Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

by M. Louisa Locke

  Mrs. Hunt paused, taking a sip of tea, and Annie could see how much the subject distressed her. She remembered reading in Shadows and Light that Flora Hunt, as a child, had undergone some awful trauma at the hands of a family friend. This, combined with the unexpected death of her father, explained how she came under the domination of Mr. Trainor, who was thirty years her senior. Annie, who was reading the book when she was still raw from the abuses of her own failed marriage, had been profoundly moved by the story of how Flora’s love and adoration of this man had turned to bitterness and despair. Annie then had a terrible thought. What must it be like for Evie May to sit in that closed cabinet with a man like Judge Babcock, who was caught in the delusion that when he caressed her, he was caressing his own beloved daughter?

  Mrs. Hunt put her cup down and took Annie’s hands in hers, her penetrating gaze holding her own. “Mrs. Fuller, you are upset. Tell me, what are you thinking?”

  “Mrs. Hunt, I can’t help but be struck by the parallel between your experiences and Evie May’s. From what I understand, she lost her father at a young age, and now Simon, this much older man, has complete control over her. It is bad enough that she may be an instrument of manipulation in the Framptons’ quest for money, but how dreadful it must be for her to sit hour after hour, confined in that cabinet with adult men who impose their own desires upon her. And her mother is no protection; she is completely infatuated with Simon Frampton.”

  “Ah, her mother,” said Flora Hunt, looking at her husband. “Yes, I understand. My mother also was infatuated with my tormentor. She tried to be a good mother, but she suffered lifelong pain from neuralgia and became quite dependent on an elixir that Mr. Trainor manufactured. That was how he first came into our life. He had moved on from mesmerism to selling patent medicine when he met my mother and me. I guess he saw more profit in me than his magical elixir. She died when I was but fifteen, and from then until the day I met Mr. Hunt and his wonderful sister I had no human protectors. Yes, you are right to be concerned about Evie May. Please tell me more about what you know of her.”

  Annie hesitated. She was still uncomfortable when she talked about Maybelle, and she still hadn’t told anyone about how she had at first thought Maybelle might be the spirit of her miscarried daughter. However, Mrs. Hunt might be able to shed some light on Maybelle, Eddie, and the others she and Kathleen had encountered.

  So she said, “One odd aspect of Evie May’s performance is that sometimes she seems to deviate from the path that Simon Frampton has laid down for her. Once, when Evie May was speaking in the character of my mother, and then again when she was speaking as my dead son Johnny, whose existence was a complete fabrication on my part, she changed into a young six-year-old girl, named Maybelle. Then, while I was speaking to Maybelle, she was replaced by a slightly older boy, who called himself Eddie, and who said he was Maybelle’s brother. He seemed to feel that he protected Maybelle.

  “Even more oddly, my maid Kathleen twice ran into Evie May outside the séance room, and each time she seemed to be someone completely different. Once she was a young woman calling herself Miss Evelyn, a name Eddie mentioned when he was talking to me. Then last night Kathleen was accosted outside the Framptons’ house by Evie May, who was dressed as a young street hoodlum, calling himself Edmund. None of these people, or whatever you would call them, seem to have anything to do with the Framptons. In fact, it was my impression that Simon was upset when he found me talking to Eddie in my private sitting with Evie May on Wednesday.”

  Annie was startled to see Mrs. Hunt smiling sadly.

  Mr. Hunt looked over at his wife and said, “Flora dear, you need to tell her. This young girl needs our help, and Mrs. Fuller has to understand if we are to work together.”

  Annie, who was still thinking about Evie May and what Mr. Hunt meant, was taken off guard when Mrs. Hunt leaned forward again and asked, “Mrs. Fuller, why did Miss Pinehurst ask you to help her?”

  Annie looked down at her hands, searching for some sort of inspiration. She found nothing beyond the truth, which the woman across from her deserved. So she told Mrs. Hunt about Madam Sibyl. She explained how she had first created this alter ego to protect Lottie, a silly but kind woman, from being bilked out of her inheritance by local mediums. Finally, she told her of Mr. Stein’s suggestion that she use Madam Sibyl as a way to supplement her income when it became clear the proceeds from the boarding house were insufficient to pay Beatrice and Kathleen decent wages and provide a little savings for Annie herself.

