What the Dead Leave Behind Read online

  Ask few questions, answer none. It had been one of her father’s favorite maxims, Prudence reminded herself. Now that she had the promise of Geoffrey Hunter’s help, she’d find Cameron without Victoria’s knowledge. It would be another of the small victories over her stepmother that were going to count for so much in the coming days.

  “I think it best you join me in the parlor, Prudence. Jackson, tell Colleen to bring tea.” Victoria’s back was eloquently stiff; her silk skirts rustled like leaves in an autumn wind.

  Ask few questions, answer none, she repeated to herself as she followed Victoria into the parlor, removing the pins from her hat and hair, wrapping the black mourning veil into a neat package, seating herself without waiting for her stepmother to choose her place for her. Never put yourself into a situation where someone else can give you orders you have to follow. Another of the Judge’s maxims. She could hear them coursing through her brain one after the other, her father’s mellow voice as clear in her mind as if he were standing beside her.

  “Donald and I were worried about you, Prudence,” Victoria said again.

  Prudence had planned this conversation during the ride up Fifth Avenue, rehearsing what she would say, imagining how Victoria would respond. Then Jackson’s cold stare had momentarily unsettled her, sending a shiver of apprehension along her spine. She needed time to pull herself together, to find that determined self who had hired an ex-Pinkerton to investigate the woman sitting opposite her.

  “I really must insist that you tell me where you went.” When she was angry, a thin white line pierced the sharp flare of Victoria’s nostrils.

  If she were a horse, thought Prudence, she would have snorted.

  “As you can see, I’m quite all right. But I do appreciate your concern.” She removed her gloves one finger at a time, smoothing, pressing, and folding them, laying them atop the narrow black silk purse she had already placed on the table. Playing for time.

  Colleen came quietly into the room, balancing a heavy silver tea tray with apparent ease. She laid it on a small mahogany sideboard, then stepped aside and looked to her mistress for further instructions.

  “We’ll serve ourselves,” Victoria snapped.

  Colleen bobbed a perfect curtsy. “Yes, madam.” She closed the parlor door behind her with only the slight snick of the latch sliding into its faceplate.

  “I’ll take milk and sugar this afternoon,” Prudence announced, pouring a dollop of milk into a gold-rimmed cup, adding the fragrant tea and a small sugar cube. “And the sandwiches look delicious.” Protocol dictated that she wait for Victoria to pour, but she was determined to do every little unexpected thing she could to annoy her stepmother. Crack Victoria’s outer shell, and the woman who hadn’t dared show her true self to the Judge might emerge.

  Teacup in hand, Prudence strolled slowly toward the mantel, where a small studio portrait of the Judge in his judicial robes sat beside a picture taken on the occasion of his second wedding. Victoria looked very beautiful, certainly not much older than the new stepdaughter posed woodenly beside the groom. Donald Morley, who had given his sister away, seemed less repulsive and more sober than usual. This was the picture Geoffrey Hunter would need when he made his inquiries: clear, full face, easily identifiable likenesses no one could mistake. The mantel was crowded with silver framed pictures; more photos stood on nearly every tabletop in the room. But only one included the Judge, his second wife, and his brother-in-law; that would have to be the one she smuggled out of the house.

  “Victoria, Jackson needs the key to the study.” Donald Morley stood in the doorway, one hand curled around the knob. Behind him loomed Jackson’s squat bulk. “Prudence. I didn’t see you standing there. Where on earth did you go? Is that tea and sandwiches?” He crossed to the table, telling Jackson over his shoulder that he’d ring for him. Within moments he was sipping tea and munching contentedly on sandwiches and cake.

  “Sit down, Prudence,” ordered Victoria. “You’re pacing like one of those lions in the Central Park Zoo.”

  “It would be much more convenient if you’d allow me to have a copy made,” mused Donald around a mouthful of crumbs. “Jackson says that particular door is the only one not to have a key on the butler’s master ring. One of your late husband’s many idiosyncrasies, my dear sister.”

