“I think someone wants us to believe it was,” he replied enigmatically.
“A third murder?”
“The jeweler who probably bought some, if not all of the diamonds; the assistant he hired to run dubious errands in and out of the Five Points; and now a servant who worked in the house where the theft had to have occurred. It’s too neat, Prudence. As though names on a list were being ticked off, item by item. I don’t like it.”
“Is William De Vries still our client?”
“For the time being.”
“Until he becomes a suspect?”
“Or the next victim.” Geoffrey tightened his hold on Prudence’s arm and scanned the street for an empty hansom cab. The sooner they got back to the office the better.
CHAPTER 11
“It’s time to shift our focus.” Geoffrey aligned the items on his desk into a precise row, tapping each one decisively as he placed it in the straight line he was creating. “We know almost nothing about Everett Rinehart and Lena’s son, yet both young men are living in the house where we presume the necklace was tampered with.”
Prudence watched, fascinated and amused, as he ordered his thoughts. “Lena’s son is Morgan Whitley,” she volunteered. “His mother rarely if ever mentions him in conversation. She’s either being very protective or she’s indifferent to him.”
Josiah, taking notes, approved Geoffrey’s straight rank of pen, pencil, inkstand, and paperweight. “Unconcerned about her own son?”
“Possibly. We don’t have enough information to decide whether she’s silent about him because she’s doting or uncaring,” Geoffrey said.
“Are we moving away from concentrating on how the theft itself was managed?” Prudence asked.
“From what we know at the moment, the substitutions most likely took place either at Tiffany or the De Vries mansion,” Geoffrey began, ticking off the steps of his reasoning. “If we eliminate Tiffany, the tampering had to have been initiated by someone at the De Vries home.”
“Has there ever been a theft of this magnitude committed by a Tiffany employee?” Josiah asked, fascinated as always by the unraveling of a case in progress.
“Two employees were caught and convicted after a series of minor thefts from the workrooms was discovered about twelve or thirteen years ago,” Geoffrey said. “It could have been an enormous blow to the Tiffany reputation, but they recovered quickly and put an elaborate system of anti-theft precautions in place. They started their own investigation the moment De Vries brought the necklace into the store for them to verify what Lady Rotherton had told him. We can count on Tiffany to be very thorough.”
“Motive, means, and opportunity.” Josiah made three columns on his stenographer’s notepad.
“Let’s leave motive and means aside for the moment,” Prudence told him. “Opportunity definitely encompasses anyone living in the De Vries home.”
“Which brings us back to staff and family,” Geoffrey agreed.
Josiah was listing names as fast as he could scribble them in the incomprehensible Gregg shorthand he had recently mastered.
“We said that Lena was definitely hiding something,” Prudence mused. “Could she possibly have stolen the diamonds from her own necklace?”
“There’s no reason to exclude her,” Geoffrey said. “It didn’t require a great deal of strength to pry the stones loose from the prongs holding them in place.”
“It would take skill and the right jeweler’s tools to remove the diamonds without damaging the settings, and we know that the maid Taylor had been taught how to care for diamonds by her father. Could Lena and Taylor have been working together? For some reason we don’t know if that speaks to motive?”
“Possibly. But could either or even both of them make a hanging look like suicide?” Geoffrey asked.
“We need more personal information about each one of the people in that house. Otherwise, we’re just speculating.” Prudence gestured toward their secretary. “And wasting Josiah’s time and paper.”
“I’ve got it all, Miss Prudence,” Josiah said. He prided himself on not missing a word of the conversations he transcribed.
“Do you remember Russell Coughlin?” Geoffrey asked.
“Ned Hayes’s reporter friend who works for the Herald?” Prudence recalled.
“He’s not on the society beat, but he’s always been able to discover the gossip that editors leave out of the stories they do print.”
“Will he share it with us?”
“If we promise to give him an exclusive on a story every other reporter in town will be scrambling for, I think he’ll cooperate. In fact, I know he will.”
