What the Dead Leave Behind Page 12

  A moment later she was being pushed across the street in the midst of a hurrying Fifth Avenue crowd, her rescuers striding rapidly along in front of her. A woman beside her patted her lightly on the arm. “The same thing happened to me once,” she said. “I had new boots on and the pavement was slippery. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I felt something shoved against the back of my legs,” Prudence said. “I’m sure I did. Was there anyone with a cane or an umbrella standing close to me?”

  The woman looked at her curiously. “I didn’t see anyone bump into you with a cane or an umbrella, miss. You just lost your balance for a moment,” she said, leaning closer to whisper, “and perhaps you’ve got your stays laced too tightly.” She smiled conspiratorially, then walked on.

  Too surprised to argue, Prudence stopped to study the display in a store window, staring at the bonnets arranged attractively in tiers, trying to seem interested in them. She watched her reflection in the glass, but saw no one lingering suspiciously behind her, recognized no one hurrying by. When she could trust her legs, and her hands no longer trembled, she moved out onto the busy sidewalk again.

  I’m imagining things, she told herself as she walked quickly toward the safety of Roscoe Conkling’s office, debating whether she should mention the incident to Geoffrey Hunter. That woman said there wasn’t anyone near me with a cane or an umbrella, and she must be right. She would have seen or felt something herself in that crush of people. Mr. Warneke and his speculations have me spooked. I’m expecting murderers where there are only accidents.

  By the time she reached the United Bank Building, she had convinced herself that nothing untoward had happened. She had also decided she would tell no one of the embarrassing incident. Empty-headed women with nothing much to do chattered on about the inconsequential events of their daily lives; Prudence was determined not to be one of them.

  * * *

  “The Dakota? What can we find out there?” Prudence asked between bites of a delicious and unpronounceable almond-topped German pastry filled with vanilla custard and thick cream.

  Josiah Gregory had insisted on providing her with fresh coffee and pastries from the bakery two doors down from the United Bank Building as soon as he heard she’d gone straight from Fifth Avenue to Dr. Worthington’s consulting office.

  “You can’t go for hours and hours without food, Miss Prudence,” he’d scolded. “This is called bienenstich. Bee sting cake, though I have no idea why.”

  “Don’t fight him,” Roscoe Conkling advised. “It won’t do you any good.”

  “I thought the marriage license would give us Victoria’s date and place of birth and her address in February of 1886, when they married, but it doesn’t,” Geoffrey Hunter reported. “Donald Morley is one of the witnesses, but the other signature is illegible.”

  New York State had only very recently begun to require centralized record keeping of births, deaths, and marriages. Licenses seemed to follow no set pattern; the information requested was minimal at best.

  With no other promising avenues to pursue, Hunter had decided to visit the Dakota, where, according to the Judge’s will, an apartment had been obtained for Victoria. No lease or purchase contract had been found among Thomas MacKenzie’s papers; Victoria almost certainly had a copy, but Roscoe had no logical or legal grounds to demand to see it. The longer their fledgling investigation remained unknown to Prudence’s stepmother, the better.

  “I’m not sure exactly what we’re looking for, Miss MacKenzie,” he confessed, “but I’d like to believe we’ll recognize it if we find it.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Prudence told him.

  “I wouldn’t have gone without you,” he answered gallantly.

  “Be that as it may.” Comfortably revived with bienenstich and coffee, Prudence was eager to be on their way. The more she thought about her near stumble on Fifth Avenue, the more certain she became that there was nothing suspicious about it. She’d made the right choice when she decided not to mention it.

  “Take these,” Josiah Gregory said, handing her a small leather briefcase, one of his stenographer’s pads, and several sharpened pencils. “If anyone asks, Mr. Hunter can say you’re a secretary from our office, sent along to take notes.”

  “I don’t think I could fool anyone who knows anything about . . . what is it called?”

