combatant is to know his enemy,” Ben said. “Not always the easiest thing to do.”

  “My father said it applies to lawyers as well as to generals.”

  “And on that piece of very sage wisdom, I think we should leave.” Geoffrey gathered up the photograph and the facsimi-lies Prudence had made of the two menus.

  “We’ll keep your names out of it,” Prudence promised. “No one will ever know who broke the cipher.”

  “Fire is a great keeper of secrets,” Ben Truitt said.

  Geoffrey had not mentioned their suspicions about Charles’s death. As hard as it was to keep from sharing that information with these intelligent and caring people, Prudence respected his reticence. Need to know, she reminded herself.

  Lydia kissed her new friend lightly on the cheek. “Don’t fret, Miss Prudence. Geoffrey and Ned Hayes may have to take the stage for a while, but you have a role to play in this charade also. And it may be the most important one of all.”

  * * *

  Halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge, Danny Dennis flicked his whip at a large horsefly that was about to settle on Mr. Washington’s broad back. He’d remembered something about the Judge, but it didn’t seem important enough to mention. Better follow up on his own first. He’d light a candle tonight on his way home. It never hurt to remind the angels that there was work to be done.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Has she arrived, Sister?”

  “Same as every Tuesday afternoon, Mr. McGlory.”

  “If anyone should ask, I’m not here.”

  “No one ever has.”

  “Just the same. I’m not here.”

  “Would you have me lie about one of our most generous patrons?”

  “I would, Sister Angelica. Except that it doesn’t have to be a lie now, does it?” He turned the visitor log around so she could read the name he’d written on the line below Mrs. Barstow’s signature. Father Sean O’Loughlin. “If anyone asks, all you have to do is point. There’s only the two of us today.”

  “That’s lying by omission, and well you know it. Father Sean O’Loughlin! I suppose it was bound to come to that eventually, pretending to be a priest!”

  “My sainted mother, God rest her soul, wore her knees out praying for me to become a priest. And I haven’t gone so far as to wear the collar.” He hadn’t. Glimpsed from behind, the black suit he’d put on was plain enough to pass for a priest’s, and he had no intention of letting anyone see his face. He’d a scarf to wind around his neck to conceal the lack of priestly collar and a hat to pull down low.

  “She should have known better,” Sister Angelica snapped. Then smiled, because Mr. McGlory, for all the terrible things that were said and written about him, had never failed to answer any of the nuns’ urgent requests. He gave even when they didn’t ask, and all he wanted for it was to be remembered in their prayers. “Get on with you now, I’ve work to do.”

  * * *

  They sat for ten minutes without saying a word, McGlory on one side of the hospital bed, Frances Barstow on the other. It was always this way at the beginning. It took time to adjust to the fact that the young woman lying still as death between them was alive, to remember that she had once been a fine dancer, a happy soul who laughed more than she cried, a creature so beautiful that many men had fallen in love with her and one of them had beaten her into insensibility.

  Her baptismal name was Mary. She was Frances Barstow’s younger sister and Billy McGlory’s second cousin, once removed. Victoria’s housekeeper called her Molly.

  “How is she?” Billy asked. He always started with the same question. It was what you did in a hospital. Except that in this wing there was no hope of recovery. Hearts beat and lungs breathed, but eyes did not see and brains neither recognized nor remembered. Mostly there was silence in the long white room where beds were separated by white curtains hung from the ceiling for privacy.

  “Sister Angelica says she’s failing.” Tears had run down Mrs. Barstow’s cheeks, dried there in streaky runnels. “She hasn’t much time left, and that’s a blessing, I suppose. But I’ll miss her, I’ll miss her terribly when she goes.”

  “It’s already been too long, Frances. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see her like this. You know how she was, always looking at herself in the mirror.”

  “She was so pretty when she was little. So pretty.”

  “You can’t blame her for what she became. She made her own choices, and I never heard her say she regretted them.”

