Death, Diamonds, and Deception

by Rosemary Simpson

  “So you think he was running bets for somebody in the family?” Geoffrey asked, unobtrusively pocketing the betting slip he’d been examining.

  “Had to have been,” Phelan agreed. “And probably for quite some time.” He swept up the flurry of paper and stuffed the slips back into the envelope. “We’ll check the dates, but I think some of these will go back at least six months.”

  The real question, Geoffrey knew, was whether Leonard Abbott had been persuaded to place bets under his own name in order to conceal the identity of whichever De Vries man or men were using him as a go-between. It was a layer of protection that might have cost him dearly, especially if losses had mounted up and gone unpaid.

  Bookies seldom served as their own enforcers; they didn’t have to. Lives were cheap in New York’s underworld. Limbs could be broken or severed for less than the price of a new hat, and there were more than enough knifers eager to prove their worth. Dozens of ex-boxers stood ready to beat and kick what he owed out of a man. Suicide might have seemed the only alternative to the kind of maiming that would have left the aspiring valet an unemployable cripple for life. Unless he gave up a name. But who would believe him without proof?

  “You’ll have to pick your side, Hunter,” Phelan said. “I think your client is about to find himself in a very uncomfortable spot. And I’m not the one he’ll blame for putting him there.” He dragged a small ring box in distinctive Tiffany blue from the far depths of the single drawer of the bedside table, snapped it open, held it out for Geoffrey to see.

  It was empty.

  CHAPTER 10

  Phelan carried the empty Tiffany ring box and the envelope containing the betting slips downstairs where, according to the butler, Mr. De Vries would be pleased to speak with him in the parlor before he left the house. Phelan didn’t bother telling him he had no intention of vacating the premises until he damn well felt like it. And he’d yet to decide how much longer he was going to allow Geoffrey Hunter to shadow him. The private investigator hadn’t interfered, but Phelan didn’t like providing information while getting nothing in return.

  Phelan’s partner, Detective Patrick Corcoran, bustled through the front door as the mortuary men edged their way out. Late as usual. He had a broad Irish smile, piercing blue eyes, and no sense of time. As bent as everyone else on the force, he was also as good a cop as could be expected and better than some. Affable rather than short-tempered, he tried to avoid physically abusing suspects, preferring to bore them into confessing with seemingly unrelated queries and yarns that took forever to tell and went nowhere. Phelan considered him one of the best interrogators there was for the kind of job that needed to be done here.

  “Pat,” he said, “the staff is downstairs in the servants’ hall. Would you run them through the usual questions? We’ll want to know what contact they had with the dead man and anything they can tell us about the kind of valet he was. Also whether he seemed to have more money recently than could be accounted for by his wages.” He lowered his voice and half covered his mouth with one hand. “Dig up whatever dirt you can. And don’t spare the family.”

  “Do I ever?” Corcoran asked, touching his hat in Geoffrey’s direction. He usually ended up knowing more about a suspect’s background or a victim’s family than even the city prosecutor could ask for.

  Phelan watched as Corcoran and the butler disappeared through the green baize-covered door to the basement. He nodded to Geoffrey to follow him, then barged his way into the mansion’s main parlor without knocking.

  Whatever conversation the occupants of the room had been having stopped abruptly. As one, they turned to stare at the interloper who had thrust himself unceremoniously into their midst.

  The first thing Geoffrey took note of was Prudence’s presence beside Lena De Vries. Both women sat with straight-back perfect posture on a pale green Louis XV love seat, Lena’s hands lightly and comfortingly clasped in Prudence’s. From the swift upward motion of their heads, Geoffrey knew they had been conversing in whispers so the two men standing before the fireplace wouldn’t overhear what they said.

  William De Vries was the first to break the silence. It was his house.

  “Has what I requested you to remove been taken away, Detective?” he asked, eyes glancing meaningfully at the ladies.

  “It has, sir.”

  “Then I bid you good day. My butler will see you out.” De Vries turned back to the fire, extending his hands toward the warmth of the flames.

