The Cliff House Strangler

by Shirley Tallman

  I searched my memory but couldn’t place anyone of that description. Yet why would a perfect stranger watch my office?

  “Every once in a while, he leaves,” Fanny went on. “Probably to get something to eat. But he always comes back.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said in honest bewilderment. “It’s not as if I keep any money or valuables in my office.”

  We spent some time in fruitless speculation, which, not surprisingly, got us nowhere. Fanny was convinced the man was somehow connected to one of my current cases, but I failed to see how. True, by agreeing to represent Madame Karpova and Alexandra Sechrest, I’d made enemies. But in my profession, that was hardly unusual. Who could consider me such a threat?

  “You’ll be careful, dear, won’t you?” Fanny asked, looking nervously up and down the street as I left her shop.

  “Of course I will. Please, Mrs. Goodman, don’t worry. I’ll be in my office first thing tomorrow morning. I only have two more days to prepare for the Sechrest divorce hearing.”

  I set off in the direction of the nearest horsecar line, thinking, as I stepped off the curb to cross Sutter Street, that traffic was unusually light for this time of evening.

  I had reached the middle of the street, when two things happened almost simultaneously: Mrs. Goodman screamed, and I heard—as well as felt on the unpaved street beneath my feet—the rumble of horse’s hooves coming upon me at a dangerous clip. I looked up and saw the driver cracking his whip, urging his animal forward at an ever-faster speed. For one terrifying moment, the man’s face loomed before me, his pale face and white mustache standing out starkly in the gaslight, his thin mouth set in grim determination.

  There was no time to scream. Instinctively, I dove forward in a desperate effort to avoid the vehicle, which was nearly upon me. From what sounded like a great distance, I heard a horse’s loud whinny, then a man’s voice calling for the beast to stop. I managed to roll over onto my back in time to see the huge animal rear up above me like some monster out of one of Mary Shelley’s tales of horror.

  With a preternatural sense of calm, I watched the horse’s front hooves begin their inevitable descent toward my head.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  To this day, I refuse to believe I fainted. Succumbing to fits of the vapors is an absurd practice, one, I’m sorry to say, that is all too often abused by members of my own sex. Honesty, however, compels me to admit that the next several minutes passed in a painful blur. I seem to remember hearing Mrs. Goodman scream yet again, then feeling strong hands grip my arms. With no clear idea how I had gotten there, I now seemed to be lying on the sidewalk.

  The first thing I saw upon opening my eyes was my neighbor stripping off her apron and placing it on top of my head. Then she started to press down so hard, I felt a sharp stab of pain.

  “I’m sorry to hurt you, Sarah, but we have to stop the bleeding,” Fanny said, looking more worried than I’d ever seen her.

  It was then that I noticed something hot and sticky running down my face. I reached up a hand, and my fingers came away dripping blood.

  I started to ask why I was bleeding; then memories of the racing carriage and the rearing horse came flooding back.

  “That driver,” I said, finding it curiously difficult to speak. “He deliberately ran me down.”

  “Shh, dear,” Fanny told me. “You have to hold still until Dr. Mallory gets here.”

  “No, I don’t require a doctor.” I attempted to raise myself up, then gave a another cry as the same sharp pain bolted through my head, forcing me back down again.

  “The driver of that carriage was the man I was telling you about,” Fanny told me. “He must have been waiting for you to cross the street.”

  “So that he could run me down.” Even as I said the words, I found them hard to believe. “Why would he want to kill me?”

  Taking hold of Fanny’s arm, I once again tried to pull myself up, but she gently laid me back down. It was then I realized something soft had been placed under my head, and I saw a coatless man standing behind my neighbor. I must be lying on his jacket, I thought, and worried that between the sidewalk and my blood, the garment would certainly be ruined.

  “You’re a very fortunate young woman,” the coatless man said in a shaky voice. “This woman risked her life pulling you out from beneath that horse. The crazy driver didn’t even stop, just took off like the devil himself was after him.”

  “But who would want—” I began, but Fanny cut me off.

  “Just lie still, dear.”

  In the end, I was obliged to endure the attentions of Dr. Mallory—whose practice was but two blocks away—while he cleaned the lesion and applied a bandage. His biggest fear, he said, was that I had suffered a concussion, and would need to be watched carefully over the next twelve hours.

  After explaining that my brother was a doctor and that I felt quite well enough to ride home in a cab, he finally gave his consent for me to leave. It proved considerably harder to extricate myself from Mrs. Goodman’s well-meaning clutches. However, when I promised to seek out my brother Charles the moment I arrived home, she finally relented and flagged down a brougham for my use.

  My main concern upon returning home was that I’d be seen by my parents. Now that my head was clearing, I realized my gown was not only torn and dirty but badly splattered with blood from my head laceration, which was the sort of wound that always bleeds profusely. With Frederick in jail, Mama and Papa had enough on their minds without worrying about me.

