No Darkness as like Death
Few in San Francisco were troubled by the news that Ambrose Shaw had been found dead at a local health institute—the prominent banker had recently turned to politics and was reviled by many for his incendiary views. But when Celia Davies learns that his death is considered suspicious by the police and that a damning piece of evidence points to a patient of hers as the culprit, she feels compelled to prove the woman’s innocence.
Teaming up with Detective Nick Greaves, Celia soon discovers there’s no shortage of suspects, including the victim’s many political enemies, his disaffected son, who may have been too eager to receive his inheritance, and even the dead man’s fellow patients at the institute, whose founder promises miracle water cures but has been covering up numerous burglaries of his well-to-do clients.
As Celia and Nick struggle with their feelings for each other as well as the many murky aspects of the case, they’ll have to navigate an endless trail of false clues and dead ends to reach the cruel truth behind a perplexing murder . . .
Title Page
Copyright
No Darkness as like Death
Nancy Herriman
Copyright © 2021 by Nancy Herriman
Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs
Published by Beyond the Page at Smashwords
Beyond the Page Books
are published by
Beyond the Page Publishing
www.beyondthepagepub.com
ISBN: 978-1-954717-02-2
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Dedication
To my fellow Sleuths in Time authors,
because no writer is an island.
You ladies are the best.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Author’s Note
Books by Nancy Herriman
About the Author
Chapter 1
San Francisco
Mid-September 1867
“Is he dead or alive, Mr. Griffin?” Celia Davies asked the man standing across from her, anxious for the answer that might allow her to breathe freely again.
After two months of not.
“My husband—is he dead or alive?” she repeated.
Mr. Griffin grinned, the breeze along the street wafting the rose water scent he wore. He had, she’d come to discover, an interesting smile, his mouth full of white teeth, unlike other men like him. Men who were scoundrels. Gamblers. Thieves.
“Ah, Mrs. Davies. What a question.” He winked and held out his hand, wiggled his fingers.
She understood what he wanted, and she reached into her reticule, but not before taking a look around to see who might be watching. On a sidewalk near the wharves and the warehouses, however, folks knew to pay no one any mind. Unless they were shouting fire, and even then she doubted anyone would heed the warning.
“Here.” She handed him the seventy-five dollars she owed him . . . the money Patrick owed him. A small loan from her dearest friend, Jane, because Celia’s husband was not here to pay his debt, and Caleb Griffin had been patient enough in waiting for remuneration. He’d made plain to her that he had no intention of continuing to be patient.
“Thank you kindly, ma’am.”
He hefted the bag of coins, hesitated—likely wondering if he should count the money out right then and there—before deciding to trust her and hastily tuck it inside his coat, snug against the cardinal red waistcoat he wore. His trademark. His bit of vanity.
“My husband,” she repeated once again, a trifle more irritably. Mr. Griffin would know what had happened to Patrick in the months since he’d been reported alive. Mr. Griffin made it his business to know all he could about those he had dealings with. “Please tell me if he is dead or truly alive.”
“Oh, he’s alive, Mrs. Davies,” he answered. “Your husband has gone to the Colorado Territory in search of placer gold.”
“Colorado . . .” She thought she’d feel relief to know Patrick was now many miles away. But the tension in her shoulders, in her chest, did not ease. She believed Mr. Griffin. Patrick had brought her to America in search of gold. He was not someone who’d permit his initial lack of success to prevent him from continuing his pursuit. “More gold.”
“He’s got the itch.”
“As I am well aware,” she replied and thanked him.
He grinned again, because he should have been the one thanking her for finally handing over the sum of money he was due. Not the other way round.
“I pray we never meet again, Mr. Griffin,” she said, perking her chin, as she did when she wished to be more in control of a situation than she often was.
“You never know, ma’am, do you? What’s gonna happen. You never know.”
“I suppose not.”
He tipped his hat and rushed off. She stood on the pavement, getting jostled by passing pedestrians who grumbled at her to get out of the way, and stared, long after Mr. Griffin was lost to view.
You never know.
• • •
Nicholas Greaves squinted into the sunlight, which sliced through gaps in the buildings packed tight the length of Pacific Street. Another ordinary late afternoon in this part of San Francisco, sidewalks crowded with longshoremen and warehouse laborers and sailors. Ducking into oyster bars and restaurants. Or turning south, down the lanes that would take them into the Barbary, where more than a meal could be purchased, even at this hour of the day.
