“I don’t know what possessed the man.” Geoffrey Hunter was as close to shouting as he ever got. He seldom allowed his temper to erupt; the violence of it frightened even him. “He should have realized what the consequences would be.”
“He writes that she was very angry.” Ned paged through the stenographer’s notebook, pausing at the sketch of Sally Lynn’s body, skimming Josiah’s descriptive prose. At least he hadn’t written his notes in abbreviations that no one but the person who wrote them could read.
“She was angry?”
“He quotes Miss Prudence at the morgue saying that she didn’t think you’d ever had any intention of allowing her to see the murder scene.”
“She’s right. I didn’t.”
“That’s your first mistake, Geoff.” Ned Hayes turned another page. “Prudence saw Nora’s body in Colonial Park. You didn’t hide anything from her then. So it made it worse to exclude her from this scene.”
“The woman was murdered in a bordello, Ned.”
“She was a whore.”
“My point exactly,” Hunter snapped.
“You can’t shield her,” Hayes said quietly. “She doesn’t want to be treated like a child. Prudence MacKenzie is educating herself to the world her father gave her a glimpse of through the law. She won’t appreciate it if you slam the door on her.”
“She’s following Joseph Nolan,” Geoffrey said. “The man dresses up like a priest and lacerates his back with a whip. If it comes to a confrontation, I don’t think Josiah is any match for him.”
“Kincaid won’t let anything happen to either of them. If he senses they might be getting into trouble he’ll have those bays whipped up and off at a gallop. Judge MacKenzie didn’t have anything but the best horseflesh in his stable and Kincaid is a master at the reins.”
Patrolman Jenkins stepped forward from the corner where he’d taken his cup of hot coffee to drink as close to the fireplace as he could get. “Begging your pardon, sir, but the man who gave me the notebook didn’t stay in the coach for long.”
“What do you mean?” Phelan asked.
“I watched it as far as the corner. Two people got out, the little man and a taller woman. They hailed a hansom cab and the carriage turned in the other direction and went down Fifth Avenue. But they weren’t in it.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Detective Phelan pushed open the swinging door into the parlor area, nearly knocking Big Brenda off her feet. “Send that sergeant of mine in here,” he ordered. “Where’s he gone to?”
“He’s directing the lads who’re taking out the last of the soiled linen. You told them to remove anything that had Sally Lynn’s blood on it.”
“Get him,” he repeated. “The lads can finish on their own.”
“Can we open this evening? Madame Jolene has been asking, and I’ve had to tell her I don’t know.”
“You can open. I don’t know why you’d want to, but once we finish here, you can open. Tell her I said so. Tell her I’ll return if I have to, if anybody’s held out on us.” Phelan turned to go back into the kitchen. Too late to hope Prudence MacKenzie wasn’t swallowed up in busy city traffic. There were hundreds of nearly identical hansom cabs in New York City. If anything happened to her, it would be a scandal the city wouldn’t soon forget. Chief Byrnes would have his badge.
“I paid Danny Dennis to keep Nolan in his sights,” Hunter was saying. “He’s a good man, Dennis. If Nolan isn’t using his own carriage, he’s being driven by Danny. And Danny will catch on to being followed soon enough.”
“But he won’t know who’s following him. He won’t have the inkling of an idea that it’s Miss Prudence. Not to mention Josiah,” Ned reasoned. “If Nolan realizes what’s happening, he’ll tell Danny to lose whoever it is, and Danny will do it. He’s the best driver in the city.”
“They’ll be all right then.” Geoffrey tried to sound more reassured than he felt. “Danny will twitch them loose like a dog shakes off water. Once Prudence’s driver loses sight of Danny’s cab he won’t be able to find it again. And Nolan will never know who was after him. He won’t even be sure anyone really was. So she’ll be safe. Despite herself, she’ll be safe.”
And the next time he saw Josiah he’d give him a piece of his mind the secretary wouldn’t soon forget.
*
“Danny is turning into Central Park,” Prudence said.
