Death, Diamonds, and Deception

by Rosemary Simpson

  Again, Geoffrey waited.

  “He dragged Aubrey into the scheme with him. They both needed money, and I suppose Morgan thought no one would notice if he only pilfered some of the stones. Or maybe he believed Lena would cover for him if she discovered what was going on. He threatened or blackmailed his valet and Lena’s maid into helping him. Leonard Abbott committed suicide rather than be sent to prison, and I expect to wake up tomorrow morning and find out that Taylor has packed her bag and left during the night.”

  “If you’re right about this, Lena will be devastated,” Prudence said. William’s theory created such a neat, self-contained package that it made her uneasy. If the police were kept out of it, there was no need for Morgan’s part in the crime to be made public. The whole distasteful episode would be swept under the carpet.

  But three men were dead.

  “Are you asking us to find the proof of what you’re alleging?” Geoffrey was often blunt and to the point when something annoyed him.

  “Yes.”

  “What will you do with it?”

  “I think it’s obvious that Morgan cannot be allowed a position of trust in either the banking or investment areas of my business. Not for some years and never without supervision. He failed the Keeley Cure and began drinking again. But there is a new morphine treatment being administered in a clinic in Switzerland. It may be the last resort in the handling of dipsomania. Morgan has to admit his fall from sobriety and repent of his theft. If he does that, I could be persuaded to make it possible for him to be admitted to the Swiss clinic as a patient and to remain there for as long as the doctors deem necessary.”

  “That’s very generous of you,” Prudence murmured, shocked and horrified at the idea that injections of morphine would be used to combat a thirst for alcohol. Substitute one mind-altering substance for another? The premise seemed ludicrous. How could anyone seriously believe it would work? And then she remembered how much private clinics charged to hide their patients from the outside world. How easily they duped rich clients into believing that the more something cost, the higher its quality. And how easily Morgan could be made to disappear until even the New York City newspapers forgot about him.

  “What we find may not indicate that Morgan is your thief,” Geoffrey said.

  “He is. I’m certain of it,” De Vries repeated.

  “Is there anything you’re not telling us?” Geoffrey asked. “Something you’re holding back?”

  “Lena said that Taylor has already confessed to being the daughter of a jeweler.”

  “I’d hardly call it a confession,” Prudence commented, trying to keep their client from leaping to yet another dubious conclusion. “She simply told us that her father trained her in the art of cleaning and caring for diamonds and other precious stones. That doesn’t make her guilty of tampering with Mrs. De Vries’s necklace.”

  “I want this matter settled. I want it dealt with quickly and quietly.”

  “The police will continue to investigate your valet’s death,” Geoffrey reminded him.

  “That can be seen to,” De Vries declared.

  So, added to the enormous cost of a clinic in Switzerland to get Morgan out of the way, his stepfather was prepared to bribe a New York City detective to conclude that Leonard Abbott’s death was a suicide. Once again, Prudence thought, the power of money would twist truth and conceal facts.

  “We’ll continue the investigation,” Geoffrey said. “But I can’t guarantee you’ll be satisfied with what we find.”

  * * *

  “We need to know who bought the diamonds,” Prudence said, starting yet another list in her notebook. Josiah’s organizational habits were rubbing off on her.

  “I set Ned Hayes to working on that.” Geoffrey spun the stone that Prudence had found on the floor of Carpenter’s jewelry shop. It glittered like a teardrop and shot out fragments of light. “Without an accounts book, he says it’s probably a lost cause.”

  “Is there a chance the book could still be there?” Prudence asked. “Hidden somewhere the police haven’t looked?”

  “I doubt Detective Phelan would tell us if they’d found it.”

  “But we have our sources within the police department. Josiah pays them regularly and complains about it just as often.”

  “The book hasn’t turned up,” Geoffrey said. “We would have heard right away.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “The police searched the shop and then turned his apartment upside down. Nothing there either. No wife, no children, not even a cat to keep the rats under control.”