  “Stenography,” Josiah said. “Just make tight scribbles across the page and pretend you know what you’re doing. Stenography is a mystery to the uninitiated. All you have to do is look as though you work in an office. I think you’ve done an admirable job at that, Miss MacKenzie. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, Josiah, though I really wasn’t trying to disguise myself. I just knew that a woman in deep mourning walking along the street might attract attention. We’re supposed to be prostrate with grief, you know.” She felt herself flush as she realized what she’d said. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she floundered.

  Conkling knew, and so did Josiah, that Prudence’s marriage would have been a union of friendship and convenience, not great passion, though there was no disgrace in that at all. It was difficult to feign a broken heart when the heart had not been a major player in the drama.

  “Shall we go?” Geoffrey suggested. “I told Danny Dennis we’d be needing him again this afternoon. He’ll take us up to the Dakota and bring us back when we’re finished there.”

  “I’m going to want to hear what you find out,” Conkling said. “But in the meantime I have a case to get ready for tomorrow morning. If you’ll clear this food off my desk, Josiah, we can get on with it.”

  “I think we’re being asked to leave, Miss MacKenzie,” Hunter said.

  * * *

  Standing in solitary grandeur at the corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West, the Dakota had only been completed four years ago. Wealthy and socially prominent New Yorkers were gradually moving uptown; the Dakota’s sixty-five apartments, no two of which were alike, ranged from a comfortable pied-à-terre to a spectacular and palatial home nine floors above the busy, noisy streets of the city. The entire structure had been built around a spacious courtyard into which carriages passed under a portico, but from the street it was like a child’s elaborate sandcastle, all pitched gables, carved arches, windowed dormers, and fanciful carvings. The Dakota wasn’t Geoffrey Hunter’s style at all, but then he wasn’t really a New Yorker.

  “Mr. Conkling appreciates your making time to see me today, Mrs. Markham.” Hunter bowed over the concierge’s hand, his dark good looks and expensive suit giving him every right in the world to be here in New York City’s most-sought-after new address. “Our stenographer, Miss Carson,” he said, introducing his silent companion.

  “Everyone knows Mr. Conkling,” Mrs. Markham answered, ushering them into her private sitting room. “I was thrilled to read about his adventure during the blizzard. And so sorry that poor young Mr. Linwood came to such a tragic end.”

  “We were all touched and saddened by his loss.” Hunter let silence hover over them, waiting for the right moment to ask his questions.

  “Mr. Gregory said there would have to be some changes now that Mr. Linwood has passed on and Miss MacKenzie is in mourning.”

  He could hear the tremolo of curiosity in Mrs. Markham’s voice. He thought she must very seldom come this close to the private lives of the Dakota’s residents, most of whom would not bother making the effort to remember her name. Yet it was she who oversaw the smooth functioning of every one of the building’s departments, she who made sure the residents were never bothered with worrisome details that could interrupt the comfortable flow of their daily lives. Invisible, she was invisible. But once in a very long while, like today, someone needed something from her that was not in the ordinary way of things.

  From his leather briefcase Hunter pulled out a document case. He handed it to Prudence, who untied the silk ribbons holding it closed and flicked through the co
ntents as if searching for something in particular. “Mrs. MacKenzie, a widow now, must of necessity concern herself with young Miss MacKenzie, of whom she is very fond.”

  “Poor girl. To lose her fiancé so close to the wedding. I read in the Herald that he stopped to rest and was killed by a falling tree limb. How very terrible for her.”

  “Very. So you understand that Mrs. MacKenzie will remain in the family home now. She will not be moving into the Dakota after all.”

  “And you are acting on her behalf?”

  “Mr. Conkling is the family attorney. I am associated with his office.”

  “I see.”

  “The problem, Mrs. Markham, is that neither Mr. Conkling nor his secretary, Mr. Gregory, nor I have ever seen the apartment. We have no way of knowing what work may have been done in the months between the Judge’s death and Mr. Linwood’s accident. I regret to have to confide to you that bills have come to Mr. Conkling’s office that he is reluctant to pay without some verification of what they entail. Mrs. MacKenzie is not a woman of business, as you may imagine, and she is very preoccupied at the moment with the care of her stepdaughter.”

  “I’m not sure how I can help you, Mr. Hunter.”

