Laura, surprised, turned around to see where Kitty was pointing. She gasped, seeing a man who resembled Buck Morrison loitering in the men’s furnishing department. He was the right height and general build, but he had a small mustache that Buck hadn’t had six weeks ago, and he kept ducking behind one of the store’s columns so she couldn’t get a good look at him.
Kitty moved closer to her and lowered her voice so the clerk who was standing across the counter from them couldn’t overhear. “Who is he?”
“I think he might be one of my former students. He isn’t at all a nice person, and I don’t like the idea of him being in town, much less following me. But I need a clearer view to be sure. Would you try to keep an eye on him while I finish this transaction? Then we can move closer.”
Kitty nodded vigorously and picked up a piece of ribbon, pretending to hold it up to the light in order to keep staring over towards the man.
Laura paid for the brown lace, hoping she hadn’t gotten more than she needed in her haste. She asked the clerk to put it with the rest of their packages. Then she looped her arm through Kitty’s, and they walked towards the front of the store. Kitty kept up a running dialogue, describing the man’s actions, while Laura studiously looked elsewhere, not wanting to alarm him if he were Buck.
“He’s moving away, towards the front door. There, look quickly, he has turned around so you can see his face clearly.”
Laura looked up and for a second found herself staring directly into a pair of blue eyes she knew she would never forget. Buck then spun around and wove his way through the crowd and out the front door.
“Oh dear, he’s gone. Do you want to try and follow him?” Kitty was clearly getting caught up in the spirit of the chase.
Laura paused, then she shook her head. “No, he’ll be long gone. But if you don’t mind, I think that I should return home.”
They retrieved their packages and left the store. Kitty’s carriage was waiting, as promised, at the corner of Montgomery and Sutter. Laura thought briefly about asking to be dropped off at Nate’s law office rather than the boarding house. She’d only been there once, but she knew it was just a few blocks east and north on Sansome Street. But it was nearly four, and she had no idea whether he would still be working. Perhaps it would be better to tell Annie first, anyway, give herself time to figure out what she wanted Nate to do about this sighting.
She just wished she was sure that Buck was the man in the alley. He’d looked so different today, all citified, with the mustache, derby, tweed suit and all. It was her impression that the man who accosted her was rougher or, at the very least, that he had been wearing the broader-brimmed hat she associated with working men. But even if he wasn’t the man who attacked me, what is he doing in the city, and why is he following me?
Chapter Twenty-eight
Saturday afternoon, January 31, 1880
"School Director Sullivan is in receipt of an anonymous letter, in which the author threatens that in the event he or she be injured, to expose the sisters of Mr. Sullivan, who are charged with having obtained fraudulent certificates."––San Francisco Chronicle, 1879
Nate ushered Barbara Hewitt into his office and asked her to please sit down. She had written to him on Thursday saying that she needed some legal advice and had information that might be related to the case he was investigating. He could tell she was nervous, sitting on the edge of her seat, clutching her purse tightly in her hands. He didn’t know her well, but she’d always struck him as a reserved person, so he decided a very business-like approach might work best.
“Mrs. Hewitt, how I can help you? We can have a very informal conversation first, if you wish. Or, if you would feel more comfortable, you can sign a retainer that makes anything you say confidential.”
She sat up even straighter, smoothed the skirt of her somber grey ensemble, and said, “Mr. Dawson, I hope you realize how much this means to me. I do think that since I will be asking your legal advice, I should sign the retainer. I wasn’t sure of the fee.” She started to open her purse.
“Please, Mrs. Hewitt. There is no need for that now,” Nate said quickly. “And if you have information that might shed some light on my investigation into the anonymous letters that have surfaced, I should think that would be more than enough compensation for any help I can give you.”
