Death Brings a Shadow

Book 4: Gilded Age Mystery

by Rosemary Simpson

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Private Investigators; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

DEATH BRINGS A SHADOW



In spring 1889, Prudence and Geoffrey set sail from New York Harbor on a private yacht bound for Bradford Island, where her friend Eleanor Dickson is to be wed. The Sea Islands along the Georgia coast serve as a winter playground for the likes of the Carnegies, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Dicksons. Despite her Yankee pedigree, Eleanor is marrying a Southern gentleman, Teddy Bennett, and Prudence is thrilled to be the maid of honor.



But days before the wedding, the bride is nowhere to be found. A frantic search of the island turns up her drowned corpse in an alligator-infested swamp. Prudence is devastated, but as they prepare the body for burial, she and Geoffrey discover evidence of bruising that indicates Eleanor was held under—most dishonorably murdered.



Determined to seek justice for her beloved friend, Prudence begins to investigate with Geoffrey's help and is quickly led into a morass of voodoo spells and dark deeds from the days of slavery. As Prudence and Geoffrey pursue a killer, they soon discover that Eleanor will not be the last to die on Bradford Island . . .

Release date: November 26, 2019

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Prudence MacKenzie watched her friend Eleanor Dickson wave excitedly toward the narrow wooden pier where her fiancé waited. Behind him stretched the coastline of Bradford Island, Georgia, a flat sweep of sun-bleached sand and gray-green live oak forest shimmering in the late-May heat. A thin veil of salt hung like mist above the water, blurring the line where foam-topped surf swept across the beach. Raucous seagulls circled overhead, calling to one another as they rode the air currents. It was a sight unlike any Prudence had ever seen before. Beautiful and utterly foreign to her Yankee eyes.

They had sailed out of New York Harbor five days ago to celebrate Eleanor’s wedding on a privately owned island hundreds of miles from the city where they had both grown up. It had seemed as though her friend’s new beginning signaled a metamorphosis for Prudence as well. Her Aunt Gillian, the dowager Viscountess Rotherton, who was to have chaperoned her niece during the voyage, telegrammed that her arrival in New York had been delayed for reasons she did not explain. She deeply regretted that her niece would have to cancel the trip, but there did not seem to be any other choice. Prudence had composed a dutifully respectful answer, then continued packing her trunks. She had slept long and dreamlessly every night beneath star-studded skies as the ship beat its way down the Atlantic coast, waking every morning delighted to be free of society’s strictures and more certain every day that the past would no longer haunt her.

But the sight and sound of Eleanor calling out to Teddy Bennett as her family’s private yacht approached the dock released an unexpected flood of memories. Resurrected the night of the Great Blizzard fourteen months ago, the hours of waiting and worrying, the death of the man she had been about to marry, and the empty days that followed. Her world had shattered into tiny fragments of self-doubt. An addiction to laudanum very nearly destroyed her future.

Until Geoffrey Hunter stepped in to save her. Steadied her as she built a new life for herself. She had never felt stronger than on the day they became partners in Hunter and MacKenzie, Investigative Law.

Where, she wondered, had this sudden rush of remembrance come from? This disturbing feeling of vulnerability? And why now? Prudence turned away from the sight of the lovers reaching out to each other and stared at the open, empty Atlantic. Blinked back tears.

Geoffrey.

There he stood, feet braced wide apart on the wooden deck, grinning into the ocean wind, black hair shining like a crow’s wing, dark eyes glittering.

He smiled at her, crossed the open space that separated them, and raised her right hand to his lips. Ever the gallant Southern gentleman, Geoffrey could as easily soothe a troubled heart as sow a confusion of mixed and conflicting emotions. She wasn’t sure what was happening between them, but his presence was comforting.

It also left her a little short of breath.

They set out for the Dicksons’ winter retreat in a procession of two-wheeled pony traps drawn by small horses descended from Spanish stallions and mares that roamed wild on Georgia’s coastal islands.