  “I hardly know how to ask it, but I’m afraid I must. I should like to inspect the apartment so that I can report back to Mr. Conkling. Miss Carson will accompany us to take notes. Mr. Conkling would have come himself, of course, but just between us, and you mustn’t breathe a word to anyone, he is ever so slightly feeling the effects of that horrible afternoon.”

  He could tell from the gleam in her eyes that the Dakota’s concierge was weighing the value of the information he had just given her, trying to decide where the sharing of it would do her the most good.

  “I’ll take you up myself,” she declared, rising to her feet, jingling the ring of master keys hanging from her belt.

  “And one other thing, if I may. I should like to see the bill of sale, please. We have a copy with the Judge’s papers, of course, but given the circumstances, Mr. Conkling would like me to verify the original signatures.”

  “I didn’t know what you might need, so I took out Mrs. MacKenzie’s entire file this morning. I’m afraid it’s a bit bulky.” Without a moment’s hesitation, Mrs. Markham handed it to Prudence, then turned and led the way to the bank of elevators that would take them to the fifth-floor corner apartment that a loving husband had secured for his widow. “I do so regret losing Mrs. MacKenzie as a resident again. She was always a lovely lady, such a pleasure to serve.” Should she mention that she had been privileged to be a witness at Mrs. MacKenzie’s marriage? Perhaps not. The whole thing had had a furtive air about it, and the gratuity she had been given had been far in excess of what might have been expected for a few minutes in a crowded downtown office decorated only with a soiled American flag. She’d used her left hand to write her signature, which was embarrassing because it made her name impossible to read. But Mrs. MacKenzie had insisted. No explanation, just a fat sheaf of bills that bought her silence then and was still buying it today.

  As unobtrusively as possible, Prudence handed Geoffrey the Dakota file, which he slipped into his briefcase, wondering as he fastened the straps if he had heard Mrs. Markham correctly. It sounded as though she were speaking of Victoria MacKenzie with some degree of familiarity, as a former resident of the Dakota. Again? Was that the word she used? If that were true, there would be a copy of the earlier lease in the file. Whose name would they find on it? He needed to get himself and Prudence out of the building without going back to the concierge’s parlor, without giving her the opportunity to remember that he hadn’t returned her documents file. Later, a few days from now, after they’d had a chance to examine its contents, Josiah Gregory could be dispatched with the file, a bouquet of flowers, and Geoffrey’s heartfelt apologies for having forgotten to return it before he left.

  “This is one of our larger apartments,” Mrs. Markham explained.

  Geoffrey and Prudence walked quickly from one room to the next, each more opulently European than the previous one. Shining parquet floors. Marble mantel fireplaces. A silk walled boudoir rivaling anything Geoffrey had seen in France. And from the windows that ran the length of the forty-foot drawing room, views of Central Park that took the breath away. But empty. Not a stick of furniture, nothing left behind by workmen planning to return.

  If Victoria had intended to place her own stamp on this apartment, she hadn’t begun to do it in the months between the Judge’s death and the demise of her future son-in-law. Strange. Geoffrey would have thought she would be eager to make her preparations for leaving the Fifth Avenue mansion that would go to the married couple. Plunging into the maelstrom of redecorating should have been a welcome distraction from the loss of the husband she was presumed to have loved. Hunter had expected to find renovations that had been halted when Linwood died and Victoria’s plans changed, but they should have been very nearly complete by that time, two weeks before the wedding. Yet here was proof that nothing had been done. Very strange.

  Geoffrey didn’t dare catch Prudence’s eye, but he could sense that she was also puzzled, was asking herself the same questions. He pulled his watch from a vest pocket.

  “Mrs. Markham, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how quickly the time was passing. Mr. Conkling is waiting for us back at the office. We have a deposition to take and I’m afraid the individuals involved are due there at any moment. We’ll need Miss Carson’s skills. Please do excuse us. I apologize for the haste, but we must be going. I shall be sure to tell Mr. Conkling how very hospitable you’ve been, and I do hope you won’t mention to Mrs. MacKenzie anything about those tradesmen’s accounts. It’s obvious there’s been some mistake. Mr. Conkling will see to untangling whatever mess someone has managed to create. We won’t bother either of the late Judge’s dear ladies. They have quite enough to bear as it is.”

