Seven for a Secret (22 page)

“Steady on, Senator,” Val said when our subject appeared to lose all powers of speech.

I don’t like scrutinizing folk in distress, and it seemed the fragmenting man before me was in enough to splinter apart. It was evidence, though. So I took it all in as best I could. “Any changes to the household recently?” I inquired.

Gates lifted his eyes a fraction. “About a month ago, she found a position in a flower shop—Timpson’s, near to my residence. Of course I congratulated her and of course I allowed her to remain for as long as she needed to find a respectable boarding house or a set of private rooms. Poor Lucy. Are you certain that it’s her?”

“Yes. And Lucy was your housekeeper, you say.”

“She was, but she found work in the flower shop much more to her tastes. Oh, God. You must find the monster who did this, Captain. You must find him at once.”

My heart was hammering. Charles Adams had rescued Lucy Wright from a gang of kidnappers and later married her. Rutherford Gates had a housekeeper called Lucy Wright who had left his service in favor of work as a florist. Whatever breed of lies we were dealing with, they were the sort that sink their teeth in and leave you bleeding.

Valentine pulled out his little notebook. He never needs to write anything down, but I think he likes the effect. “Lucy Wright. Spinster?”

“Widowed, with a child.”

“Previous residence?”

“She was originally from Albany.”

“How long had Mrs. Wright overseen your ken?”

“Two years, all told. I was very fond of her.”

“Seemed the sort of lass it would be easy for a man to grow fond of.” Val smiled salaciously, flicking a vesta with his thumbnail and lighting his cigarette. He leaned forward and did the same for Gates. The man obviously needed one.

“Lucy was lovely, yes,” Gates said with some care. His hale complexion had grown moldy. “If you’re suggesting that my relationship with her was in any way improper—”

“Oh, I’m not
suggesting
it,” Val said in a remarkably bold display of cunning. “Don’t tell me you had that thoroughbred under your nose for two years and never took a ride.”

My hackles rose at Val’s language—but the foul tone aided the greater good, for Gates’s pallor shifted to a stunning shade of crimson.

“Are you accusing me of something, Captain?”

My brother splayed a hand over his chest, all innocence. “Senator, I’d never dream of it. But were you in a position to
know
Lucy? Her friends? Enemies? Where do we start?”

Gates shuddered, looking stricken. “I’m sorry. This is such a shock.”

“That’s fair,” I allowed, aiming for kindly and landing at civil. “Take your time about it.”

“You’re right, of course.” Gates cast a look at my brother, a
We all of us have our little foibles,
do we not
expression. “We were . . . intimate on occasion. We kept it secret, and I hope I can trust you to do the same. Lucy spent the majority of her time within the walls of my home with her little boy. She was terrified of slave catchers, you see. As many Africans are. She was once the victim of a vile kidnapping attempt from which I extricated her. That’s how we met, in fact. Lucy lived in mortal fear of being snatched up again. When she found the position at the florist’s shop, I was terribly proud of her. It seemed that she was finally making a recovery.”

Val blew out a smooth circle of smoke, watching its lazy dissipation with considerable interest. “Before she was killed, her sister and son were netted by blackbirders.”

I shot a glance at my brother, surprised at the admission. Likely because my head was spinning. Gates’s tale was so close in character to what I’d supposed to be the truth that I felt in a dreamscape. Gates, meanwhile, dropped his own cigarette. Gutted, for all appearances. My brother calmly stepped on the glowing point.

“No. Please tell me—”

“The Wrights afterward escaped to a safe location. Two days later, Lucy Wright was put to anodyne with a cord round the neck, possibly in an alleyway, possibly somewhere else. Delia and Jonas Wright are missing. Might you know whereabouts they are?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Nary a suggestion?”

“I wish to God I had one. I don’t even know where Delia Wright resides, only that she teaches school at the Abyssinian Church. This is all so shocking.”

“Shocking is about the color of it. And here’s what I’m wondering, Senator.”

Gates tugged at his goatee, looking as if he might sully the flawless reputation of Astor House by being ill on its finely worked carpet.

“Yes, Captain?”

“I’m wondering what you want me to do about it.”

