What the Dead Leave Behind

by Rosemary Simpson

  “The fever’s down. I’m perfectly fine.”

  “You’re not perfectly fine, and even a slight fever is of concern in a man your age,” Josiah scolded. “Sir.”

  “Where’s Hunter?”

  “I’m here,” Geoffrey said from the doorway. He pulled a chair close to Conkling’s bed and sat down, his eyes doing a quick check of the ex-senator’s condition. He wasn’t sure how strong Conkling really was. Roscoe always put up a good show and never admitted to weakness.

  “Did you bring what I asked for?” Conkling asked his secretary.

  “I did.” Josiah fanned out the contents of a cardboard folder. “I brought everything.”

  “What is this about, Mr. Conkling?” Prudence asked.

  “I’ve remembered something, but I’m not sure I’m recalling it correctly.”

  “He was delirious, Miss MacKenzie. The fever made him relive that nightmare walk up Broadway, every step of the way and every gust of wind that knocked him down.”

  “I wasn’t delirious.”

  “I’d like to know what to call it when you’re out of your head, raging like a crazy man, and so hot, the cloths they put on your head had to be changed every few minutes.” Josiah’s nod was the self-righteous bob of a man who knows what he’s talking about.

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Ask the doctor, if you won’t believe me.”

  “I think you are much improved, Mr. Conkling, very much improved. I haven’t heard you argue so much since the last time Josiah tried to talk some common sense into you.” Prudence waited until Roscoe returned her smile. “Now then, if you two will stop bickering, perhaps we can get on with the business that brought us here.”

  “Josiah, find those pages I wrote about stopping in front of the Astor House when William Sulzer decided he’d had enough. Those pages and the ones right after, especially the part about Grace Church.”

  It took him a few moments, but Josiah knew his employer’s papers well; it was his job to keep everything in order so that anything Roscoe needed could be found at a moment’s shouted command. “Here they are,” he said, laying aside the pages that weren’t wanted.

  “Read them to me.”

  As Josiah’s well-modulated voice droned on, it was as if the blizzard in all its fury came to blow itself out in Conkling’s bedroom. Roscoe was as adept at recreating a scene on paper as he was in the courtroom. The biting cold and the fierce wind. The snow blowing so thickly that it whited out the street, the buildings, everything but what lay within arm’s reach.

  “Stop. Read that section again.” Conkling pushed himself forward on his heap of pillows, his eyes bright with excitement. “That’s what I thought I remembered. William Sulzer went into the Astor House, but Charles and I continued up Broadway. I remember the voices of the men inside at the bar and in the lobby as the porter opened the door for him, then the silence when it closed. Now find the paragraph about looking back just after I made it past Grace Church.”

  Josiah read it through twice. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “When I turned around, Charles had fallen behind. He was a few hundred yards away from Grace Church, and I had the notion he might have stopped there except for feeling he couldn’t leave me. Then I saw someone else coming along behind Charles, and I raised my arm to the both of them. I thought at the time that Sulzer must have changed his mind and come back out of the Astor House and that Charles was waiting for him to catch up with us. I knew they wouldn’t be able to hear me through all the wind howling, but I figured if I waved, they’d see I was all right and able to make it to Madison Square on my own. But that wasn’t Sulzer coming through the snow behind Charles. He never left the Astor House.”

  “Are you sure, Roscoe?” Geoffrey had sat silent throughout the reading of Conkling’s notes. He had agonized over Charles’s death so often that he was nearly numb now with the repetition. Except that the ace of spades his friend had laboriously and no doubt painfully pulled from his pocket screamed out a message and a warning. It had to be something Geoffrey was supposed to recognize about the man Conkling had seen following behind them. No other conclusion made any sense.

