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Overview
From the author of What the Dead Leave Behind, this suspenseful and richly atmospheric mystery captures both the elegance and sophistication of New York’s Gilded Age—and the secrets and bloody terrors that lurk behind its elegant facades . . .
Heiress Prudence MacKenzie is a valuable partner to attorney Geoffrey Hunter, despite the fact that women are not admitted to the bar in nineteenth-century New York. And though their office is a comfortable distance from the violence of the city’s slums, the firm of Hunter and MacKenzie is about to come dangerously close to a high-profile killer across the pond . . .
Nora Kenny works in Prudence’s Fifth Avenue house, just as her mother once served Prudence’s mother. As children, they played freely together, before retreating into their respective social classes. Still, they remain fond of each other. So when Nora’s body is discovered in a local park, Prudence is devastated. As other poor, vulnerable young women fall victim, the police are confounded. Has the Ripper crossed the Atlantic to find a new hunting ground? Is someone copying his crimes? A former Pinkerton agent, Geoffrey intends to step in, and Prudence is equally determined. But a killer with a disordered mind and an incomprehensible motive may prove too elusive for even this experienced pair to outwit.
Praise for What the Dead Leave Behind
“Simpson's debut, first in a planned series, features complex characters, a vivid look at old New York in the late 1800s, and a mystery with a twist.” —Kirkus Reviews
“This is a story to savor . . . Prudence is a stubborn, quick-witted American heroine who will remind readers of Tasha Alexander’s Lady Emily Ashton and Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia Grey.”—Booklist
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781496709134 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Kensington |
| Publication date: | 01/30/2018 |
| Series: | Gilded Age Mystery Series , #2 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 118,736 |
| File size: | 761 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
"Jack the Ripper's killed number seven. An Irish girl this time, younger than the others. Only twenty-five. The detective in charge had photographs taken of the scene and the victim. I don't think I'll buy a newspaper next week." Josiah Gregory rattled the pages of the New York Herald of November 10, 1888. The shocking story of the mutilation of Mary Jane Kelly was graphic and unsettling.
"Have you ever been to London, Josiah?" Geoffrey Hunter set down the New York Times, which was running the same story, but in far less detail; its readership preferred to be informed and only inadvertently titillated. The lead story in the column cabled by their London correspondent was the partisan wrangling of the Parnell Commission. Politics as usual first, then the Ripper.
"I haven't, sir. Mr. Conkling went, of course. Twice. Once in 1875, then again two years later. He was a great one for seeing everything there was to be seen, but I doubt he ventured into Whitechapel."
"You still miss him, don't you, Josiah?"
"Every day. I always will. You can't spend that much of your life with someone and not regret his absence. I was the senator's personal secretary from his first swearing in at the House of Representatives in Washington until he died. Almost twenty-nine years."
"You could retire, if that would suit you."
"And do what with myself, Mr. Hunter? I'd rather stay on here with you. I'm used to working, and I'm used to this office."
"What else does the Herald say about Mary Jane Kelly?"
"So much that I'd be careful not to leave the paper lying around where Miss Prudence might pick it up. The Kelly woman was a lady of the evening like all the others the Ripper's killed, but this time he did more damage to the corpse. The doctor on the scene is quoted as saying it was worse than anything he's experienced in dissecting rooms. The Ripper cut the body open and took out all of the organs. He sliced her face so badly it didn't look like a face anymore and nearly severed her head when he slit the throat. Then he hacked off all of her private parts. That's the short version, Mr. Hunter, and about all I care to read." Josiah folded the newspaper four times into a neat rectangle that he handed to his employer. "As I say, it's nothing Miss Prudence should see."
"I've already read the story, Josiah." The young woman standing in the doorway to Geoffrey Hunter's office was tall and slender, dressed in black, but without the long, heavy veils of full mourning. It had been more than ten months since her father's death, nearly eight since her fiancé had been murdered in the worst blizzard the northeastern seaboard had ever known. "You shouldn't leave the outer office unattended if you don't want intruders coming in unchallenged." Prudence MacKenzie smiled to take the sting out of her words, and was immediately transformed from a pretty girl into the kind of delicate beauty men instinctively want to possess and protect.
