It was at that moment that Prudence appeared at his side, though she had been several steps behind him for nearly an hour. Unnoticed as he concentrated single-mindedly on the game whose willing dupe he had become.
“Morgan, is that really you?” she asked, slipping one hand through the crook of his arm. “It’s been so long I wasn’t sure.”
He stared at her for a moment, struggling to come back from the world of swirling numbers that repeatedly hurled him with dizzying speed from hope to despair. Pale brown hair, fair skin, regular features blossoming into beauty when she smiled. Gray eyes of a compelling clarity that drew you into their mesmerizing light. He’d only ever met one person with eyes like that. “Prudence! Prudence MacKenzie!” He looked around him, panicked; he’d spoken her name too loudly in the clickety-clack hush.
“Not to worry, Morgan. It’s perfectly respectable for a lady to accompany her elderly British aunt on an afternoon expedition to see the famous sights of New York City.” She gestured toward a regal woman of a certain age who was studying the single-zero European layout on one of the roulette tables.
Morgan paled. “Is she . . . ?”
Drat. Prudence hadn’t thought to allow for the fact that Lena had almost certainly told her son about the missing diamonds and how the theft came to be discovered. Everett Rinehart, during the initial police investigation of the valet’s suicide, hadn’t seemed to connect the death with anything but the betting slips and snuffbox Detective Phelan had shown them.
“My aunt Gillian. Lady Rotherton. Yes, she’s the one who first noticed that some of your mother’s diamonds had been replaced by paste. I didn’t realize you knew.”
“I don’t think William meant for me to be told. But Mother and I have no secrets from one another.”
Prudence laid her other hand on Morgan’s arm, steering him from the roulette tables toward a curtained alcove containing a cushioned banquette and table. Within moments of their reaching it, a white-gloved waiter asked what he could serve them.
“Whiskey,” Morgan said. “A double.”
“Sherry,” Prudence ordered. “Amontillado, if you have it.” It was the only sherry she could think of, having read “The Cask of Amontillado” numerous times in her father’s 1874 edition of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe. She’d always wondered what that particular sherry tasted like.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Prudence,” Morgan mumbled awkwardly, not knowing what else to say. It had been two years since Judge MacKenzie’s death, but they had been difficult ones for him, periodically marked with blackouts as he lost himself deeper and deeper in drink.
Morgan vaguely recalled attending the judge’s funeral, bending over Prudence’s hand, murmuring the polite phrases of condolence. The coldness with which his stepfather had spoken to his late friend’s widow. There had been a moment when he and Prudence had spoken privately, a few words only, but enough to rekindle the childhood understanding that had once connected them. When she raised her mourning veil, the beautiful gray eyes looking up at him had been lost and drifting in the drugged solace of laudanum. It had been a cold, sobering shock to recognize a mutual dependency.
“We both lost a parent when we were young,” Prudence said, as if reading his thoughts, willing them out of the depths of a bereavement that only another bereft child could fathom. “You’re fortunate to have your mother.”
“I remember the lawns on Staten Island,” Morgan said wistfully. “From when Mother and William visited there. Do you still have the house?”
“My father couldn’t bring himself to sell it,” Prudence said. “And neither could I.”
“Of course.”
“We’d already returned to Manhattan that fall, but as my mother felt herself weaken she asked to be taken back to Staten Island. My father could deny her nothing. When Mother begged to be carried out onto the porch so she could look at the water, Father bundled her in blankets and had the servants put warm bricks under her feet and tuck hot water bottles all around her. I’ll never forget the sight of them sitting together like that for hours, hand in hand.”
“Remind me of how old you were when she died.”
“Six. I was six.”
“My father had been dead for two years by then. I remember telling you that I had begun to forget what he looked like, and how terrible that made me feel. I meant it to be a comfort, but I don’t think it was.”
“Your mother had recently married William.”
“He was kind to me, but I always knew he wanted a son of his own.”
