No Darkness as like Death

by Nancy Herriman

  Celia surveyed the occupants of the horsecar compartment, wondering if any of her fellow passengers were headed to Mr. Shaw’s burial. Women in black, their faces veiled, wept into handkerchiefs, consoled by family members. Men with armbands or hatbands of black sat in sober, somber silence. Most of those invited to attend Mr. Shaw’s burial, though, would be sufficiently prosperous to own carriages or procure a private hackney coach rather than subject themselves to the ignobility of a gritty ride on public transport.

  Would Mr. Blanchard be in attendance in order to disprove the reports of ill will between the families? Not likely. The owner of the Hygienic Institute, Mr. Ross, would likely also not be at the graveside. And, for that matter, neither would Miss Olivia Campbell. How might Rebecca Shaw respond to Miss Campbell’s assertion she’d spent Wednesday evening with Miss Shaw’s former fiancé? The best way to learn would be to ask.

  A solitary, grim-faced fellow across the aisle and a few seats ahead, a pair of wire-framed spectacles perched on his nose and his face sprouting bushy whiskers, might be one of Ambrose Shaw’s mourners. He must have sensed her staring, for he glanced over his shoulder and met her gaze. She inclined her head. He scowled and looked away, blotting his forehead with a handkerchief even though the interior of the car was not warm.

  Curious.

  Soon, a long white picket fence came into view, rising and falling over the undulations of the hill. The area it enclosed was a sea of crosses, tombs, and marble mausoleums. Laurel trees dotted the grounds, and a chapel stood near the road. The horsecar eased to a halt, stirring Celia’s fellow passengers to reluctant life.

  “Laurel Hill Cemetery,” called out the driver. “Calvary Cemetery to your left. Odd Fellows beyond that.”

  As a unit, the passengers rose and shuffled out of the car, the man with the spectacles hurrying to the front of the crowd. Celia got to her feet, her back stiff from the lengthy four-mile ride. Brushing off her skirts, which had managed to collect dust and sand through the open windows of the horsecar, she exited the omnibus. At least the drizzle had ceased. A row of carriages, adorned with tall black feathers and ebony bunting, lined the road alongside the cemetery. Perhaps they had conveyed Mr. Shaw’s funeral party.

  The damp air chilled her face, and she hugged her shawl tighter around her shoulders. From where the hills descended to the shore, the fog trumpet erected near Cliff House sounded, its tone deep and mournful, warning ships approaching the entrance to the Golden Gate. The scent of the ocean drifted on the air along with the sound of the fog warning. When she crested the next rise in the road, she would be able to spy the Chinese burial grounds. A friend lay buried there. A young woman whose murder had plunged Celia into a world of criminal investigation and danger she’d never sought to be a part of.

  I wish it had stopped with her. Despite Barbara’s insistence—and Mr. Greaves’s as well—that she enjoyed the occupation far more than she should, she prayed that the murders of Mr. Shaw and Mrs. Wynn were the last two cases she ever had cause to involve herself with.

  Her musings had distracted her, and she’d lost sight of the bespectacled fellow. Just as well. If he was indeed one of Ambrose Shaw’s mourners, she would encounter him at the graveside. As she reached the gateway leading into Calvary Cemetery, a hackney coach came to a halt behind her. Rebecca Shaw clambered down before the driver could open the door for her. She was alone, having chosen, it appeared, to not share a conveyance with her stepmother and stepbrother.

  “Miss Shaw,” Celia called out. Much to her amazement, Rebecca Shaw waited for Celia to catch her up.

  “Mrs. Davies,” she said, the sheer black netting drawn over her face obscuring her expression but not her annoyance. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “I wished to extend my condolences to your family, Miss Shaw,” replied Celia, falling into step alongside the woman.

  “Oh?” she asked, sounding doubtful. “Well, the only family in attendance besides me will be Leonard and Delphia. When my brothers were informed of Father’s death, they opted to not make the journey from Nevada.”

  The path wound along an incline, its gravel crunching beneath their feet. Celia spotted the bespectacled man several yards ahead.

  “Is that fellow one of your father’s acquaintances?” she asked. “I saw him on the horsecar. An oddly anxious man.”