"Let me take that," Hunter said, standing to reach for a rectangular package secured in brown paper and tied with butcher's twine. "What is this, Prudence?"
"It's the Hunter and MacKenzie stationery," she said. "I decided I couldn't wait for delivery. I went by the printer's on my way here." Using the scissors Josiah handed her, Prudence cut through the string and then the sturdy wrapping. "What do you think?"
The letter paper was a heavy, off-white bond, the firm's name engraved across the top of each sheet in a thick calligraphic script. Hunter and MacKenzie, Investigative Law.
Josiah Gregory ran his fingers lightly over the lettering. "Mr. Conkling would have liked this," he said. "It's what he hoped for when he made out his will that last time."
Like Prudence's fiancé, Roscoe Conkling had been among the 200 New York City casualties of the Great White Blizzard, though it had taken almost a month before the damage done to his body during a long walk up Broadway at the height of the storm finally killed him. When he knew without a doubt that he would not survive, the former senator from New York deeded his office and his law practice to Geoffrey Hunter and wrote a letter in which he urged him to follow a profession that would give meaning to his life. Josiah Gregory, now a man of independent means through his longtime employer's generosity, had been an unexpected and invaluable bonus.
"I'll put this away." Josiah gathered up the new stationery, the wrapping paper, the twine, and the scissors. Moving quickly and quietly, with a deft neatness that defined his every movement and gesture, he retreated to his desk in the outer office. He'd give Miss Prudence and Mr. Hunter a few minutes to themselves before he brought in the coffee tray. November was always cold and damp; nothing made a New York winter bearable like strong, sweet coffee with a good dollop of heavy cream.
"I did read the article about the Ripper's latest atrocity." Prudence unfolded the newspaper Josiah had placed on Geoffrey's desk, settling herself in one of the client chairs to look at the headline. "I cannot imagine what kind of monster would do something like this, not once, but seven separate times. They're calling him a lunatic and a homicidal maniac. For once I don't think the press is exaggerating. He has to be insane, Geoffrey. It's the only explanation that makes any sense. Thank God it's not happening here."
"We've had our share of killers. No country or society is immune from violence. Think about what we did to one another not very long ago. The war's been over for twenty-three years, but for some people it's as though it were still being fought."
Matthew Brady's photographs of Union and Confederate dead on shell pocked battlefields had horrified and saddened a nation torn in two by irreconcilable beliefs and a warrior culture that enshrined blood sacrifice. Death had ridden the land for four long years, and when it was finally over, greed galloped in like a fifth horsemen of the Apocalypse.
There were more enormously wealthy men in America now than ever before, but there were also legions of hopelessly poor and homeless men, women, and children. Armies of exploited workers whose wages barely staved off starvation. Violence was commonplace in big city slums, but few of New York City's killings could match what Jack the Ripper was doing in the far away London cesspit of Whitechapel.
"How could he do what they say he's done? Especially this latest killing, this Mary Jane Kelly. The reporter writes that he carved her up as casually as a butcher does the carcass of a sheep hanging from a hook in a slaughterhouse. I don't think I'll ever be able to understand the man who did that."
"Would you be able to defend him, Prudence?"
"Women haven't been admitted to the bar in New York, Geoffrey. It's only been a few months since New York University finally allowed three women to enroll in their law courses. Whether they'll graduate with anything equivalent to a law degree is another matter entirely."
"You didn't answer my question."
"I'm not sure I can. My father taught me everything he knew about the law. Even though the lessons took place at home, I learned as much if not more than any intern in any law firm in the city. The Judge made sure of that. But since the bar is closed to women in this state, your question is moot."
"There was a killer in Austin, Texas, three years ago. He murdered eight people, seven of them women, mostly in service. Chopped them to death with an axe."
"Did someone defend him?"
"I don't think the murders have ever been solved."