  “I’m afraid we have more business to conduct, sir.” Phelan strode across the room as if he owned it. “There’s questions that need to be asked and answered. And explanations to be given.”

  “Explanations?” De Vries turned around sharply, as if not believing what his ears had heard. A man of his standing did not explain anything to anyone.

  “It would probably be best to take care of these matters here, Mr. De Vries,” Phelan continued smoothly, “rather than down at the station.”

  “Perhaps we should hear him out, Uncle.” The younger man standing beside William laid a placating hand on De Vries’s arm, as if to urge him to bear with this buffoon for as long as it took to get rid of him.

  “And your name, sir?” Phelan asked.

  “I’m Everett Rinehart,” the young man said. “My late mother was Mr. De Vries’s sister. That makes me his nephew.” He extended a hand and smiled winningly, as though the police detective were a welcome guest.

  Geoffrey introduced himself, noting that Rinehart’s grip was that of a gentleman, neither too weak nor too strong, his palm warm and dry. He was dressed for business, in the kind of sober, dark suit meant to inspire confidence in his financial judgment. A solid gold watch chain stretched across his gray waistcoat, no doubt attached to an equally fine pocket watch, and he wore a gold signet ring on the little finger of his left hand.

  Geoffrey judged him to be in his late twenties, as handsome as any husband-seeking girl could wish for. Regular features, smooth dark blond hair cut conservatively, blue-eyed, clean-shaven except for a modest mustache, every facial feature sculpted and unblemished. Too perfect to be real. Glancing at Prudence, he saw that she had read his mind and was amused at what he was thinking.

  “We’ll need your address, Mr. Rinehart,” Phelan instructed. “And where to contact you during the business day.”

  “My nephew works in my office and lives here,” De Vries interrupted. “Though I see no reason why he should be subjected to your inquiries.”

  “In that case, I believe the deceased Leonard Abbott may have been serving as your personal valet, Mr. Rinehart. Is that correct?” Phelan flipped up the tail of his long coat and ensconced himself in a comfortable upholstered chair opposite Lena and Prudence, smiling politely at them. No one had asked him to sit down. He took his police notebook out of his pocket, uncapped one of the modern pens that carried its own ink, and poised it over an open page. “Is that correct?” he repeated.

  Lena seemed to study her husband’s nephew, waiting for his answer, though she certainly could have replied for him. The housekeeper informed her of everything to do with the indoor staff, including her assessment of their personal and presumably private conduct.

  “Leonard was learning on the job, so to speak,” Everett said, using the dead man’s first name as though he had never risen above the status of footman. “I had no real complaints against the young man. His performance was far from perfect, but he did seem to be trying his best. I cannot think why he would have done what he did.”

  “Are you a betting man, Mr. Rinehart?” Phelan asked. He watched De Vries trim a cigar, roll the cut end in his mouth, and set the tobacco afire with a gold lighter. He hadn’t asked his wife’s permission to smoke, and he seemed oblivious to the lack of common courtesy.

  “Only at my clubs,” Everett replied. “And rarely on anything more risky than a hand of cards.” He moved away from the mantel, gesturing to Geoffrey to be seated. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a one for sowing wild oats
.”

  That was an interesting remark to make, Geoffrey thought. It put him squarely in the category of well-to-do young men who could be considered relatively harmless to that season’s debutantes. Every mother’s dream, if his personal fortune was big enough. Prudence, he noticed, smiled at Everett in what Geoffrey reluctantly decided was a coquettish simper. Surely she didn’t believe a word of what he had said?

  “I would not have welcomed Everett into the firm had I not trusted him unreservedly,” De Vries added.

  Phelan nodded. “Do you recognize this, Mr. Rinehart?” In the palm of his outstretched hand the gold and tortoiseshell snuffbox gleamed in the reflected light of the fire. “Is it perhaps yours?”

  “I’m not partial to snuff, Detective. It’s a beautiful piece, but it’s not mine. More’s the pity.”