“The roads are made of crushed shells,” Geoffrey told Prudence, leaning in closer than he really needed to. “Mostly oyster shells because they don’t shatter into powder as easily as the others.”

“They’re noisy,” she said, unfurling her ivory-handled silk parasol against a blindingly bright sun. “Tell me again about the Sea Islands.”

“They’ve always been a culture apart,” Geoffrey began. “A world of rice and cotton and indigo fields separated from the mainland. Subject only to their own laws and customs. Or so Sea Islanders would have you believe. Most of the plantation owners fled before Sherman marched through Georgia. They came back when President Andrew Johnson’s pardon made it possible to reclaim the property they’d abandoned.”

“Did the pardon include your family in North Carolina?”

Geoffrey could seldom be persuaded to talk about the South he’d left as a young man and didn’t return to help rebuild.

“It did.” He turned his head to make the wide-brimmed hat he wore shade his face, speaking so softly that his answer was almost lost under the crunch of spoked wooden wheels over oyster shells.

“I didn’t intend to pry,” Prudence apologized. “And I really only meant for you to tell me what you could about the background of the family Eleanor is marrying into.” She’d had very little opportunity for private conversation with her friend aboard the yacht. Mrs. Dickson had seemed determined to stay as close to her daughter as she could during these last days before the wedding pried them apart.

“It’s definite that they won’t live year-round on the island. Eleanor’s father offered to buy Teddy a seat on the New York Cotton Exchange and he accepted.”

“He’s a lucky man. They’re both lucky. To have found each other and been allowed to follow their hearts. It doesn’t happen all that often in Society.”

Eyes on blond Teddy and dark-haired Eleanor riding in the lead pony trap, Prudence thought them a perfectly matched couple. Thirty-two-year-old Teddy was every girl’s dream of Prince Charming. Eleanor, four years younger than her fiancé, had been the acknowledged beauty of her Season. They were as at ease together as if they’d known each other all their lives instead of slightly more than seven months.

“There it is! There’s Seapoint!” Eleanor called out, flourishing her parasol.

The narrow road winding through thickets of scrub live oak opened onto a broad expanse of green lawn. Before them rose the forty-room mansion Eleanor’s father had designed to compete with what the Carnegies had built on Cumberland Island. It was as if someone had lifted one of the extravagant stone mansions from New York City’s Fifth Avenue and set it down intact in a far different clime and era.

It didn’t belong, but it was magnificent, a mass of heavy red brick and gray granite, turrets and chimneys soaring into the sky. Round-topped windows marched across the expanse of its two main stories, attic bedrooms for the staff tucked beneath sharply angled gables. Enclosed by high stone walls pierced by a tall, arched gate, Seapoint sat splendidly alone and aloof. It both beckoned and repelled, too bulky, dark, and sinister for a sun-kissed island, yet somehow the perfect expression of the new wealth that had created it.

“It’s not what I expected,” Prudence breathed. She had imagined white verandas and peacocks strutting beneath ancient trees hung with Spanish moss. Something out of the antebellum South of before the war, the way it had been captured in hundreds of images taken by itinerant photographers.

Geoffrey shrugged. “There’s not much left of what was here before. The South is having to reinvent itself. The Sea Islands are becoming the winter playground of people like J. P. Morgan, the Carnegies and Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts and Dicksons.”

“You don’t sound sad about losing the past.”

“It’s not being lost, Prudence. Don’t ever mislead yourself into thinking the South has accepted defeat. What I meant by reinventing itself is that there will be no fundamental changes to the way Southerners think and feel, but they’re smart enough to have learned that survival means living behind a mask of polite deception. It’s something we’ve always been expert at doing.”

“We? I’ve never heard you talk this way, Geoffrey.”

“Coming home does strange things to a man,” he murmured.