  Miss Shaw peered at him. “Mr. Ross from the Hygienic Institute. What gall, to think he’s welcome here.”

  He trailed after a middle-aged woman. Mrs. Shaw, perhaps. She was of average height—too short to attack Mrs. Wynn with a cobblestone?—and possessed a confident bearing. The young man accompanying her looked to be Leonard Shaw. Mr. Ross was attempting to have a conversation with him, but Mr. Shaw brushed him off.

  Celia ducked beneath the branches of a tree planted too near the path. “Is that Mrs. Shaw with your stepbrother?”

  “Yes, it is. I didn’t realize you’d met Leo.”

  “I encountered him at the police station yesterday morning,” she said. “Very early. Do you know what he was doing there, by any chance? The detective he was visiting is not the one in charge of your father’s case.”

  “I don’t, and I wouldn’t advise asking him this morning.” She pressed her lips into a grim line for a brief moment. “That’s why you’re here. Because the police haven’t yet arrested anybody for murdering my father and you intend to poke around. I haven’t forgotten what your cousin mentioned about your meddling in police affairs, Mrs. Davies.”

  “You need not have waited for me, Miss Shaw,” Celia pointed out. “You could have continued on and ignored me. As you did yesterday morning when I stopped by your apartment, only to find you absent.”

  “You want to know why I ran off?” she responded. “Don’t look startled. Of course I noticed you yesterday and I did choose to ignore you.”

  “Yet now you are willing to speak with me.” Perhaps she’d had time to construct an excuse.

  “Where might I go and hide?” Rebecca Shaw swept a black-gloved hand before her, its movement encompassing the sparsely vegetated hillside. There were more headstones than shrubs and trees. “Behind that row of crosses?”

  “I am persistent, I admit,” said Celia. “So why have you changed your mind?”

  “Because you’re persistent,” she said. “What is it you’re so curious about?”

  “Why do you have a tintype of your former fiancé in your studio window?” asked Celia.

  “Mr. Blanchard has always been supportive,” she replied. “Nothing more, Mrs. Davies. Our relationship is concluded.”

  “And what of that woman I noticed you with . . . she seemed very agitated,” she said. “Because of Althea Wynn, perhaps?”

  “Who?” the woman walking alongside was quick to respond.

  “Haven’t you read the papers?” Celia asked.

  “I’ve been too busy lately to read newspapers.”

  “Of course.” Celia glanced at Miss Shaw’s hands, the fingers gripping the strings of her black lace reticule, and tried to envision them clutching a broken cobblestone. Smashing it down upon Mrs. Wynn’s head. The image was not too difficult to conjure. “It must be distressing to see the newspapers linking Mr. Blanchard to your father’s death.”

  “It’s outrageous.”

  Two women defending the man.

  “Especially considering that your father perished from a seizure of his heart brought on from exposure to chloroform. How could Mr. Blanchard have known about Mr. Shaw’s poor health and his vulnerability? Unless you’d informed him.” They reached the crest of the hill and continued along the path, which dipped down the other side. Thirty or so yards away, a grave had been opened, a canopy stretching overhead. A clergyman mingled among the gathering crowd. “Furthermore, there is the unfortunate fact that Mr. Blanchard possesses a supply of the substance. A bottle is missing from his house.”

  “You’re being ridiculous, Mrs. Davies,” said Miss Shaw.

  Did I truly believ
e I could make her implicate him? Celia changed tack. “I received a note Thursday evening at my house. Did you leave it for me?”

  “I don’t have any reason to send you missives, Mrs. Davies,” replied the woman tersely.

  “I suppose you do not,” said Celia, cautious with her steps on the descending path, gravel slipping beneath the leather soles of her shoes. “Do you know Miss Olivia Campbell?”

  “You have a lot of questions, Mrs. Davies, and I’m getting pretty tired of them.”

  “You do know her, though.” I am indeed persistent, Miss Shaw.

  “Elliot . . . Mr. Blanchard hired her to tutor his wife and improve her English,” she said. “Why?”

  “She has stated that she was with him Wednesday evening, providing him an alibi.”

  Miss Shaw came to an abrupt halt. “What?”

