Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

by M. Louisa Locke

  Chapter Nineteen

  Monday, October 20, 1879, late evening

  “Patrick Carroll, while drunk last night, entered the dining room of J.N. Schneider’s boarding house, and proceeded to demolish the furniture.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

  Kathleen squirmed on the hard wooden seat of the horse car, made more uncomfortable because her toes barely touched the floor. She was tired, it was well past nine-thirty, and normally by this time in the evening the dishes would be done, Mrs. O’Rourke would have put the dough for the morning rolls onto the windowsill for their slow rise, and the two of them would be having a last cup of tea before turning in for the night. Since it was Monday, she had been up at four-thirty this morning. Washday. Even though Mrs. Fuller had recently hired a laundress, Kathleen still had to get up early to start heating the large kettles of water, and she had refused to give up responsibility for the men’s collars and cuffs and the women’s clothing. Mrs. Kantor might be a good soul and did a splendid job on the bed linens and tablecloths, but Kathleen shuddered to think what her rough, chapped hands might do to the ladies’ delicate underthings.

  Mr. Dawson had arrived at the Framptons just as the séance ended, to escort them home. Exhausted though Kathleen was, she wouldn’t have missed this evening and the chance to see him and Mrs. Fuller together. She knew Mrs. O’Rourke would want a full report. The light cast by the passing gas lamps was strong enough to give Kathleen a clear picture of the couple sitting across the aisle from her. Mr. Dawson was turned towards Mrs. Fuller, a smile on his face. Mrs. Fuller, forced by her bustle to sit almost sideways on the bench, vigorously stabbed the air to make some point, then looked up into his face and laughed.

  Kathleen sighed. After all the time Mrs. Fuller and Mr. Dawson spent together in August, Mrs. O’Rourke and Mrs. Stein had been sure the two of them would be hitched by Thanksgiving. But then everything had fallen apart.

  Kathleen was convinced something had gone wrong the last time Mr. Dawson visited the boarding house before going to visit his folks. When he’d left the house, he’d looked like he’d bit into a sour persimmon, and he didn’t have his usual kind word for Kathleen. As for Mrs. Fuller, it was plain as the nose on her face that she’d been out of sorts the whole time he’d been away.

  “Like she’d gone back to sleep,” she’d said to Patrick, Mrs. O’Rourke’s nephew, one morning several weeks ago. “When I started work here I saw how sad she looked when she was alone. She’s always kind and good humored to me, and she isn’t above laughing at a joke when we’re all sitting around in the kitchen, but when no one is around, she’d look tired and sad. Like someone took all the stuffing out of her. But when Mr. Dawson came into the picture, he sort of woke her up, like one of those princes in the fairy tales. Then he went away, and it’s like the curse of the bad witch has got her all over again.”

  At that point, Patrick had got all cheeky and said he’d be glad to wake Kathleen up with a kiss if she wanted him to, and she’d slapped his face, ever so gently, to put him in his place. Then he tried to put his arm around her, and, well . . . about that time his aunt had come in from the garden to find out what he’d done to make Kathleen screech and she hadn’t thought any more about it.

  Now, however, it seemed to Kathleen that Mrs. Fuller had woken up again, ever since Mr. Dawson got back in town, and it did Kathleen’s heart good to see the change.

  Oh, dear, what’s gone wrong now? Kathleen thought when she heard Mrs. Fuller utter a sharp exclamation, which wiped the smile from Mr. Dawson’s face.

  “Nate, you aren’t saying I should stop attending, are you?”

  “No, that’s not what I said. I said that Anthony Pierce advised against me poking into the Framptons’ affairs until he had had a chance to check them out further. He doesn’t know a thing about you, and we need to keep it that way. Pierce warned that if a lawyer like me started to ask questions, Simon Frampton might get the wind up. That is why I didn’t go ahead tonight and ask to attend a séance. Maybe I shouldn’t have come at all, but I wanted to at least check out the place, see the Framptons in person.”

