What the Dead Leave Behind

by Rosemary Simpson

  Victoria had to have a reason for emptying the mansion of its servants, but try as she might, Prudence couldn’t find it. She had that same odd sensation of teetering on the brink of a fall that she had experienced in the crowd on Fifth Avenue. As though she were about to lose her balance and could do nothing to stop it. Until Kincaid drove Donald back, there would be nobody near her she could trust.

  “If there’s nothing else, miss?” Not waiting for an answer, Jackson disappeared down the hall in the direction of the servants’ staircase to the lower floor.

  Prudence breathed a sigh of relief, glad to see him go.

  As she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, Prudence fingered the gold chain from which hung her mother’s ring, nestled deeply between two stays of her corset. Just touching the tiny links gave her confidence, reminded her why she had taken the ring, and why she was going to such lengths to hide the theft from Victoria. Not theft, reclamation. She had reclaimed what belonged to her.

  She should have given it to Geoffrey while they were together at Mr. Conkling’s apartment, but despite promises to herself that she would hand it over for safekeeping, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to part with it. And now she was glad she hadn’t. It’s my armor, she decided. A knight never goes into battle without his armor.

  She had had an idea during the ride from Conkling’s apartment, listening to the rhythmic clop of Mr. Washington’s hooves on the cobbled street. What if, instead of creating a combination from family dates, her father had chosen an occasion linked to his profession? She could almost hear his voice congratulating her. She couldn’t recall when he had taken his judge’s oath, but the date was written on the back of the photograph he had posed for that day in his new judicial robes. A photograph that stood on her dressing table.

  She glanced toward Victoria’s room, half expecting her stepmother to open her door in response to Prudence’s footsteps on the stairs. Nothing. The disturbing silence in the house remained unbroken. The last time it had been this quiet Prudence had entered her bedroom to find Jackson staring at the mound of pillows and blankets he thought was her. The memory made her shudder.

  Still nothing. No one waited for her in the room left clean and orderly by the efficient Clara, who had somehow found the courage to bring her messages from Kincaid. The Judge smiled at her from her favorite photograph of him; she pried it out of the frame and memorized the date.

  One more item to get: the key to the library that she’d hidden under her mother’s pearls. She couldn’t count on Victoria’s having left the door unlocked and she didn’t want to risk being seen reaching behind the coatrack in the downstairs hallway for the key hidden there. She lifted the lid of the velvet-lined case that contained the only piece of her mother’s jewelry Victoria had allowed her to keep. The strands shone with a soft satiny glow, the diamond clasp winking in the folds of the velvet. Prudence lifted the pearls from their nest, then pried up the heavy cardboard to which the lining was glued. She reached for the key, then stared at the bottom of the jewel case, fingers poised above emptiness. The key was gone!

  Surely she was mistaken. She turned the case upside down, shook out the velvet lining, uncoiled the pearl necklace, knowing even as she searched that she would not find the key tangled in its strands. Only one person could have taken it. Victoria had been suspicious the day she tried the library door and could not open it, had probably never accepted Prudence’s hasty explanation that the door was sticking. Like a dog scenting a buried bone, the Judge’s widow would not rest until she’d found what she was looking for. She’d known instinctively that her stepdaughter must have had a second key and was using it to lock herself into the library when she wanted to be alone there. And so she’d taken it from her, the way she’d deprived Prudence of nearly everything she cherished.

  More determined than ever that she would open her father’s hidden safe, Prudence crept quietly from her room and down the main staircase. Before she risked the key concealed in the frame of the coatrack, she’d make sure the library door was locked. But as she reached the bottom of the stairs, a small figure in a maid’s uniform stepped into the hall from the entryway. German Clara, holding in her hand the key she must have found when Colleen’s duties became hers. She put one finger to her lips to signal the need for silence, then insisted that Prudence take the key.

  “Jackson,” she whispered, her eyes wide and worried.

  “I understand,” Prudence said, “I’ll lock the door behind me. He won’t be able to get in. Thank you, Clara.”