  As it happened, our butler, Edis, was the only one about when I slipped into the house. Those old eyes, which had observed so much over the years, registered shock when he took in my disheveled appearance. Assuring him that my condition was not as bad as it appeared, I made him promise not to inform my parents of my mishap. He could, however, ask Charles to visit my room as soon as he returned home.

  I’d just changed into a robe when my brother knocked and entered my bedroom, closely followed by my worried-looking sister-in-law Celia. Briefly, I told them what had happened, taking care to portray the incident as nothing more than an accident. Charles examined my wound, then confirmed Dr. Mallory’s diagnosis that I had very likely suffered a concussion and would require close observation throughout the night.

  Which is exactly what he did—with annoying frequency. Every hour or two, he appeared to check my eyes by the light of a candle. During the long night, I slept little, kept awake by my brother, my headache, and theories about Moss’s notes.

  Despite the busy schedule I had planned for the day, by morning I was forced to admit I was unfit to rise from my bed. My head still ached, and I was unsteady when I stumbled to the lavatory. Naturally, all my plans to keep the incident from my parents had been for naught. Not only had I been betrayed by Edis, who’d appeared so troubled the following morning that Papa easily wheedled it out of him, but by Charles, who had enlisted my mother to care for me during the day.

  “It will be good for Mother,” he explained. “She needs to get her mind off Frederick and his arraignment this afternoon. You’re not seriously injured, thank God, but she’ll enjoy fussing over you.” He went on to say he would leave some medicine to relieve my headache and would check on me again that afternoon when he made his house calls.

  After promising to let Mrs. Goodman know I was on the mend, Charles sent Samuel up to see me before he left for the day. If I was forced to spend the day resting, I reasoned, I could at least pursue some of the ideas that had occurred to me during my restless night.

  I thought it best not to share my speculations with Samuel until I could prove their validity, and as a result, he was bursting with curiosity at the selection of books I requested from Papa’s library. As soon as Samuel was gone, I took a dose of Charles’s pain medication, then settled down to work. I was hard at it when my mother came in carrying a breakfast tray. I felt a stab of guilt to see new worry lines on her face, undoubtedly put there by her eldest son and only daughter.

>   “Sarah, darling, how are you?” she said, placing the tray on an end table and coming over to examine my bandaged head. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive you for not telling me you were injured last night.”

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” I said a bit feebly. “I didn’t want to add to your troubles just now.”

  “Oh? And you don’t think being treated as if I’m too old and feeble to help my child when she’s hurt doesn’t add considerably more to my troubles?”

  Heat rose to my face as I recognized the truth in what she was saying. After all, I’d felt the same way when Samuel failed to tell me the full circumstances surrounding Frederick’s arrest.

  “You’re right, Mama, I should have told you. Actually, I’m very happy to have you here now.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” she said, plumping my pillows and placing the tray across my lap. “There now, I want you to eat every bite of that porridge. Cook made it specially for you.”

  Pleased to discover I was hungry, I required no further encouragement. For the remainder of the day, Mama fussed over me like a happy mother hen, fetching, chatting, and bringing me one restorative dish after another from Cook’s kitchen. Charles had been right: This was exactly what she needed to get her mind off Frederick and his arraignment hearing.

  As for me, I continued to peruse Papa’s books and study Mr. Ferrier’s translations of Moss’s diary. I drew yet another diagram depicting where everyone had sat during the Cliff House séance, then considered it for a long time. Gradually, certain facts began to emerge, if not yet entirely clear, cogent enough to let me know I was headed in the right direction.

  The last thing I did before Mama took away my books and notes and informed me it was time to take a nap was to make a list of what remained for me to do before Friday’s divorce hearing. When I finally closed my eyes and succumbed to sleep, I felt as though the fog was finally beginning to lift!

  Despite the lingering remains of a dull headache, I awoke the next morning feeling refreshed and eager to carry out the plans I had formulated while lying in bed. It was a glorious morning, and not entirely due to the weather. To my family’s profound relief, Frederick had been released from jail the previous evening. The presiding judge had denied the assistant district attorney’s request for bail, allowing my brother out on his own recognizance. Such had been my mother’s joy that she and Celia had departed first thing that morning to visit Frederick and assure themselves that he was truly well after his two-day confinement.

  Not long afterward, I asked Samuel if I could share a ride downtown with him. There were a few rather sensitive questions I wished to ask him, and a hansom would provide the privacy I deemed necessary.

  Staring at my hat, he somewhat reluctantly agreed. “If you’re sure you feel up to it, of course. But where in the world did you find that hat?”

  “I borrowed it from Mama,” I explained. I’d chosen a large dark blue Gainsborough hat from the back of Mama’s armoire. I’d settled on this particular style not because I cared for the design (which I didn’t) but because it covered the entire top of my head, bandages and all. Above the wide brim, it was decorated with feathers and several enormous artificial flowers. It was far too frivolous to be worn with my tailored brown suit, but needs must. At the moment, it was more important to hide my injury than to appear stylish.