  “I believe you heard me, Miss Shaw,” said Celia. “Miss Campbell says she was with Mr. Blanchard the night your father died. However, I am uncertain whether to believe her. She could be lying in order to protect him.”

  “Oh my God, Mrs. Davies.” Rebecca Shaw burst out laughing, which took Celia aback. “You know what? Perhaps you should leave the police work to the professionals. That’s what I think is the only truth in this whole wretched mess,” she said and marched off to join the others at the grave.

  • • •

  Nick leaned against a marble monument, a squat obelisk tucked beneath an oak tree that hadn’t obliged the family by growing tall enough to provide shade. The monument was dedicated to the memory of—he squinted at the name carved into the stone—dedicated to the memory of T. Vincent. Loving husband and father. All he and Ellie had been able to afford for their father was a puny granite headstone whose surface would erode in the harsh sun and dusty wind of Sacramento. Abraham Greaves eventually worn down to where, some decades from now, it’d be hard to tell who’d been buried at the edge of the cemetery. Tell if he’d also been a loving husband and father.

  He spoke often of you with pride . . .

  Nick shook off the recollection and contemplated the scene unfolding at the grave. The ceremony was wrapping up, the requisite handful of dirt tossed onto the lowered coffin followed by a small bouquet of flowers Delphia Shaw had been carrying. Rebecca Shaw had chosen a spot far enough from her family members to avoid speaking with them but not so far that she’d be accused of disrespect. Mr. Ross was among the mourners, he’d noted. A unexpected visitor. Elliot Blanchard, unsurprisingly, was absent. Also unsurprising was the presence of a blond-haired woman in a deep blue gown who’d never learn to leave police business to the police.

  Just then, she dipped her chin and shot a look in Nick’s direction. He saluted her with a wave of his hat.

  She retreated from the group gathered around the grave, where the clergyman was offering final words, and climbed the incline to where he stood. “Good day to you, Mr. Greaves,” she said. “Mr. Shaw has received a lovely graveside service. His widow and son appear genuinely bereft.”

  “What about Rebecca Shaw?” he asked when she joined him, her attention fixed on the people who’d come to see Shaw’s casket descend into the ground. The contours of her face could only be described as elegant, and her eyelashes . . . damn, Nick. Not the time. Not ever the time.

  “Obligation has brought Miss Shaw here.” Celia Davies narrowed her eyes as she observed the woman, who was beating a hasty retreat. “I went to Miss Shaw’s yesterday to question her about her stepbrother’s visit to the police station.”

  “I thought you’d planned to go straight to your clinic.”

  “I changed my mind,” she said. Unapologetically.

  “Leonard Shaw explained to me he was at the station on an unrelated, private matter, which he didn’t care to elaborate on.”

  “Ah.”

  Right then, Rebecca Shaw glanced in their direction. Behind her black veil she was probably glaring.

  “Miss Shaw was not at her apartment when I visited,” continued Mrs. Davies as the woman hurried down the path toward the waiting carriages. “Her neighbor, who appears to closely monitor Miss Shaw’s comings and goings, mentioned she’d gone out unusually early. However, as I prepared to depart, I noticed her with a woman I did not recognize. Miss Shaw was keen to avoid me and they both ran off.”

  Interesting.

  “Her stepbrother has decided to implicate her, which makes a change from blaming Elliot Blanchard.” At the moment, the man was leading his mother away from the grave, Delphia Shaw leaning on his arm. “Both men had a busy morning yesterday. He and Leonard Shaw were at Empire State, arguing. Almost came to blows over the Shaws blaming Blanchard for Ambrose Shaw’s death.”

  “A demonstration of the extent of his temper,” she said. “However, I thought you were focusing on Mr. Platt as the perpetrator. Which means I must ask what you are doing here?”

  “Paying my respects.”

  “Certainly,” she replied with a hasty smile. “I have other news, Mr. Greaves. Owen obtained a list of recent purchases of candy made by Ambrose Shaw. He did not send that box you saw at Bauman’s to Mina; it was addressed to ‘all the ladies.’ He’d not singled her out for attention.”