  “I go now,” the maid said.

  “Enjoy your afternoon out,” Prudence said.

  German Clara nodded, then padded softly toward the servants’ stairway.

  The library door was unlocked. Prudence slipped the key into the pocket of her skirt, then turned the knob, looking around the empty hallway behind her as she stepped into the room.

  Victoria was waiting for her.

  “That wasn’t very smart of you, Prudence, leaving the way you did this morning without a word to me of where you were going. I thought we had agreed you wouldn’t do that anymore.”

  Be careful. You’ll be worse off if you’re caught in a lie than if you say nothing. She kept her lips firmly closed and waited.

  “Where did you go?”

  “Nowhere important.”

  “Jackson said a hansom cab driver brought a note that he refused to hand over to anyone but you. By the time I came downstairs you were already gone. Where did you go, Prudence?”

  “I told you, it’s not important.”

  “I think you went to see Roscoe Conkling. I think you spent the past few hours sitting by his bedside listening to lies and false accusations that I could drag him into court for making. That’s where I think you’ve been, Prudence. And it wasn’t a smart thing to do at all.”

  Prudence had a flash of visual memory, of the door to Roscoe’s bedroom ajar as she and Geoffrey left. But neither of them had opened it. The last person through that door had been the nurse, and surely she would have closed it to give Mr. Conkling and his guests privacy.

  Not if she were being paid to report who visited him and what they discussed. Not if she had been told to pay particular attention if a certain young woman or a dark-haired man came to call. When they didn’t see her as they left, Prudence had assumed the woman had gone to make herself a cup of tea while her patient entertained his callers, but it hadn’t been that at all. She’d been Victoria’s creature, another of her informants. Prudence felt the blood drain from her face.

  “I see you think you’ve figured something out. How clever of you.”

  Everything she had heard or discussed in Conkling’s apartment exploded like fireworks in Prudence’s brain. For the second time that day she relived Charles’s walk up Broadway, his struggles through the terrible wind and the drifts of heavy snow. She watched a bulky figure follow after him, saw Conkling raise his arm to wave. Charles staggered to the bench in Union Park, took off his hat to shake the snow from the brim. Her mind would go no further. Rage far stronger than any anger she had ever experienced blinded her to her own safety, made her forget that she had promised to lull Donald and her stepmother into a false sense of security. Charles had stood in Victoria’s way, so he had had to be removed.

  “I don’t know how you managed it, but Charles’s death wasn’t an accident, was it? He was brutally attacked and left to die in the snow. How could you? How could you?” She took an angry stride toward Victoria, then realized that her stepmother was sidestepping her, that she had circled and blocked the only way out of the library. By the time Prudence understood what was happening, Victoria had locked the door to the hallway and safety. She held up a key that did not hang from a gold chain.

  “I wondered why the door wouldn’t open that day,” she said, dangling the silver key from her fingertips. “Don’t you know that every woman in the world hides things in her jewelry case? I would have expected something more imaginative from you, Prudence.�
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  “It was Donald, Donald killed him,” Prudence spat, her fingers curling into claws. Geoffrey had been right after all. She wanted to scratch out Victoria’s eyes, scrape the mocking smile from her face.

  “You’re jumping to unwarranted conclusions, Prudence. I told you Conkling was feeding you lies.” Victoria moved toward her, voice low and persuasive, the sway of her walk like the lazy hypnotic swing of a cobra’s head before it strikes.

  Prudence was beyond caring now. “You killed my father, too. Did you give him digitalis, Victoria? Is that how you did it? Or was Dr. Worthington right? Was it one of those quack potency concoctions that set his heart pounding too fast for his body to bear? Except that he never bought anything like that for himself. He wouldn’t. He hated you. He could hardly stand to be in the same room with you. You made Donald buy it, but you were the one who fed it to him. He thought he was being given what his friend and physician had recommended, but it was an elixir of death he swallowed. Wasn’t it, Victoria? Wasn’t it?”