“We can’t tell him about the theft of the diamonds without our client’s permission,” Prudence said. She didn’t want to remind him aloud that it was a matter of ethics. “You didn’t say a word to Detective Phelan about why De Vries hired us.”
“If possible, that’s the way we’ll keep things. It won’t be the first time. When the two murders we’re sure of and the murder made to look like suicide do get solved, and if the guilty party leads back to the De Vries household, we won’t have to compromise client confidentiality. The police and whoever confesses will do it for us. Coughlin will get details from an unidentified source that no other reporter has; inside stories are gold to newsmen.” Geoffrey ran his hand over the items he’d arranged so carefully on his desk, sending them scattering. “It’ll work. Trust me.”
* * *
Russell Coughlin met them in one of the side dining rooms of the Astor House, just a few steps across Broadway from the Herald building.
“Very few people in society come here nowadays,” he told Prudence, who had worn a veiled hat to conceal her face. “I don’t think you have to worry about being recognized. Businessmen still come for lunch in the Rotunda, but they rarely stray off to the smaller rooms.”
The Astor House had once been the most famous hotel in the country, but by now it had seen better days. Competition from newer hotels and the general move of Manhattanites northward toward Central Park and beyond had taken their toll. The fabric on Prudence’s chair was a bit frayed and the carpeting beneath her feet worn to the nap in places. The white linen tablecloth had been washed and starched too many times, and even the silverware didn’t gleam as brightly as it should.
Coughlin consulted his reporter’s notebook as soon as the waiter had taken their orders and left the table.
“As far as our society page reporter knows, William De Vries is as staid and respectable as they get. In New York, at any rate. She says there’s some talk among her British colleagues about what he gets up to when he’s in England, but nothing she can confirm. He makes business trips to London and the continent at least once or twice a year, but he goes alone, doesn’t take his wife with him. And while he’s there, he frequents the Marlborough House Set. The Prince of Wales and his friends are notorious for what they get up to, and the queen stays angry at Bertie, as he’s known in the family, all the time. But the newspapers are careful about what they print. They have to be.”
“What about the nephew and the stepson?” Geoffrey asked. From what Prudence had told him of Lady Rotherton’s comments about De Vries, he hadn’t expected anything different.
“The nephew is considered one of the most eligible bachelors in the city,” Coughlin said. “Up until about two years ago he lived with his widowed mother in a small town on the Hudson. Wickelton, population practically nothing. Went to Harvard, graduated with honors, received a small inheritance when he turned twenty-one. When his mother died, he sold the family home and came to live with his uncle, who took him into the banking and investment business. The story is that De Vries gave him an account to manage and challenged him to double its worth in one year. Which he somehow did. So the rumor is that De Vries will entrust him with more and more of the business until he becomes a full partner or takes it over entirely. That’s what makes the mothers of marriageable daughters invite him to their soirées.”
>
“That’s it?”
“Everett Rinehart seems to be living an open and charmed life. My contact says he’s a bore to cover. His only vice seems to be a love of sailing, but even there he’s not over his head. He owns a small boat that he takes out into Long Island Sound or the East River several times a month with some friends from Harvard. Four or five of them. The boat won’t hold any more than that. He hasn’t joined an expensive yacht club yet, but that would be the logical next step if he wants to get into racing and eventually a bigger boat. Right now it seems more a hobby than anything else. He has been seeing one young woman rather more than any others, so there may be an engagement on the horizon.”
“Do you have her name?”
“Lorinda Bouwmeester.”
“It sounds Dutch,” Geoffrey said. “Bouwmeester.”
“One of the Knickerbocker families. They’re as old–New York society as you can get. Old money, too.” Coughlin flipped to the next page in his notebook.
“Do you know the name, Prudence?” Geoffrey asked.