  “I remind you about her shawl and the key, Mrs. Davies,” he said. “Plus her concussion. She’s involved, all right.”

  She glanced up at him, past the brim of her deep bonnet. “Mina does now recall heading to the Institute in a state of anxiety. Worried, she told Barbara. Perhaps she’d become aware someone meant to harm Mr. Shaw and intended to intervene.”

  “Or Shaw had invited her there,” he said. “Maybe even sent her that key.”

  She frowned. “The candy was not intended for her, Mr. Greaves.”

  “Okay, okay, Mrs. Davies. Point made.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Maybe Mina had learned that Platt meant to harm Shaw,” said Nick, returning to his “perpetrator.” “A young woman—a Giulia DiPaolo—who lives at Mrs. Wynn’s boardinghouse thinks she spotted him at the time of the woman’s murder. Plus, we have Cassidy’s testimony about Platt and Mrs. Wynn arguing over Shaw’s watch.”

  “Was Mr. Platt a regular customer of Bauman’s?” she asked.

  Nick massaged the sudden ache in his arm, the wound that managed to hurt at the strangest—or most perceptive—of moments. “I get why you’re asking, ma’am.”

  “I would indeed be happy to have you prove that Mr. Platt is the murderer, Mr. Greaves, but in order for Mina to learn of a plot to harm Mr. Shaw, she most probably acquired the information at the saloon,” she explained. “And if Mr. Platt never went there, how had she heard?”

  “Mina Cascarino doesn’t spend all her time at Bauman’s, Mrs. Davies.”

  The mourners had all vacated the gravesite, strolling in groups of two and three back to their carriages. Leonard Shaw and his mother walked alone.

  “I should also inform you that Barbara’s new tutor, a Miss Olivia Campbell, used to work for the Blanchards. She acted as companion and English teacher to Mrs. Blanchard,” said Mrs. Davies, watching them depart. “She has made an astonishing declaration that she was with Mr. Blanchard on the evening of Mr. Shaw’s death.”

  “No wonder Blanchard didn’t provide an alibi; he didn’t want anybody to know he’d been with a woman who wasn’t his wife.”

  “I queried Miss Shaw about the likelihood Miss Campbell told me the truth,” she said. “Miss Shaw laughed at me.”

  “No one should laugh at you, Mrs. Davies.”

  Color washed over her cheeks. “Thank you for saying so, Mr. Greaves. However, it was not the first time nor, I suspect, shall it be the last,” she replied. “I do fear Miss Campbell sympathized with Mr. Blanchard’s hostility toward Ambrose Shaw. She was another recipient of Mr. Shaw’s gifts of chocolates. A gift to hurt her and draw the ire of her employers, the Blanchards.”

  “The more I hear about Ambrose Shaw, ma’am, the more I despise the fellow.”

  “However, we must consider that M
iss Campbell is lying in order to protect Mr. Blanchard.”

  “You don’t want to think she’s a young woman who might spend the evening with a married man,” he said.

  “No, I do not,” she answered. “Should you question her, please do be kind.”

  “Am I usually unkind, Mrs. Davies?”

  “At times, you take on a fierce expression when you interrogate people, Mr. Greaves,” she said. “I experienced your scowl myself the first time we met.”

  When he’d questioned her about her brother-in-law’s role in the murder of a Chinese girl. That time seemed like years ago instead of just a few months.

  “No need to worry about my expression, ma’am. I don’t need to speak with Miss Campbell.” Platt was the murderer, sure as the year came around. A woman striding across the cemetery caught Nick’s eye. She was heading straight for the Shaws. “What’s Giulia DiPaolo doing here? She was just at the station.”

  Mrs. Davies twisted about to see who he’d spotted. “That woman in the green dress, do you mean? The young lady who noticed Mr. Platt,” she said. “She looks familiar. I cannot fathom why, though.”

  Giulia DiPaolo didn’t get any closer than twenty feet to Mrs. Shaw and her son. They veered off at a right angle, unaware she’d been making a beeline in their direction. Rebecca Shaw noticed her, though, and dashed for the line of waiting carriages. Miss DiPaolo slowed before changing course and heading for the small stone building near the main gate. The receiving vault for the temporary storage of corpses.