He scrubbed fingers through his hair and reseated his hat. A coal wagon rumbled past, and he strode across the street once the path was clear. Bauman’s wood sign squeaked in the wind. Three men in dark cotton duck trousers and sack coats ignored his approach and dashed down the steps to the basement saloon, more interested in the sausages Bauman’s wife was frying up than in a detective wandering along the plank walkway.
The brothel that used to be located next door had closed, the sign removed, the window shuttered. Nick wondered, idly, when that had happened. Its closure wasn’t due to any excessive vigilance on the part of the police, that was certain. So long as folks didn’t cause trou
ble—and that included the ladies who’d once plied their trade in the depths of the brothel’s dusky parlors—the cops didn’t go looking for it. There was more than enough crime to occupy their time. Once the sun set, crooks and sharpers would ooze through half-open doors, like blobs of tar escaping their bucket, to settle onto the road. They’d stick themselves to every unlit, secluded spot and lie in wait for a greenhorn to wander along. Greenhorns who’d be lucky if the worst result was losing some money.
With a sweep of his hand, Nick wiped dust from his coat and descended the steps. The gas lamps suspended from the ceiling had already been lit, the glow of their flames reflecting yellow off the pressed tin overhead. A fire had been set in the cast-iron stove to heat the room, and the tables were crowded with workers having a meal and a beer. A haze of cigar smoke hung over the room, and the smell of frying meat made Nick’s mouth water.
Bauman looked over from where he stood behind the saloon’s long walnut bar, drawing a beer. “Mr. Greaves!” His German accent was as round and thick as his chest.
His customers gave Nick cursory glances before returning to their food. He wore nothing that indicated he was a policeman, no uniform, no badge. And if any of them were aware of his occupation, they were convincingly pretending not to care.
“Bauman,” said Nick in reply.
The saloonkeeper slid the glass of lager beer across the bar toward a waiting customer. “You return at last, Mr. Greaves.”
It had been weeks . . . no, months. It had been months since he’d been inside this saloon. “Miss me?”
The other man laughed. “Do I miss you? Or does she? What is it you want to know?”
“Is she in?” Nick asked, squinting at the hallway that led to the quarters at the rear of the building. It would be early for her to be at the saloon, but sometimes she came in to help serve the customers and prepare for the evening’s entertainment.
Bauman shook his head before replying. “Ah, Mr. Greaves.”
The saloonkeeper had been witness to Nick’s drawn-out history with Mina Cascarino. A history that had only in the briefest of moments been what any sane person would call happy.
“She is here,” he replied. “Be kind.”
“When aren’t I?”
Bauman didn’t laugh that time.
Nick tapped fingertips to the brim of his hat and wove his way through the tangle of tables and chairs. Mrs. Bauman was bent over her cooking stove and didn’t notice him passing in the hallway outside the kitchen. Mina, on the other hand . . .
“Go away,” she announced from the doorway to the room she and the musicians used when they weren’t out in the saloon performing. A bandana tied over her head secured her glossy black hair, and around her shoulders she clasped a fringed shawl, its color an iridescent blue that altered its shade with her every movement. The checked tan gown she wore was the plainest dress he’d ever seen on her. She looked tired.
Maybe she was simply tired of him. She had every right to be.
“Can we talk, Mina?”
“I don’t have anything to say to you, Nick.” She spun on her heel and stomped back into the room. “And I don’t have time to talk. I need to get to work. Adolph is already unhappy that I asked to leave early tonight. I don’t want to anger him more. So, goodbye.”
His hand stopped the door before she could slam it shut. “My father’s dead.”
Of all the places to first go after landing at the dock, he’d chosen to come to Bauman’s. To a cramped, musty room with a wobbly dressing table and some chairs shoved into the only corner not occupied by crates and casks of beer. Standing near enough to Mina to see the flush on her smooth cheeks and inhale the aroma of her tuberose perfume. Near enough to take her in his arms if he reached out. But he didn’t take her in his arms.
“Why are you here?” she asked, her voice weary.
“My father—”
“Is dead.” Her gaze studied his face; he loathed the pity he detected in her eyes. “Condolences on your loss, but what else do you want me to say? What do you want me to do? Tell you that nothing was your fault? Well, I can’t say that, Nick, because I don’t know that it’s true.”
“You’re probably right.”
She dropped onto a chair set before the dressing table, her back to him. “If you’re looking for comforting, you should be talking to Celia Davies, not me.”
Celia . . . “How do you know about her?”
Mina examined his reflection in the cracked mirror, propped up on the table, the gold paint on its frame worn away in spots from handling. “She lives next door to my family, Nick. And as much time as she spends tending to my siblings’ sicknesses and injuries, why wouldn’t I know about her?” she asked. “About her and you.”
