“To qualify as a bluestocking you have to pontificate on literary topics of no interest to anyone but other bluestockings. With the occasional obscure political argument thrown in from time to time. I don’t see you ever doing that, Prudence.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment to my good sense.”
“Last season’s initial Assembly Ball?” Geoffrey repeated.
“William and Lena attended, of course,” Prudence said, one finger on the relevant entry. “No one in society who receives an invitation ever refuses. I think we can assume that Morgan and Aubrey were also there. It’s the first occasion of the season on which the debutantes are seen en masse as it were. Eligible bachelors are as necessary to the evening’s success as flowers and champagne. Taylor has written that the necklace arrived at the house on Tuesday, December fourth. The ball took place that Thursday evening.”
“Giving time for Taylor to clean and polish the stones.”
“There’s no note to that effect, and she’s otherwise very detailed. It went back to the vault the following week, after the first Patriarchs Ball.”
“All right, let me look at the other three lists,” Geoffrey said, using crystal paperweights to mark the entries he wanted. He, too, had found Josiah’s calendar beyond comprehension. “Aubrey pays down his debt two days after Christmas, as does Morgan.”
“Working backward then,” Prudence began. “If stones were removed from the necklace during the week it was out of the Tiffany vault, they could have been sold to Carpenter very soon thereafter.”
“I doubt he would have paid Aubrey and Morgan the full sum right away,” Geoffrey said.
“You’re jumping to an unsupported conclusion. We don’t know yet who was working with Carpenter.”
“You’re right, of course,” Geoffrey conceded. “But just for the sake of argument and to make the best use of these lists, let’s say for the moment that Aubrey and Morgan are likely suspects. Would you agree to that premise?”
“Reluctantly,” Prudence said.
“Good enough. I doubt Carpenter had sufficient ready cash to pay anything near what the diamonds would fetch from a fence, even if we’re only talking about a very few stones. He would have to sell them elsewhere to get the money to pay our thieves. And that would take us logically from the beginning to the end of December.”
“Which was when Morgan and Aubrey suddenly had enough to satisfy the Mint. At least temporarily.”
“It’s also possible that both young men received gifts of cash for Christmas that year,” Geoffrey said, blowing apart his own argument.
“I wonder why De Vries continued sending his wife’s necklace back and forth to Tiffany’s vault so many times during the season. He has two safes in his home. Why not simply store it there from December until the beginning of Lent when most of the important social occasions are over? Wouldn’t it be safer not to be transporting it through the streets like that?”
“A determined professional thief would very soon catch on to what was being done. We may be dealing with a second-story man, Prudence.”
“What is a second-story man?”
“It’s a very skilled burglar whose specialty is entering a building through a window above the ground floor. Usually at night, almost always when a business is empty or the occupants of a home are asleep or away. If he’s really adept, his entry and exit go unnoticed until someone realizes that a theft has occurred. And that’s usually not until the item in question is missed and no one can find it.”
“He’d have to make his way into Lena’s dressing room or the safe in William’s library downstairs. Could he do that?”
“I seem to remember a very adroit young woman who went through a suspect’s desk drawers in a supposedly safely locked room in the dead of night before disappearing from the house the next morning. She wasn’t caught, either,” Geoffrey said, reminding Prudence that her midnight escapade had provided important clues in their investigation of a wife murderer.
“Of course he could,” she agreed. “I have to keep reminding myself that no matter how difficult or impossible a task may seem, someone is bound to attempt it. And eventually succeed.”
“If a second-story man was used, he needn’t have been working on his own,” Geoffrey said.
“The more people you bring into an operation, the greater the likelihood of discovery. Isn’t that what you always say?”
“And it’s usually true. In this case, if either Taylor or Leonard Abbott was involved, a second-story man could have been used to bring the paste gems into the house and get the real diamonds out. Don’t forget that many employers regularly search their servants’ rooms and that days off can be canceled without warning. Hiding the diamonds after they were removed from the necklace and then getting them to Carpenter’s shop would have been the riskiest parts of the heist. That’s where timing would have been of primary importance.”
“Do we know whether the young man calling himself Vincent Reynolds had the expertise to be a second-story man?” Prudence asked, remembering his frequent but unpredictable appearances at James Carpenter’s jewelry shop.
“We can find out,” Geoffrey said. “If he could make it up the side of a building without breaking his neck, it’s another piece fitted into the puzzle.”
“But we still won’t know who hired him.” Prudence tapped restlessly on the lists lying before her. “Do you think this type of crime has been committed here in New York City before, Geoffrey? I mean prying stones out of a necklace or bracelet instead of stealing the entire piece.”
“If Lena’s necklace had disappeared, there would have been an enormous hue and cry about it. The police, the insurance company, and probably even Tiffany’s own investigators would have been on it right away. Someone would have suggested calling in the Pinkertons. Which would have made it much more difficult to dispose of the stones. The thief or thieves might have had to wait for as long as a year or two before being able to move them. Even if they’d broken up the necklace themselves, there would have been warnings and watches out for the sudden appearance of quality diamonds without provenance.”
