“He didn’t do it, Geoffrey. He didn’t kill Nora.”
“No. Whatever else he did or didn’t do, that crime can’t be laid at his door.”
“Then you believe him?”
“Fahey is convinced he told us the truth about Nora, but we have to get the real story out of the coroner. If Nora was pregnant, as Phelan claims, there’s someone else we have to find before our favorite detective goes looking for him.”
“The man who was standing alone at the back of the church during Nora’s funeral.”
“That’s where we start. He had a reason for being there,” Geoffrey said. “It will break Tim Fahey’s heart if we find out that Phelan was right.”
“His heart’s already broken.”
“Truth can be a terrible companion, Prudence. It can ride you like a demon and give you no rest because you have no defense against it.”
“I think I know that better than most people,” Prudence said. “Even so, I’ve learned to prefer the starkest of truths to the most comforting of lies.”
*
That night Tim Fahey was taken to one of the basement cells where sound couldn’t penetrate to the floors above. He was systematically beaten into unconsciousness, then thrown into an isolation cell whose only furnishing was a bucket for his bloody wastes.
Fahey’s file disappeared. None of the warders would be able to tell a visitor where he was.
Without paperwork, Tim Fahey no longer existed. At least not legally.
CHAPTER 7
“I’ve tried every one of my contacts at Bellevue where the autopsy took place,” Josiah Gregory said. He set aside Prudence’s written account of the visit to the Tombs the previous day, appalled by what a lady of her upbringing had seen and heard. “The report hasn’t come across anyone’s desk, so it hasn’t been filed in the morgue. A copy should have been sent to the Metropolitan Police, but nobody there has logged it in either. It’s as though the Nora Kenny postmortem never took place, yet we know it did.”
“It has to exist somewhere,” Geoffrey said. “The doctor who performed the examination might have kept a copy for himself. He wouldn’t be the only coroner who secreted away reports of interesting or baffling cases.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Prudence offered. “He might be more willing to tell what he knows if it’s a woman inquiring about another woman.”
“Bring up the family connection,” Geoffrey suggested.
“Next you’ll be telling me to cry discreetly into a black bordered handkerchief.”
“If it helps.”
*
“The wounds were made with surgical precision.” Dr. Robert Estin unabashedly admired the skill with which Nora’s killer had gone about his macabre business. “No extra incisions anywhere. He knew what he was doing.”
“When the family came to identify Nora’s body, they saw that her throat had been cut and there was a wound to her torso, but your attendant stopped short of uncovering the worst of it.”
“You were here at Bellevue with them?”
“Mrs. Kenny worked for my mother for many years. She took care of her during her final illness. Her daughter Nora often came to help out when there were extra chores to be done at my home here in Manhattan as well as the house on Staten Island. The Kennys are family retainers of long standing.” Prudence thought she had struck the right combination of laudable concern and discreet reference to a social rank that breathed wealth and power. If Dr. Estin hoped to get out of the Bellevue morgue and into a lucrative private practice, he would need the patronage of patients like her.
“What can I do for you, Miss MacKenzie?”
“Once their grief is blunted by time, Nora’s parents are certain to begin asking questions. Autopsy reports are public documents. Painful though it will be, the family may demand to read the details of their daughter’s postmortem.”
“That’s not something I would advise any grieving relative to do.” Doctor Estin’s collar seemed too tight for his neck. He tugged at the stiffly starched wings beneath his chin and fingered the knot in his black silk cravat. Still in his late twenties, he hadn’t yet perfected the art of deflecting unwanted questions and comments.
“Nevertheless.”
“And you want to soften the blow.”
“Yes. I thought my family doctor would be able to interpret the information in the least painful way.” She forced an open, candid smile, gray eyes mutely requesting the young doctor’s assistance. It was as close to flirting as she dared go.
“I’d like to help you, Miss MacKenzie, but the Kenny autopsy report has been ordered sealed. I can’t say for how long.”
“What does that mean, Doctor?”