  “But Pierce did say he would look further into whether or not there was any scandal associated with them?” asked Mrs. Fuller.

  “Yes, although he didn’t seem to feel there was much chance of finding out more than he had. Pierce seemed a good enough sort of fellow. Even offered to . . . well, that’s neither here nor there. What’s important is that he will ask around to see if there is anything he missed. I’m sorry that he didn’t seem to know much more about Arabella Frampton’s background.”

  “But what you learned does answer some of my questions,” Mrs. Fuller replied. “For example, where Simon got his upper-class accent. And tonight Arabella quoted from a classics textbook I had as a student. Clearly, she didn’t have that sort of schooling, but her husband did. She has got to have a terrific memory to do what she does. Keep all those characters straight. He must have had her memorize all those passages, just for Miss Reynolds.”

  “Was Miss Reynolds the tall, formidable lady?”

  “My, no.” Mrs. Fuller laughed. “That was Mrs. Mott, who is really much sweeter than she looks. She appears to view Arabella as some sort of telegraph operator connecting her with her Kansas relatives, alive and dead. Miss Reynolds was that small woman, rather nearsighted, who bumped into you. She comes to the Monday circle with her sister, replacing Mrs. Larkson and Mr. Sweeter. That was a disappointment. I did want another chance to observe them after what Esther Stein told me.”

  Kathleen leaned forward to hear better, since the rattle of the car wheels on the track had gotten louder as they crossed Market Street. She had been in the kitchen this morning when Mrs. Stein started to tell Mrs. Fuller what she had learned about Mrs. Larkson, but she’d had to leave to help Mrs. Kantor drain the first tub of wash water, missing the whole story.

  Mrs. Fuller continued. “It turns out Esther’s youngest daughter, Hetty, knows Isobel Larkson quite well. She says the mothers of Jack Sweeter and Isobel Larkson were cousins, and the two of them grew up just living down the street from each other in Portland. That’s where Mr. Larkson met Isobel, on a business trip. When Mr. Sweeter came to San Francisco to look for a position four months ago, of course Mr. Larkson invited him to stay with them. Hetty told her mother that initially she thought this was a good idea, because Isobel, who is so much younger than her husband, seemed very homesick. She thought having a relative from back home staying with them would help. But now she’s not so sure. Mr. Sweeter hasn’t found work yet, and Hetty feels he hasn’t been a good influence on Isobel. ‘Encouraging her to gad about, neglecting her wifely duties,’ were Hetty’s exact words. Esther said Hetty is a firm believer in ‘wifely duties.’”

  “In what way do you think this couple can help you expose the Framptons?” Mr. Dawson said, which was what Kathleen had been thinking.

  “If there is anything untoward about the relationship between Mrs. Larkson and Jack Sweeter, and I must say the term ‘kissing cousins’ seemed quite fitting, given the way they behaved, then they would be prime candidates for blackmail, if that were the Framptons’ game.”

  “Blackmail?” Kathleen blurted out. “Oh, ma’am, sir, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was just so surprised.”

  “Miss Kathleen,” said Mr. Dawson. “Don’t apologize! You took the words right out of my mouth. So, Mrs. Fuller, are you going to tell us why you think the Framptons are engaged in blackmail?”

  “I don’t know anything for a fact, but sitting there tonight, listening to Mr. Ruckner and some of the others spilling out intimate details about their own lives, thinking about what Judge Babcock might be saying to his supposed daughter in the cabinet, I couldn’t help but wonder how easy it would be for the Framptons to use this information to their advantage. You know successful mediums depend on good intelligence gathering. I am sure they discover secrets that clients might pay to keep hidden.”

  “
That’s real interesting, and you could be on the right track,” Mr. Dawson said. “Anthony Pierce might not have been much help, but after lunch I stopped by to see our old friend Chief Detective Jackson, see if he had heard anything about the Framptons. He said they keep files on any complaints made against the mediums, fortunetellers and such that work in the city.”