“Aunt Gillian spoke of impoverished aristocrats wearing paste because they’d surreptitiously sold the family jewels bit by bit. It doesn’t seem outlandish under those circumstances to let go of a stone or two in dire circumstances.”
“I agree. I don’t think it’s at all unheard of. But what happened in the De Vries household is very different. Unless we hypothesize that Lena is the guilty party, that she has been secretly bailing Morgan out of his many financial holes, obviously without her husband’s knowledge or consent. She could easily have persuaded Taylor to help her. And Abbott, possibly to make the initial contact with Carpenter.”
“She couldn’t have done it without Morgan’s knowledge. And he gave no hint of suspecting his mother of such duplicity.”
“Lena has a settlement from her first marriage,” Geoffrey reminded her. “That could be the source of the money that’s been keeping Morgan afloat.”
“William would have control of it. I doubt he would let anyone in the firm except family manage his wife’s fortune.”
“Which means Morgan or Everett, if not William himself.”
“And that brings us right back to Lena’s dilemma,” Prudence said. “Unless she can go through Morgan, and he will say nothing to William, she has no direct access to anything but the funds her husband gives her to manage the daily running of the household. Which she couldn’t possibly stretch to cover her son’s indiscretions.”
“Ask who manages her money,” Geoffrey said, seeing Prudence write in the notebook she kept in her skirt pocket.
“I will. And there’s something else I want to know.”
“What’s that?”
“Where she was the day the necklace was delivered, when William had to come home from his office to sign for it and lock it away in one of the safes. She’s never explained that to my satisfaction.”
“Are you think
ing of her as a suspect, Prudence?”
“I’m thinking that Lena De Vries, the former widow Whitley, may be a much more mercenary character than I’ve believed her to be. She’ll do anything for her son, that I don’t doubt, but she also had a care for her own well-being when she married William. And I also believe that he’d go so far as to divorce her if he thought she was stealing from him. He may have gifted her the necklace, but it shouts to the world that he’s a man of enormous wealth and influence. It’s as much his possession as she is.”
“But did she commit a crime? Technically, a woman’s jewels are usually considered to belong to her, rather like a dowry that assures she won’t be impoverished if her husband dies without making specific provision for her in his will.”
“It’s a nicety that a man like our client would fight tooth and nail in a court of law if he thought his wife had betrayed him,” Prudence said. “And in William’s case, it would be the swiftest road to a younger and presumably more fertile wife. Whatever happened to those stones, Lena De Vries has been in desperate straits from the moment she realized her son was an inebriate.”
“And she began to believe she was the only person in the world who could keep him from an ignominious death as a drunkard and a pauper,” Geoffrey agreed.
“God help her.”
CHAPTER 18
Morgan returned to the world of banking and investments a week after his friend Aubrey’s funeral. He had spent that interim time probing deeply into his battered and bruised psyche, wrestling with the remnants of what he remembered of who he had once been. Long, empty days in the company of fellow sufferers at the Keeley Institute had introduced him to introspection, though the Gold Cure relied more on its regimen of injections and tonics than forays into the inner man. But for Morgan, alone in a bedroom of his stepfather’s home, there was no place else to go.
William cautiously welcomed him back, the Swiss clinic lurking as a temporarily shelved threat. Or beacon of hope. Morgan was sober again—his eyes clear and focused, skin showing a modicum of winter ruddiness, hands steady, posture erect, clothing appropriately somber. He drank coffee at breakfast, hot tea at lunch, water at dinner.
Beside him from morning to late afternoon, though for fewer hours as each successful day followed another, Everett Rinehart played the role of caretaker, much as the white-coated attendants at the Keeley Institute monitored the behavior of sometimes recalcitrant patients. The friendship between the two young men grew deeper as Morgan’s trust in his stepfather’s nephew escalated to something close to the confidence he had in his mother. Everett kept a weather eye on his calculations and smoothed the way back to active management of client portfolios. Morgan was far from being allowed to work unsupervised, but his personal minder was solicitous and encouraging. He had never known what it was to have a brother; Everett was teaching him what that relationship could be.
Morgan was healing.
* * *
“I no longer require you to find proof of Morgan’s guilt,” William De Vries said, removing a blank printed check from his wallet. “I’ve decided to end this farce here and now. What happens inside my home and my place of business is no longer your concern, though I appreciate the unobtrusive way the investigation has been conducted. Worthy of Allan Pinkerton himself.”
“Has Morgan confessed to you?” Prudence asked. He’d been so adamant in declaring his innocence that she couldn’t imagine the abrupt about-face his stepfather’s presence at the Hunter and MacKenzie offices seemed to indicate. She ignored Geoffrey’s signal to stop asking questions. “Did he agree to begin treatment at the clinic in Switzerland?”
“Neither, if you must know, Prudence.” William uncapped one of the new gold-nibbed fountain pens that had lately grown popular for their convenience and cachet. “His mother and my nephew have pleaded eloquently for his rehabilitation, and he himself is showing signs of having turned over a new leaf. I don’t think it an exaggeration to say that the death of his friend Aubrey Canfield shook him to the core. It happens that way sometimes. A man obstinately refuses to see the truth until it stares him in the face and delivers a blow to his viscera. He’s never the same afterward.”
