Tell Me No Lies Read online

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  Lily was waiting for her, a cup of coffee in her hand, when Phil burst into her boudoir pulling pins from her hair.

  “I think the…” Phil noticed the brown, side-pleated visiting dress that was already hanging on the door of the chifforobe. “That one,” she added superfluously.

  “I thought you might be in a hurry,” Lily said. “The brown is classic, discreet but chic, well-fitted but not constricting, and appropriate for several occasions.”

  “Whether it be luncheon or running for your life through the streets of Manhattan,” Phil added and cut her a grin. “Yes, excellent.” She sat down at her dressing table, and picked up a piece of buttered toast from the tray there.

  Lily stepped behind her and began unbraiding her hair. “Though perhaps if you are to meet the police and want to appear formidable you might prefer the eggplant and maroon…”

  Phil grimaced at her maid in the mirror. “I thought we agreed to throw that one out.”

  “Oh no, my lady. It holds too important a place in your introduction to American crime to be cast off.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Do you think you will see the detective sergeant today?”

  “As much as I would like to renew his acquaintance, I rather hope this won’t turn out to be a matter for the New York City Police Department.”

  “But you think it will.”

  “All too possible. And if I’m not mistaken, so does Mr. Luther Pratt. Which reminds me. Pack your ‘valise dramatique’ with extra hankies. There seems to be a surfeit of women in the Pratt household.”

  “I am to go?”

  “Why yes. You may be needed.”

  Lily’s dark eyes flared. Phil was never sure what that quick light in her maid’s eyes meant. Fear, surprise, or anticipation. There was so much she didn’t know about Lily. Except so far she’d been utterly loyal.

  Phil drank coffee and ate her toast while Lily coiffed her hair. She donned the brown visiting dress and didn’t argue when Lily insisted on pinning her new velvet cloche at such an extreme angle that the attached spray of pheasant feathers nearly covered one side of her face.

  Preswick saw them downstairs all the way to the hotel lobby, where he reluctantly turned them over to the doorman, who ushered them into the first waiting red taxicab. Phil gave the driver the address, he touched his cap, and they were off to the Pratt mansion farther north on Fifth Avenue.

  It was a brisk day; the last of the leaves on the trees in the park still held their color. Lily sat stiffly upright beside her, her simple winter coat covering her spotless, crisply starched maid’s uniform.

  “Now Lily. This may be nothing more than a terrible accident, but I must warn you. The gentleman who died was young and very handsome. It won’t be pleasant.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Lily said, showing her understanding of the gravity of the occasion. She never called Phil “my lady” except in company or when things were extremely serious.

  Not a typical mistress-servant relationship, for which Phil was forever grateful. She’d had enough of those to last a lifetime.

  Lily was no ordinary servant. She wasn’t ordinary in any sense of the word. Phil had decided the moment she’d seen the girl, valiantly fending off the clutches of three customs men to keep from being thrown off the SS Oceanic, that she had to do something to save her.

  And save her she did. Recruited her as her lady’s maid, since her own maid had taken one look at the ship and fled. Phil had finagled her a carte de visite and paid her passage to New York; Preswick had done the rest. And though she still refused to tell them her real name—Phil called her Lily because of her stunningly pale complexion—or where she had come from, or why, she had transformed into a more than passable lady’s maid, and more to Phil’s taste than any of the prim, nosy, and ready-to-gossip maids Phil had had in the past.

  And proven herself more than capable in a scrape.

  And so had Phil’s butler.

  They were quite a team, if she did say so herself.

  Several minutes later, the cab pulled to a stop in front of the Pratt residence. The evening before the mansion had been shimmering with light. Torches placed on marble plinths had lit the way up the stone steps to heavy walnut doors. In the light of day, it was a heavy stone building with crenellated frieze columns that rose at least five stories in the air.

  Phil and Lily climbed down from the cab and stopped on the sidewalk to collect themselves.

  “It looks like La Santé.” Lily sucked in her breath, making her lips disappear.