“The public is not to be allowed access. For the common good.”
“Was the report destroyed?”
He looked shocked at the suggestion. “That would be a grave violation of procedure, if not an outright flaunting of the law. The report will be made available at the proper time.”
If Doctor Estin had kept a copy for himself, Prudence doubted that any more discreet cajoling would get it out of him. The question she knew she couldn’t ask outright was whether he thought Nora had been pregnant. No lady would solicit that kind of information. Since she couldn’t risk losing the moral high ground in this strange conversation, Prudence decided to switch tactics.
“If I can’t have the report itself,” she said, “the next best thing would seem to be as much information as you think I should share with the family.”
“That was done at the time of the official identification of the body,” he said stiffly.
“I was there,” she reminded him softly.
“Of course,” he apologized. “Nora Kenny’s throat was cut by a single deep stroke of a wide bladed knife. She bled to death within a few minutes.”
“The mutilation was done after she’d died?”
“Yes. There is that for her family to be thankful for.”
“The mortician who prepared her body for burial is aware of the desecration. Perhaps he’s the person to contact.”
“He’s hardly a medical expert.”
“No, of course not. But he could describe to me what he observed. The body had to be washed and embalmed.”
Doctor Estin was plainly struggling. He’d done what he’d been told to do, buried the autopsy report and refused to answer any reporter’s questions. But now he had the opportunity to curry favor with someone far above him on the social ladder, and if he didn’t take advantage of it, some journeyman mortician would reap the reward that should be his. What difference could it possibly make if he told Miss MacKenzie what she wanted to know? And who would ever find out? She wasn’t likely to go blabbing to the newspapers. He’d keep back one essential piece of information and take his chances with the rest of it.
He described in clinical terms what had been done to the dead woman, ticking off dispassionately on his fingers the organs that had been removed, assuring Miss MacKenzie that her maid had been dead before the first cut was made below the neck. Aside from having her throat cut, which he emphasized was a rapid and not terribly painful way to go, she wouldn’t have felt anything. He had sewed her back up with smaller than usual stitches when the autopsy was complete.
What Dr. Estin decided not to tell his inquisitive visitor about were the signs of chloasma faciei he’d found on Nora Kenny’s cheeks and forehead, but especially across her upper lip. Midwives called it the Mask of Pregnancy, disfiguring brown blotches that sometimes looked like a ragged mustache painted on the expectant mother’s face. The subject had been only briefly touched on during his medical studies, but Estin was positive he was right, even though in Nora Kenny’s case the marks were very faint. He mentioned it to the detective in charge of the case, but he hadn’t been rash enough to include it in the written report. The mortician would have covered the nearly invisible brown blotches with the thick cosmetics that often made the dead look unnaturally alive, but he wouldn’t have mentioned them to
the bereaved relatives.
There were many reasons someone’s skin could become discolored. But a young woman? Whose internal organs had been deliberately and meticulously removed?
Speculation wasn’t something the police department welcomed. Estin had learned his lesson early and learned it well. He’d shared his opinion with Detective Phelan just to protect himself if another source should come forward and verify the victim’s gravid state, but he was careful not to insist on it.
So he never mentioned the Mask of Pregnancy to Miss MacKenzie, who wouldn’t be expected to know anything about so indelicate a topic anyway.
*
“He’s hiding something,” Prudence reported. “I don’t know what, but it’s definitely a conjecture he was determined not to share. I didn’t get much more out of Dr. Estin than what Detective Phelan told us in Colonial Park. He confirmed that the killer was right-handed. He’s positive of that because of the direction and depth of the wound to Nora’s neck.”
“We all suspected that.”
“The other important piece of information is that our murderer has a surgeon’s skill with a knife. Dr. Estin was impressed by his expertise. It made me shudder to see him lick his lips in envy.”
“He actually licked his lips?”