“I doubt you’ll be able to claim compensation from your insurance company unless they can be satisfied that a thorough investigation has been conducted,” Geoffrey said. “It’s not uncommon for Pinkertons to be called in when their own people can’t crack a case.”
“No insurance claim will be made,” William said. “I’m sure I indicated when I first came to you that such a possibility was to be considered.”
“You did,” Geoffrey agreed. He spoke into the tube connecting him to Josiah’s desk in the outer office. A few moments later the secretary appeared with the De Vries case folder and a neatly written statement of the amount owed to date. “I trust this will be satisfactory.”
De Vries glanced at the figure, asked no questions, and did not open the folder to peruse the reports written by Prudence, Geoffrey, and Amos Lang. He seemed anxious to put the episode behind him, unwilling to find out exactly how much of his private and business life had been subjected to scrutiny.
“My wife is eager to lay the matter to rest,” William said, waving the filled-in check in the air to dry the ink. He handed over the last document of their arrangement with an unmistakable sigh of relief. “I regret you had to learn the sad truth about someone you considered a childhood friend, Prudence,” he said.
“We all have our weaknesses and dark moments,” she answered. “No one is exempt. That’s one of the first things I learned after Father died.”
“We all miss him. The judge was an honorable and principled gentleman. You can be proud to call yourself his daughter, my dear.”
William softened for a moment, his facial features slackening into something resembling a blurred facsimile of the hard-edged man of business he presented to the world. Prudence wondered if this was the side of her husband that Lena saw. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the gentleness was gone.
“It’s over,” Geoffrey said when their client had left. Josiah would take the check to the bank later in the morning and place the De Vries file in the cabinet reserved for cases that had been marked Closed. “It didn’t turn out the way I wanted, but I told you when we first got involved with him that William would be a difficult client. I said he would want to interfere, and he did. It was like working with someone pulling on your coattails every step of the way.”
Unusually for him, Geoffrey was showing signs of anger and frustration. He’d warned Prudence long ago that not every case ended well for its investigators, and that she would have to learn to let go when holding on was no longer feasible. He seemed to be having trouble practicing what he preached.
“It’s not a satisfactory conclusion,” she said. She’d already voiced her opinion about William’s decision not to inform either his insurance company or the police about the missing diamonds. The only thing that remained was to decide what, if anything, they could do on their own to tie up the loose ends that would continue to beat at their professional pride for months, perhaps years to come. It was a discussion that promised to be as bleak and unrewarding as the nonresolution of the case itself.
“I’ll tell Josiah he can open the appointment book again,” Geoffrey said. “We need to put Morgan Whitley and Lena De Vries behind us. Guilty or not, we can’t live their lives for them.”
“Aunt Gillian will probably agree with you. She’s a very pragmatic woman. But I suspect she’ll step up the number of calls she’s been making and urging me to make with her. Society’s greatest gift to its members is the sharp-tongued gossip of its ladies. It’s also a scourge to the one being talked about. A trip to Europe or a retreat to the country is sometimes the only answer. We’ll see which one Lena chooses.”
“Has she said how long she plans to stay in New York?” Geoffrey asked.
“Aunt Gillian? I think she misses London more than she likes to admit. The only thing keepi
ng her here may be the impropriety of leaving me alone without proper chaperonage.” Prudence made a sound that was not quite a laugh, not quite a snort of exasperation. “And no, Geoffrey, I am not considering marriage to any of the fatuous young men who might be anxious to ask for my hand. Aunt Gillian may be irritating to live with, but I’m not that desperate. Not yet, at any rate. Marriage in general is not on my immediate horizon.”
Josiah appeared with a laden tea tray, so she failed to see the wash of disheartened gloom that coursed over Geoffrey’s face.
But Josiah did. And wondered when Miss Prudence would stop torturing the poor man.
* * *
“The Homestake is proving to be the richest strike in the history of American gold mining,” Travis Collins told Morgan Whitley over lunch at the Astor House. “I don’t need to tell you that it was the first mine ever listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and it’s still there ten years later, making a fortune for everyone who had the foresight to buy into it.” He signaled the waiter to pour more wine even though the man he was trying to interest in his proposition hadn’t touched the pale golden liquid in his glass. Maybe he preferred red? Two open bottles nestled in silver wine chillers beside the table.
“Everything else in the Black Hills is played out,” Morgan said. “And whatever claims were worth working were bought up by Homestake. They’ve got a monopoly on that entire area.” He’d researched the Black Hills gold rush before agreeing to meet with Collins, and almost canceled the lunch when Everett backed out at the last moment.
But Everett had urged him to at least listen to what the man had to say. The South African gold rush that had erupted three years before was still attracting thousands of miners from every country in the world, but getting in on the ground floor of mine ownership was a thing of the past. And the Brits and Boers were monopolizing the South African finds. Some people predicted there would eventually be war over the disputed territories. That kind of development could lose you the cash you’d risked. Better to stay within the United States, Everett contended, where the government could be counted on to keep the Western savages under control and their lands open for business.
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