Bloody Lessons: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

by Locke, M. Louisa

  The greatest shock, however, came when she read the third letter, written the second week of September, right after Seth’s first visit with Laura in Cupertino. From what he said, it was clear that Hattie had asked him to check up on her. Each of his subsequent letters reported on his visits to Laura, where they went each weekend––up the trail into the Santa Cruz Mountains, a picnic along the Cupertino River, a drive to San Jose, her health––she looks tired, she doesn’t appear to be eating enough, she has a cold, the fresh air seemed to do her good, and her state of mind––she is anxious, she is having trouble with some of her students, she appears much happier after her visit home, and she won’t confide in me what is worrying her.

  Laura didn’t know whether to be touched that Hattie had been concerned about her or furious that she had enlisted Seth to spy on her. Mostly, she was embarrassed to think of the way she had treated him last Sunday. Reading these letters, which she’d done several times in the past few days, hearing in her mind his calm and unemotional voice, she wondered how she could have ever thought that he had been the one to attack her. The idea now seemed absurd. His attention to her last fall had simply come from his desire to do Hattie a favor.

  Probably, if he hadn’t figured out that she was being harassed by Buck, he wouldn’t have come as often. He certainly wasn’t personally interested in her, given the unflattering nature of his comments. How boring it must have been for him to drive around such an anxious, scrawny, sickly, incompetent woman every weekend. All he had gotten for his pains was Laura’s public abuse when he tried to find out about Hattie’s death.

  The least she could do was apologize. To that end, she had sent him a short note, addressed to the Pine and Larkin School where he was teaching, asking if he would be willing to meet with her. She would have preferred to simply write an apology and leave it at that. However, since Seth’s letters made it plain that he was responding to letters he had gotten from Hattie, she needed to know what Hattie had written to him about Russell and her reasons for quitting teaching. It now seemed possible that Hattie might have confided details to Seth that she hadn’t been able or willing to confide in Laura.

  Noting the time on her pocket watch, she brought her thoughts back to her job. She stood and announced that the students needed to put down their pens and pass their papers to the front. As usual, this spurred a flurry of last-minute scribblings by some of the students and the rise of noise in the classroom as others opened their desktops to put their pens away.

  Laura raised her voice. “Please, everyone be still until Miss Blaine has collected all of your papers. I want to remind you that there will be a spelling test first thing tomorrow. All of you using the Fourth Reader, make sure to bring your books to school because Miss Blaine is going to lead you in your discussion. I want you to show her how prepared you are.”

  After Kitty walked over and placed the pile of collected essays on the desk, Laura turned back to the students and announced, “Dismissed.” Pandemonium ensued, but she was pleased at how cheerful everyone sounded as they chattered to their neighbors while they got out the books they needed for doing their homework and made their way to the back of the room to get their coats. Hattie always…yes, she wouldn’t shy away from the memory…Hattie always said that a classroom that was too quiet was a classroom where the students were too frightened to learn.

  “Is there anything else you would like me to do, Miss Dawson?” said Kitty in her usual deferential manner, so at odds with her ease with the students. “I could erase the board before I go.”

  Trying not to sound irritated, Laura replied, “No need, thank you. I will see you tomorrow then.” Since she would be waiting for Barbara, who had her weekly meeting of the Literature and Debate Society at Girls' High, Laura had plenty of time to clean the board and set it up for the next day. She would write the spelling words for their test, then cover it by hanging up the roller map of the United States. She had a suspicion that the janitor, Mr. Ferguson, might be letting some of his pets among her students sneak a peek at the board ahead of time, and this was her solution to that problem.

  *****

  She had just finished putting the spelling list on the board and taken the roller map from the supply cabinet when she heard a sound behind her and turned around, assuming it was Jamie coming in to see if she needed any help. Instead, she saw Seth Timmons standing at the back of the room, black Stetson in hand.

  He nodded politely. “Miss Dawson, you asked to see me?”

  She hadn’t expected to see him in person this soon, hadn’t really planned out what she wanted to say, so she just said, “Yes, thank you for coming.”

  Then, aware that she was still holding the map, she decided to take advantage of his height, and she asked, “Would you mind unrolling this map and putting it up on those hooks so it hides the spelling list?”

  He put down his hat and gloves on one of the desks and walked in an easy stride towards the front of the room. When he came over to take the map from her, their hands touched, and she noticed her fingers were all covered in chalk dust. She resisted the impulse to go over to the mirror at the back of the supply cabinet to see if she had transferred any chalk to her hair or face during the afternoon. It was an occupational hazard he would be familiar with, but she didn’t want him to think her untidy.

  As he finished hanging the map, she said, “You mentioned that you were teaching at Pine and Larkin Primary. What grade?” How stupid, of course I know he is at that school since I sent the note there. He must think me an idiot.

  “Fourth.”