  Prudence and Geoffrey caught one last telling glimpse of the very cooperative Mrs. Markham as they turned briefly before leaving the luxurious apartment where no one lived. The concierge was standing in front of the Central Park facing windows, keys dangling from her hand, mesmerized by the glitter of the spring sun on the waters of the lake. She would return to the real world and her duties in a moment, but for as long as it took to imagine it, she was seeing herself as someone else.

  Geoffrey understood and he pitied her. It was hard to live with dreams that were shattered every time you opened your eyes in the morning. Hard to think about what might have been.

  * * *

  “You’ve answered one question, Geoffrey, and raised a host of others. I thought I knew Thomas as well as anyone and better than most, but I knew nothing about this. Nothing. It makes me wonder what else he was hiding.”

  Victoria Morley had lived at the Dakota for a full year before she married the Judge. The lease lay on Roscoe Conkling’s desk, Thomas MacKenzie’s bold signature scrawled across the bottom of the page in thick black ink. The Judge had pledged financial responsibility for the considerable rent, but the lease itself was clearly in Victoria Morley’s name.

  “I thought you’d want to see these,” Geoffrey said, indicating the pile of papers he and Prudence had brought back from the Dakota.

  “Josiah will make copies of everything. We’ll have them compared and witnessed, so there’s no doubt the copies are true and authentic.”

  “I’ll need to hire at least two temporary clerks to do the copying,” Josiah said. He had already contacted the agency, but Mr. Conkling liked to believe that nothing was done in his office without his express permission.

  “Hire as many as you need. We have to get the file back to the Markham woman before she begins to suspect she’s done something very stupid. Something that could cost her her job. She won’t dare say a word. Rich people don’t like to think their secrets will be shared.”

  “We’ve stumbled into the hive of what may be a particularly nasty queen bee, Roscoe.” Geoffrey had been flattered when Conkli
ng urged the younger man to call him by his first name. It wasn’t an invitation he extended to everyone.

  “I’ve just realized I don’t know Victoria at all, Prudence. Not at all.” Conkling piled the Dakota papers into his secretary’s outstretched arms, then sat down heavily behind his desk, one hand pressed to the side of his head as if bearing down on an incipient ache. “I remember the day the Judge told me he was getting married again. Frankly, I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t met her; I don’t think too many of his friends even knew she existed. Later, afterward, we deluded ourselves into thinking that surely it hadn’t happened as quickly as we thought, surely Thomas had introduced her to some of us. But now that I take a hard look backward, I’m not sure that’s right. I think it very possible we deceived ourselves because our friend Thomas MacKenzie deserved happiness and we refused to see anything else for him.”

  “Danny Dennis says if you’re going to get home before dark, it’s best to start now, Miss Prudence,” Josiah interrupted.

  “Thank you. I wish I didn’t have to go, Mr. Conkling.”

  “Do you want me to arrange somewhere else for you to stay, Prudence? I have any number of respectable clients who would be only too happy to offer you their hospitality.”

  “Do you mean am I afraid?”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, under the circumstances.”

  “I’m angry, Mr. Conkling. I tried to explain to Mr. Hunter what anger does to me, but I don’t know that I was able to make it clear. My father had a temper, too, you know. He rarely showed it on the bench and he never erupted at someone who couldn’t fight back. One of the servants, for example. But I heard stories about him, usually by listening when I wasn’t supposed to. Kincaid, the coachman, could curl your hair with what he witnessed. Cameron, who was our butler for years, matched him story for story. They were proud to work for a man who stood up for himself and others, who wouldn’t be bullied or manipulated, who let everyone within reach of his voice know exactly how he felt. That’s one of the reasons I don’t understand why he capitulated to Victoria. It doesn’t make sense. But no, I’m not afraid of her, Mr. Conkling. I’ve discovered how very much my father’s daughter I am.”