Death, Diamonds, and Deception

by Rosemary Simpson

  “I don’t understand,” Prudence said, reading quick condemnation in her aunt’s eyes. “Surely the necklace wouldn’t have been turned over to anyone but you or Mr. De Vries.”

  “I didn’t know William had made the arrangements he did.” Lena hesitated, then explained, all in a rush. “He assumed I would be home, but by the time he telephoned to inform me that the Tiffany representative was on his way, I had already left. He was furious because it meant he had to leave his office. The necklace had to be put into a safe, and there was no one here who knew the combinations.”

  “I’m not sure I’m hearing this correctly,” Lady Rotherton interrupted. “On the day of the Assembly Ball you were out paying calls?”

  “The day before,” Prudence corrected.

  “That’s nearly as bad,” Lady Rotherton snapped. A lady devoted the utmost care to her appearance at all times, but never so meticulously as when she appeared at an important social function. It could and often did take days to complete all the preparations. To gad about in wintry New York weather the day before an Assembly Ball was nothing short of foolhardy.

  “I wasn’t exactly paying calls, Lady Rotherton.” Lena De Vries seemed to be acquiring a bit of backbone. “Had I known William intended that the necklace be delivered a day early, of course I would have made sure I was here to receive it. Since I did not know of his plans, I see no reason why I should have to explain my absence.”

  “So I suppose that you inspected the necklace sometime that evening?” Prudence asked. She knew it was on the tip of her aunt’s tongue to ask just where Lena De Vries had spent that important afternoon, and why her husband had not known where she was, but Prudence wasn’t ready to risk antagonizing William’s wife yet. Where she had gone wasn’t as important as who had handled the necklace between the time it left Tiffany’s vault and Lena’s appearance at the ball.

  “William had placed it in the library safe. He gave it to me before dinner and I handed it over to Taylor, my lady’s maid.”

  “You didn’t open the case and look at it?”

  “William and I both did. In the library. Neither of us noticed that anything was wrong.”

  “So Taylor cleaned the stones and the settings. And she didn’t suspect anything either?”

  “She told me before I went to bed that she’d only had to give it a light polish. I don’t wear it very often. But no, she didn’t remark anything out of the ordinary. And it was locked in the safe in my dressing room that night.”

  “Was there anyone in the house the day of the ball who was not a member of your regular staff?” Prudence asked.

  “No. I spent most of the day resting. Reading, writing letters. Getting ready.”

  “Why don’t you wear it very often, Lena?” Lady Rotherton asked before Prudence could stop her. “It isn’t every woman who can boast of owning a necklace literally made for a queen.”

  Lena flushed a pale shade of pink with two red spots high on her cheekbones, the only sign that Lady Rotherton’s remark had touched a nerve. Her hands remained in her lap and her fixed smile never wavered.

  “Is it because the original necklace was to have been crafted to celebrate the birth of a royal son?” Lady Rotherton spoke so softly that Prudence wasn’t sure she had heard her correctly.

  “I have a son,” Lena De Vries whispered.

  “But William doesn’t,” Lady Rotherton said.

  * * *

  “It’s been a while since I’ve been down here,” Ned Hayes told Geoffrey as Danny Dennis’s hansom cab inched its way along the muddy, unpaved streets of Lower Manhattan. This dangerous, gang-ridden section of the city held a peculiar fascination for the former Confederate officer and once star detective of the New York City Police Department. During his deeply drug and alcohol addicted years, when fellow officers and newspaper reporters who watched his every move were betting on how long he would last before one of his twin loves killed him, the Five Points had given him both anonymity and as much morphine and cheap booze as he could consume. That he’d survived at all was only because after he’d saved Billy McGlory’s life, the saloonkeeper had put the word out on the street. Ned Hayes wasn’t to be touched, and the white powder he bought wasn’t to be cut with rat poison or anything else that would leave him convulsing in the gutter.