  Her stepmother’s arm lashed out and caught Prudence’s dress at the neckline. One hard downward tug and the silk ripped, revealing the gold chain that lay against her skin. The delicate gold broke when Victoria pulled on it; pain lashed across the back of Prudence’s neck. A moment later the emerald and diamond ring the Judge had given to Sarah MacKenzie when their only child was born lay in Victoria’s predatory palm.

  “I missed this the same day you took it. That was Sunday, Prudence, when you played your little charade so well, you fooled even me. For a while. I know when someone has been in my room. I can always tell. There’s a certain disturbance in the air, and no matter how careful the intruder is, something seems not quite right. You should have looked more closely at yourself in the mirror. Silk clings to the skin; it outlines whatever lies beneath it.” Victoria slipped Sarah MacKenzie’s jewel onto the third finger of her right hand. “Emerald is the stone of true love. Did you know that?”

  A hot wash of bile rose from Prudence’s stomach and filled her mouth. She was living her worst nightmare, Victoria gloating as she laid claim to Sarah MacKenzie’s most treasured possessions.

  She had to get out of this room where she had once felt so safe, had to flee the house while she still could. Victoria and Donald wouldn’t kill her; they needed her alive in order to enjoy the Judge’s money. She had boasted that they couldn’t harm her, but she had forgotten that they could reduce her to the state of an automaton through the half-sleep of laudanum, something she feared with every fiber of her body.

  It was too late for subterfuge. They were no longer playing games with one another. If Victoria and Donald really wanted her gone, they wouldn’t hesitate to force the laudanum down her throat. Donald would hold her down; Victoria would pinch her nostrils until she had to open her mouth to breathe. And then it would be too late. Once would be enough. The demon of addiction would hold her in its thrall again and they would watch her so closely there would never be a second chance to escape.

  Victoria didn’t try to stop her when Prudence ran to the door and tugged at the knob with all her strength. She pounded on the solid oak and called out as loudly as she could. She didn’t dare scream Kincaid’s or Clara’s names, but she hoped that somewhere in this vast house someone would hear the commotion and come to find out what or who was causing it.

  “It won’t open. You’re well and truly caught,” Victoria said. “Make as much noise as you want, Prudence. It won’t do you any good. The staff is enjoying an extra afternoon off, a special consideration for all of the difficult times we’ve been through recently. No one is here to help you.”

  Prudence felt her hair fall down over her shoulders, shaken loose by her struggle with the door. Tears of frustration stung her eyelids, but she wouldn’t give Victoria the triumph of seeing her weep. Her only hope now was to face down her formidable stepmother. She had to concentrate on remembering that she was worth more alive than dead, had to believe that would save her, would help her endure. Protect your secrets, my child, protect your secrets. Therein lies your strength. In the end, they will save you.

  “I wonder why you came into the library, Prudence. What did you hope to find here? Is there something I’ve missed?”

  She didn’t dare glance in the direction of the hidden safe. Victoria would know in an instant that the answer to her question lay concealed there. She would find the safe. She would hire someone to open it for her. Prudence’s last hope of defeating her would go up in smoke.

  “I came to be alone with the memory of my father,” she said. She infused as much dignity as she could into the simple statement. Despite the ripped dress and the ruined coiffure, Prudence sensed that if she kept her wits about her, she might be a match for the woman who seemed to be holding all the winning cards.

  “He was a weak man, you know. He allowed a hopeless case to bring him down.”

  “He loved my mother. Whatever he did was to save her.”

  “As I said, he was a weak man.”

  “I won’t allow you to malign him.”

  “You forget yourself, Prudence. A widow has a closer tie than a daughter. Legally and in every other way that matters.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Now we come to it. I prefer honesty, don’t you?”

  You don’t know the meaning of the word, Prudence thought. But she didn’t say it aloud.

  “Don’t you wonder where Donald is this afternoon?” Victoria asked. “I’ll tell you. He’s gone to a doctor’s office. A particular kind of doctor whose practice specializes in treating women suffering from hysteria, melancholia, and hallucinations. Which, I regret to inform you, are exactly the symptoms you’ve displayed since your father’s death. Dr. Yarborough has a clinic upstate where his patients find peace and tranquility.”