  She would have to ask. Ask few questions, answer none. Prudence had to know. But she kept her back to him so Donald couldn’t read her face, pretending interest in the slightly dusty leaves of the enormously ugly aspidistra plant that was slowly dying in a too-dim corner far from the front windows. “Why do you need the key to my father’s study, Donald?”

  No answer. No sound except the slurp of tea and the crunch of thinly sliced cucumbers between crustless triangles of buttered bread. Prudence waited. She wouldn’t repeat herself. The only way to make people listen to you is never to repeat yourself. Another of the Judge’s maxims. She thought she heard Victoria start to make that familiar clicking noise in her throat that signaled annoyance, but Donald was too quick for her.

  “Charles won’t be needing it now, will he? I’m sorry, Prudence, but that’s the truth of the situation, and the sooner you face up to it, the better. I thought—that is, your stepmother and I decided there was no point letting the room gather dust, as it were.”

  “You haven’t been in there in weeks,” Victoria said primly. “Really not since those dreadful days just after Thomas passed away. I was heartbroken, of course, and you didn’t make my grief any easier to bear, Prudence. Not with all of that shouting and crying and flinging about of books. Now that poor Charles is dead, too, there’s no reason to keep things as they were. Jackson and one of the maids will box up the Judge’s law books. I’ll leave it to Mr. Conkling to suggest a suitable law school or library to which to donate them. Donald has made do with that small dressing room just off his bedroom, but there really is no more reason to deprive him of a decent study where he can see to his business affairs and smoke his pipe in peace.”

  A fait accompli, then. Just like the removal from the house of the loyal and beloved butler who had helped her through the scrapes of childhood and kept a gimlet eye on her transition into young womanhood. She would find out where Cameron had gone, and she would not allow the room that was more her father’s than any other spot in the house to be desecrated by the likes of Donald Morley. If she was Victoria’s financial prisoner for the indefinite future, she was also the only thing that stood between her stepmother and the loss to charity of half of the Judge’s fortune. She had to find out exactly what her place was in this new threesome created by Charles’s death.

  “Donald is not to have my father’s study.”

  For a moment the only sound in the room was the faint hiss of the warming candle under the silver teapot of extra water. Not even the crunch of cucumber sandwiches. For once, Donald Morley had heard something that froze his jaws in midchew.

  “That’s not your decision to make, Prudence.” Victoria recovered more quickly than her brother. “I’m willing to forgive a certain amount of questionable behavior today, given the circumstances. Funerals can be very upsetting. You’ve suffered two terrible losses. But there are limits, my dear. And you are rapidly approaching them.”

  “Donald is not to have my father’s study.” She had no weapon except the strength of her own will in this first battle, this urgently important decision of who was to occupy Thomas MacKenzie’s library. The instinct that her father always said was a lawyer’s best friend suddenly told her that Victoria was not as sure of herself as she sounded. She didn’t know where or with whom her stepdaughter had spent most of the afternoon, or why she had so obviously evaded telling her. Prudence was more certain than ever that Victoria had something to hide, perhaps many somethings, and that the threat of discovery might be the only leverage she had.

  She had to trust Hunter to ferret out Victoria’s past, whatever it was, but for now Victoria had to be led to believe that Prudence knew or suspected someth
ing the Judge’s widow had been at great pains to conceal. That same lawyer’s instinct told her to take advantage of every little weakness, to feign a strength she wasn’t sure she possessed. Not to falter, not to break. Victoria intended to control and manipulate her stepdaughter through the use of laudanum; believing her plan was working might buy Prudence the precious time she needed.

  “I plan to inventory my father’s private papers. His letters, especially the ones he wrote to my mother. His study wasn’t just a law library, you know. It was where he could retreat from the rest of the world, where he could write the history of our family, where he confided his most private thoughts to his diary. As his daughter, those papers belong to me now.”

  She set down her teacup. Not a drop had been drunk. If Victoria really was secretly dosing her with more laudanum than Dr. Worthington had advised, she would fear an overdose if Prudence grew so addicted that she managed to buy her own supply. She had to confirm what she suspected.