“There is not a ‘her’ and ‘me.’” Two months ago, it had become clear there wasn’t ever going to be. Celia’s husband had returned from the grave. “Her husband’s not dead. He’s back from Mexico.”
“Oh, so that’s why you’re here. Because her husband’s alive. Just get out. Please.” In her haste to stand, she bumped against the table, knocking a ribbon-tied box that had been on its surface to the floor.
Nick picked it up. “Candies from Roesler’s. With a note attached . . .” He narrowed his gaze to read the handwriting in the dull lantern light. “‘From A.S. with affection.’ Who’s A.S.?”
She snatched the candies from his grasp. Her hands were shaking. “Just leave before I say something stupid or you say something stupid.”
“I hope you don’t think this is stupid to say, Mina, but I’m sorry.” The weight he’d been carrying since his sister had summoned him to their father’s funeral became a boulder. A boulder heavy enough to force him to his knees. “Sorry for how I’ve always treated you.”
Her gaze softened, but she kept her distance. “That’s nice, Nick, but it’s too late. Way too late to fix.”
• • •
“Are you positive you can spare the time to get a portrait taken, Cousin? You were gone most of the afternoon,” said Barbara. “Maybe we can do this later.”
Celia looked over at her cousin and ward. “I can afford the time away from the clinic, Barbara.”
“Oh,” she replied, frowning.
Barbara resumed staring at the shopfront window they’d stopped in front of, at its sign painted in large block letters on the shopfront window glass. REBECCA SHAW: PHOTOGRAPHIC GALLERY. Examples of her craft were on display—tintypes and cartes de visite and sepia-toned salted paper prints. Impressive work. The display was intended, perhaps, to prove her abilities as a photographer. She was, after all, the lone female in San Francisco pursuing such a career.
“Your patient with the milk sickness won’t be back today?” her cousin asked.
“I suspect she did not actually have the milk sickness.” All the cases Celia had read about in the newspapers had occurred in farm country back East, and were usually fatal. “I sent her home with an ipecacuanha emetic, which, if she takes it, will do a thorough job of purging her of any toxin. She is not likely to return, meaning my calendar is clear.”
“Oh.”
“You will like Miss Shaw, I promise,” said Celia, reaching over to squeeze her cousin’s arm. “And I have already given her a deposit, so we cannot back out now.”
The window’s blinds were pulled up, admitting as much of the light coming in from Montgomery as possible. Inside the shop, Miss Shaw moved about. She was a tall woman in a dark gown, her hair a thick wave of upswept auburn, occupied with rearranging a painted screen that would create their portrait’s backdrop. Miss Shaw had yet to note their presence.
“You could probably get the deposit back,” said Barbara.
Celia had to applaud her cousin’s persistence. The idea to commission a photographic portrait had seemed so sensible when she’d thought of it. Barbara was missing her only friend, who’d gone to Benicia at the end of July to attend the Young Ladies’ Seminary there, and Celia had hoped to provide a pleasant distr
action.
Clearly, her idea was not working.
“Barbara, what is bothering you?”
Her cousin was eyeing the contents of the window. “I don’t want my portrait on display like a . . . like I’m some traveling circus oddity. Or a weird disfigured limb like what they show at the Anatomical Museum.”
“I will specifically ask Miss Shaw to not display a copy,” said Celia. “We can trust her to be sensitive and discreet. I promise you.”
Barbara shifted her attention from the window to the people on the street. The photographic gallery was located in the business district of the city, where well-dressed men marched past and wealthy women strolled in and out of shops, their skirts swishing. Wagons clattered across the macadam road, and the Omnibus Railroad bell clanged as the driver reined in the horses and brought the car to a halt. Newspaper boys sang out the headlines—mostly comments on the shocking victory for the Copperheads in the recent election—and street vendors peddled their wares.
Her cousin wasn’t distracted by the commotion, though. She was watching for the pedestrians’ reactions to a half-Chinese girl wearing a stylish purple gown, a soberly attired Englishwoman at her side. Waiting for the insults, the sneers that often occurred when she visited an area of the city most Chinese never dared venture into. For once, none came. At least, not as yet.
“If we go inside, Barbara, we can escape the scrutiny,” whispered Celia.
Barbara looked up at her. The brim of her bonnet shadowed her face, darkened her eyes. “They’re not staring at you. They’re staring at me.”
“If we go inside, then you can escape the scrutiny.”
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