Prudence’s room opened onto a covered porch that stretched across the entire second floor of the mansion on its ocean side, which, she was informed, was really the back of the house. She barely had time to appreciate the view before Eleanor insisted on strolling out to the extensive rose garden heavily mulched with what looked like seaweed, adamant that Geoffrey not accompany them. It was an odd thing to do, almost as strange as Teddy’s departure as soon as the pony traps had been unloaded.

“They’re expecting me home at Wildacre,” he’d apologized, declaring himself reluctant to leave Eleanor’s company, but bound to honor an obligation. “I wish I could stay longer, but I’ll be back tomorrow. I promise we’ll have time together before the family dinner.” He’d lingered over his fiancée’s hand, then mounted his horse and ridden off with only a single backward glance.

“Father wanted the front entrance to be a grand sweep into the grounds,” Eleanor explained as she and Prudence walked. “No tea tents or lawn tennis courts to mar the effect.”

“It’s a beautiful setting,” Prudence said, breathing as deeply as her tightly laced corset would allow. The sea breezes brought a scent and taste of salt to air that grew increasingly thick and cloying the farther away from the ocean they went. Shell pathways had been laid out down to the shore and toward white stone benches at the edge of the live oak forest bordering the emerald lawns. Eleanor had already warned her not to ramble alone in the beckoning shade of the oddly twisted trees shaped by decades of strong Atlantic winds.

“Snakes are everywhere.” Her friend shuddered delicately. “Rattlers, water moccasins, corals . . . and those are just the venomous ones.” She gathered her skirts around her ankles. “There’s a children’s rhyme to remind you how to identify a coral snake, but I can never remember it.”

“I’ll stay on the paths,” Prudence promised. The only snakes she’d ever seen had been behind glass at the Central Park Zoo. She thought she wouldn’t mind not encountering one at closer range.

Eleanor stopped abruptly, then turned and grasped Prudence’s arm with fingers that gripped convulsively. “This is why I brought you out here,” she said, her voice trembling on the brink of panic. “Do you feel it, Prudence?”

“Feel what?”

“Eyes watching us. From somewhere deep among the trees. I’ve tried to find whoever it is, but I’ve never been able to see anyone. The undergrowth is too dense.”

“I don’t understand, Eleanor.”

“Neither do I. Not really. But whenever I’m here, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched. It’s happened more than once. At first, I thought it was my imagination, so I tried to ignore it. But this past winter, after Teddy and I began spending time together, the feeling grew much stronger. It frightened me.”

“Have you talked to him about it?”

“I know what he’d say. That I’m a little Yankee gal who’s afraid of snakes and wild pigs and raccoons and bobcats and everything else he grew up with. He loves this island, Prudence. It’s where his family put down roots when the first Bennett came over from England. He won’t want to admit there’s anything sinister or menacing about it.”

“Geoffrey said you’ll be living in New York after the wedding.”

“It’s a sacrifice on Teddy’s part. Don’t think I don’t appreciate how hard it’s going to be for him. But we’ll still come to Bradford Island in the winter. He’s not giving it up forever.”

“You’re shaking, Eleanor.”

“Please tell me you feel it, Prudence. Please tell me I’m not letting my nerves or prewedding jitters get the better of me.”

“Who do you think is watching you?” Prudence asked. She placed her hand over Eleanor’s, shocked at how cold her friend’s fingers felt. It was as though all the warm blood had drained out of them. Maybe if she could get her to talk about her fears, she’d see how groundless they were. From what Prudence had observed of Teddy Bennett while he was courting Eleanor in New York, he was deeply in love with her. “Teddy wouldn’t bring you to a place where harm could come to you. You know he wouldn’t.”

“It’s not Teddy I’m afraid of. He’s not the one spying on me.”

“Who, then?”

Eleanor didn’t answer immediately. Her eyes flicked toward the live oak forest, then back to the wind-buffeted roses. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “Just that something or someone on this island doesn’t want me here. Don’t laugh, Prudence, please. You’re the only one I can trust to take me seriously. Please tell me you feel it, also. I haven’t said anything to anyone else. Especially not Teddy. I don’t want him to be disappointed in me.”