“I think you’d do better to ask Aunt Gillian. She may have spent the last twenty some odd years in England, but there isn’t much she doesn’t know about who’s who in New York. She would probably have married into that type of family if she hadn’t succumbed to the lure of a title.”
“I’ve saved the best for last,” Coughlin said, signaling to the waiter that he’d take another stein of beer. Roast beef, sliced fried potatoes, and a small mountain of pureed root vegetables had disappeared as though he hadn’t eaten in a month or more. And somehow the eating hadn’t interrupted his narrative.
But he waited to begin until the waiter had removed their plates, brought coffee for Prudence and Geoffrey, and a brimming stein of frothy beer for himself.
“Are either of you familiar with the Keeley Cure?” he asked.
“I’ve never heard of it,” Prudence said.
“According to Dr. Leslie Keeley, he’s discovered the cure for excessive alcohol consumption,” Geoffrey said, leaning back in his chair. “He claims drunkenness is a disease, and that’s how his institute handles it. Somewhere in a small town outside Chicago. He treats other addictions, but the main one is drunkenness.”
“That’s right,” Coughlin commented. “Are you acquainted with someone who’s undergone the treatment?”
“I looked into it for a friend. But he took a different direction.” Geoffrey didn’t need to mention Ned Hayes by name. Until Tyrus had taken over and tied him to his bed where he sweated and shook out the devils he’d swallowed and injected over the years, Ned’s condition had been the despair of everyone who cared for him. Most of the so-called cures for alcoholism were eventually proved to be quackery, but desperate cases called for desperate measures.
“A lot has been written about it in the Chicago papers,” Coughlin continued. “And there’s talk that Keeley will eventually open a branch of the institute in New York. But for now, anyone who wants to take the Gold Cure has to go to Dwight, Illinois.”
“Why is it called the Gold Cure?” Prudence asked. She had a reason for asking that far outweighed anything to do with the De Vries case. Deep in the most hidden recesses of her worst fears, Prudence had a horror of falling victim once again to the soothing, addictive balm of laudanum. She collected reports of treatments that promised to break the cycle of dependency the way other women accumulated bits of jewelry. Not even Geoffrey knew how often she awoke in the night sweating from a nightmare in which one swallow of the bitter-tasting liquid opium turned into a river of poison.
“The main treatment is daily injections of bichloride of gold,” Coughlin explained. “The formula is a well-guarded secret, but patients come to the institute and line up like trained monkeys four times a day to be jabbed in the arm with a needle by doctors who pass them along as fast as they can. Hundreds at a time. They’re also required to drink specially prepared tonics every few hours. Another secret recipe. And while they’re undergoing the treatment, they have to live in hotels and boardinghouses in Dwight because the only place they can get the injections is at the institute.”
“Women too?” Prudence shuddered. She had a sudden vision of herself in a long line of withered female addicts.
“The women receive the injections in their boardinghouses or hotel rooms. The institute cooperates to conceal their identities.”
“How long does the treatment last?”
“Four to six weeks, Miss MacKenzie. At the end of that time, Keeley declares the patient cured.”
“What about relapses? Surely not everyone is successfully treated.” Prudence knew that the majority of laudanum users drifted through what remained of their lives in a state of permanent reliance on the drug to get them through each day.
“Keeley says his cure is absolute, and if one of his patients begins drinking again it’s through choice and not need. As long as a patient keeps to the regimen, the doctor doesn’t admit to the possibility of failure.”
“And this is where Morgan Whitley comes in?” Geoffrey asked.
“No one boasts of taking the Keeley Cure,” Coughlin said. “But if a register of clients were ever made available, I’m told you’d recognize many of the names. Some of the nation’s most public figures, male and female both. Drunkenness isn’t reserved for the down and out, but it costs money to subscribe to a cure.”
“And Lena’s son has done that? Gone to Dwight, Illinois, for his bichloride of gold injections?” Prudence asked.