“That must have been hard for you.”
“Harder on Mother. She wept a lot during those early years of the marriage. Looking back I think it must have been every time she had to face the fact that a child had not been conceived.” He reddened and twirled the glass of whiskey from which he had not drunk. “I beg your pardon, Prudence. That was indelicate of me.”
“I’m sorry we drifted apart, Morgan.”
He shrugged. “It was to be expected. All we had in common as children was that both of us had lost a parent. I went off to school, as boys do, and I’m sure you had governesses. By the time of your coming out, I had begun to avoid balls and dinner parties. For the obvious reason.” Tales of his drunkenness had made the rounds of every parlor in town. There were few secrets in the enclosed world of New York society.
“I never came out, not officially.” Judge MacKenzie had died between Christmas and New Year’s, of an illness that had plagued him for weeks before his heart failed. The debutantes ball was traditionally held in December. Prudence’s white dress had hung unworn in her armoire until her stepmother ordered it burned. “After the year of mourning was over, I decided there wasn’t any point to it. I hope you’re not too shocked.”
“My mother told me that William hired Hunter and MacKenzie, Investigative Law, to solve the mystery of her missing diamonds. And that you’re the MacKenzie.”
“I am.”
“You haven’t let life overwhelm you, Prudence.”
“I have a weakness that I go to great pains to conceal. I’m not proud of it. Every day is a battle.”
“If anyone can understand that, I can.” Morgan’s hand tightened around the glass of whiskey he still hadn’t raised to his lips. “We were told at the Keeley Institute that the treatment would cure us and that if we fell into drunkenness again, it was because we chose that path, not because our body craved the drink too strongly for us to resist. The injections of bichloride of gold would make us physically sound. The tonics we drank and the meals we ate would restore us to health, as though we had never been debilitated by demon rum. The promise was that Doctor Keeley could work a miracle on us.”
“And did he?” Prudence asked.
“You tell me. Do I look like someone who’s been touched by the miraculous?”
He looked, Prudence thought, like a man on the brink of falling off a cliff. Far too thin, so pale the veins throbbing in his temples were as blue as the rivers bracketing Manhattan Island. The ringless fingers holding his glass of whiskey were almost skeletal, elongated, the brittle nails gnawed and cracked. She read despondency in Morgan Whitley’s eyes, in the furrows that lined his face, in the dark circles that testified to nights without sleep. He was far from being in good health. But was he desperate enough to have robbed his own mother? Was he even physically and mentally capable of concocting what had to have been a complex and dangerous scheme? She shook her head.
“That’s what I think when I see myself in the mirror,” Morgan said. “I wonder what a miracle is supposed to look like. The only thing I know for certain is that it doesn’t look like me.”
“Perhaps it takes time,” Prudence said, deciding to change the subject. “Tell me about William’s nephew. You’re about the same age. Does he understand the demons you’re battling?”
“I don’t think I would have lasted this long if it hadn’t been for Everett. We’re as close as brothers, though there aren’t any blood ties between us and he’s e
verything I’m not. My mother’s husband thinks Everett can do no wrong, and if you were to compare his successes to my failures, you’d come to the same conclusion. And to answer the question you’re too kind to ask, no, I’m not jealous or resentful of him. I said we were as close as brothers, and that’s true, but we’re also the best of friends.”
“Both of you work in the De Vries banking and investment offices,” Prudence prodded.
“That’s a long story that I’d rather not get into,” Morgan said, shifting the whiskey glass from right to left and right again, imitating the roulette ball’s search for a winning number. “I don’t go to the offices very often now. There doesn’t seem much reason for it.”
There was no point asking how he managed to cover his gambling losses. Prudence imagined that what he had inherited from his father had long ago trickled through his fingers. Lena must be financing him. She wondered if William knew. Surely his stepfather suspected.
“We sail together,” Morgan continued. “Everett has a boat. Nothing grand yet, but he’ll be a yachtsman to reckon with some day. For the time being, we sail on the East River and in Long Island Sound whenever the wind is steady.”