  Phil didn’t even blink, though she did tuck the morsel away. So Lily had been to Paris; hopefully not to La Santé.

  “A prison, hmm. Last night I thought it looked rather lovely, but today it reminds me of one of those large banking establishments down on Centre Street.” Though apropos perhaps, Phil thought.

  “They are the same, are they not? They keep some people in and others out.”

  “How true,” Phil said. “I think we’ll converse in Italian today. Most of them will be able to catch at least a few words. I imagine Mrs. Pratt and possibly her children are fairly fluent. They will all be able to understand but assume you won’t be able to understand what they might say in English in your presence.”

  “Sì, signora.”

  “But say as little as possible.”

  Lily’s eyes widened.

  Phil smiled. “I’m not certain how practiced I am. Something else to add to our study list. Shall we ring the bell?”

  They were greeted, not by a butler, but by Mr. Pratt himself. “Pardon the informality, Lady Dunbridge, but I thought the less intercourse with the servants the better. Ah,” he said, frowning slightly. “I see you have brought your maid.”

  “Yes, she goes everywhere with me. Very useful in a crisis and the beauty of it is her English is somewhat limited.” She felt Lily stiffen slightly beside her. She didn’t like to be belittled even for a good cause. Phil turned to beam down on her and saw her looking demurely and utterly stupid at the brilliantly polished marble floor. Phil could have kissed her.

  “Come into the parlor and I’ll see if Gwen—”

  “Mr. Pratt. This may seem an odd request, but I’d like to see the body first. I’m not ghoulish, nor am I oversensitive. Besides, Lily is heavily armed with smelling salts and other restoratives. But the first thing I learned with my poor friend Bev’s situation is to learn everything you can—at once.”

  She gave him a meaningful look, which she rather thought he missed completely.

  The door to their right opened and a man dressed in business attire stepped out. He was tall, with black hair slicked back from a center part. Phil noticed because his head was bent in a preoccupied study.

  Luther Pratt startled convulsively.

  The man stopped. “Ah, sir. I didn’t expect to see you home today and I offered to pick up Mrs. Pratt’s powders at the pharmacist this morning. Elva didn’t have time to fetch them yesterday with all the preparations.” His features lifted from preoccupied to concerned. He looked inquisitively toward Phil, and Phil saw that he was much younger than she’d thought and not at all unhandsome.

  “Thank you, Vincent. Very kind of you. And I did mean to be off earlier, but Mrs. Pratt asked me to wait for Lady Dunbridge. If I might introduce my secretary, Vincent Wynn-Taylor.”

  Phil smiled, nodded. And wished him at Jericho.

  “Ah yes,” Wynn-Taylor said, while he no doubt desperately searched for the reason she was here and why he had forgotten to put her visit in the day’s schedule.

  He bowed. Though Phil thought she detected a slight disdain for the whole “peerage malarkey” as one of the shipping magnates had so eloquently put it at the party last night before he passed out headfirst into the deviled eggs.

  “How do you do,” she returned with her most countess-like condescension. “Dear Gwen mentioned she was thinking about new draperies for the parlor and you know how women are. I promised to come a
round first thing to discuss some ideas.” She gave him a bright smile. One somewhere between one she would give to an eager schoolboy and one reserved for a potential pickpocket she’d just passed on the street. One could never be sure.

  “My wife is in the conservatory. I’ll just … Please tell her Lady Dunbridge will be in shortly,” Mr. Pratt said, finally remembering his part in the agenda. “Then I’ll join you in the office.”

  “Very well, sir.” Wynn-Taylor nodded to the countess and strode down the hall and entered a room at the far end.

  Suddenly galvanized into action, Pratt ushered Phil down the same hallway, Lily following in their wake.

  He didn’t stop at the elegant curving staircase that led up to the ballroom and living quarters, but steered Phil down the corridor, past several other doors until they were in the back regions of the house.

  Then he stopped. “Are you quite sure you are willing to do this, Lady Dunbridge? It’s not for a lady.”

  “Quite sure.”