“The road he’s taking goes past the sheep meadow and the Carousel,” Josiah told her. “I can’t imagine Nolan stopping to admire the sheep, and the Carousel is closed when the weather is bad. It doesn’t make sense.”
“In a strange way it does. If he has something in that cab with him that he’s desperate to hide, he has to dispose of it before the police connect him to Sally Lynn and decide to question him. I don’t think he knows yet where he’s going or what he’ll do. He’s counting on the inspiration of the moment, and in the meantime, as long as he’s in Danny’s cab and the police don’t know where he is, he’s safe. If it’s the nun’s habit and the cassock he’s trying to get rid of, he can toss them anywhere in the park and feel confident they won’t be traced back to him.”
“He can’t know Sally Lynn is dead,” Josiah argued. “Unless he’s the one who killed her.”
“Maybe not when he first ordered the cab to turn around. But all it would take would be a question shouted out to someone on that street.”
What’s going on?
Dead whore over to Madame Jolene’s place.
Who?
The one with the black curls, Sally Lynn she called herself.
“It’s Sunday. He can’t hide out at his office, and he probably doesn’t dare return to the house on Fifth Avenue. Maybe the park was the only place he could think of to go.” Prudence banged on the ceiling hatch near the rear of the cab until it slid open. “We’ll let you know when we want to get out,” she instructed the driver. “Stay far enough back so the cab in front of us can’t be sure we’re following.”
“He already knows. That’s Danny Dennis up there, Miss. Nobody can put one over on him.”
“If Danny knows, then Nolan probably does as well,” Josiah reasoned.
“Looks like Danny is stopping at the Carousel, Miss,” the driver said. “Leastways, he’s pulling over and slowing down.”
“We’re getting out,” Prudence decided. “Stop, driver, stop right here.” Dennis’s cab disappeared from sight around a bend in the road. “Get down, Josiah. It’s not far. We’ll walk the rest of the way. He won’t see us coming.” She handed the driver a tip large enough to make his jaw drop. “Whip up your horse and pass by that other cab without stopping. You’ve got to be going fast enough so nobody can tell whether you’re carrying any passengers. Understand?”
“I do, Miss.”
“If anyone tries to stop you, keep on going if you can. If you can’t, and somebody wants to know where your passengers got out, you tell them it was at the entrance to the park. A lady and gentleman. That’s all. Nothing more.”
“Nobody’ll get a word different out of me.”
They watched the cab careen down the roadway. Following instructions and buoyed by the biggest tip he’d ever gotten, the driver was making good speed. He’d whip by the Carousel so fast he’d be gone before anyone realized he was there.
“I should have gotten his name,” Prudence said. “I don’t know what I was thinking of. We’ll never be able to find him now.”
“Does it matter?”
“It would have been nice to hear from his own lips what he saw when he passed the Carousel. Whether Danny or Nolan looked up as he raced by them.”
“Danny will know who he is,” Josiah said. “He can identify every cabbie in the city. They all recognize each other’s horses and vehicles. According to Danny, the horses are as distinctive as children. Or so he claims.”
“He would.”
“Stay off the road, Miss. There’s less chance Nolan will hear us.”
“He may not even get ou
t of the cab. In fact, I’d be surprised if he did.”
“I’m not following your logic.”
“Consider. He’s vulnerable to blackmail. So this morning he begs off going to Saint Patrick’s with the rest of the Nolan family because he has to think through what he’s going to do about Sally Lynn. He has to have sensed that she’s close to telling Madame Jolene what he makes her do. Maybe she’s already talked to the madam. Or he’s the one who killed her and he wants to know if the body’s been found. Whichever it is, he’s on his way back to the brothel, he comes around the corner, sees the police everywhere, and orders his driver to turn around. Now where does he go? He needs time to think through what he’s seen and plan what to do next.”
“Whether he’s worried about blackmail or he’s a murderer, Nolan has to be close to panicking right now. He doesn’t know what the police have learned, but he’s got enough common sense to feel threatened. He decides to have Danny pull off the road at the Carousel, and then he’ll sit in the cab until he’s figured out what he has to do to keep himself safe. You’re right. He won’t get out.” Josiah slid across an icy patch. “It’s too cold.”