  “Heavens, do you think they have a file on Madam Sibyl?”

  “Well, they might, but I wouldn’t worry. I doubt there is anything in it, and from what Jackson said, usually the police don’t even follow up on the complaints, since speaking with ghosts or telling people their future isn’t against the law. Interestingly, while the file on the Framptons was slim, there was one long letter written by a lawyer on behalf of Judge Babcock’s sister and heir, asking the San Francisco police to forward any information of wrongdoing by the Framptons, to be used in a suit the sister was filing to have the Judge declared incompetent.

  The Chief Detective said, ‘Unfortunately, being a damn fool doesn’t make you incompetent,’ so he didn’t think the sister was going to have any luck. But we might think about contacting her anyway.”

  “Nate, this is good news. Was there anything else in the file?”

  “Three other letters, all anonymous, but according to Jackson, all from different women. One woman wrote that her husband had lost all their money investing in a business his dead brother recommended. She blamed the Framptons, saying they had benefited from the investment, so they had committed fraud. Jackson told me that the police had looked into the complaint, but couldn’t find any relationship between the Framptons and the company. The second letter complained that the Framptons and their spirits were driving her husband to drink, and the third, which is what I found most interesting, was from a woman who had made the mistake of telling the ghost of her dead mother a secret, and now the Frampton’s were pressuring her to do something ‘awful’ and couldn’t the police shut them down.”

  “Oh my, what did the police do about that complaint?” Mrs. Fuller asked.

  “There wasn’t anything they could do because there wasn’t any return address or name given, and no description of what the letter writer was being asked to do, so no evidence of a crime. But if there is any truth to the letter, it sure does suggest the Framptons aren’t above blackmail.”

  Kathleen, who had been startled by something Mr. Dawson had said, used a brief pause in the conversation to ask a question. She leaned into the aisle that ran down the center of the car, and said, “Mr. Dawson, sir, did you say one of the letters talked about driving a man to drink? Cause I think I might know who sent that letter.”

  Mrs. Fuller responded quickly, saying, “Kathleen, whatever can you mean? Who . . .”

  Just then Mr. Dawson stood up and yanked on the cord that rang the bell by the driver, who pulled on the reins, bringing the car to a slow stop.

  “Ladies, I do believe this is O’Farrell, time for us to get off,” he said, leading the way to the front of the car. He then stepped down and offered Mrs. Fuller his hand, helping her down on to the street. As Kathleen was about to disembark, he reached up and helped her down as well. Such a gentleman, she thought. Patrick could learn a thing or two from him.

  Once they all reached the sidewalk and began the short block and a half up O’Farrell to the boarding house, Mrs. Fuller again asked Kathleen to explain what she had meant.

  Kathleen, rather embarrassed that she had said anything, hesitated a moment.

  “I’m probably wrong. It’s just that Mrs. Nickerson, Evie May’s mother, came and sat and talked to me tonight. I think that that Mrs. Frampton told her to keep an eye on me. I saw her whisper something and point over at me, just before she went into the room with all of you. As a result, Mrs. Nickerson and I were together the whole time, and she was quite chatty. I learned all about where she grew up, her husband who died, her older children and how they all abandoned her, except Evie May, and how she felt that Mrs. Frampton didn’t take proper care of Mr. Frampton. But at one point she mentioned that Mrs. Hapgood, the lady who sat with her on Friday, couldn’t make it on Mondays because she had to close up the store she and her husband run. She said Mrs. Hapgood worried that he might be tempted to stop off somewhere on the way home if the séance upset him too much.”

  Kathleen flashed on the memory of her mother sending her out as a little girl to whatever job site her father was on, hoping she could convince him to come straight home. Sometimes that had worked. But after her mother died, Kathleen had had to stay home with the little ones, and her father never came straight home again. Off drunk in some dive is where I thought he was the night he didn’t come home at all, ever again. Never thought he was dead from falling headfirst from a crossbeam on the job. Drink killed him all the same. Never would have slipped if he hadn’t started drinking first thing in the morning. Never would have died if Ma had been there to josh him out of one of his black moods.