“Nothing you could do would make him think less of you. He loves you, Eleanor.”

“I know. But he also secretly believes that someday I’ll agree to live permanently on the island with him. To raise our children here and grow old together. My father has convinced him that he’ll make his fortune in New York, but I understand Teddy better than he thinks I do. Savannah has a new Cotton Exchange. Nothing has been decided, but Teddy wouldn’t have mentioned it if he weren’t already contemplating an eventual move there. He tells me that Savannah is a very old and beautiful city. General Sherman occupied it briefly, but it wasn’t burned the way Atlanta was. New York is a stepping stone toward what he really wants.”

“Which is?”

“The Bennetts of Bradford Island restored to everything they were before the war.”

“All the more reason for them to welcome you.” It would be indelicate to hint that the Dickson wealth had in any way enhanced the bride-to-be’s attractiveness, but Prudence knew more than most young women about marriages of convenience. “Tomorrow morning, before the day gets too warm, you and I will follow that path we saw Teddy ride away on. Who knows? We might even meet him on his way here.”

“It’s cool and very mysterious in the live oaks,” Eleanor said wistfully. “I used to walk there often the first winter after the house was completed. Before I met Teddy, before I started feeling eyes watching me.”

“Squirrels and raccoons,” Prudence said decisively, “and perhaps one or two of those ponies that have run wild.”

“Do you really think so?”

“The wedding is in a few days, Eleanor. That’s more than enough to have on your mind. You don’t need ghosts in the forest to put bags under your eyes.”

“Ghosts?”

“Demons, phantoms, will-o’-the-wisps. Whatever you want to call them. Teddy loves you and you love him. Nothing else matters.”

“Prudence?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t feel them anymore. The eyes. They’re gone.” Eleanor squeezed Prudence’s hand gratefully. “I don’t know what you did, but the eyes aren’t there any longer.”

And please God they stay away, Prudence thought.

Even though she didn’t for one moment believe that Eleanor was in any danger, she decided to tell Geoffrey about this oddly disturbing conversation. Pinkertons, even ex-Pinkertons, were famous for chasing down the wildest rumors and most unlikely situations.

No questions left unanswered, no bugaboos unexorcised.

“Does she have any notion of who might be spying on her?” Geoffrey asked that evening. They were strolling on the beach in the twilight, walking off the last rolling gait of their sea legs.

“None at all.” Prudence was surprised by how solemnly he had taken Eleanor’s fantasy of eyes peering out at her from the live oak forest. Prudence herself didn’t doubt the feeling was real, but she could not read menace into it. Eleanor, she believed, had allowed herself to become fearful not so much of marriage itself as of the new world in which her fiancé had grown up but to which she was a stranger. She’d said it herself—prewedding jitters.

“There’s bound to be curiosity about the newest Bennett bride,” Geoffrey mused.

“Children hiding in the trees?”

“More likely some of the ex-slaves who remained on the island after the war and continued working Bennett land. It’s happened all over the South. They get a shack, a bag of beans, and a few coins if they’re lucky. Almost as though they’d never been freed.”

“Surely not.” Prudence knew next to nothing about the lives of men and women who worked from sunup to sundown to put a crust of bread in their children’s mouths and a patchwork of rags on their backs. She’d grown up in a household of well-paid and well-treated servants whose loyalty to her family was real and unquestioned. Casually cruel exploitation on a grand scale was something she had never witnessed and could not imagine.

“Eleanor’s father bought the island with the express intention of building an estate on it that would rival anything his competitors could come up with. This mania for constructing Fifth Avenue palaces has infected the entire Four Hundred. New York City isn’t big enough for them anymore.”

Prudence rarely questioned Geoffrey’s arsenal of knowledge. His network of acquaintances and informants was both broad and deep, his encyclopedia of facts seemingly boundless. “What does that have to do with what Eleanor believes is happening to her?”