  They had a sketch of the yellow-haired young man with a squint, a likeness the haberdasher had sworn was close enough to what he remembered of James Carpenter’s assistant to make him recognizable. The sweeper boy who claimed to have seen him in the Five Points verified the resemblance and thought the sighting had been on Mulberry Street, right where it curved into the area known as Mulberry Bend. “He was walking along with his hands in his pockets, like he was thinking real hard about something and not paying attention to who was coming up behind him,” the sweeper had recalled. “I’m sure it was him because I saw him turn the corner off Fifth Avenue and go toward Carpenter’s the very next day.”

  Geoffrey gave him a nickel for his trouble.

  “We’ll start on Mulberry Street,” Ned directed Danny. “It’s the only clue we’ve got.”

  Danny parked Mr. Washington in front of a saloon whose bouncers he knew by sight and a previous adventure best not mentioned. The big white horse bared his teeth and the bouncers nodded an okay. If Danny chose to step down from his high driver’s perch at the rear of the hansom cab, he’d be in no danger. Neither would his property. They’d keep a weather eye out and ensure that the denizens of Mulberry Bend took as wide a detour around Mr. Washington as the crowded roadway and deeply pocked sidewalk allowed. Neither of the bouncers recognized the fellow Danny and his toffs were looking for.

  An hour later Geoffrey and Ned had completed a circuit of the block where the sweeper boy claimed to have spotted their quarry. No one would admit to having seen him. And, as one of the shopkeepers pointed out, with the Five Points being heavily Italian and Irish now, a thatch of Nordic blond hair would have stood out like a sore thumb.

  “There’s one more possibility,” Ned decided. “I should have thought of it before we started slogging through the mud.” He shook heavy clods off the boots his manservant Tyrus had polished to a bright gleam that morning. “I’ll owe him a poker night for this,” he said disgustedly. The octogenarian ex-slave who had been his childhood guardian and body servant during the war considered it his bounden duty to keep Young Master in check by regularly humbling him at cards.

  “What’s that?” Geoffrey asked, continuing to scan the crowds pushing their way along the busy road. Mostly men. The streets of the Five Points were dangerous for women except in the open-air markets where vegetables that weren’t good enough for uptown tables were sold at deep discounts. The more rotten they were, the cheaper the price.

  “Mama Oshia. If she’s still here,” Ned said.

  Mama Oshia was the voodoo healer who had nursed Billy McGlory back to health in a tiny tenement room hung with dried animal parts, strong-smelling roots, and faceless dolls waiting for a spell to animate them. How she got from Louisiana to New York City was a mystery she’d never revealed, but she’d recognized a kindred spirit in Ned Hayes when he’d declined to arrest her for hexing an especially vicious pimp. They’d shared whiskey, white powder, the hallucinogenic nightmares of a particularly nasty angel’s trumpet and, occasionally, a bed. She was old enough to be Ned’s grandmother, but that hadn’t mattered to either of them.

  Mama Oshia was reputed to know everything that went on in the Five Points and everyone who lived there. On both sides of the law.

  Geoffrey had never met her and Danny Dennis refused to take Mr. Washington to the street where Ned Hayes had last visited her.

  “He wouldn’t be safe there,” Danny said, choosing not to elaborate. “We’ll wait for you here.”

  He made the sign of the cross as the two men disappeared down the street.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Perhaps you have questions for my maid,” Lena De Vries managed after several moments of pain
ful, emotion-charged silence. “She’ll be able to supply you with the dates when the necklace was worn. There’s really nothing more I can tell you.”

  Without waiting for Prudence to reply, Lena summoned the butler and gave him instructions. “Ask Taylor to come to the parlor. She’s to bring my wardrobe record with her.” She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “You may tell Cook that luncheon will be delayed.”

  “I’m sure there’s no need for that,” Prudence said.

  “It’s no trouble,” Lena assured her. “Our midday meal is taken en famille, as it were. William often lunches with colleagues or clients.”

  “And your son?” Lady Rotherton asked.

  Prudence wondered where she got the gall to mention him again.

  “En famille, as I said.” Lena’s cheeks flushed red, but she kept her composure and volunteered no further information. She smiled at Prudence, but when her eyes met Lady Rotherton’s, a gleam of something strong and stubborn shone in them and the smile grew taut and fixed.