  “Mr. De Vries?”

  William took the box from Phelan and flicked back the lid with one practiced fingernail. He raised it to his nose, but carefully. “It’s not snuff,” he said.

  “Cocaine,” Phelan told him. “Very pure. And very dangerous.”

  “And you thought this belonged to one of us?” Restrained fury burned across De Vries’s cheeks. “How dare you?”

  “I had to ask, Mr. De Vries,” Phelan replied laconically. “We found it in the dead man’s trouser pocket.”

  “Then that’s your answer. He wasn’t in his right mind when he put the noose around his neck. Crazy mad with this drug! It’s a wonder he didn’t kill us all in our beds!”

  Lena let out an anguished cry, clutching Prudence’s hands so tightly her fingernails made red crescents in the skin.

  “Go up to your room, Lena,” De Vries ordered, reaching for the bellpull to summon her maid. “This is no conversation for a lady to hear.”

  No apology. No expression of remorse or concern for how he spoke to his wife in front of a vulgar policeman and a man he had hired to solve a mystery he didn’t want made public.

  “I’ll stay, William,” Lena said. She released Prudence’s fingers and folded her hands tightly in her lap. “I have a right to know what’s happening in my own home.”

  “I’d prefer you leave, Lena.” De Vries’s hand gripped the bellpull, but he hadn’t tugged on it yet. “I’m sure the events of the day have been both disturbing and fatiguing.”

  “I’ll stay,” she insisted. Two red spots burned in her cheeks. It was obvious that despite the effort it took to do so, she was determined to get her own way, even if it meant defying her husband. And probably not for the first time.

  The tension between William and Lena stretched like the taut string of a violin until it finally broke with an almost audible twang.

  “Suit yourself. But don’t complain later that I didn’t warn you.” De Vries let his hand drop and turned his attention back to Detective Phelan. The confrontation with his wife might never have happened. “Abbott would have been shown the door without a character reference had I known about this.” He set the snuffbox down as though it were dirtying his fingers. “It’s a filthy habit.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not all your footman or valet was up to,” Phelan said, taking a handful of betting slips out of the envelope in which they had been concealed.

  “There are no names on any of these.” De Vries passed some of them to his nephew, both men searching front and back for identifying initials.

  “Bookies don’t use them on the slips,” Phelan explained. “It’s safer all round.”

  “Then how do they get redeemed if the bet is won?” Everett asked.

  “The slip is as good as cash money,” Phelan told him. “And the bookie has his own records. Which, I might add, he keeps hidden where no one else can find them. If he knows what’s good for him.”

  “It’s another world,” De Vries pronounced. “One I have no wish to be a part of.”

  “Nor I,” Rinehart said, handing the slips he had been looking at back to Phelan. “Banking interests and the stock market provide all the excitement a gentleman could ask for.”

  Prudence glanced at Geoffrey, sitting as silent and motionless as a statue. He made a miniscule movement of his head, enough to let her know that this was Phelan’s game and he was content to let him conduct it however he chose. Observing the byplay between De Vries and his nephew, between De Vries and Phelan, was giving him insights into their characters he would put to good use later on. Geoffrey was nothing if not patient. It was sometimes all Prudence could do not to jump in and snatch the reins of conversation into her own capable hands.

  “He didn’t place all these bets for himself,” Phelan said. He fixed an accusatory glare on William De Vries, then on his nephew. “Someone else in this house was paying him to run them and hold the slips, someone who was afraid his weakness would be discovered.”

  Neither man said a word. Each returned Phelan’s stare with the perfect aplomb of a gentleman of means whose reputation is above reproach.

  “And then there’s this.” Phelan held out the robin-egg blue Tiffany ring box.

  Lena De Vries slid to the floor in a dead faint.

  * * *

  In the flurry of activity that followed Lena’s loss of consciousness, William De Vries managed to get rid of Detective Phelan and his partner. Like most men, they did their utmost to avoid being confronted with a woman’s weaknesses.