"Like Jack the Ripper."
"One theory is that when a murderer leaves the area where he committed his crimes, he doesn't stop killing; he starts again in a different place. The Ripper is still somewhere in London; there's no telling how many more women he'll kill before something or someone forces him to leave."
"For an ex-Pinkerton, you don't sound very optimistic that the Austin killer or the Ripper will ever be caught."
"I'm not. You can trace a crime passionel to a spurned lover, and a murder committed in the course of a burglary to the man who's foolish enough to pawn what he's stolen. You can even link a poisoner to the victim. But if someone kills for the sheer pleasure of killing, and there's no personal link to his prey, then he'll only be caught by accident, by some small, fortuitous mistake he doesn't realize he's made."
"At least we don't have a Ripper in New York City." Prudence refolded the newspaper, placed it headline down on her partner's desk.
"Not yet. It's only a matter of time before someone decides that London shouldn't have all the glory."
"Surely not."
"Sooner or later we'll have an American Ripper, Prudence. For all we know he's already at work; the newspapers just haven't discovered him yet."
* * *
"Can you manage, girl?" Brian Kenny handed his daughter a heavy wicker basket containing the freshly butchered bodies of four of his wife's finest stewing hens. Wrapped in saltwater soaked toweling, they'd keep nicely until she could hand them over to the MacKenzie cook in the house on Fifth Avenue. "Mind you keep the lid on tight, now. Mrs. Hearne is that careful about what she puts in her soup pot."
Nora Kenny drew her small, slender self up to her full height of just over five feet. She'd bundled her black hair into a fisherman's knit cap for the cold, windy ride from Staten Island to Manhattan, but there was nothing she could do to keep the red from her cheeks. Chapped skin and lips were the price you paid in November for having a fair Irish complexion. "I'll be fine, Da. I've carried baskets heavier than this one many a time."
"Don't forget it's Sunday tomorrow. You don't want to miss Mass."
"I'll go to Saint Anselm's with Colleen." Nora had become good friends with Miss Prudence's maid, sharing a room with her whenever she worked at the Fifth Avenue house.
"One of your brothers will be here to meet the ferry next Saturday. Mind you're on time to catch it. Your ma will worry me to death if you don't."
She could feel a blush deepening the scarlet of her already cold reddened cheeks. It was always like that when she had something to hide.
"Go on then. The ferry's about to pull out."
A surge of passengers crowded across the dock toward the new paddle wheeler named the Robert Garrett. Nora slung the handle of the wicker basket over one arm, picked up her carpetbag with her free hand, and smiled up at her da. She was his only girl in a family of ten children, six of them still living, thank God. He worried about her more than he did any of the five lads. He'd been reluctant to let her go by herself to help get Miss Prudence's Fifth Avenue house ready for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, but she'd reminded him of how welcome the extra wages would be and he'd given in. Brian had a terrible soft spot for his Nora.
As soon as the Robert Garrett pulled away from Staten Island into the choppy waters of the Hudson River, Nora found herself a comfortable seat in the portside saloon, the basket containing the plucked fowl sitting in an empty seat beside her, carpetbag at her feet. From this side of the ferry she could look out the windows that ran all along its side and see the enormous Statue of Liberty that had gone up on Bedloe's Island two years before. The weather on the day of the dedication had been bad enough to force cancellation of the planned fireworks. Nora remembered how disappointed they'd all been, crowded onto the family's two fishing boats to catch a glimpse of President Grover Cleveland, then forced to return to Staten Island in thick fog and heavy rain without having spied a single dignitary. The mist swirling up from the river today reminded her of that late October day in 1886. She and Tim Fahey had just begun walking out.
The ferry wasn't as crowded today as she'd thought it might be. Most of the seats were taken, but there were none of the weekday crowds pressed against the rails. Nora let her thoughts fly ahead to the mansion on Fifth Avenue where she'd be spending the coming week. She and her mother had both worked for the MacKenzie family since the Judge first built the Staten Island summer house named Windscape where he hoped his wife would recover from the tuberculosis. She didn't, of course. No one ever did, though sometimes the invalid coughed out bits of his lungs for years until the final hemorrhage.