He pulled out their standard printed legal form, filled out the top section, and asked her to read and sign her name, with the date. As she did, he tried not to speculate on what she was going to say, what it was that she hadn’t felt she could tell Annie. He’d assumed Mrs. Hewitt was older than Annie because of her son Jamie, whose ninth birthday party he had attended last September. But today, having the occasion to examine her more closely, he realized that she could well be under the age of thirty, depending on how young she was when she married. If Annie’d had a child with her husband, the child would be…
“There, Mr. Dawson.” Mrs. Hewitt handed the signed paper back to him. “And now, I expect you would like to know why I am here.” She opened up her purse again and took out a piece of paper that had been folded several times and held it out to him. “Please look at this, and I think you will understand why I have come to you for advice.”
What Nate saw was a folded page from the San Francisco Morning Call, dated January 17th of this year. It appeared to be one of the inside pages of the paper that contained general news on one side and advertisements on the other. It was dirty, and one side was ragged as if the page had been hastily ripped from the accompanying sheet. Skimming through the headlines and seeing nothing that looked like it would have anything to do with Barbara Hewitt or the anonymous letters, he looked up at her in puzzlement. “Mrs. Hewitt, I don’t understand. Is it one of the ads I am supposed to look at?”
She leaned towards the desk and pointed. “See the letters that are circled throughout the page? Here is what they spell out if you write each one of them in turn.” She handed him a plain piece of paper, on which was written, “I know who you are. You will pay for taking what is mine.”
“Good heavens,” Nate exclaimed. He took out a loose piece of paper and his pen and went through the newspaper page, writing down the circled letters in turn as she suggested. Damned if they don’t spell out those two sentences. He looked at her and said, “However did you figure this out?”
“I nearly didn’t. In fact, I almost threw the newspaper page away when I received it, thinking it some sort of joke. But the way it was given to me seemed to indicate otherwise. Wednesday before last, Jamie had some class work to do, so I offered to take Dandy for his last walk. We had just gotten to the corner of O’Farrell and Taylor when a young boy came running up and thrust an envelope into my hand, then ran off down Jones.”
“And in the envelope was this piece of newspaper, nothing else?”
“Yes. I was thoroughly confused. When I got home, I read the articles, but there was nothing that seemed relevant. Then, having noticed a few of the circled letters, I turned the sheet over and looked through all the advertisements, wondering if this was some odd new marketing ploy. But none of the ads were circled, which made me go back and look at the circled letters on the other side again. Took me a while, but once I hit on the pattern, it was easy to see.”
“And was there anything on the envelope? Was it addressed to you specifically?” Nate tried to remain calm, but it was hard, given the inescapable implication that here was another example of an anonymous threat, once again directed at a teacher.
“No, nothing on the envelope. I did ask Jamie about whether any of his schoolmates might be playing a joke on him. I didn’t show him the actual paper or tell him what it said. I didn’t want to upset him. I just asked if it was a new fashion to pass messages between friends by circling letters in a newspaper.” Barbara Hewitt smiled briefly. “He seemed very surprised, but he told me it was a ‘jolly good idea’ and that he was going to try it with Ian, Kathleen’s younger brother.”
Nate leaned back, looki
ng again at the two sentences. “Well this ‘You will pay for taking what is mine’ surely looks like it could be from the same person who has accused Mrs. Anderson of getting her job through favoritism. I suppose it could be someone who feels they deserved your job or any job at Girls' High for that matter. The animus towards teachers with the better paying positions could be general, not specific. But why didn’t you tell Annie about this right away?”
“It wasn’t until this Wednesday, when Annie told me about the notes sent to Hattie Wilks and the new letter accusing Mr. Hoffmann, that I realized this message could be connected.”
Nate looked at her, her head bowed as she fiddled with the clasp, and he asked gently, “Mrs. Hewitt. What do you think the sentence, ‘I know who you are’ means?”