  “We’ll be back at a more opportune time, Mr. De Vries,” Phelan promised as he and his fellow detective were ushered toward the front door. Pat Corcoran had surged up from the basement with the servants summoned by their master’s repeated yanks on the bellpull that rang in the staff dining room where he had been questioning them.

  A cluster of chattering maids poked their heads around the baize-covered door to spy out what was going on that had made such a disturbance. All they saw were the backs of two plainclothes policemen disappearing out onto the street where a few passersby craned their necks past the uniformed officers urging them on their way. The morgue wagon had already left for Bellevue.

  Lena’s lady’s maid and the housekeeper fluttered around their mistress with smelling salts and brandy, chaffing her hands, covering her legs with a warm knitted throw, calling her name repeatedly. Her eyelids fluttered, opened, closed again.

  Prudence slipped her fingers onto one of Lena’s wrists, feeling for the pulse she had been taught to find when her father’s heart condition had worsened and he needed constant nursing. Strong and steady, she communicated silently to Geoffrey. Prudence had no illusions about the ways in which women evaded distressing moments. Whether this was a true faint or a ruse to avoid unpleasantness, the Tiffany-blue ring box was at the root of it.

  “Is she coming around?” William De Vries asked brusquely. He’d instructed the butler to serve whiskey to the gentlemen and ordered sherry poured for Prudence. There only remained the problem of getting his wife onto her feet and up the stairs to the chaise longue in her boudoir.

  The ring box at which they had all been staring when Lena slipped to the floor was nowhere in sight. He assumed Detective Phelan had taken it with him. Evidence that Leonard Abbott had been a thief as well as a gambler and a self-killer.

  Good riddance to him, William De Vries decided.

  * * *

  “She’s definitely hiding something, Geoffrey,” Prudence said as they walked arm in arm down Fifth Avenue toward their offices near Trinity Church. The gloomy winter clouds had lifted and the sky was a clear, bright blue. Snow crunched beneath their feet and bells tinkled on the harnesses of some of the horses pulling hansom cabs for hire. It was close to Christmas; the city was putting on its best face for the shoppers along the Ladies’ Mile.

  “Was it a real faint?” he asked. Gentleman though he was, his investigative instincts made him wary of convenient swoons.

  “Maybe,” Prudence said, reflectively. “But if she wanted to divert attention away from the Tiffany ring box, she certainly succeeded.”

  A flash of robin-egg blue showed against the black leather of o
ne of Geoffrey’s gloved hands.

  “You stole it!” Prudence exclaimed, skipping two quick steps in gleeful recognition of his criminality. “How on earth did you manage it?”

  “No one was paying attention to me, thanks to Lena De Vries and her vapors,” he said, smiling broadly. He handed the small box to Prudence, who opened and closed the lid several times and pulled sharply at the velvet lining.

  “Nothing,” she said, handing it back to him.

  “What did you expect to find?”

  “I don’t know. Something that would reveal to whom it belonged?”

  “I think Lena told us that.”

  “You think she recognized it?”

  “A tiny piece of the blue leather has been chipped off the corner. As though it was roughly handled at one time. You could see it quite clearly when Phelan held the box in his hand. She might have recognized it and realized in that instant that she had to do something drastic to avoid having to answer questions.”

  “Aunt Gillian has been right all along. Lena knew that some of the diamonds she was wearing the night of the ball were fake.”

  “I’m not sure I’d go that far. Not yet. Your aunt has a tendency to jump to conclusions without any proof to back them up.”

  “But Lena is the only one in the house likely to possess a ring purchased at Tiffany. Yet it wasn’t in the box. Where was it? And why was she afraid to admit that it was gone?”

  “And how did the empty box end up in the bedside table of a footman with aspirations to become a valet? Who put it there?”

  Prudence stopped so suddenly that a woman walking behind nearly bumped into her. “You don’t think it was Leonard Abbott himself, do you, Geoffrey?”