  Taylor was a small, thin woman of uncertain age, dressed entirely in modest, unrelieved black, as was required of a lady’s maid. Her hair was pulled back unfashionably tight into a low bun from which no stray locks escaped, and the only jewelry she wore was a pair of jet earrings. Spectacles dangled from a hook on her corseted bodice. In her right hand she carried a leather-covered ledger, pencil neatly tucked into the binding.

  “I brought what you asked for, Mrs. De Vries,” she said, holding out the book. Her voice trembled.

  “Miss MacKenzie is helping with the investigation into how the Marie Antoinette necklace could have been tampered with,” Lena explained. Introductions would have been improper, so none were made.

  “Specifically, I would like the dates when the necklace was worn,” Prudence began. “When it arrived at the house, who brought it, and who signed for it. Whether it was put into a safe, and if so, which one. At what time it was removed from the safe for Mrs. De Vries to wear, and when it was locked up again. It goes without saying that I shall require the type of event to which it was worn.”

  “And whether Tiffany cleaned the diamonds or you did,” Lady Rotherton put in sharply.

  “I’ve always been the one to clean them, madam,” Taylor stuttered. “I use only the gentlest soap and the softest polish cloths. Sometimes jewelers employ a cleaning paste that can leave a residue and a bit of an odor. It’s usually a job that’s left to an apprentice to do. They’re not always as careful as they should be.”

  “And how do you know that?” Lady Rotherton demanded.

  “My father was a jeweler,” Taylor answered. “He crafted settings into which the designer’s stones were placed.”

  “And he taught you how to work with diamonds?”

  “He did.” Taylor’s eyes gleamed brightly. Her father had died too young, sight clouded and back bent by years of close work over a jeweler’s table.

  “May I see the wardrobe record?” Prudence asked. She paged through the book, noting as she did so that every entry was dated, neatly inscribed, and followed by the initials A.T. Included were the details of what Lena De Vries had worn in the morning, at luncheon, for afternoon calls, for tea, for dinner, to the opera, the theater, and the balls that were the high points of every social season. Notes were made of cleaning and repairs made to each garment and pair of shoes or boots. At the beginning of every inscription was the most recent preceding date on which the garment had been worn. It was possible to leaf backward through the record and reconstruct the life of every item in her boudoir. When it was purchased, from which couturier, the occasions on which it was worn, when it was finally discarded. Prudence wondered whether she could expect Colleen to adhere to such a system, then swiftly discarded the idea. The life she was fashioning for herself was not that of a society icon whose every outfit was subject to intense scrutiny and imitation.

  “The initials A.T. are yours?” she asked.

  “Yes, miss.”

  Prudence waited.

  “My first name is Amelia,” Taylor said, glancing at her mistress.

  Lena De Vries nodded, as if to indicate that she hadn’t forgotten Taylor’s Christian name, though it was never used when referring to her.

  “Is there no separate list kept of when Mrs. De Vries’s jewelry was taken out of the Tiffany vault?” Lady Rotherton asked. She had scanned the wardrobe record pages as Prudence turned them, and generally approved Taylor’s method of keeping track of her mistress’s possessions. Improvements could be made, however; that was always true.

  “No, my lady,” Taylor answered.

  “I wonder why not.”

  “I didn’t think it necessary,” Lena said. “I’ve found Taylor’s records quite sufficient for my purposes.” Which she didn’t need to emphasize were essentially to ensure that she didn’t appear in the same gown at functions where it was likely to be recognized as having been worn before.

  “I don’t need to take this record with me,” Prudence said. “But it would help a great deal if you could extract from it the specific information I’ve asked for. Most important is a list of the dates on which the Marie Antoinette necklace was removed from the vault and the events to which it was worn.” Prudence returned the wardrobe record to the woman who had compiled it. All of the other details of how Lena dressed on a daily basis muddied the water. They were overwhelming in their detailed precision.

  “You may get right to work on that, Taylor,” Lena instructed. “I’ll have it sent to your office, shall I, Prudence?”

  It was as obvious a dismissal as a polite hostess could make.