  Annie concluded, saying, “Miss Pinehurst felt that my experience as Madam Sibyl made me particularly qualified to figure out how Simon and Arabella Frampton were tricking the people who attended their séances.”

  Mrs. Hunt then said, “I am curious, Mrs. Fuller. Is that how you see yourself? As someone who has something in common with the Framptons?”

  “No, I don’t,” Annie replied, surprised at the anger she felt when she heard someone else ask the very question she had been asking herself. She continued, “But then, I wouldn’t, would I? I tell myself that what I do is different because my intentions are honorable. If I were a man, I wouldn’t have to use such artifice, so I tell myself it is society’s fault that people would rather get their financial advice from a fake clairvoyant than a well-trained and experienced business woman. But the more involved I have been in trying to expose the Framptons, the more I have begun to question my own actions.”

  “Do you believe in the astrology and palmistry you use as Madam Sibyl,” Mrs. Hunt asked?

  “No.” said Annie, pausing. “I guess I accept the possibility that a body of knowledge or set beliefs that have developed over thousands of years might have some basis in truth. Maybe honest practitioners of these so-called sciences do receive some wisdom from studying the arrangement of the stars or the lines in a person’s palms. But I am not one of those honest practitioners because, although I do believe in the advice I give, I don’t get that advice from the stars or my clients’ palms.”

  Annie paused again, thinking about what she had just said, then continued. “I also don’t know if there is life after death, or if the spirits of the departed speak to the living. But I am willing to believe this might be true, and I do believe that honest Spiritualists, such as you, believe it to be true. Yet I am convinced that the Framptons are not Spiritualists and that the spirits are not speaking through them. Evie May, I am not so certain about.”

  “Mrs. Fuller, I commend you for your frankness,” said Mrs. Hunt. “Honest self-doubt and a willingness to accept that other people’s beliefs have validity are rare commodities in today’s world. I don’t believe you have anything in common with the Framptons, but I do think you need to consider the damage you are doing to yourself if you continue to spend your days lying to the very people you are trying to help. The ends seldom justify the means.

  “However, that is between you and your conscience.” Mrs. Hunt smiled over her shoulder at her husband, who smiled in return. “What we must figure out, now, is how to help you expose the Framptons. You have quite convinced me that they must be stopped, for the sake of people like your Miss Pinehurst’s sister, as well as for the good name of true Spiritualists. But even more importantly, we must consider how to help Evie May. I believe Maybelle, Eddie and the other spirits you have described are her protectors, but from my own experience I can tell you that they are going to need our help if the girl isn’t going to be destroyed by what is being done to her.”

  *****

  The girl was neatly dressed in a dark, royal-blue walking suit, tailored to suggest the beginning of a woman’s curves, with blinding white lace at collar and cuffs. Her hair, parted in the center, was pulled into a topknot of intricate curls. Polished, black, high-button shoes peeked out from her long skirt. She stared straight into space, the china doll held loosely in her lap. The faint chimes of church bells seemed to awaken her. She stood up, looked puzzled for a moment at the doll and dropped it onto the chair. She then glided o
ver to the tall mirror, which was illuminated by a shaft of afternoon sun. She stared, then tilted her head, touched her hair, and smiled. Noticing a film of dust on the mirror, she frowned and looked around. Seeing a worn and ragged jersey lying on top of a trunk, she walked over to pick it up, but in doing so her long skirts stirred up clumps of mud on the floor. Making a small sound of disgust, she lifted up her skirts, moved rapidly to the opening in the floor that led down to the set of steps, and began to descend.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Sunday evening, October 26, 1879

  “REV. MR. GRAVES ON SPIRITUALISM. The speaker said that angels are superior to men, but inferior to man redeemed.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

  As Annie sat between Kathleen and Nate in the close confines of a hansom cab, exquisitely aware of Nate’s arm pressed up against her own, she labored to keep from fidgeting by clasping her hands tightly together in her lap. She feared that the slightest sign of nervousness on her part would give Nate an excuse to abort this evening’s plans to search the Framptons’ house. Biddy had told them that the cook, Mrs. Schmitt, left at five, and the rest of the household left to partake of their dinners by seven; consequently, if they arrived at seven-thirty, they should find the house empty.