  “Where was he living?”

  “About eight or nine blocks from the store. On a back street that’s mainly rooming houses and a few larger buildings that aren’t quite tenements, but nothing you’d want to live in any longer than you had to.”

  “I don’t understand. He was dealing in stolen diamonds,” Prudence said. “Surely he could have afforded something better.”

  “Probably. But my guess is he had to spend a lot on rent for the store off Fifth Avenue. I think Carpenter was new at the game he was playing. He hadn’t graduated to the big time yet, so he wasn’t getting top dollar for the stones he was selling. He was a trained jeweler; there’s no doubt about that. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d also been a fence at one time.”

  “Is that all?” Prudence asked.

  Geoffrey shrugged. “I think we can close the book on Mr. James Carpenter. For the time being, at least. His body will be in Potter’s Field in a few days, if it’s not there already, and his landlord has undoubtedly got new tenants in the rooms he was renting. The only way we’re going to find out who killed him is if whoever stole the diamonds confesses to the murder as well. And we’re a long way from being able to name a suspect.”

  “I wish we could take another look around the jewelry store.”

  “Shops don’t stay empty longer than a few days in that area, Prudence. A week at the most.”

  “But don’t the police have to release the scene of a crime before it can become business as usual again?”

  Geoffrey rubbed the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand together.

  “I always forget that bribery is the oil that greases the city’s wheels,” Prudence said ruefully.

  “Carpenter was occupying a valuable piece of property.”

  “Humor me. Just this once. Danny Dennis could have us up there in no time.”

  “What do you think you’ll see?”

  “I don’t know. But if we don’t go, I’ll always wonder.”

  * * *

  What they saw outside the shop on Eighteenth Street was a pair of rubbish bins waiting to be picked up by one of the private companies that serviced the area. The eight-year-old Department of Street Cleaning wasn’t functioning much better as an independent city administration than it had when it was attached to the police department. No one depended on it to haul away their trash.

  Danny Dennis pulled Mr. Washington as close to the curb as he could. Geoffrey handed Prudence out, steering her away from the puddles of horse urine and piles of manure that the street urchins hadn’t swept away.

  “It looks like the next tenant is already moving in,” Geoffrey said once Prudence was safely out of the street and on the sidewalk.

  “As long as we’re here . . .”

  “You’re stubborn enough to become either a great detective or a first-class nag. You do realize that, don’t you?” But Geoffrey smiled as he said it, and he kept hold of Prudence’s hand.

  “Just for a moment.”

  “He won’t thank you for getting in his way.”

  “The customer is always right, Geoffrey. And that’s what I am. A potential customer.”

  “You don’t even know what’s going to be sold here.”

  “Does it matter?”

  The man who was dragging another, smaller rubbish bin out of the storefront paused when he saw a handsomely dressed couple looking inquisitively at his newly
rented property.

  “We won’t be open for business until next week,” he said, wiping his hands on a gray canvas apron that covered his clothing from chest to knees. “Manfred Gruner, at your service, sir. Madam. Watchmaker extraordinaire.”

  “Watchmaker. How wonderful,” Prudence said. “My late father’s gold watch hasn’t run properly since the day he died.”

  “I’d be proud to have you as my initial customer,” Mr. Gruner said. “I can promise it will be the first item I work on.”

  “That’s very kind of you.” Prudence glanced down at the debris in the rubbish bin. She could have sworn some of the broken tools looked like the ones that had been strewn around Carpenter’s workroom. “Such a shame, what happened to Mr. Carpenter,” she said.

  “Did you know him?”

  “He had some lovely pieces. Nothing terribly expensive, but the workmanship was good and the designs very new and fresh.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, miss, never having met the man.” Gruner suddenly waved his arms over his head. “Here now, get that horse away from my bins,” he called out. “I don’t want him pulling that stuff out all over the street. They’ll charge me extra for whatever’s not in the container.”