  “How interesting. Harold Hapgood has a problem with alcohol,” said Mrs. Fuller, pulling her away from these dark thoughts.

  “That makes some sense. I noticed tonight that when he first came in he went straight for the sideboard where Albert was pouring drinks. He just stood there for a moment, then turned away and went and sat down at his place at the table. I can imagine he might want a little sip of courage if he had any idea of how nasty the spirit of his father was going to be. Simon Frampton said that Hapgood comes to get advice about running the business, but what he got tonight was an earful of recriminations.

  What I don’t understand is why he would keep coming back, if that is what most of his communications were like. I could certainly see his wife trying to stop him from coming, and if she couldn’t, writing the police in desperation. I think that a little chat with Mrs. Hapgood might be very useful.”

  They had just arrived at the front of the boarding house, and Mrs. Fuller stopped and gave Kathleen a little hug, saying, “Thank you Kathleen. I think this might be the most important piece of information we’ve gotten yet. I just knew bringing you along with me was a good idea.”

  Kathleen felt her chest expand, like her heart had somehow grown, and she was searching for the right words to express how glad she was to have been of service, when Mrs. Fuller turned and said rather stiffly, “Mr. Dawson, I would invite you in, but I am afraid it is late, and both Kathleen and I have early morning duties tomorrow. But I do thank you for escorting us home.”

  Kathleen wished she could excuse herself and slip down the sidewalk to the back entrance to the kitchen, so that Mr. Dawson would have a moment alone with her mistress. But she knew Mrs. Fuller had strictly forbidden Mrs. O’Rourke from waiting up for them, so the back door would be locked. Instead she moved forward and up the steps to the front porch, where the light from the oil lamps sitting in both parlor windows created bars of light. How nice of Mrs. O’Rourke to leave them both burning, but I will need to remember to refill the lamps in the morning, she was thinking when she was startled by a cry from Mrs. Fuller, who had mounted the stairs behind her.

  Turning, she saw that her mistress was staring at a slip of paper in her hands. Mr. Dawson was taking the stairs up to the porch two at a time, saying, “Annie, whatever is the matter? What do you have there? Here, let me see it.”

  Mrs. Fuller shook her head, letting Mr. Dawson take the paper. “I found this in my coat pocket, when I was looking for the front door key. Someone must have slipped it in while I was at the séance. It must be a joke, Nate.”

  Kathleen looked at the piece of paper that Mr. Dawson now held out to catch the light from the windows and saw, written in thick black ink, three simple, chilling sentences.

  YOU MAKE A GRAVE MISTAKE. CANT FOOL THE DEAD. STAY AWAY IF YOU KNOW WHATS GOOD FOR YOU.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tuesday afternoon, October 21, 1879

  “STREET CAR ACCIDENT. On Monday afternoon as Mrs. Fay was stepping from one of the dummy-cars on Larkin street, with a child in her arms, she was thrown to the
ground by a sudden jolt and severely bruised. The child escaped injury.

  —San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

  Walking briskly down O’Farrell, Annie felt the steady push of wind on her back. She knew once she turned onto Market that the taller buildings along this main thoroughfare would offer her some protection. For now, she wished she had taken the time to change out of the refurbished black silk she wore during the day as Madam Sibyl, but she had more clients to see this evening. Late afternoon, however, was the only time Miss Pinehurst had free in her job as head cashier at the restaurant Montaigne’s Steak House.

  The chill, damp October air at least woke her up. The discussion last night between Nate, Kathleen, and herself, following the discovery of the threatening note in her coat, had gone on for some time. It had been midnight before she made it to bed, and more like two in the morning before she fell asleep. She had almost dozed off waiting for Madam Sibyl’s last afternoon client.