  The plan was for Biddy to keep an eye on the front door, and Kathleen on the back while Annie and Nate searched the séance rooms and as many of the other rooms in the house as they could in the allotted time. They needed to be gone by eight-thirty, nine at the latest, if they wanted to be sure to miss the return of the house’s occupants. She hoped that an hour would be time enough.

  As the cab made its way down Taylor, she distracted herself from worrying about the risks they were taking by turning her thoughts back to the strange story Flora Hunt had recounted the day before about what she called her spirit protectors. Mrs. Hunt had explained that, throughout her life, she would go into a trance state and these protectors would appear. The first came when she was eight and lost in the woods. An old woman took over her body and led her home. Mrs. Hunt later identified the woman as her grandmother, who had died before she was born.

  She had said to Annie, “My childhood was relatively happy, until the age of eleven. My father, a carpenter and radical reformer, had been my closest companion, but then something happened to him. He changed. His mood darkened, and he began to spend more and more time at the local tavern, becoming irritated when I tried to talk to him. The greatest betrayal came one evening when he lay in a drunken stupor in the parlor while one of his friends took me on his lap and put his hands on me. That was when Zachariah, my second protector, first appeared. He is the spirit of a young schoolmaster, and he explained the fundamentals of geometry during my ordeal.”

  Mrs. Hunt had gone on to say she had experienced ten different spirits during her lifetime. She said, “I believe they are angels sent by God to protect me. They comforted me, spoke through me when I performed, and kept me sane. Without them, I would never have survived my life with Mr. Trainor. When I was on stage, and these protectors came to me, that was the only time I felt completely safe.”

  Touched by angels, Annie had thought as a child when she saw Mrs. Hunt perform. And Maybelle sleeps with the angels. Could there possibly be a connection?

  Mrs. Hunt had gone on to tell Annie that she was convinced these spirit protectors had led her to the small Nebraska town where she had met Mr. Hunt. She said that after Mr. Hunt and his sister had nursed her back to health and helped her obtain a divorce from Mr. Trainor, she had ended her career as a trance medium.

  “I didn’t feel it was right to use my protectors for financial gain. I no longer needed them to give me courage to speak in public, and I have turned my energies to speak on behalf of other women caught in the snares of godless and abusive marriages. These spirits visit me infrequently now, some I haven’t heard from in years.”

  At this point Mrs. Hunt had again smiled at her husband and said, “I have my own human protector now, but I know that if I need them, they are with me always, sent by God.”

  When Annie had described the work Evie May did for the Framptons, Mrs. Hunt asserted that Maybelle, Eddie, Miss Evelyn, and even the young man Edmund, who Kathleen had met, were probably Evie May’s own protective spirits.

  She had said, “Mrs. Fuller, I don’t believe it is an accident that Maybelle and Eddie showed themselves to you. They knew that you would work to save Evie May from the life of degradation that faces her if she stays with Simon Frampton.”

  Yesterday, Annie had demurred when Mrs. Hunt said this, but now she remembered how Maybelle clung to her, and she wondered if what Mrs. Hunt said was true. She had, in any event, promised to try and arrange a meeting between Mrs. Hunt and Mrs. Nickerson and Evie May.

  As if he could read her thoughts, Nate broke the silence in the cab, saying, “Annie, you never finished telling me about your visit to Mrs. Hunt. Did you find her helpful?”

  “Yes, she not only gave me some useful suggestions about what to look for when we search the séance room, but she also will make inquiries among her Spiritualist friends to see if anyone knows something about the Framptons that could be of help.”