Val propped his elbow on the arm of the settee and continued smoking reflectively. I hadn’t known where he was leading before, but now he’d arrived, I saw his ploy for the brilliantly simple scheme it was. If Rutherford Gates had returned home, somehow inexplicably discovered Lucy at Valentine’s, and killed her in a jealous rage—all of which fit, people kill for love every day of the year and the world keeps turning—then his response to Val’s question would be telling.

I know nothing of this affair. But please drop the case, for the sake of the Party.

“Please do all you can.” Gates slumped back, mouth slack with grief. “I arranged to have the house closed up this morning—I’m so often traveling between here and Albany that I’m thinking of selling it, and after all, my housekeeper had given notice. Living in a hotel seemed much easier in the interim. When I found no one home, I pictured her settled elsewhere . . . the mistress of her own establishment. Happy. I can’t stomach it. Find the son of a bitch who did this, Captain, and hang him.”

“Oh, there you are, Rutherford. But I fear that I interrupt you.”

Animal apprehension slithered across my shoulders. Silkie Marsh stood behind Val, dressed in her usual splendor—black satin with jet beadwork, lips artfully rouged, a pale fur cape the exact color of her pale golden hair. She was addressing Gates, but naturally she was looking at Valentine. Madam Marsh sees people the way most people see cobblestones—as a means of getting somewhere. But she once had Val, and she wants him back, the way a child would want a toy simply because they’ve been told they can’t have it any longer. She’d worked a spray of tiny scarlet hothouse roses into the artful sweeps of her hair that made me think of sprayed blood.

“Silkie.” Val smiled, still languidly smoking. “What a pal you’ve been to the Party this year. They’ve all but built you a shrine at the Hall, dear little duck. You’ve been plumping our coffers something admirable.”

“I couldn’t think of doing anything less.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. He ignored it. So she shifted her attention to me, smiling as if he’d leapt up and embraced her. “And Mr. Wilde. I gather your efforts to redeem Mr. Carpenter were successful. It is the last time I’ll trust Mr. Varker’s word, of that I assure you.”

“I take it you only imagined meeting Coffee St. Claire,” I couldn’t help but mention.

“I was convinced it was the same man, but now I understand that I allowed myself to be led, I’m afraid.” She cocked her head, dimpled and wide-eyed and soft as a razor. “You must think me a foolish, impressionable girl, Mr. Wilde.”

“That is the
last
thing I think of you.”

Blushing as if at a compliment, Silkie Marsh turned to the senator. He mopped his face with a handkerchief, pushing his half-spectacles up his nose. “Rutherford, darling, I won’t ask what you were speaking of, but you seem most . . . troubled. Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes. I’ve had a bit of a shock, I fear. Nothing to speak of.”

“Nothing but murder,” Val said brightly.

Emerging from behind the settee, Silkie Marsh eyed us in either real or feigned wonderment. The woman is such a creature of clockwork, mimicking humanity by means of wax and paint and cogs, that it’s almost impossible to tell when she’s lying or simply parroting normal sentiment.

Rutherford Gates, meanwhile, was turning blue.

“Murder?” she echoed.

“You’re familiar with the concept,” I reminded her.

The vivid circles within her dappled eyes froze over. “I’ll await you in the restaurant, Rutherford, and we can discuss fund-raising. If you are able. If other business detains you, I’ll simply take advantage of their excellent chef. Valentine, might you consider my house at Greene Street for a Knickerbocker Twenty-one event soon? My girls and I would be delighted to provide a little cheer, entirely gratis, of course.”

“Gratis, you say?” my brother mused.

“Always for you, Valentine,” she murmured.

“Well, they do say you get what you pay for. No.” Val crushed the cigarette in a discreet crystal tray. “No, I would not.”

Shock would be the mildest word for my reaction. I’d never seen him so openly reject an overture in my life. Silkie Marsh colored again, this time naturally. A sheen of tears sprang into her eyes for good measure. Nodding to Rutherford Gates, she hurried away, silken coiffure bobbing in a sea of similarly artful heads.

“Thank you for speaking with me,” Gates said, rising. If we’d insulted a pal of his, he seemed game to ignore the fact. “I really must meet with Miss Marsh, as she’s contributed healthy sums to my campaign in the coming spring. But keep me informed. Please.”

“You’ll be in town for the Party ball a week from now?” Val inquired.