After a long pause, she looked back up at him, her face pale and her eyes brimming with tears. She said quietly, “I think it means that whoever sent the message knows that I am not Barbara Hewitt.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Saturday late evening, January 31, 1880
"THE CALIFORNIA DETECTIVE BUREAU attends to detective work in all its branches; in the city or country; office 331 Kearny street, room 4; strictly confidential, terms moderate." ––San Francisco Chronicle, 1880
The clock on her mantel chimed eleven as Annie sat at the small table in her bedroom, reading the Saturday evening edition of the Daily Bulletin. She was gathering information she might use next week as Madam Sibyl, trying to make up for the time she’d lost this week working at Girls' High. With any luck, she would need only two more weeks to complete her investigative work there. She knew from past experience how wearing it was to juggle Madam Sibyl’s work, run the boarding house, and investigate a possible crime. She did have to admit, however, that she enjoyed getting a chance to solve a puzzle again, this time with Nate’s blessing. It was ironic that Nate was the one who’d asked for her help, given all their past arguments about her penchant for sticking her nose into other people’s business. Detecting, that’s what professionals call what I’m doing. Here, right in the Daily Bulletin is a large advertisement for the “Pacific Detective Bureau, 632 Market St. San Francisco.”
Evidently, when Emory first brought up the subject of hiring someone, Nate had recommended they consult one of these local private detectives. But his Uncle Frank argued that Annie would be able to do something that none of the former treasury agents or Pinkertons who advertised their services would be able to do: pass herself off as a teacher. And she’d already discovered at least one person who was a possible suspect. Mr. Frazier, the job applicant who’d lost out to Mrs. Anderson. Frazier might very well blame his own economic difficulties on any teachers who got one of the coveted teaching jobs or the administrators who hired them. In other words, he could be behind the accusations aimed at Dottie Anderson and Hoffmann, as well as those accusing Hattie and, perhaps indirectly, Russell.
This thought led to Laura’s description of her meeting with Russell. The dear girl obviously couldn’t decide whether he was the villain or another victim in what happened to Hattie. And Buck Morrison’s appearance at the store today seemed to have added to her confusion. She was tying herself up in knots over whether Buck was the man who attacked her. The events of the past few months were undermining Laura’s confidence in herself. As Annie had intimated to Nate, she believed that the root of all of Laura’s distress was her disillusionment with her beloved Hattie. If she could be wrong about Hattie, then she could be wrong about everybody and everything. From her own painful experiences, Annie knew only time and a willingness on Laura’s part to accept Hattie for who she was, flaws and all, would heal that wound.
“Mrs. Fuller? Annie?”
Annie heard a faint knocking and her name being called, so she got up and opened the door a crack to see Barbara Hewitt standing in the hallway with Jamie’s dog, Dandy, clutched in her arms. Opening up the door wider, she put out her hand to have it eagerly licked by Dandy and asked Barbara what she could do for her.
“I hate to bother you,” Barbara said very quietly, “but I could see light coming out from under your door and hoped this meant you were still up. I wonder if you would mind coming up to the landing that leads to the top floor and look out with me. I think that I saw someone lurking in the back alley.”
“Just a minute,” said Annie, and she went and got the candle she kept by her bed. Lit candle in hand, she joined Barbara and Dandy in the hallway. As they walked to the back stairs, Barbara again apologized for disturbing her, whispering so as not to wake Laura or the Steins, whose darkened doorways they were passing. There wasn’t any light coming from the small back room David Chapman and Spencer Harvey shared or the water closet, either.
When they made it to the landing that led up to the attic where Barbara, her son Jamie, the elderly Moffets, and Beatrice O’Rourke all had their rooms, Annie stopped and blew out the candle. She said, “Please, don’t apologize. I am glad you came and got me. I need to let my eyes adjust, so tell me exactly what you saw.”
“I was up grading. Jamie was asleep in the curtained alcove. Dandy got off the bed and came to stand by me, barking softly. I thought he just needed to be let out, so I picked him up and started down the stairs. But when we got to the landing, he started to growl. Just like he is doing now.”
Dandy was straining towards the window, emitting a low gurgling sound. Barbara tried to calm him, saying, “Dandy, hush. You’ll wake everyone. There’s a good boy.”