“Figuratively speaking.” Prudence gratefully accepted the cup of strong coffee Josiah handed her. She needed something biting and bitter to match her mood. “Once he started talking, he didn’t stop until he’d described every cut. He kept referring to what was done as the procedure or the surgery, as if Nora were a patient instead of a victim. It made my blood run cold.”
“Write it up,” Geoffrey said. “Use my office. And while you’re doing that, I’m going back to the Tombs to talk to Tim Fahey again.”
*
Prudence was deep in the report she was writing when Josiah knocked on the office door. He closed it behind him as he approached the desk. “It’s Agnes Kenny, Miss. She’s come to see you and nobody else, she says.”
“Agnes?”
“You’ll forgive my saying this, Miss Prudence, but she looks terrible. As if she hasn’t slept a night since the funeral.”
“Show her in, Josiah. And then fix some strong hot tea with plenty of milk and sugar.”
“I’ll bring it right in, Miss.”
Prudence swept together the sheets of paper on which she was recording everything Doctor Estin had said. She opened one of Geoffrey’s desk drawers at random and jammed the bundle into it before Nora’s mother could catch a glimpse of her daughter’s name. Then she stood up to greet the woman who had looked after her as tenderly as she had Prudence’s mother.
“I didn’t know where else to turn,” Agnes said.
Prudence seated her on the other side of the desk and poured a cup of Josiah’s best Indian blend. It wasn’t as strong or black as she knew the Irish liked their tea, but it would have to do. He was right. Agnes Kenny had the look about her of a creature about to collapse. She had aged this past week, become an old woman before her time, lost the brightness of eye and upturned smile of a happy wife and mother.
“Drink some tea, Agnes, and then tell me what’s happened.”
From her purse Agnes took a small book covered in tooled blue leather. “I found this in Nora’s room. Hidden under the mattress.” She laid it on the desk and with one finger pushed it toward Prudence. “It’s her diary. I never knew she kept one.”
“Have you read it?” Prudence asked, picking up the journal that was slightly larger than the palm of her hand.
“All last night. Over and over. I sat up by the kitchen fire so her father wouldn’t ask what I was doing.” Tears had begun to stream down Agnes Kenny’s face. She let them flow unimpeded, as though the weight of them could wash away her sorrow.
“May I?”
Agnes nodded, then sat back in her chair. Exhausted, she lowered the tea cup to her lap and watched as Prudence turned the pages. She’d read what her daughter had written so many times that she’d memorized every sentence. Each word had seared itself into her brain.
“My heart aches whenever I’m with Tim,” Prudence read aloud. “I thought I loved him, but how feeble that emotion was compared to the passion that makes me tremble and cry out every time my heart’s true desire holds me in his arms.”
She glanced up. Agnes was whispering the words Prudence had just read aloud.
“I won’t read any more unless you want me to,” Prudence said.
Nora’s mother shook her head despairingly. “You need to know everything, Miss. It doesn’t hurt so much now, and you’ve a beautiful voice. It makes what my Nora wrote sound like poetry.”
“I don’t know how much longer we can go on like this. Someone is bound to see us eventually. When they do, something terrible will happen to him and my da will make sure I marry Tim. If he’ll still have me. Any suspicion of what I’ve done will be hushed up. How will I bear it?”
“She didn’t know what she was doing,” Agnes said. “She fell in love and forgot everything else. Duty to family. Her promise to Tim. Everything I taught her. She lied to us. She had to twist the truth to find ways to meet him. No matter where she went, there was some arrangement so they could steal a few moments together. I should have suspected.”
“Why is that, Agnes?”
“It got to be that it was Nora, and only Nora, who did all of the household errands. I was glad enough of it because there’s always work to be done at home. I’m not much for walking or riding long distances and carrying heavy loads anymore.” Agnes’s eyes pleaded for forgiveness. She should have kept a tighter rein on her only daughter, shouldn’t have let Nora go off so much on her own just to spare a mother’s tired feet and sore shoulders.
“You mustn’t blame yourself,” Prudence said. “She would have found some way to meet him no matter what obstacles you put in her way.”