“Yes, though Albany will doubtless require me in the meanwhile. I’m staying here at the Astor when in Manhattan. Room three thirty-seven. Don’t hesitate to contact me.”

Gates departed. He left behind him a visible aura of grey unease. When the senator had caught Silkie Marsh up at the restaurant entrance, she smiled, taking his arm. They proceeded into an exotic realm of terrapin and goose liver and capon. Neither of them honest. One of them, at the minimum, a ruthless killer.

I hadn’t decided about the other quite yet.

“I don’t suppose we should be surprised Gates and Silkie Marsh know each other?” I ventured.

Val shook his head. “They’ve been pals for years. So have I, for that matter. We’re all cut from the same cloth.”

“No, you aren’t. Would you call them friends or friendly?”

“Friends.”

“That worries me tremendously.”

“That’s because you, my Tim, are sharper than the average fence post.”

“Have you spotted the lie yet?”

“The only hummer I know he just delivered was that they were intimate
on occasion.
I told you I wouldn’t go sniffing after Lucy Adams, and that’s because she wasn’t the casual sort of ladybird. She was a one-man moll. Worried at her wedding ring as if it eased her, nary a disloyal thought in her head. They went to it regular if they went at all, though I never spied her at his ken.”

My scar needed some vicious rubbing, so I started in. Val, for once, ignored me. After he waved his fingers at a waiter—Irish this time—a pair of brandies were shortly thereafter clasped in worried grips. I drank, not caring what it cost. Anyway, Val would pay for it. He’s the Democrat, after all.

“Motive, Val,” I said under my breath.

“Motive,” he sighed. “Don’t I know it.”

A politico,
I thought,
rescues a beautiful woman. He’s entranced. He likes who he is in the story because it’s the wrong story he’s telling. He supposes himself the hero. He imagines the narrative is printed in great block letters, with pictures rendered in blinding splashes of color. Fantastical portraits of knights drawn in his image. Of dragons slain, the glory of the conqueror. Of swift, heartbreaking love. And then he finds himself married—perhaps—and only a politico after all. With a wife, now.

Seixas Varker and Long Luke Coles wanted Lucy alive so as to make a swift, rancid profit. Val and I and Piest and the Committee men—at least to my knowledge, God knows my acquaintance with Higgins and Brown was brief—wanted her safe. I assumed Silkie Marsh was acting true to form and assigned her the role of
perpetrator of whatever evil
is foulest
and left it at that. These circumstances, barring extraordinary new evidence, led to one conclusion.

The only person I’d yet met who could have wanted Lucy Wright dead was Rutherford Gates. When an election and a secret marriage had entered the picture, anyhow.

Val tossed several coins on the pewter salver, rising and buttoning his coat. “The poor fish seemed shocked enough. Whether shocked that she’s croaked or shocked we wanted a chat with him over it, though, I couldn’t say.”

“Could the sisters have known about all of this? Found Gates out long ago, and kept mouse for the family’s sake?”

“No way to be certain just yet. But if they were mum in the name of peaceableness, that tack seems to have gone south.”

“I’m for the Committee of Vigilance,” I said, following him out the great glass-paned door. “The remaining Wrights need finding, and finding now.”

“Then I’ll explore a few notions of my own.”

“Which?”

“Ones I’ll keep snug over for now.”

Irritated and worried, I blinked up at the sun, stepping to the edge of the paving stones to allow the scores of beaver-hatted gentlemen and fur-caped ladies to pass me by. “Do I have to tell you to be careful again?”

“No. I just gave the middle finger to Silkie Marsh, major Democratic contributor and present or former darling of every Party boss in Manhattan I can think of.
Careful
won’t serve the purpose. We sort this quick as possible or there’ll be hell to pay.”

Val touched his hat brim and set off, swinging his stick like a dandy out for a lark. He was right, of course. Time was a precious commodity. I hastened off alone, ruminating over names.

Wright or Adams,
I thought as I drew closer to Julius’s ken, having sent word the night before requesting an audience with the Committee. Her murder couldn’t be unraveled until I knew which it was. And I would find it out, I determined, as I recalled the weight of her nearly cold body and the depth of her richly dark voice. I would know her name, and like a key it would unlock every obstacle that barred me from the answer. And heaven forbid I leave a mystery unsolved or a strongbox unopened.