  “I forgot because Sulzer wasn’t the one who told me, and I wasn’t paying attention at the time. It was the next day, before we knew Charles was missing. I was on my way to court, and I overheard a conversation in the hallway. Someone was talking about having spent the night sitting in the Astor House bar with half the lawyers with offices on Wall Street because every hotel room was taken. There were cots and pallets in all the corridors by the time he got there. Don’t ask me who was doing the talking, because I have no idea, but he said it was a great way to sit out the blizzard and he’d highly recommend it for the next time we have a snowstorm. He mentioned several of our colleagues by name, and I’m sure now Sulzer was one of them. So you see, if he never left the Astor bar, it had to be someone else on Broadway that night.”

  “Dear God in Heaven.” Josiah stared at the papers in his hand as if he could will them to say something else.

  “If it wasn’t Mr. Sulzer, then who was it?” asked Prudence. She had gone very pale.

  No one answered her.

  “A heavy tree branch fell on Charles when he sat down on a bench in Union Square,” she said. “It knocked him unconscious, so that he fell forward off the bench and into the snow. Where he froze to death.” Her voice broke on the final word; she choked back the sob that was threatening to burst from her throat.

  “His pockets were gone through and his briefcase taken,” Roscoe said.

  “The police decided that a street bum came along and robbed him.” Josiah blinked hard and fast in concentration as he tried to picture the scene. “A street bum would have taken his coat, too.”

  “I don’t see how we’ll be able to prove anything now. It’s too late,” Prudence said. “Is there any way to tell the difference between an accidental blow and a deliberate one? Does it even matter? Nothing will bring him back.”

  “Truth matters, Prudence. Truth matters more than anything else in the world.” Conkling laughed. “Listen to me, a lawyer, pontificating about truth, when what I really do is try to get my client off no matter how guilty he is. Truth doesn’t matter where the law is concerned, it’s all those twists and turns we can take around it.”

  “Roscoe,” interrupted Geoffrey. “Can you describe the man you saw through the snow?”

  “I assumed it was Sulzer.”

  “But we’re certain now that it wasn’t. William Sulzer is tall and thin, as I recall. I met him once in the Linwood offices. He was consulting on a case.”

  “Very tall, very thin,” Conkling agreed, closing his eyes.

  “Are you all right, sir?” Josiah asked.

  “I’m picturing that moment when I turned around and waved. Don’t distract me.”

  In the silence, Prudence reached out to touch Geoffrey’s arm. What she was thinking was so illogical yet so certain in her own mind, at least, that it frightened her into seeking the support of his strength. She felt a palm cover the hand resting on his sleeve, and then the warmth of both his hands wrapped comfortingly around her own. It seemed as though they were sharing the same thought.

  “Stocky,” Roscoe said, eyes still closed. “The man wasn’t as tall as Sulzer; he didn’t have that scarecrow look about him. Even wearing a topcoat and hat, Sulzer wouldn’t have been that bulky.” He opened his eyes and stared at the three faces looking back at him. “Why didn’t I notice it at the time? Why didn’t I sense something dangerous about him? I waved and turned back around and kept on slogging my way home as though I were out to win some kind of competition. I didn’t spare a second thought for Charles after that. I was too preoccupied with myself. I thought because he was young and strong that he was bound to make it.”

  “Donald Morley,” whispered Prudence. “I don’t know how he knew where Charles would be, but it had to have been Donald.”

  “When we went to the Dakot
a, nothing had been done to the apartment Victoria was supposed to move into,” Geoffrey said.

  “She never intended to leave the Fifth Avenue house,” Prudence said. “She never meant for the wedding to take place. She planned Charles’s death from the moment she heard the will read and realized that the Judge had outsmarted her. The only way she could win out over him was to make sure I did not marry. And the only way to do that was to kill the groom.”

  “Maurice Warneke as good as told us that Charles’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  “He also said that what the dead leave behind can bear witness for them.”

  “If we’ll learn to listen. In this case, learn to see and believe what’s right before our eyes.”

  “Go back to Warneke, Geoffrey,” Conkling instructed. “Tell him what I’ve remembered. Tell him I’m willing to swear in court that someone was following Charles that afternoon. See if that will persuade him to come forward with his own suspicions.”

  “What about proving moral turpitude against Victoria?” Prudence asked.