“Only that when Philip Dickson purchased Bradford Island, he took advantage of the near-bankruptcy of the family that had owned it for over a hundred years. Plenty of other Southerners reclaimed the lands that were confiscated from them during the war. By hard work they’ll manage to hold on to them this time and eventually edge their way back to prosperity. It was unfortunate for the Bennett family that their fate fell into the hands of Teddy’s father. He’s the worst kind of Southerner, Prudence. A man who believes as firmly in his right to do nothing for the people who depend on him as he does in the sun’s promise to rise in the east every morning.” Geoffrey paused for a moment. “I asked a few questions before we left New York.”

Of course he had.

“The single concession Philip Dickson agreed to was that the Bennett family would be allowed to continue to live at Wildacre for as long as they could pay the taxes on it. If they ever fail to meet that obligation, the plantation house and its immediate acreage will devolve to Dickson for whatever sum is due. It was a crafty bargain on Dickson’s part.”

“And Wildacre is far enough away so the two families never have to lay eyes on one another?”

“On the far northern shore of the island.”

“Out of sight, out of mind,” Prudence said. “Except that when Eleanor’s father began to build his mansion, they had to be curious.”

“It’s not every day a rich Yankee invades with money instead of an army.”

She hadn’t expected the bitterness that soured his voice and darkened his eyes to unreadable black pits.

“I’d say every man, woman, and child on the island is obsessed with the Yankee bride. Think about it for a moment, Prudence. They all know she’s her father’s only child, and that Philip Dickson is not a young man. Sooner rather than later she’ll be mistress of Bradford Island, but as a Bennett. Like you, I don’t think she’s in any danger, but I do believe she’s going to have to get used to spending her every waking moment under constant scrutiny.”

“Poor Eleanor. I don’t think I could stand it.”

Prudence slept late but fitfully the night after the Dicksons entertained Teddy Bennett’s family for dinner at Seapoint. She’d had enough wine to doze off quickly when she climbed into bed shortly before eleven o’clock, but it was also enough to wake her several times out of restless dreaming. Once she thought she heard voices echoing through the night air, but she couldn’t make out who they might be, and finally decided they existed only in her tense, restive mind.

She coaxed herself back to sleep by picturing Eleanor in her wedding gown, a stunning confection of white silk and Valenciennes lace, the veil so light and fine it would float cloudlike around the bride’s delicate features as she walked toward her groom. They’d had such a wonderful time together during the fittings, as seam by seam and layer by layer the dress became exactly what Eleanor envisioned. Prudence hadn’t had to exaggerate when she told her friend she had never seen anything more beautiful.

When the knocking on her bedroom door woke her, Prudence couldn’t at first remember where she was. Strong morning sunlight streamed across her bed and a breeze of sea salt and honeysuckle perfumed the air. From off in the distance came the rhythmic swooshing sound of a rotary mower making its way back and forth through the lush green grass of the rear lawn. Then she remembered. Geoffrey had said they would scythe or mow the grass a full two days before the wedding. Any closer to the date and clouds of mosquitos and midges would be buzzing and biting around their ankles as they processed across the new stubble to the stone chapel where Eleanor and Teddy were to say their vows.

“Prudence?” Eleanor’s mother stepped hesitantly into the room. “Aren’t you girls awake yet? It’s nearly eight o’clock.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Dickson. I must have overslept. Too much good company last night.” Prudence struggled to sit up, unbraided hair tumbling over her shoulders.

“Isn’t Eleanor with you? She’s not in her bed. I thought for sure she’d come in to spend a girls’ night giggling and gossiping until dawn.” Abigail Dickson frowned and set down the jewelry box she carried. She walked across the room and out onto the covered porch, shading her eyes against the sun. “Eleanor!” she called, twirling left and then right to sight down the length of the second-floor veranda. “She knows I don’t like her to walk on the beach alone without first telling someone where she’s going.”

A maid carrying a morning tray of hot coffee and biscuits wrapped in a white linen napkin edged through the open bedroom door.