  “I won’t go,” Prudence said.

  “You won’t have a choice. Dr. Yarborough only admits women by court order, and your commitment papers are being presented to a judge this afternoon. I expect word any moment that they’ve been signed.”

  “I won’t go,” Prudence repeated.

  “If you fight it, they’ll put you into a straitjacket. I understand it’s very uncomfortable. I’ll pack a small bag for you. It’s the least I can do.” Victoria turned away from her stepdaughter, walked toward the door.

  Desperate not to be locked in to await the fate that was coming her way, forgetting in her panic the key that German Clara had insisted she take, Prudence lunged at Victoria. The rustle of her skirts and her own desperation gave her away. Once again Victoria sidestepped her stepdaughter, but this time she did more than allow her to fall to the floor. She reached for the lamp on the Judge’s desk and threw it as hard as she could. The chimney exploded upon impact, sending shards of glass and splashes of kerosene everywhere. Prudence’s fingers touched her forehead and came away bloody.

  “You need the help of a doctor skilled in the treatment of hysteria, Prudence. Anyone looking at the mess you’ve made of yourself would agree.”

  Without another word, Victoria left her. The key turned loudly in the lock. Prudence heard the tap of her stepmother’s retreating footsteps, and then there was silence. She tried to stand. Blackness overtook her and she fell.

  * * *

  I have to get out of this room, Prudence thought, I have to get out of this house before Donald gets back.

  How long was I unconscious? Victoria had left her alone in the library, crumpled in a bloody heap on the floor. Confident, as always, that she had the upper hand, knowing that Donald would arrive any moment with the men who would take away her annoying stepdaughter.

  She underestimates me, Prudence thought, and that’s how I’ll bring her down. She always thinks she’s stronger and more clever than everyone else, a voice whispered.

  As she struggled to her feet, Prudence felt the sharp thrust of something metal against her leg. She slid her hand into the pocket of her skirt and folded her fingers around the key the Judge deli
ghted in concealing from her when they’d played their hiding games.

  The key the maid had insisted on giving her would be her ticket to freedom. Thank you, Clara. If only she could stay on her feet and keep moving.

  She wiped as much of the blood from her face as she could, remembering that she had heard Dr. Worthington explain after some childhood accident that head scrapes always bled profusely. It didn’t mean there was serious injury.

  She had to go now, now before she was buckled into a straitjacket and hauled off to peace and tranquility. She knew what that meant. A waking death of drugged half-sleep. In her case, once the first drops of laudanum were poured down her throat, there would be no coming back. Breathe, breathe deeply. Miraculously, the confusion and the pain lifted; she could stand without trembling, could hold the precious key without dropping it.

  Before she inserted the key in the lock, Prudence pressed her ear to the wooden door, listening for any sound of movement on the other side. She remembered what Victoria had said about packing a bag, and knew that her best, perhaps her only chance of escape was while her stepmother remained upstairs. She unlocked the door, slipped through into the hallway, then locked it again behind her. Think. You have to gain time, you have to send them in the wrong direction.

  The family door to the stable courtyard was at the end of the first-floor corridor. Seldom used, it was a way for the master of the house to reach the stables without having to go through the servants’ hall downstairs. Prudence opened the door just a crack, enough to suggest that she’d used it to flee the house. Then she ran for the servants’ staircase and the warren of storage rooms in the basement where she could hide until it was safe to slip away. She opened the door as carefully and quietly as her nerves would allow.

  The staircase was dim; she didn’t dare turn on the electric bulb to illuminate the descent. She felt her way downward, hearing her footsteps echo in the silence of the servantless house. She’d never been pursued before, never had to hide from people who wished her harm. She felt more alone on this empty, echoing wooden stairwell than she’d ever been in her life. This was where Colleen had been pushed, where she had been expected to fall to her death.