But when they reached the Carousel, Joseph Nolan was standing on the revolving platform, one arm draped around the neck of a fawn-colored stallion with a bright red saddle and bridle sadly in need of repainting. Danny Dennis and Mr. Washington were nowhere in sight.
“Wait.” Prudence pulled at Josiah’s arm until he was close beside her, hidden behind the trunk of an ancient ash tree.
“I thought you said he wouldn’t get out of the cab,” the secretary whispered.
“The road’s too narrow here, so he’s sent Danny on ahead to find a wider spot and turn the cab around. He doesn’t want any witnesses to whatever he’s planning to do.”
“Now what?”
“We wait.”
“Look, Miss, he’s carrying something,” Josiah said. “It looks like a leather briefcase. Half the businessmen in New York walk around with them. That’s got to be what Kevin described as a satchel.”
“He’s going to get rid of it, Josiah. He’s just looking for a place to hide it until he can come back without anyone seeing him.”
The freezing temperature hadn’t been so bad when they were walking, but now Prudence began to shiver. She wasn’t shod for icy pathways and she wasn’t dressed for anything colder than the interior of a carriage warmed by pots of charcoal. She should have told the hansom cab driver to wait outside the park for thirty minutes, then return for them. She’d given him a large enough tip. Maybe he’d come back on his own.
“I hope he hurries up. I don’t want to crouch here in this forest all day.”
“You’re not crouching and it’s hardly a forest,” Prudence chided. “Watch him now. He’s moving. He’s going somewhere.”
Joseph Nolan was weaving his way around the Carousel, stopping now and then to get his bearings. When he finally stepped off, he seemed to disappear, as if he’d fallen into a hole.
“He’s gone down into the tunnel where the horse turns the mechanism,” Prudence breathed. “My father told me about it when he brought me here. He thought it would amuse me, but I cried. There’s a horse and a mule down below the Carousel, hitched to a metal pole that he pulls around and around in a circle all day long. In the darkness. So that children up above can pretend to be riding real horses and shriek and laugh in the sunlight. It has to be horrid down there.”
“Like workhouses or the prisons where they make the inmates march on treadmills.” Josiah had visited some of Roscoe Conkling’s less fortunate clients in their places of incarceration.
“It’s empty when the Carousel is closed during the winter. A perfect hiding place.”
“Wouldn’t they lock the entrance to the tunnel?”
“I suspect a man like Joseph Nolan would have figured out a way around that. Detective Phelan told us the gate to Colonial Park where Nora was found had been picked.”
Prudence led the way from one tree to another, Josiah behind her. Every step took them closer to the clearing in which the Carousel stood in deserted winter splendor.
“That’s far enough,” Josiah hissed. Miss Prudence scared him almost as much as Mr. Conkling had.
“He’s coming out again.”
Joseph Nolan, leather briefcase hanging from one hand, was standing in front of the Carousel when Danny Dennis swung his cab over to the side of the road and halted Mr. Washington. He looked around before getting in, as if to be certain that no one lurked nearby, as if something had caught his attention and he needed to know what it was.
Mr. Washington stomped his feet and shook his great white head, steam pluming out his nostrils. Danny Dennis said something to his fare, Nolan answered back. Minutes later they were gone, the clop of Mr. Washington’s hooves and the noise of the wheels scraping along the frozen roadway fading into the distance.
“He left something behind,” Prudence said, stepping out from among the trees. “I’m sure of it.”
“The briefcase was lighter. He carried it differently,” agreed Josiah. “I don’t suppose you’ll want to leave until we find out what it was.”
“We’ll wait a few more minutes. Just to be certain he doesn’t decide to come back.”
“He won’t, Miss. It’s too cold.”
“You also said he wouldn’t get out of the cab, Josiah.”
“Did I?”
“You did. But to be fair, so did I.”