Agnes nodded resignedly. “I know that, Miss. I remind myself a hundred times a day. I remember what it was like to be young and in love.”
“Do you think she cared for him that much?”
“She did. All you have to do is read the rest of what she’s written. But please, Miss Prudence, don’t judge her.”
It was an odd thing to say, Prudence thought. She turned a page, glanced at Agnes again, and continued reading, but silently now. She thought Agnes was best left in her own thoughts; she’d spent the whole of last night getting to know her daughter’s secret heart.
“They did love each other,” breathed Prudence when she had read the last few entries. At Nora’s funeral she had drawn Geoffrey’s attention to the olive skinned young man standing at the rear of the church. Asked who he could be, what he was doing there. Now she knew. He was in love with her. She heard the answer reverberate in the recesses of her mind and the stillness of her partner’s office. He was in love with her and she with him.
“We none of us had any idea,” Agnes said.
“Do you know who he is?” Prudence asked. “She never mentions his name or describes him in any way that would make it possible to identify him.”
“Nora was always loyal to the people she loved. She’d never tell tales on any of her brothers, no matter how much they deserved it. She wasn’t taking any chances. We’ll never know who he is.”
“Agnes, is there any possibility he’s from one of the Italian villages on the island?”
“We don’t mix with them, Miss,” Agnes snapped. “I don’t know why you’d think such a thing.”
“There was a young man standing at the back of the church at Nora’s funeral. He wasn’t Irish. He had black hair and olive skin. He looked Mediterranean. Mr. Hunter saw him, too. He agrees with me.”
“She wouldn’t do that,” Agnes said. “She wouldn’t do that to herself or her family.”
“Would you have tried to separate them?”
“We would have done anything we could to keep them apart. The Kennys are Irish to the core.”
“But Irish and Italians ar
e both Catholic,” Prudence reasoned.
“You have to feel it here,” Agnes said, pointing to her heart. “If you don’t understand, I can’t explain it to you.” Her face closed in stubborn denial. “Whoever he is, he’s not Italian.”
“I read how she wrote about him,” Prudence said.
“He knows something that could exonerate Tim Fahey. If he doesn’t come forward with it, he deserves to burn in hell for all eternity.” Agnes might someday forgive her daughter’s lover for stealing Nora’s heart, but she would never absolve him from causing the hanging death of an innocent man she’d long considered another son.
“We can always hope that if there isn’t any real evidence against Tim, they’ll have to let him go.”
“They’ll manufacture whatever evidence it takes, Miss Prudence. It’s what the police do when they need to get a case off the books. They solve the crime however they can. An Irish girl in the family way and not by the man she’s about to marry? It’s a recipe for murder; that’s how they’ll railroad Tim. They’ll say he killed her when he found out she’d been playing fast and loose on him. And everyone will believe it.”
Prudence stared at Agnes Kenny. In the family way. Was it possible Nora’s mother and Detective Phelan both suspected the same thing? Had she missed something in Nora’s diary?
“She didn’t come right out with it, Miss, but reading between the lines, I’d say she was worried. She’d put on some weight around the waist. Her dresses looked tight to me, but I thought it was nervous eating before the wedding. She wrote about her friend who didn’t come to visit; we both know what that means.”
“Dear God in heaven.” Why hadn’t she seen it from the beginning? This had to be the secret Dr. Estin was concealing. There was something about Nora’s body that gave away her condition, but only to skilled medical eyes. “Does anyone else know that Nora might have been pregnant?”
“They’ll find out. They always do. At the trial, if not before. We can’t let Tim be convicted, Miss Prudence. Nora has paid a terrible price for what she did, but it would be a crime and a mortal sin if Tim were hanged for her murder. He didn’t do it.” Agnes put her cold tea on Hunter’s desk, then sat up ramrod straight in her chair. “It’s up to you to prove he’s innocent, you and Mr. Hunter. Nobody else cares enough or is smart enough. Certainly not the police.”
Lies That Comfort and Betray Page 7