  Before Phil could answer, the door behind Luther’s head opened and Gwendolyn Pratt slipped out, bringing a distinct medicinal odor with her. Phil just caught a glimpse of Vincent Wynn-Taylor handing a maid a package before Gwen closed the door behind her.

  “Oh Lady Dunbridge, I thought it might be you. Thank you for coming.”

  Phil was a bit shocked at her appearance. Last night the lady of the mansion had been resplendent in a golden charmeuse gown with beaded ocher flounces and a train of glittering wheat-colored organza. She was still impeccably dressed, in a day dress of figured linen, but she was pale and somewhat frail looking.

  “I was just bringing Lady Dunbridge to, uh … you?”

  “All in good time, my dear. But first she must see the body.” She sucked in a painful breath. Her husband strode to her side. “Really, my dear. Do not distress yourself. I’ll take care of everything.”

  Gwen waved him away. Turned to Phil. “It’s my asthma. A lung disorder. Merely an annoyance. I’ll have Brinlow ring for tea or … Lady Dunbridge, have you breakfasted?”

  She turned to her husband. “You’ll do everything exactly as she says, Luther. You must.” Gwen turned troubled eyes to Phil, and Phil noticed the deep violet color that contrasted so wonderfully with her blondish-red hair. She was not a beautiful woman, but she knew how to carry herself, and she was intelligent. “We’re depending on you.”

  “Mrs. Pratt,” Phil said, trying to rein in Gwen’s overly simplistic expectations. She wasn’t certain when her friendship with Beverly Reynolds while Bev was under the investigation for the murder of her husband had grown into Phil being the kingpin that had saved the day, and Bev’s bacon. It was a role she didn’t mind playing and it was partially true, she had to admit. But was it a fluke or did she actually have a talent for this investigation business? And could she really promise Gwendolyn Pratt a speedy and favorable outcome?

  “I will do my best.”

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Pratt.

  “In that case, we must be better friends than we already are. To give me reason to be hanging on your elbow when the police arrive. If you could call me Philomena?”

  “Certainly,” Mrs. Pratt said, finally getting her breath under control. “And you must call me Gwen.” She smiled wanly at her husband. “And don’t whatever you do, Luther, look shocked at anything we say, and give us all away.”

  Mr. Pratt’s eyebrows rose in astonishment. “I hope that it won’t come to that.”

  “Promise me.”

  “Very well, but you must wait for us here.”

  “Yes, Luther.” She turned to Philomena. “We will take your advice, if you can help us. I fear this may be more than a tragic accident.”

  “Hush now, Gwen. You’ve been reading too many of those gothic ghost tales.”

  “But you will see us through?”

  “I will endeavor to see that suspicion ultimately falls on the culprit and not on the innocent. To the best of my poor ability,” Phil added, and hoped to heaven it wasn’t this nice asthmatic woman and her stiff but loving husband.

  Mr. Pratt opened the conservatory door and Phil caught a glimpse of large potted palms and rattan furniture across a terrazzo-tiled floor, and Gwen Pratt slipped inside.

  “I suppose you’d better call me Luther,” he said. “Though don’t ask me to call you by your Christian name. I’d make a hash of it. This way.” They walked all the way to the back of the house, where he stopped in front of a heavy door covered in green baize.

  “I’m as progressive as the next man, but have you ever been in the basement of a house?”

  “Basement?”

  “Yes, that’s where he was found. Didn’t I say?”

  “No, you didn’t.” And that opened up a vast new arena of possibilities. None with which she was overly familiar. And she doubted if Lily would know much more. After all, she’d only been a lady’s maid for a few months, and never in a full household.

  Well, Phil had no doubt they would both do their best. She would have to leave it to Lily to obtain what information she could “downstairs.”

  “I have been known to visit cook on occasion.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend,” he said nervously.

  “Not at all. Most countesses would never dream of trespassing to the lower realms.” She smiled. “They wouldn’t be welcome. But as you’ve probably heard, I’m not your ordinary countess.”