  From the pocket in her skirt designed for a handkerchief and a vial of smelling salts Prudence brought out one of the small brown bottles that could be bought at any pharmacy, bottles made expressly for a lady to carry on her exhausting social rounds. The distinctive odor of alcohol and honey was released into the room as she removed the cork. Ladies preferred the bitter laudanum dissolved in something sweet. “Family papers can reveal so much. Don’t you agree, Victoria?”

  Moving surprisingly quickly for the size of his belly, Donald snatched the small brown bottle from Prudence’s hand, recorked it, and dropped the offending object into his coat pocket. “You buried someone very dear to you today,” he said unctuously. “It’s understandable that you should be upset. But to lie to us, Prudence! To pretend that you were going to accompany the Linwoods to the cemetery and then to steal away like some wanton girl of the streets just to find a pharmacy where no one would know you! Sensible people know when enough is enough!”

  “I don’t take many extra drops of laudanum, Donald,” Prudence said. “Just occasionally, or when a nervous headache becomes too painful.” She remembered Roscoe Conkling’s warning. Her father’s will could not be broken by any ordinary challenge of a disgruntled beneficiary, but malfeasance, though hard to prove, was grounds no judge would ignore. And Prudence’s death by overdose would mean the loss of a great deal of money.

  Morley stared at her as if he weren’t quite sure who she was, then turned to his sister. “Victoria, I can wait until Prudence has gone through her father’s papers. I’ve made do for the past two years with that little dressing room, and I imagine I can survive for a few more weeks there. She can take her time about it.” He reached out clumsily, folding Prudence into a brief, avuncular embrace.

  “I believe I’ll go lie down for a while,” Prudence said, pulling away from him.

  “I’ll send Colleen up to you when it’s time to dress for dinner.” Victoria’s voice was as brittle as ice. She wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, only that the stepdaughter she had dismissed as not worth worrying about had unexpectedly developed a backbone.

  Prudence nodded, but said nothing. She felt Donald’s eyes boring into her as he opened the parlor door and stood aside. He smelled of whiskey and pipe tobacco, expensive whiskey now, a cheaper corn sweetness when he had first come to live with his sister and the Judge. Prudence forced herself not to wrinkle up her nose as she brushed past him, as she stepped carefully into the hall.

  “Donald, close that door and come over here.”

  She heard Victoria’s peevish command and the sound of the parlor door closing. Heard angry hissing and the muted sounds of an argument. Victoria hadn’t conceded yet, hadn’t agreed to give Prudence access to her late husband’s study. For once, brother and sister did not seem to be agreeing on something. Prudence wondered why, but she didn’t have time to linger.

  She dared a quick look behind her, held both hands against her skirts to keep them from rustling. She could hear the murmur of voices, but no matter how hard she concentrated, she could not make out what they were saying. She dared not approach the door too closely, nor could she stay where she was in the empty hall. There was no telling when Jackson would come back. Donald had said he would ring for him, but a good butler had the ability to sense his master’s wishes before they could be expressed.

  The key. Prudence moved as quickly as she dared down the wide central hall of the house, stopping when she reached the heavy oak door through which she had entered and left so many times. There had been three keys to the Judge’s study, one of which he kept on a thin gold chain threaded through a buttonhole of his vest. The second key lay upstairs in Prudence’s jewel case, hidden under the black velvet on which nestled her mother’s pearls. She reached behind the heavy coatrack that was as tall as the front door, found the shallow niche that had been whittled out of one of its upright posts. Within seconds she was inside her father’s study, the door safely locked behind her, the third key buried in her pocket.

  The key that Jackson didn’t have could only be the one the Judge habitually carried, and if Donald hadn’t been able to give it to him, then Victoria had it. Not on her person, but somewhere in the satin-draped bedroom that Prudence privately thought was the epitome of overblown bad taste. The pink of the drapes was too deep, too much of the furniture had been decorated with bright gold leaf, there were mirrors everywhere you turned, and the air behind the always-closed windows reeked of the heavy, cloying perfume that was her stepmother’s signature fragrance.