  Taking out the handkerchief she kept tucked in her sleeve, she swiped ineffectually at the chalk on her hands and started talking quickly to fill the ensuing silence. “And how do you find your class? Pretty lively I might expect, at least from my limited experience. I must say I like teaching seventh-grade students much more than I did the younger students at Cupertino Creek. I was surprised that they hired you…I mean not you personally…it just was my understanding that schools generally hired women for the primary grades. I really think that is a mistake, but then what man would want to accept the low salaries that the school board is now offering primary teachers?” Laura stopped, aghast at where her nerves had taken her conversation.

  Seth didn’t respond but simply looked at her, raising one eyebrow in the irritating way he had. She tried to rescue herself, saying, “I expect that teaching young boys and girls is an interesting alternative to herding cattle, which I gather you did this summer.”

  “Yes, Miss Dawson, it is. But I don’t expect you asked to meet with me to discuss the relative merits of teaching and cattle ranching.” A slight smile deepened the indentations in his cheeks that echoed the curves of his mustache.

  After reading his letters to Hattie, she’d realized that in all their rides together this fall she’d never thought to ask him how he had spent the previous summer. He must have thought her very rude and self-involved. But then, his one-syllable answers to the questions she did ask hadn’t encouraged her to press any further into his personal life. But positivism and Comte, if I’d only known, what interesting discussions we could have had.

  Taking a deep breath, Laura tried again to find her conversational footing. “I’m sorry, Mr. Timmons; I don’t mean to waste your time. First of all, I do want to apologize for my reaction to seeing you at the Gardens. I confess that the death of Hattie, Miss Wilks, has seriously upset me.”

  Seth made a dismissive motion with his right hand. “Miss Dawson, no need to apologize. Being with Miss Wilks when she died must have been unsettling.”

  “Yes, and I want to clarify. I didn’t really think you had followed me or attacked me. It is just that…well, I never quite understood why you were being so attentive to me this fall. Now, having read Hattie’s correspondence from you, I realize you were simply responding to a request from her and that she had given you my address.”

  Seth stiffened and said, “You read my letters?”

  �
��Yes, Hattie’s parents asked me to go through her things, decide what needed to be kept.” Laura felt on the defensive at the accusatory tone in his deep voice. “I…well…I needed to know if she had confided in you about…I’m sorry…I am not explaining myself well.”

  Laura had been so determined to find out what Hattie’d told Seth in her letters to him that she hadn’t thought about how he might respond to this invasion of his privacy. Looking at how his grey eyes darkened under his frowning brows, she scrambled to make him understand her motivation. “You see, I wouldn’t have read them except that I am desperate to find out more about why Hattie decided to give up all her plans and marry Mr. Russell. There are some very suspicious circumstances around her death. I am afraid…”

  “What do you mean, suspicious?” Seth asked, his voice rising as he took a quick step towards her.

  “She was being persecuted by someone who made vicious accusations and may have hounded her to death. We found these notes…they said awful things, and it isn’t clear how she fell. In her last words to me, Hattie said something that makes me suspect that it might not have been an accident…so you can see…” Laura faltered, now afraid she may have said too much. Just because Hattie had trusted him didn’t mean that he was trustworthy. Oh, why hadn’t she taken the time to check with Annie or Nate about the wisdom of meeting with Seth? Or at least have planned out how to approach this conversation.

  “You said she was hounded to death? How exactly did she die, Miss Dawson?”

  “I told you, she fell down the stairs at her boarding house. I was notified, but when I got to the hospital…there was internal bleeding. They couldn’t stop it.” Laura turned away, afraid she was going to start to cry.

  “Are you saying it wasn’t an accident?” Seth asked.

  “I can’t really…say right now,” Laura said, turning to face him again. “Not until I get a better understanding of what happened this fall and the exact reasons for Hattie’s decision to quit teaching. Did you know that she was planning on marrying Mr. Russell in just a few weeks?”

  Seth smoothed his mustache, a mannerism she had learned meant he was thinking of what to say next. He then said slowly, “Well, I did know that she had met someone she was quite fond of named Russell. She did tell me she had resigned her position but not why.”

  Laura, hurt once again to discover Hattie had confided in Seth but not her, said, “I don’t understand. She didn’t say a word to me in any of her letters. And you never mentioned this to me, either.”

  Now Seth looked uncomfortable. He said, “It didn’t seem to be any of my business.”

  Laura had the urge to snap that it certainly wasn’t his business, but since she was trying to find out what Hattie had confided in him, she refrained. Instead, she tried again to ask for details. “In her letters, did she give you the impression she felt pressured to quit teaching and marry Russell?”

  “No, but she didn’t write much about herself. Mostly, she wanted to know how you were doing, how my classes were going. And she didn’t give me any specifics in her first few letters. Just that she had joined this study group to prepare for entrance into the University. Then she hinted she had met someone in this group she respected a good deal.”

  “When did she tell you about quitting her job?”

  “Several weeks before the end of fall term, when she wrote to me about the opening at Pine and Larkin. She knew that I had run out of funds and was looking for work.”