“Never mind,” Abigail Dickson said. “You and I can have a nice chat while we’re waiting.” She poured coffee into two gold-rimmed cups while the maid helped Prudence into her dressing gown. “That’s all for now, Lilah. You can come back later to dress Miss Prudence.”

The maid closed the door softly behind her.

It was on the tip of Prudence’s tongue to tell Eleanor’s mother that she hadn’t seen her daughter since they’d parted in the hallway late last night, but she caught herself in time. Wherever her friend had gone this morning she’d obviously wanted a few private moments before being engulfed once again in last-minute wedding preparations.

And Eleanor certainly deserved it. She’d smiled and nodded her way through a dinner that Prudence had found increasingly uncomfortable as course succeeded course and the conversation faltered and grew progressively more stilted and constrained. Teddy’s two younger sisters, both unmarried and edging into irreversible spinsterhood, had seemed so awed by their surroundings that they’d said very little and rarely lifted their eyes from their plates. His father and younger brother radiated a subdued anger that seethed closer to the surface of their self-control with every glass of wine they drank. By the time the ladies adjourned to the parlor, leaving the men to their brandy and cigars, Prudence had exhausted her reserve of politely inoffensive topics. Fortunately, Abigail Dickson could chatter on for hours about absolutely nothing.

Now she was holding out the black velvet jewelry case she’d carried into the room. “This is what my beautiful Eleanor will wear with her wedding gown,” she said, opening the case to display a many-coiled rope of matched pearls nestled around a large diamond clasp. “They belonged to my mother and my grandmother before her. They each wore them on their wedding day, and so did I. Now it’s Eleanor’s turn.” Tears sparkled in Abigail’s eyes. She dashed them away with a lace-trimmed handkerchief and spilled the pearls out onto the small table at which they’d sat to drink their coffee. The diamond clasp flashed like lightning as it caught the brilliant Georgia sunlight.

“They’re magnificent,” Prudence declared, running a forefinger along the strand of satiny white pearls.

“And this is for you, my dear,” Abigail said, handing a small robin egg blue Tiffany box to Prudence. “Your maid of honor gift, but also an expression of our appreciation for the years of friendship you and Eleanor have shared. Open it.”

A pair of exquisite pearl and diamond earrings twinkled up at Prudence. Tears misted her vision.

“We’re a sight, aren’t we?” Abigail laughed, handkerchief to her eyes again. “I’m so happy for her.” Unspoken was the apprehension every mother felt on handing her daughter over to a husband whose control of her would go unchallenged once the vows were exchanged. “Her father and I couldn’t have found Eleanor a better husband if we’d picked him out ourselves.”

Prudence glanced toward the door leading onto the porch, sipped her coffee, and wondered where Eleanor had gone. And why. Two days ago she’d been afraid of unfriendly eyes watching her from the live oaks. Had something changed? Something happened that she hadn’t shared with her friend? Surely, she wouldn’t have walked into that forest of misshapen trees by herself? Not in the dark, and not this morning, either, Prudence decided. She was probably on the beach, just as Abigail had said, out of sight from the house, tiptoeing barefoot through the shallows.

Prudence decided to do her best to distract Eleanor’s mother until her errant daughter returned. “You’re certainly responsible for their having met.”

“I suppose you’re right. If Philip hadn’t bought Bradford Island as a place to get away from the dreadful New York winter, they might never have been introduced. Not that they ever were, of course. Properly introduced, I mean. I’m sure Eleanor has told you the story.” Without waiting for an answer, Abigail trilled on. “Philip hadn’t met any of the Bennetts during the negotiations for the sale of the island. Hadn’t wanted to, actually, since their situation was precarious.”

“Bankrupt, is what Eleanor said.”

“My dear husband does not get enjoyment from the spectacle of another man’s misfortune,” Abigail explained. “So he left everything to the lawyers and the bankers.”

Geoffrey had had a harsher and more realistic opinion of why the transaction was handled the way it was. In his view. . .