Nora came to Windscape as a three-year-old, tied by a long rope looped around her waist and fastened to one of the thick wooden legs of the kitchen table so she wouldn't wander and get into mischief. Agnes Kenny kept a watchful eye on her daughter as she peeled potatoes, polished silverware, or baked the Irish soda bread that Sarah McKenzie loved to nibble with her afternoon cup of tea. The child was four when she was first let loose to play with Miss Prudence, the two of them a lively, mischievous pair whose antics brought a smile and occasionally a laugh to Miss Sarah's lips. Then a cough. Laughter always exacted a price. Nora remembered the sound of that coughing, how it echoed through the rooms, getting worse and worse until Miss Prudence's mother stopped coughing and the house became empty and silent.
Once they'd grown out of childhood, which happened early in their young lives, Miss Prudence and Nora seldom met, though Nora continued to accompany her mother whenever Agnes went to Windscape to cook or to clean. The Judge never spoke of selling the house, but he was seldom there. When the summer air in the city was brutally hot and hard to breathe, Judge MacKenzie brought his daughter across the river to the white painted house on the hill, but the young miss was never alone. There was always a nurse or governess or tutor beside her; she'd grown beyond the free, open play of the early years. She was being groomed to take her mother's place in a society from which Nora would forever be excluded.
That was the way of the world, her mother told her, reading the sadness in her daughter's expressive blue eyes. Miss Prudence didn't mean anything by it. She'd just moved deeper into the world she'd been born to, leaving her childhood playmate behind. Where she belonged. It was all about knowing your place and keeping to it. That was why her parents approved of Tim Fahey, why they'd pushed her in his direction and encouraged the engagement even when Nora herself was sure it was no longer what she wanted. Her ma said there wasn't a finer young man on Staten Island than Tim, and that Nora and Tim fit together as well as they did because they were so much alike. They lived in the same world.
She smiled at her da's caution to remember to go to Mass tomorrow. One of the reasons she was taking this early ferry was so she could stop by Saint Anselm's for Saturday confession on her way to Miss Prudence's house. She'd already confessed this particular sin to Father Devlin on the island more times than she cared to think about. She was sure he hadn't recognized her yet through the screen, but eventually he would and then there'd be hell to pay. Priests weren't allowed to reveal what they were told in confession, but she couldn't afford to take any chances.
She could walk in off the street to Saint Anselm's and be just another blue eyed, black haired Irish girl. Lost in the crowd. She'd been to Mass there many times with Colleen, but she didn't know any of the priests personally and they didn't know her. She'd whisper her sin through the grille, bow her head for absolution, gabble her penance at the altar rail, and be on her way. Ten or fifteen minutes at most. The hens wouldn't mind.
The other stop she had to make was more important. She decided to go there first, just in case it took longer than she had planned for. If she didn't make it to Saint Anselm's before confessions ended for the day she'd have to lie to her mother about receiving Communion on Sunday because you couldn't go to the altar with a mortal sin on your soul.
Then it would be back to Father Devlin again when she got home because she knew she wasn't going to stop. She was caught already, so what could it matter?
Unless something happened in the meantime. Unless she was wrong.
She'd told so many lies by now that a few more wouldn't trouble her conscience at all.
CHAPTER 2
Weekly confessions at Saint Anselm's started at midafternoon during the winter months. The November sun usually set by five o'clock and even with snow on the ground to reflect the light from streetlamps, it was dark as well as cold. People wanted to get home.
This Saturday only one of the three priests assigned to the parish was on duty. Father Gerard Mahoney, Saint Anselm's sixty-year-old pastor, was confined to his bed with a mustard plaster on his chest. Father Kearns, the assistant pastor, had been called to the bedside of a dying child.
"I'll manage," Father Mark Brennan assured both his colleagues.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Lies That Comfort And Betray"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Rosemary Simpson.
Excerpted by permission of KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP..
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