It was the second time that afternoon Josiah would regret listening to Miss Prudence.
CHAPTER 26
“Do you remember where Nolan was standing when he disappeared?” Josiah laid one gloved hand on the arched neck of a dappled wooden steed whose immovable front legs pawed the winter air. He threaded his way in and out among rearing animals and small sleighs.
“I remember riding this Carousel when I was a child,” Prudence said, lost for a moment in nostalgia. “That horse over there was my favorite—the white pony with the blue saddle and reins. I always thought he was neighing at me. His teeth are all chipped now, poor thing.”
“Our driver said they’ll be freshened up for spring. That’s one of the reasons the ride closes down for a while. I have a bad feeling about this place, Miss. We need to hurry up.”
“Here, Josiah,” called Prudence. She had worked her way to the rearmost section of the shelter under which the Carousel stood. A jumble of equipment and bits and pieces of this and that had been piled against a back wall, presumably to be refurbished when the weather permitted.
A few feet away, off to the side, yawned a ramp leading downward into the earth. This was where the horse and the mule that powered the Carousel entered, where they were yoked to the mechanism that drove the circular platform on which the wooden horses above them galloped in frozen splendor. Round and round, day after day, stopping and starting again to the sound of the operator’s boot knocking against the wooden flooring right above their heads.
“I can’t see a thing,” Josiah said, peering down the ramp into what looked like a very large earth walled cellar. He paused to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness after the bright glare of ice and patches of snow in the park.
“Nolan had to have had a lamp,” Prudence reasoned. “And he would have left it here so he could come back to retrieve what he hid.”
“How long?”
“I think that depends on what it is. If it’s something he doesn’t want to destroy, then he only needs to hide it for as long as it could link him to one of the murdered girls.”
“Certainly to Sally Lynn.”
“Geoffrey says the vast majority of killings in New York City are never solved.”
“I doubt there’s much effort when the victim lives outside the law.”
“Or if she’s a servant,” Prudence said, thinking of Ellen Tierney and Nora Kenny.
“Here. I almost tripped on it,” Josiah said, triumphantly holding up a small lantern by its curved carrying handle. “It loo
ks like a carriage lamp. He must have taken it from Danny’s cab. The glass chimney is still warm.” He rummaged around in his coat pocket until he found a tiny box of safety matches.
Josiah had only recently begun to experiment with the cigarettes marketed in square paper packets, artfully decorated with green leafed lilies and swirls of gold curlicues. He’d never liked the cigars most men smoked, but he found these flavored and perfumed tobacco products both relaxing and delicious.
Will he never cease surprising me? Prudence thought as she lit the kerosene lantern. Holding it out in front of her, she slowly descended the ramp that was barely wide enough to allow a horse or a mule access to the round track beaten into the ground by hundreds of thousands of hoofbeats. For anyone who loved horses, it didn’t bear thinking about.
“It’s worse than I thought it would be,” Prudence said, lowering the lantern whose sputtering light was bright enough to be blinding when held too close to the face. “That must be where the Carousel’s operator sits.” She pointed up toward a rectangle of wooden ceiling between whose rough planks beams of daylight slanted into the cellar. It was like being in an abandoned mine, earthen walls reinforced with crudely planed wooden supports, dampness oozing into the glacial air to become icicles. Lumps of dried horse dung lay frozen to the ground.
“Where would he hide something?” Josiah asked. He turned in a slow circle, examining earthen walls, roof, and floor. “I’m looking for a hole dug out somewhere and then quickly filled in. Any kind of disturbance that seems different from the dirt around it.”
Prudence took the hissing lantern into dark corners while Josiah circled closer to the horse track, peering through the gray winter light that penetrated the operator’s platform. First one then the other reached out toward a promising spot, only to pull back, disappointed. Dampness sometimes made the earth look disturbed when it was only cold and wet.
“I was so certain he’d left something behind,” Josiah said. “So certain the briefcase seemed lighter when he came out.”
Lies That Comfort and Betray Page 27