  He tightened his lips and opened the heavy baize door. The stairway down to the kitchens, storage, and staff areas was fairly wide and well lit, unlike at Dunbridge Castle, where the poor maids had been known to scrape their elbows on the stone walls as they carried trays up to their personages.

  It was like walking into a different world. The smell of steam hovered in the air. The clanging of pots and pans, the scraping of chairs, the scuffling of feet as delivery men carried heavy crates of food, echoed from down a warren of corridors.

  They turned to the left, and Phil noticed that Lily had moved closer to her.

  Halfway down the corridor Mr. Pratt stopped. Looked around, then took out a key. Phil wondered if he was aware of the heads clustered together behind a partially opened door. Three of them at least, and she had no doubt there were others.

  She had to work quickly.

  They stepped into a large bright room, belowground but with high windows that could be opened to air. Large machines lined the far side of the room, giving it a futuristic quality. Stacks of towels lined up along the long wooden folding table. A line of cord was drawn across the room from which long drapes of lace were drying in the air. Of course, they were in the laundry room, and those odd-looking contraptions must be the new washing machines. The gaps in her education were sometimes staggering.

  She turned to Luther Pratt for elucidation.

  “We have twelve bedrooms and during a full house as we are close to having now, and with the servants’ quarters, the laundry I’m told sometimes gets backed up by twenty hours or so.

  “Which it seems happened yesterday with the extra guests and festivities, you know.”

  Phil nodded. “How long had Mr. Fauks been staying here as your guest?” she asked as she took in her surroundings, thinking what an absurd place for a rich young industrialist to meet his death.

  What on earth had he been doing down in this part of the house?

  Seducing a housemaid came to mind. Phil couldn’t think of a less romantic trysting place. And felt a quiet anger and pity for the poor girls who would spend their entire days washing, drying, and ironing, just to be manhandled by a stranger and be expected to carry on like nothing had happened and hope against hope they didn’t become with child.

  Any one of them might be the prey of a dashing young man, though Mr. Fauks hadn’t struck her as the type to maul a scullery maid. Of course, impressions could be deceiving.

  “He came in from Pittsburgh several days ago and was to stay with us for several days to attend Agnes’s debutante ball, enjoy the social
events, and check in with his business interests. Oh, this is just terrible. What will I tell his father?”

  Phil gave him an encouraging smile. This was no time for her host to unravel. They must work quickly, then try to contact the one man on the police force she knew they could almost trust. And pray that he got here before someone with fewer scruples.

  It hadn’t taken her long to understand that corruption still ran deep within the police force despite President Roosevelt’s reforms when he’d been commissioner there.

  And if Perry Fauks was killed in the laundry room, then a laundress or other belowstairs servant would be a handy suspect, and would relieve them of having to investigate more prominent suspects and risk censure or even worse by the people who still ran the city.

  That would be the easiest outcome and least damaging to the family, especially considering Mr. Pratt’s standing in the community. But if Luther Pratt had thought he could sweep this matter under the carpet, why had he called on her? What kind of man was her host?

  “This way.” Pratt held back a panel of lace and gestured for her to pass through.

  They walked between several rows of ironing boards and past a large canvas cart half-filled with white linens. Phil glanced in but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  Pratt stopped suddenly at a pile of white linens spread on the stone floor, then he reached down.

  And Phil got a terrible premonition.

  He took a handful of material and whisked it away with the bravura of a magician. Not to reveal a rabbit, but Perry Fauks, heir and shining star of the steel and manufacturing future, the darling of hopeful mothers across the country, the object of more than one girl’s attentions at the party the night before, lying on his back on a pile of dirty tablecloths. He was dressed in evening wear, his necktie still impeccably tied, as if he had suddenly decided to take a nap.

  Or had he been purposely laid out in this dignified pose?

  “Did anyone move him?”

  “No. Well, not until we … we had to … He was stuck in the chute.”

  It was hard to look away, he seemed so peaceful and still handsome even now. But Phil forced herself to look up at the stone wall and square opening in the wall above the body and the tail of sheets and linens that tumbled from the corner like a river of white.