“Just the two of you?”
“No. There’s a whole crew from when we were undergraduates at Harvard. Four or five of us can always manage to show up. We’re sailing tomorrow morning, as a matter of fact.”
“Won’t it be too cold?” Prudence asked. She shivered, imagining the chill of being out on the water in a December wind.
“That’s the challenge of sailing in wintertime.” A flush of enthusiasm animated Morgan’s face. “It’s cold, but bracing. As long as you don’t fall overboard. And everybody brings a flask, so there’s plenty of whiskey to keep the blood flowing.”
“Would I know any of these friends of yours? Anyone crazy enough to enjoy nearly freezing to death?” Prudence asked, more to keep Morgan talking about something he obviously enjoyed than because she was interested in the antics of college classmates who hadn’t quite grown up.
“I doubt it. Though you might recognize the surnames.”
Again that acknowledgment of how small and inbred was the pool of New York society’s acceptable families. Prudence thought that if you went to the trouble of tracing their lineages, you’d find they were all distant cousins of one sort or another. New money and new blood married into the old, but the end result was the same.
Prudence caught Geoffrey’s eye across the room. She had the answers she’d come here to find. Time to leave Morgan to his own devices and rejoin her erstwhile chaperone. Who had piled up an impressive array of chips at the single-zero roulette table.
“I’m so glad to have run into you, Morgan,” she said, sipping the last dregs of her amontillado and gathering her gloves and reticule.
“Would you say it was fortuitous?” he asked, following her look. “I see your Mister Hunter over there. He’s kept his distance while we talked.”
Geoffrey and the ex-Pinkerton Amos Lang had nearly disappeared into the mirrored hallway outside the roulette room.
“I suppose I should congratulate you, Prudence. But I would have answered your questions without this elaborate stratagem.” Morgan stood, bowed correctly, and then bent over to kiss her cheek lightly.
In the moment before she moved away, she saw him lift the double shot of whiskey to his lips and drain the glass dry.
* * *
“He figured it out, Geoffrey,” Prudence said. She’d had last night and most of the morning to go over her conversation with Morgan Whitley.
“He must have been in the house somewhere and seen us arrive. I don’t recall having been introduced to him.”
“Morgan may not be as impaired as he would have you believe,” Lady Rotherton observed. She had settled comfortably into the Hunter and MacKenzie conference room, a steaming cup of imported English tea in front of her. Made according to precise directions she had written out and deposited on Josiah’s desk.
“It felt as though no time at all had passed since we were children together,” Prudence mused. “I can’t explain why exactly, but that was the feeling I had. And I remember now that he came to my father’s funeral.” Laudanum allows you to forget so much.
“He’s lost a great deal of money at the Mint,” Geoffrey said. “Amos managed to get hold of a copy of his account there. Morgan pays off just enough to be allowed to continue to gamble. Never the whole tab. And I suspect he’s in arrears in other places, as well.”
“The boy’s a drunkard,” Lady Rotherton said without the slightest suggestion of pity. “He’ll ruin himself and whoever is foolish enough to believe he can change. He can’t. None of them can.”
“He’s taken the Keeley Cure,” Prudence reminded her.
“Quackery,” Lady Rotherton snapped.
“Do we know enough to exclude him from a list of suspects?” It was always Geoffrey who brought their conversations back on track. “Josiah? And speak American, please.”
Josiah cleared his throat with a great sigh of put-upon affliction. “He has motive.”
“Of course he does,” Lady Rotherton interrupted. “Morgan needs capital. Funds. A bankroll. We all know that.”
“And he certainly had opportunity if the thefts took place in the De Vries house.” Josiah was not going to be scoffed at, even by Her Ladyship.
“What about means?” Prudence asked, struggling with the idea that someone who had been a childhood playmate could have become a thief.