  Danny Dennis took hold of Mr. Washington’s bridle and eased the great white head toward the street.

  “I didn’t get his feed bag on fast enough,” Dennis explained when he handed Geoffrey a damp, slightly chewed accounts book. “Careful now. Something smelly and rotten has soaked into the cover. That’s what he was after. He does like a soft apple or a head of lettuce now and then.”

  Prudence refrained from saying I told you so.

  But only just.

  * * *

  The accounts book told them almost nothing about James Carpenter’s illicit business of buying and reselling precious stones of dubious provenance.

  “This is why he crossed the line into dealing in stolen goods,” Geoffrey said, pointing to a set of figures at the bottom of one of the pages. “He wasn’t making enough to be able to continue renting his shop for very much longer. He appears to have lost some commissions from the larger jewelry houses and wasn’t able to make up the difference.”

  He turned several pages and found a much larger sum at the bottom of a long column of figures. “Here we are. I’d guess that this is the first result of his foray into a life of crime.”

  “But there’s nothing identifying either the gem, who brought it to him, or to whom he sold it,” Prudence said. The line on which the transaction was recorded contained only a monetary amount, in stark contrast to the entries on the rest of the page. “He was being very cautious.”

  “But he couldn’t resist putting his profit in writing where he’d have the pleasure of looking at it whenever he wanted. It wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else, but to James Carpenter it shouted success.”

  “There is a date,” Prudence said. “That should tell us something.”

  “I’ll have Josiah go through the book from front to back and copy out all of the dates and sums where an entry is otherwise blank,” Geoffrey said. He rifled the pages. “There doesn’t appear to be too many of them. That would support the idea that he was new to the scam and hadn’t been involved in it for very long.”

  “Nothing we’ve seen here connects him either to Lena’s maid, Taylor, or to the valet who hanged himself.” Though she hadn’t seen the body dangling from the rafters, Prudence’s mind had created a vivid mental picture that made her shudder every time she thought of it. “I know I shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but William De Vries has done exactly that, and I can’t seem to shake off his assumptions.”

  “Morgan is an obvious suspect,” Geoffrey agreed.

  “I doubt William has ever really warmed to him. Every time he looked at Morgan he had to be reminded that he didn’t have a son of his own. That Lena failed him. And now he must know it’s too late unless he gets himself a younger wife.”

  “He’ll be looking for an excuse to free himself from Lena if that’s the way his thoughts are turning.” Geoffrey had seen it happen so often that it no longer surprised him when men who married more than once chose new partners half their age.

  “Geoffrey. Think about this for a moment,” Prudence urged. “All of the maids who left the De Vries household over the past few years were provided with a good reference, according to what I found out at the Wentworth Agency. Which means none of them could have been dismissed because of pregnancy.”

  “Perhaps they left before the condition was discovered.”

  “Not likely,” Prudence said. “Maids who find themselves in the family way hang on for as long as they can, hoping they’ll miscarry naturally or trying home remedies to make them lose the baby. Housekeepers keep a sharp eye on their waists. They know who’s stepping out and whether one of the gentlemen of the family is in the habit of taking advantage of his position.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It might not be Lena’s fault that William doesn’t have a son by her. Isn’t that possible?”

  “I’m not a doctor, Prudence.”

  “If it’s true,” she said, ignoring his protestation of ignorance, “and William suspects that it might be, his resentment of Morgan would have grown over time. He’d be quite willing to get him out of the house where he wouldn’t have to see him every day across the dinner table. Hence the Swiss clinic.”

  “And the eagerness to find him guilty of the theft of the diamonds.”

  “Without any kind of proof at all. Not even any circumstantial evidence. Just the fact of his excessive drinking and gambling. He needed money, so he must have stolen his mother’s diamonds. Q.E.D.” Would Geoffrey agree? “Quod erat demonstrandum,” she added for good measure.

  “William didn’t bat an eye when I told him that our investigation might not prove Morgan guilty.”