  “She thought he was in love with her.”

  “He’s dead now, so it doesn’t matter. He paid.”

  “I never asked you about that.”

  “There’s nothing to be said. He beat her up and then he fell off a pier. He was dead drunk, and then he was just dead.”

  “They say on the street that Billy McGlory always pays his debts. And always collects on what’s owed him.”

  “It keeps things simple. People know where they stand.”

  Molly Barstow had been dying under the care of the Sisters of Charity for almost three years. When Frances Barstow brought her to their hospital the girl was unconscious, both her arms broken and one of her legs. She’d been beaten so badly that her body was black and blue from the neck down. She was bleeding from the ears and her skull was flattened on one side from being hit so hard and so many times. The only place he hadn’t used an ax handle on her was her face. Molly had been in a coma from that day to this one.

  She’d worked in McGlory’s Armory Hall from the time she was seventeen until a protector set her up in her own house. When Frances asked her cousin to give her a job, too, so she could keep an eye on her sister, he did. Family was family. Billy’s girls didn’t have a madam because the Armory wasn’t a brothel, but Frances was as close to one as made no difference. She looked out for them as best she could, and when the inevitable happened and they wept in her arms over it, she sent them to someone who usually managed to get rid of the problem without killing them. The only lady of the night she hadn’t been able to save was her sister.

  Billy paid for the special care Molly needed, and gave generously to the Sisters of Charity even though the nuns would have given his cousin the same devoted nursing if he hadn’t donated a nickel. But Billy paid his debts. So did Frances Barstow. It was a family trait.

  Frances accepted without question that Billy needed someone to be his eyes and ears in the household of a rich Judge’s mistress who was going to lose her housekeeper. The Dakota had opened another world to Frances Barstow, one she never wanted to have to leave. When Victoria Morley became Victoria MacKenzie, Frances moved with her to the mansion on Fifth Avenue.

  Every few weeks, without fail, Billy showed up at Molly’s bedside on a Tuesday afternoon. They talked. About family. About Molly’s condition. And always about what Victoria MacKenzie was saying and doing. He never told his cousin what his interest was, and Frances knew better than to ask.

  The hard part about being Victoria MacKenzie’s housekeeper was the discipline the mistress of the house insisted be maintained over the staff. Not that Frances hadn’t had experience managing people; she had, all those soiled doves Billy had entrusted to her. But Fifth Avenue was a different place altogether. Everyone except F
rances had been there for years, some of them going back to the time of the Judge’s earlier marriage. The first one to go had been the housekeeper Mrs. Barstow replaced, the most recent casualty the butler who had once been the Judge’s valet.

  Almost three years now, and Frances Barstow had nearly forgotten the woman she had once been. She had remade herself after the housekeeper who trained her as a maid all those long years ago before Armory Hall. A strict unsmiling woman who hovered like a predatory hawk over the young girls who were in service under her. Harsh, unforgiving, cold, and never showing any weakness of her own. Frances Barstow took that housekeeper as her model and succeeded in creating a persona she now wore as effortlessly as if she had never had to learn it.

  “I think Mrs. MacKenzie is beginning to make mistakes,” Frances said.

  “Explain.”

  “One of the maids was killed last week. She fell down the staircase that connects the kitchen and the servants’ hall in the basement to the first floor where the family parlors are.” Frances smoothed the white coverlet that barely moved, so shallow was Molly’s breathing. “I don’t think it was an accident. Colleen had been up and down those stairs hundreds of times. I think she knew something and had to be silenced.”

  “There have been two other deaths connected with that family in the past three months.”

  “Miss Prudence’s fiancé died in the blizzard. I don’t see how that could be anything but an accident. The Judge went down more slowly. I saw the decline. It was his heart giving out, they said. Maybe. The maid who died was the same one who changed his sheets and brought up his trays after the first attack left him bedridden. She was in his room more than Mrs. MacKenzie, nearly as much as Miss Prudence.”