  As she turned from the door and walked toward her father’s great mahogany desk, Prudence sensed his presence in the room, smelled the warm leather and ink scent that always surrounded him, caught a whiff of the fine imported cigars he loved. Once, a very daring young lady, she had begged to be allowed to puff on the burning tobacco that men seemed to enjoy so much. An indulgent father, he had allowed it, and then hadn’t so much as chuckled while she choked and coughed and waved her hands around to dispel the awful smoke.

  She had been angry with him in Roscoe Conkling’s office, angry because he had claimed to love her, had defied convention to educate her in the law. Had then weighed and found her unworthy to stand on her own. Had given over control of her trust to a husband she would never marry, and then to a woman she despised. It was as if Prudence had been examined and found lacking in some fundamental way she could neither identify nor understand. The choice of Charles she was prepared to forgive. The Judge had believed that Charles’s character was too honest to allow him to touch a cent of his wife’s fortune without her consent. But Victoria? Victoria?

  She seated herself in her father’s leather armchair. Someone had dusted and polished the desktop, the bookshelves, the tables that sat beside the wing chairs placed close enough to the fireplace for warmth and light. Someone had cleared away whatever papers had been left stacked for the Judge’s attention when he was forced to take to his bed. She wondered how much had been hidden from sight in drawers, how much tossed into the fire. There were no ashes in the grate; fresh logs had been laid but not lit.

  This was what she wanted. If she could have this room and this desk, this link to her father, she would be able to withstand whatever pressures Victoria brought to bear on her. She could be strong in this study, could resist the lure of laudanum here, could envision herself the fulfillment of what the Judge had begun to create. What had Donald said? That he could wait a few more weeks for her to go through her father’s papers? He had given in so quickly. Why? And would Victoria also decide to placate her stepdaughter, even temporarily? She wondered how long they would argue.

  She heard a cautious but insistent scratching at the door. A short flutter of soft knocks, then the scratching again.

  “Miss Prudence. Miss Prudence.”

  She sped to the study door, unlocked it, opened it just a crack.

  “Miss Prudence, the mistress rang for me to take away the tea things. I thought you should know.”

  “How did you . . . ?”

>   “I dust and polish that old coatrack, Miss Prudence. I found the key a long time ago, but I never said a word. The Judge was good to me.”

  Prudence stood frozen in the hallway, the study door locked again, the key in her hand.

  “Give it to me, Miss Prudence. I’ll put it back. You may need it.”

  “I don’t want Mr. Morley in my father’s study, Colleen. Ever. I don’t think I could bear it. And I don’t want him or my stepmother to know that I have my own key.”

  “You’ll think of something, Miss Prudence. Your daddy used to tell all of us that you were the smartest thing he’d ever seen, for not being a boy.”

  The Judge’s daughter spun on her heel and was up the broad, curving staircase before Colleen slid the key back into its hiding place. The maid thought she heard something that was very like the strangling noises the Judge used to make when he was too angry to speak. Everyone who worked for him learned to scatter and hide when that deep chest rumbling began.

  I am my father’s daughter, Prudence repeated to herself over and over again. Her boots beat a tattoo on the Turkish carpets where as a girl she had stretched out on a pile of cushions to read and dream of a future wondrous beyond imagining. I am my father’s daughter, I am my father’s daughter.

  If Geoffrey Hunter couldn’t find out who Victoria was, she would. She’d tear her father’s study apart until she found what she knew must be hidden there. I am my father’s daughter.

  She wouldn’t give Victoria the gentleman’s courtesy of a formal challenge. Ambush was a far more effective tactic. Gentlemanly attitudes toward war had been the South’s undoing. They were lovely and romantic and fit for the court of King Arthur, but in the real world of the late nineteenth century, they weren’t worth a fiddler’s damn.