  Annie paused. She hadn’t yet mentioned what Flora Hunt had told her about her past, her spirit protectors, or her ideas about Evie May, and she didn’t feel this was the time or place to bring up this subject. Instead, she said, “What might be most helpful is Mrs. Hunt’s willingness to meet with Sukie Vetch, because I got nowhere with Miss Pinehurst’s sister when I saw her this afternoon. Miss Pinehurst had arranged to meet me at the Vetch’s, around three, and Sukie’s husband agreed. However, when the maid showed me into the parlor, Sukie and Miss Pinehurst were in the midst of a heated battle.”

  Annie had never met Mrs. Vetch before, and she doubted she would have guessed that this was Lucy Pinehurst’s little sister. Unlike the tall, slim, dark-haired, plain-faced Miss Pinehurst, Sukie Vetch was short and blond with a full figure, a pertly turned-up nose, and a rosebud mouth, which was screwed up at that time into a definite pout. The only things the two sisters had in common were their dark-brown eyes, which were flashing in an identical fashion.

  Annie continued, “Unfortunately, Miss Pinehurst hadn’t been able to refrain from telling Sukie about how Evie May pretended to be the spirit of my son Johnny, a child who never existed, and how this proved that the Framptons were frauds. As I entered the room, Sukie was shouting that Miss Pinehurst was just a jealous, dried-up spinster, who couldn’t stand that, even in death, Charlie preferred his mother to his aunt.”

  Kathleen, who had been listening closely to Annie and Nate’s conversation, said, “Oh, ma’am. What a wicked thing to say to Miss Lucy. Sukie Vetch sounds like a spoiled brat.”

  Annie smiled at Kathleen’s outburst and said, “Miss Pinehurst had intimated that since childhood Sukie had tended to throw a tantrum when she didn’t get her way. Yet, when I walked up to Sukie and saw what a sad state she was in, I confess I felt real pity for her. Her eyes were red-rimmed, as if she hadn’t slept in a month. Her skin was dry and splotchy and pulled too tightly over her cheekbones, and her hair looked unwashed. And her hands, which she had clasped over her stomach, as if she was protecting her unborn child, visibly trembled. No wonder Miss Pinehurst is so worried about her health.”

  Nate spoke up. “Did you get to talk to her at all?”

  “No,” Annie said. “As soon as she noticed I had entered the room, she stalked out without speaking to me. Her husband did stay, and he said that he had decided to meet with the spirit of Charlie. This, of course, means he would meet with Evie May, but only with Sukie present. He reasoned that since Sukie called him a liar when he told her about Simon putting pressure on him, if Evie May does ask him questions about Mr. Ruckner or the bank, this might open up Sukie’s eyes. If that didn’t work, he was seriously considering having Sukie committed to a health sanitarium, for her own and her baby’s well-being. Then the poor man began to cry.”
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br />   Nate uttered an oath and then said, “You did tell me Mrs. Hunt offered to speak to Mrs. Vetch. What good do you think that will do?”

  “Mrs. Hunt thought that Mrs. Vetch might be willing to listen to someone who was a true Spiritualist, who wouldn’t try to persuade her that contact with her dead son was impossible. She put it this way, ‘Her family is asking her to give up this one connection with her son, without giving her any hope of another way of keeping him part of her life. I can give her that hope.’ It is worth a try. I gave Mr. Vetch her address and told him to contact her.”

  “Ma’am, sir. We are here,” said Kathleen, as the cab came to a halt next to the alley behind Harrison Street.

  Nate tapped the hatch on the roof, and when it opened, he reached up and said, “Here’s your fare, and I have doubled it, if you promise to return within the hour and wait for us here.”

  Annie heard the cab driver reply, “Yes, sir. Be glad to.” Then Nate opened the doors at the front of the carriage and stepped down to the road. He turned and helped Annie, then Kathleen alight.

  Kathleen lifted the lantern they had brought with them, having lit the candle within, and began to lead the way down the dark alley. The first block wasn’t too bad, since the houses were all occupied and the alley had been kept clear of debris. However, when they crossed Fifth and entered the alley behind the Framptons’ house, the general neglect of this block became evident. They had to pick their way past leaning fences, half-dried patches of mud, and piles of odiferous refuse. Annie silently thanked Kathleen for the foresight in bringing the lantern.