“We can’t discount the lady’s maid, Taylor,” said Geoffrey. “I imagine it would be the work of a few minutes for her to make the substitutions. And they probably weren’t all done at the same time.”
“The first theft must have been the hardest,” Prudence said, following his line of thought. “He needs money, but can’t or won’t ask his mother to give him any more than she already has. So he exerts his not inconsiderable charm on her maid. Who strikes me as a very frightened and emotionally vulnerable woman.”
“With skills he doesn’t hesitate to exploit,” Lady Rotherton put in. “Young men have no moral scruples at all when they want something from a woman.”
“Instead of taking the necklace to Carpenter, he takes the stones,” Prudence continued.
“Cleaner and more efficient. If he’s caught, he can always say he bought the lot from a wholesaler and was taking them to be worked into a gift for a lady. And he’d probably be believed,” Geoffrey added.
“He spent six weeks at the Keeley Institute outside Chicago,” Prudence reminded them. “We need those dates.”
“Prudence?” Lady Rotherton’s use of her niece’s name was more command than question.
“He’ll tell me if I ask him.”
“Send a note,” Lady Rotherton instructed her. “It might be useful to have a sample of his handwriting.”
Josiah stared at her. He wondered how many men had penned love letters to the enchanting American turned British aristocrat. And what use she had made of them.
The same barefoot urchin who had brought Amos Lang’s urgent message to Geoffrey the day before scooted into the conference room. His nose dribbled beads of moisture and his hands were blue with cold, but he had on the boots and jacket Josiah had given him.
He handed Geoffrey a grubby piece of paper, then hopped from foot to foot as he waited for a reply.
“There’s been an accident,” Geoffrey said, tossing the note on the table. “Josiah, get word to Danny Dennis that we need him right away.”
“What’s happened?” Prudence asked, reaching for the coat she had laid on the chair beside her.
“Morgan has followed his valet’s example and taken the easy way out,” predicted Lady Rotherton, taking a last sip from her teacup.
“Two men went overboard from Everett Rinehart’s boat. Into the East River,” Geoffrey said, shoving his hands into his coat sleeves.
“Are they dead?” Prudence asked, wondering why she bothered. Of course they were. No one
could survive the river’s icy waters at this time of year.
“Amos doesn’t say. He saw them being pulled out onto the dock and driven off in a hansom cab. Someone shouted to take them to Bellevue.”
“They’re dead then,” Lady Rotherton said, settling the matter. “That’s where your city morgue is located.” She wondered if Josiah had made enough tea for her to have a second cup.
“It’s also the hospital closest to the East River,” Geoffrey reminded everyone. “It may be the infirmary for indigent cases, but it has an emergency pavilion as well. If anyone can save them, it’s the doctors and staff at Bellevue. They see injuries no one else does.”
Prudence picked up the note Geoffrey had let drop.
“I tell you he’s dead,” Lady Rotherton said, watching her niece’s face. “No use hoping for anything else.”
But Prudence whispered a quick, guilty prayer, begging to be assured that her conversation with Morgan at the Mint had not tipped him over the edge. The image of him tossing the contents of the whiskey glass into his mouth seared itself into her brain.
Please, God. Please don’t let him have taken a flask with him this morning. Not onto the slippery deck of a sailboat pitching through the waters of the East River. Please, God. No.
Amos Lang’s note had not mentioned Morgan by name.
CHAPTER 14
By the time Prudence and Geoffrey reached Bellevue, the two men who had been pulled out of the East River had been released from the Emergency Pavilion. Miraculously, one of them had rallied from his immersion in the freezing, contaminated water. The other was dying.
“We could do nothing further for him,” a doctor told them. He was a young man, sad faced and plainly exhausted by the succession of hopeless cases that poured through the hospital’s doors every day. “We’ve put him in a curtained alcove on one of the wards for the time being. The parents are arranging to take him home where he’ll be attended by private nurses and his family physician.”
Death, Diamonds, and Deception Page 12