  “He’s too good a businessman to admit of an outcome he can’t control,” Prudence said. “And my father often told me that a lawyer who was worth his salt never let the idea of absolute truth enter into his pleadings. Truth becomes whatever version of reality can be proved.”

  “I think you’re becoming more cynical with every case we work on,” Geoffrey said. “Not that I’m objecting. I just find it interesting.”

  “The only one who can tell us how William has treated his stepson over the years is Lena,” Prudence continued.

  “She won’t reveal anything that might paint an unfavorable portrait of her son,” Geoffrey argued.

  “Do we take William’s resentment of Morgan for granted?”

  “I think we have to. He sees himself as protecting her son for his wife’s sake,” Geoffrey hypothesized. “That and the bitterness he must feel toward Morgan blind him to any possibility other than the one he’s put forth. So we’re up against a wall of suspicion and antagonism that we may not be able to breach.”

  “Much as I hate to admit it, we can’t ignore the fact that William could be right. Morgan might very well be the guilty party.”

  “We need to move on, Prudence.”

  It seemed to her that with every new discovery, they stepped backward. Could you build a case out of negatives?

  CHAPTER 16

  Prudence stared at the four lists she had laid out on the conference room table.

  One, in Amelia Taylor’s neatly cramped, lady’s maid handwriting, itemized every occasion on which Lena De Vries had worn the Marie Antoinette diamond necklace. In each instance except the most recent one, Lena herself had signed for the delivery from Tiffany’s vault.

  Josiah had put together the second list from the accounts book Mr. Washington had pulled from the rubbish bin outside the late James Carpenter’s jewelry shop. It had lain for a full day beneath the globe of a gas lamp, emitting a faint stench of rotted vegetation as the pages dried out.

  Amos Lang had brought the third list, along with a notation of the bribes he had been paying a cooperative clerk in the Mint’s accounting department. Au
brey Canfield’s gambling debts, sporadic payments, and frequent episodes of monumentally bad luck at the tables were depressing testimony to the waste of what should have been a full and promising young life.

  From the same susceptible clerk, Amos had obtained a record of Morgan Whitley’s time at the Mint. Not as extensive as his friend Aubrey’s, it was nevertheless another dismal witness to the damage that could be done by an addiction to wagering on cards and an ivory roulette ball.

  “The thing is,” Amos told Geoffrey while Prudence stared in horror at the amounts that had been squandered on a few hours of excitement ending in disappointment. “It’s likely that both Canfield and Whitley gambled at other casino parlors that would let them run up a tab when they didn’t have cash money to bet. There aren’t many of them, because the only ones who extend credit cater exclusively to gentlemen, but it will help if you can get Whitley to tell you where else he played. And I should warn you that the bribes are expensive.”

  “Our client has very deep pockets,” Geoffrey told his operative. “But hold off for the moment. Let’s see what we learn from the information we’ve got so far.”

  A small man who faded unnoticed into crowds and was so nondescript in appearance that no one ever remembered what he looked like, Amos was a few years older than Geoffrey. Nicknamed “the ferret” by Allan Pinkerton himself, he had been the famous detective’s first choice when the challenge was to discover information that someone had gone to great lengths to conceal. Amos never spoke of why he left the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, but Geoffrey had once told Prudence that rumor hinted at involvement with a woman.

  “Do you think Whitley did it?” Amos asked.

  “I don’t want to believe it was Morgan,” Prudence said, “but that’s because I knew him when we were both children trying to survive the loss of a parent.”

  “Facts are facts, Miss Prudence,” Amos said. He’d had mixed feelings about working for a woman when Geoffrey had first tapped him for a job with Hunter and MacKenzie, but he’d come to respect and admire the tenacity with which the judge’s daughter pursued a case and fought her private demons. Amos Lang carried a small brown bottle of laudanum in his coat pocket and kept a needle and a vial of cocaine in his bedside table.