“Six months ago De Vries apparently gave him an ultimatum. Get cured or get out. And my source assumes that meant out of the house as well as the business. Something precipitated the situation, but my source doesn’t know what that was. Only that Morgan has been a fairly public drunk since his Harvard days. His stepfather took him into the investment firm when he graduated. It wasn’t until Morgan proved himself unable to make sound decisions that De Vries started leaning heavily on his nephew. What’s interesting is that the two young men appear to be friends. You’d think there would be animosity between them, some sort of cutthroat competitiveness at least. But there isn’t. Or if there is, it’s so well hidden no one has detected it yet.”
“It must be agony for Lena that her son is skating so close to the edge of ruin,” Prudence said. “That might be the reason she never willingly speaks of him. She knows his weakness could easily prove to be his undoing. As it has for so many others.” She felt a familiar tingle of apprehension travel up her spine.
“Morgan has until the end of the year to prove himself. I should point out that this isn’t the only ultimatum his stepfather has pronounced. There have been a number of them over the years. But Mrs. De Vries has apparently managed to talk her husband out of turning his back on her son all those other times. My source says it won’t happen again. Morgan isn’t a blood relative to De Vries; the nephew is. And De Vries doesn’t need Morgan now that Everett is turning out to be so much like his uncle.”
“The son Lena was unable to give him,” Geoffrey said. He knew firsthand about the crushing expectations fathers laid upon their male children.
“Mrs. De Vries is something of an enigma,” Coughlin added. “She was a Bergen before her marriage to Jacob Whitley. Two Knickerbocker families. Old names, old money. It wasn’t a love match, but the arrangement seemed to suit both of them. She’s related to Mrs. Astor through one of those complex cousin strands that takes a genealogical chart to unravel. When Whitley died, Lena was left to raise Morgan alone. No other children. She was expected to remarry and she did, again staying within the social milieu in which she’s always lived. De Vries is a much wealthier man than her first husband and perhaps that was one of his attractions. She must have thought he would eventually adopt Morgan, who might have been a difficult child from an early age. I’m just guessing now.” Coughlin put away the reporter’s notebook he’d been consulting from time to time.
“I’ll let Ned know we met,” Geoffrey said, rising to shake Coughlin’s hand.
“He was hoping to be able to join us.”
“I haven’t seen him in a few months. Is he still dry?”
“Tyrus keeps him on a tight leash,” Prudence contributed.
“I’d hate like hell for anything to happen to him,” Coughlin said. “He’s one of the good ones.”
“So is he,” Geoffrey commented as Coughlin wove his way through the tables toward the crowded Rotunda. “One of the good ones. For a reporter.”
“What next, Geoffrey?”
“We go back to the office and write a report for Josiah’s files.”
“And then what?”
“We contrive a meeting with Morgan and evaluate him for ourselves. Right now he’s the only member of the De Vries family we haven’t spoken to directly.”
“From what Coughlin said, he doesn’t seem to be accepted as a member of William De Vries’s family. Not if he has to prove himself or be thrown out into the street.”
“Lena won’t let that happen,” Geoffrey predicted. “She’ll move heaven and earth to make sure it doesn’t.”
“To protect her reputation and keep scandal from attaching itself to the family name?” Prudence asked. “Or because she loves him enough to force her husband into choosing between them if that’s the only leverage she has?”
“That’s what we don’t know,” Geoffrey said. “And what we’ll have to find out.”
CHAPTER 12
“Your Mr. Whitley is apparently not showing up at the De Vries offices with any kind of regularity,” Josiah reported. “I’ve telephoned several times for an appointment and they keep putting me off.”
“Do you think he’s drinking again?” Prudence asked. She’d been both fascinated and appalled by Russell Coughlin’s description of the Keeley Cure. Despite the doctor’s claim that his institute’s patients were restored to health and sobriety by the treatment, she knew from her own experience that the craving for laudanum was never entirely eliminated. She presumed it was the same for alcohol.
Death, Diamonds, and Deception Page 10