  Laura thought about the timing. Would Hattie have even known she was pregnant by then? Perhaps not. Once she found out, however, she would have had to scrap any plans to teach in the spring, and marriage would be the only respectable option. But was this a mutual decision between Hattie and Russell? She really wished she knew if Russell had known about Hattie’s condition. One thing she knew for sure, she wasn’t going to tell Seth Timmons about the pregnancy or about the real reason Hattie had bled to death.

  Seth interrupted these thoughts. “I still don’t understand. How is this related to some man attacking you? That’s what you said, didn’t you, that you thought I had attacked you?”

  Laura thought he looked angry and wondered if he could ever forgive her for her stupid accusations. “I’m not saying it is related…I don’t know. You see, two weeks ago, on my way home, a man grabbed me in the alley behind the boarding house where I live. I thought he was someone I knew by the way he spoke. And I know I wasn’t very nice to you after your fight with Buck because you’d frightened me so. And then I was worried that you might have blamed me if Buck’s father made trouble for you. Please, Mr. Timmons, I am sorry I ever entertained the idea it might have been you. I have apologized…can you let it be?”

  As Seth looked down at her, she could feel the flush of embarrassment on her cheeks.

  He then said, “Miss Dawson, I don’t blame you. I am just sorry to have given the impression that I would ever do you harm. I should have kept my temper more under control that day…when I…when I found that lily-livered cur pressing his attentions on you. I know I frightened you. But I can promise you, I mean to find out just exactly where Buck Morrison was two weeks ago, and if he is responsible…then all I can say is he will wish he were dead.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Saturday afternoon, January 24, 1880

  "The old Ocean House road requires macadamizing from the Industrial School to Mission Street. The rock is being quarried with prison labor." ––San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

  For his drive with Annie today, Nate had chosen the new Ocean Road that wound through the sand dunes north of Twin Peaks. He wanted to avoid the traffic that would be clogging up both the former Point Lobos toll road and the newly completed road that went through Golden Gate Park to the beach. He also wanted to avoid ending up at the Cliff House, with its still-painful memories for both of them. But now he doubted the wisdom of his choice as they left the protection of the hills and began to encounter a stiff western breeze, filling the air with fine grit. Even though the carriage roof was up, Annie had been forced to cover her nose and mouth with her scarf. Nate’s hat sat down low over his forehead, but he still had to squint to shield his eyes.

  Although he hated cutting their excursion short, Nate said, “Look, shall we turn around and head home? The wind would at least be at our backs.” It had been nearly a week since he had seen Annie, and there was much to talk about that required more privacy than they would find if they stayed at her house.

  “No, if I remember the one time you took me this way last summer, we should be hitting the old Ocean Beach toll road soon. Isn’t that macadamized? Kathleen told me she and Patrick were at the Ocean Side House a few months ago and that they had a nice snug fire.”

  “Annie, I…”

  “Oh shush. What is respectable enough for Kathleen and Patrick is fine for me. It’s the Cliff House that has become notorious, not the Ocean Side House. Besides, Kathleen would never suggest I go somewhere that wasn’t proper. You know she and Beatrice are as careful of my reputation as you are. But do hurry, I am freezing.” She turned and buried her face in his shoulder.

  He could see the House of Corrections and the old Industrial School ahead, which meant they were about to join the better road, so he continued on, urging the two horses to a faster trot. The team would be equally glad to reach their stalls in the stables next to the restaurant.

  Once sitting at a table with a view of the ocean in front of them and the fireplace at their back, Nate felt himself relax. For some reason, every time he took Annie out for a ride, he became anxious. It was not just the memory of their first trip to the ocean together and its disastrous conclusion but some deep-seated fear that something would go wrong that would undermine her respect for him. The hostlers would fob off a carriage on him whose cushions were badly sprung or an axle would break or the waiter would give them a table located near the kitchen––something that other men would know instinctively how to handle. That her father, or her former husband, would hav
e known how to handle. It was an idiotic insecurity, but there it was.

  If only she would tell him more about her husband, maybe he wouldn’t worry as much. He knew she’d been unhappy, that her husband was responsible for the loss of her inheritance and that he eventually committed suicide. But that was the fate of many a good and honorable man during the terrible financial panic of 1873. He also knew from experience that men born to New York City wealth, like her father, like her husband, had an ease about them that he’d never mastered. They commanded respect without even trying. And she must have loved John Fuller at one time. She married him, after all. What if the underlying sadness he’d sensed coming from her recently was because he just didn’t measure up to her father or to her husband, and that was why she didn’t want to marry him?

  Annie, who had stopped by the ladies’ cloak room to freshen up, walked over to the table, and Nate leaped to his feet. There was something different about the outfit she wore today that emphasized her slender waist, and it was all he could do not to sweep her into his arms. Instead, he calmly pulled back her chair. As he slid the chair forward, he breathed deeply, noting that her usual scent today included the tang of salt. When he sat down across from her and noticed the high color in her cheeks and the redness of her lips, he wondered if her kisses would taste salty as well.