She then said to Annie, “When I looked out toward the back of the lot, I thought I saw someone moving down the alley. At first, I thought I would just need to wait until the person passed by before letting Dandy out into the yard. Then I saw a flare of light and realized that someone was standing near the gate, probably smoking a cigarette.”
Annie, whose eyes had now adjusted to the dark, leaned close to the window and looked to the back of the yard. Her house was taller than those on either side, and the houses across the back alley were on Ellis, which was further down the gentle slope leading to Market. This meant they had a good view of the surrounding neighborhood. The moon was rising on the left, and while it was definitely waning, it still provided a good deal of light. She looked at the back gate and saw nothing.
Since Dandy was now quiet, his erect ears at attention, she said, “I don’t see anything. But if you don’t mind, let’s just stand here and look out for a moment, see if there is any movement. Then we can go to the kitchen and let Dandy out. He will tell us if there is someone still in the alley, and we can get Mr. Chapman or Mr. Harvey to come down and check things out.”
Barbara agreed, and they stood in companionable silence. The moonlight made the shadows of the apricot tree dance on the white paving stones, and the wood in the fence and gate were a bleached grey, interrupted here and there by dark black shadows that Annie tried to identify. A rake, a bushel basket, the trash barrel, and what looked like an old sweater hanging on one of the post of the clothesline. No shadow, however, that corresponded to a person loitering in the alley or yard. Perhaps Barbara’s imagination had played a trick on her. Not surprising given the terrible events of this past fall when Dandy had alerted his owner to a very real crime in the neighborhood. Well, the small dog was calm now, so they could probably assume if anyone had been out back, they were now gone. Annie was about to suggest they go down to let the dog out when Barbara broke the silence.
“Annie, I saw Mr. Dawson today. I wondered if he told you about our meeting.” Barbara shifted slightly next to her.
“No, I haven’t spoken with him today. He is planning on coming by tomorrow evening.” Annie paused, hoping that Barbara would continue.
“I…I showed him a note I got that I thought might be from the same anonymous person who wrote to Miss Wilks and has been spreading rumors about Mr. Hoffmann and others.” Barbara went on to tell Annie about how she had received the note and what it said.
“Oh my goodness,” Annie said when she was finished with her story
. “I am so sorry this happened to you. How awful.” She wanted to give Barbara a quick hug, but she didn’t know if that degree of intimacy would be welcomed by such a self-contained woman.
“There is more, and I promise you I will understand if…if you feel that what I have to tell you next changes irrevocably our…position here. I just ask that you consider Jamie…”
Barbara stopped speaking for a moment. She went on in a rush. “You see, what the note said, that they knew who I was, must have meant that they knew I had taken another woman’s identity. The real Barbara Hewitt died six years ago, and her sister-in-law gave me her birth certificate and teaching credentials, so I could get a job and support Jamie.”
Annie didn’t know what to say. Barbara…no…that isn’t her real name…but then who is she?
Before she could respond, Barbara continued. “You see, I had attended Kansas Normal School a few years after Barbara Hewitt did, but when my mother died I had to return to our ranch, never getting my certificate. A year later my father died, and I married. Bobby had been our ranch hand. He tried to make a go of the ranch, and I got taught for a few terms in a nearby town to help out, but in ’74 we were wiped out by locusts.”
“Then what happened?” Annie prompted, after a brief pause.
Barbara sighed. “We lost everything, and Bobby…he didn’t take it well. It was better that we go our separate ways. Jamie and I traveled west with the Hewitts, who offered me a position helping out on the trail taking care of their six children. We all wintered in Nevada. Nan Hewitt’s husband thought maybe there’d be work in mining, but the silver boom was pretty much over.”
“That was in ’75?” Annie asked.
“Yes, and when a position opened up in a local school…well…money was scarce for all of us, and we were becoming pretty desperate. Nan suggested I use her sister-in-law’s teaching credentials to get the job. The real Barbra Hewitt had died the year before, and Nan had her birth certificate and Kansas Teaching Certificate and letters of recommendation. Everything I would need. So I became Barbara Hewitt.”
Bloody Lessons: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery Page 21