  “Ned Hayes thinks we have a better chance of proving blackmail,” Geoffrey said. “He has a Herald reporter digging through the newspaper’s morgue to find the stories written about those thirty-seven men whose initials the Judge underlined in his notebook. We’re hoping the articles will tell us more about each man, personal details, family relationships, where he lived then, clues about how or where to find him now.” Geoffrey thought he knew what else was in Ned’s mind, but he wasn’t ready to share it. He doubted he ever would.

  “We already know they walked out of court free men,” Prudence said.

  “All but one. The last case he wanted you to know about, the man he sent to Sing Sing.”

  “If any of those men admit to being freed because of a bribe, it’s bound to come out that none of them could have come up with the amount of money my father was given. Someone with deep pockets had to have bought their freedom for them. If they worked for him, McGlory’s name is bound to be mentioned.”

  Geoffrey should have known that Prudence would go straight to the heart of the matter. She’d never met McGlory, and please God she never would. But she had his measure.

  “Billy McGlory would never allow it to happen,” Conkling said. “He’d make sure everyone who could testify against him would have his mouth permanently closed.”

  “Have you ever practiced criminal law, Mr. Conkling?” Prudence asked.

  “My clients are wealthy and influential men, child. It’s best not to question how they got that way.”

  “I’ll stop by Warneke’s and then I’ll go find Ned,” Geoffrey decided.

  “Someone has to keep Victoria and Donald from suspecting that their world is about to come crashing down around their ears,” Prudence said. “I’m the only one who can do that.”

  “Are you sure, Miss MacKenzie?” Josiah asked.

  “I’ve told all of you a dozen times or more that I don’t have anything more serious to fear from Victoria than harsh words and tight purse strings. For the sake of her standing in society, she has to keep the myth of our loving relationship as alive as I am. I’m willing to play along with her for as long as it takes.”

  “It might be possible to buy her off,” Conkling said. “If we can’t win a case against her in court, we can always try a little blackmail of our own. I don’t doubt that it would be expensive, but it would get rid of her once and for all.”

  “Not yet,” Prudence said. “I think of that as a last resort. I don’t want the killers of my father and my fiancé to walk away from their crimes with fat purses.”

  “I agree,” said Roscoe. “We should only consider it as a last resort.” He was more tired than he cared to admit. The pillows behind his back were like welcoming white arms, plump and soft. His eyes were closing, his head lolling to one side.

  “Danny Dennis can see me home,” Prudence said. “I promise you I’ll be fine, Geoffrey. Don’t waste time worrying about me. You need to talk to Warneke again and catch up with Ned Hayes.”

  Josiah gathered up the papers scattered across Conkling’s bed.

  The door to Roscoe Conkling’s bedroom was ajar when they left, the nurse nowhere in sight.

  * * *

  Mrs. Barstow followed Mrs. MacKenzie’s instructions to the letter, making sure all of the household staff took advantage of the extra half day off, seeing them out of the house, locking the door behind the last one to leave.

  “I’ll be on my way then,” she told her employer. “Unless you need me to stay?”

  “No. I’d prefer that all of you, senior staff included, have some extra time to yourselves. We’ve been through a great deal in the past three months. Mr. Morley and I will also be going out. I want to see for myself that the area around the Judge’s crypt is being kept up, and to speak to the Trinity Church sexton about it. One cannot leave these things to chance.”

  “Would Madam care for anything before I leave?”

  “Nothing, thank you, Mrs. Barstow.”

  “Then I think I shall take myself off to Central Park for the afternoon. It’s lovely and warm today.”

  “A very good idea.”

  She hasn’t changed either her shoes or her dress, Mrs. Barstow thought as she left the upstairs parlor and descended the servants’ staircase. Why is she lying to me?

  She put her hat and gloves on, picked up her pocketbook, relocked the kitchen door. Stood for a moment in the unaccustomed early-afternoon quiet of the rear courtyard facing the stables, then walked around the side of the house and up Fifth Avenue. A hot spot burned on the back of her black bombazine dress, as though someone had focused sun through a magnifying glass. She knew without turning around that Mrs. MacKenzie was watching her from a parlor window.