  * * *

  The building in which Mama Oshia had nursed Billy McGlory back to health after the gunshot wounds that should have finished him off was a five-story brick tenement that appeared to be better maintained than its neighbors. There were no broken windows on the ground floor and the front stoop had been recently swept. The garbage bins were chained together outside the door to the basement, lids secured so the contents wouldn’t be strewn across the sidewalk.

  “You see this every now and then in the Five Points,” Ned Hayes said. “It usually means someone of importance to the neighborhood lives there.” He opened the front door and stepped into a dark hallway. Geoffrey followed, his coat unbuttoned for quick access to the revolver holstered under his shoulder.

  An elderly woman bundled in several layers of ancient sweaters, head swathed in a black kerchief, was moving a broom across the floor with unsteady, though determined strokes. When she turned to face them, her milky eyes registered no change as the shaft of light from the doorway lit up a small pile of dusty debris nestled atop a sheet of newsprint.

  “I’m looking for Mama Oshia,” Ned called out. The blind sweeper was likely to be deaf also. A lifetime of hard manual labor and near starvation took its toll on men and women alike. Few of them lived into old age, and those who did were usually severely handicapped.

  “She’s up where she always is,” the woman replied. “Top floor at the front. Been living in that window apartment for as long as I can remember.”

  There were no windows along the sides of tenement buildings. Except for the two apartments on each floor that faced front and back, the rooms were as dark as midnight and smelled of poverty, cabbage, urine, no ventilation, and too many people packed into too small quarters.

  Mama Oshia’s door opened as they climbed to the top of the narrow wooden staircase on the fifth floor. She stepped out onto the landing, fists on ample hips, a broad smile creasing her fleshy face.

  “I knew you was comin’ today, Mr. Ned. All the leaves fell off my tea plant yesterday.”

  “That doesn’t sound very good, Mama.” Ned stood to one side. “This gentleman with me is Mr. Geoffrey Hunter. He was a Pinkerton at one time.”

  “I won’t hold that against him,” she said, running deep-set black eyes over the two men. She flashed a white-toothed smile that lit up her dark face. “You’d best come inside where we can talk
about the bidness that brung you here.” It went without saying that as soon as Ned had turned in her direction one of her street boys had come running with the news. She already knew the name of the person he was looking for.

  Walking into Mama Oshia’s apartment was like being transported back to Bradford Island off the coast of Georgia, where Geoffrey and Prudence had sailed in May to a wedding that became a murder. Where two wise women named Aunt Jessa and Queen Lula had built log cabins hidden deep in live oak groves. Where the walls and ceilings of those one-room shacks sprouted dried herbs and dangling corn husk dolls waiting for spells to be cast and lives changed. The sights and smells were the same, as were the dozens of candles covering every surface, the gilded images of the Virgin, and the darker faces of a pantheon of voodoo saints. It was a blood part of the old-time South that Geoffrey would never be able to wash from his veins.

  Mama Oshia lit a black candle in front of a miniature altar on which stood one of the faceless corn husk dolls.

  “Is that him?” Ned asked. “Yellow hair and a squint?”

  “It might well be,” Mama Oshia answered.

  Ned laid a stack of silver coins before the altar, hesitated a moment, then added a Liberty Head half eagle five-dollar gold piece. A king’s ransom in the tenements.

  “I reckon that’s him all right,” Mama Oshia said.

  “What can you tell us?” Ned took a small leather notepad out of his jacket pocket and licked the tip of a sharpened pencil. Habits learned when he was a policeman died hard.

  “Showed up around here about a year ago. Thought too much of himself to turn a hand to the heavy work down at the docks or in the slaughterhouses. Knew how to read and write, pick a lock and a pocket. Not slow with a knife, but he didn’t have a good head for the kind of liquor he could afford to buy, so he ended up on the wrong end of bar fights. Disappeared for a while. When he came back, he had cash money, enough to rent a room and buy a woman. He’d come and go, and rumor had it he was working the streets up around the Ladies’ Mile. That’s off limits. Police headquarters sent the word out. Anybody caught lifting anything up there can say his prayers because the third degree will be too good for him. No negotiating. Strictly off limits.”