  Up Fifth Avenue she went until she was certain she could no longer be seen, until the hot spot on her back cooled and she knew the watcher had turned away from the window. Two long blocks, that should be enough. She turned right at the next cross street and began to make her way toward the alley running behind the mansions facing onto Fifth Avenue. This was the world of work hidden behind the elaborate facades of the luxurious homes of the wealthy, where coachmen drove carriages and horses after depositing their passengers at their front doors. Down to the end of the block she went, into the alleyway where private sanitation companies emptied the rubbish and manure bins, past rear gates that led into secluded courtyards, into the stables and carriage houses above which the outdoor men servants had their rooms.

  Family and members of the inside MacKenzie household staff rarely had reason to visit the stable area; it smelled of horses and hay, of the oil used to keep the harnesses supple, and the polish that shone the brass fittings of the carriages. Each stable was its coachman’s private domain, his small kingdom, where he could be alone with the horses he loved. When Mrs. Barstow stepped through the courtyard gate and skirted the stables to reach the kitchen door, she felt oddly like a trespasser. A click of the lock and she was inside again, no one the wiser, certainly not Mrs. MacKenzie.

  If asked, she couldn’t have explained why she had sneaked into the house like a thief. The few extra hours the staff had been given didn’t amount to a whole half day, and there wouldn’t be time for her to get to the Sisters of Charity and back again without having to curtail the time she could sit by her sister’s bedside. The nuns wouldn’t know what to make of her, anyway, if she showed up unexpectedly.

  The walk in Central Park had sounded nice, and she might have gone, if Mrs. MacKenzie hadn’t sat there in her indoor shoes and gown and blatantly lied to her. No lady could dress herself without the help of a maid; Victoria MacKenzie wasn’t going anywhere. Neither, she thought, was Mr. Morley. He hadn’t been in the parlor, but she’d smelled a freshly lit pipe in the hallway; he was somewhere in the house.

  Victoria MacKenzie had emptied the house of its staff, then lied to get rid of her housekeeper. There would be no witnesses to whatever she was planning, something Bil
ly would definitely want to know about. Miss Prudence? Hadn’t Frances herself said that Mrs. MacKenzie was cleaning house? Hadn’t she predicted that Miss Prudence would be the next to go? But where? How? That was reason enough to stay behind.

  Mrs. Barstow sat at her housekeeper’s desk, the door to her parlor closed, no lamps lit, nothing to break the silence of the basement rooms except the hallway clock marking the quarter hour, the half hour, then three chimes that echoed in the emptiness.

  CHAPTER 25

  Jackson opened the front door to Prudence, then closed and bolted it the way he did when he was locking up for the night. The snap of the double locks and the thump of the steel bar as he lowered it into its cradles on either side of the door felt out of place in the early afternoon. Ominous, as though a battle or a siege were about to take place.

  Prudence expected Victoria to storm out into the hallway and demand where she had been, but her stepmother wasn’t in the parlor. Neither was Donald, though the strong scent of his pipe hung in the air. The dining room had been cleared of luncheon, the table bare and shining around its centerpiece of cut spring flowers.

  “Has Mrs. MacKenzie gone out?” she asked, returning to the foyer. She didn’t like the idea that she might be alone in the house with Jackson. She hadn’t forgotten the shock of finding him in her bedroom; something about his odd yellow eyes made her think of a carnivorous gleam seen through the bars of the Central Park Zoo.

  “Mr. Morley is out, miss. But he’s expected back shortly.”

  “Did he take the carriage?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “Where is everyone else? The house feels empty.”

  “Mrs. MacKenzie has given the staff the rest of the day off, miss. I was about to leave myself when I heard the bell.”

  That explained the locking up, but Prudence knew that her stepmother would never leave her alone in the house. There was too much animosity and suspicion between them. So where was she?