  While we rode, I asked my brother for more details about Frederick and his arraignment hearing the previous afternoon.

  “All things considered, he looks well enough,” Samuel told me. “More than anything, I think he’s mortified by the whole experience. Heaven only knows how this will affect his career in the state senate. I do know it’s going to be hard for him to show his face in public until he’s been cleared of these ridiculous charges.”

  “Has he told anyone the real reason he went to see Vincenzo at the jail?” I asked, getting to the heart of what I wanted to know.

  “Yes, he finally broke down and told Papa.” He smiled wryly. “I gather Father didn’t leave him much choice in the matter. Evidently, it’s all to do with Rudolph Hardin.”

  “Hardin?” This was a surprise! “You mean Frederick’s political rival? The one who’s been leaking those awful stories to the newspapers?”

  “That’s the one.” We were both jostled as our cab narrowly missed colliding with an omnibus that had careened recklessly around the corner. Samuel took a moment to resettle in his seat, then continued, “According to Freddie, Vincenzo sent a man to see him, claiming he was a good friend of Hardin’s footman. If Freddie bailed him out of jail, he promised to pass on some information that could ruin Hardin.”

  “So that’s why he didn’t want to tell us,” I said thoughtfully.

  “Exactly. And, as it turns out, Vincenzo did give Frederick an envelope. Only Freddie swears that it contained some cock-and-bull story about Hardin buying up a string of bawdy houses along the Embarcadero and setting his sister Clara up as a madam in one of them.”

  “Good Lord! Did Frederick actually believe him?”

  There was a loud cry out on the street, followed by a string of curses from our hackman. Our hansom made an abrupt turn to the right, which took us over several large potholes. Each bounce made my head feel as if it were being hit by a sledgehammer. Observing my discomfort, Samuel leaned his head out the window and shouted at our driver to slow down, but as far as I could tell, it did little good.

  “Freddie says he didn’t believe any of it,” Samuel said at length. “Given half a chance, though, I suspect he would have been happy to use it against Hardin. Which would have been disastrous, considering that Hardin’s sister Clara has been a Roman Catholic nun for the past fifteen years.”

  Despite my throbbing head, and the gravity of our brother’s situation, I couldn’t help laughing at the mental picture this invoked. “That rather proves our theory about Frederick being set up, doesn’t it?”

  A shadow crossed my brother’s face. “Yes, and that’s what worries me. Whoever is behind this has laid his plans very cleverly. Even if the charges can’t be conclusively proved, the suspicion and innuendos will be more than enough to ruin Frederick politically, not to mention socially. I doubt that any law firm in town would hire him after this.”

  Suddenly, I felt tense and chilled inside. This kind of scandal would utterly destroy my eldest brother and his wife. It would also sully Papa’s good name, which would be horribly unfair; Papa was the most ethical man I knew!

  “Samuel, we have to find the person who initiated this smear campaign. The only way to save Freddie is to prove without any doubt that he’s innocent of these charges.”

  Samuel gave me an ironic smile. “What do you think I’ve been trying to do since Frederick was arrested? Do you suppose I could just sit back and watch our entire family being thrown to the wolves, simply because our big brother is so damn gullible?” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I shouldn’t have said that. Freddie means well, I suppose. He just can’t seem to see beyond his own self-importance.”

  I nodded. “He can be unbearably annoying at times. Still, we’ve got to find a way to get him out of this mess.”

  We’d just reached the city jail when I remembered to ask Samuel the question I’d placed uppermost on my list the day before.

  His eyebrows rose in surprise. “You want to know what? How did you even hear about that place?” Laughing, he raised a hand to cut me off before I could explain. “Never mind, I haven’t time to hear it now. But you have to promise to give me all the gruesome details later.”

  Still shaking his head in bemusement, he gave me the information I’d requested, then helped me out of the carriage and instructed the driver to take him on to the offices of the San Francisco Examiner.

  Entering the jail, I was shown to Madame Karpova’s cell by Sergeant Jackson, who updated me on my client’s state of mind since her arraignment hearing two days earlier.

  “She’s been a real pest, asking for you over and over,” he said. “Other
than that, she’s doing all right. I’ve been keeping a close eye on her, although I still can’t believe anyone is out to hurt her.”

  Madame Karpova was beginning to show the strain of her incarceration. Her face was pale and pinched, her already volatile temper frayed. The moment I entered the cell, she commenced berating me for not visiting her the day before. She went on to complain about the dreadful food, the surly guards, the lumpy cot, the cold temperature, and the lack of adequate blankets. She was especially upset that everyone at the jail treated her like a criminal, when she was completely innocent of wrongdoing. When I was finally able to get in a word, I explained that I had been ill the day before and thus unable to journey outside my house.

  To my considerable surprise, she closed her eyes, then blurted, “You were injured in an accident.” Her black eyes studied my face. “You have a head wound, have you not? That is why you were unable to come to me yesterday.”

  I felt tiny goose bumps rise on my arms. “How did you know?”

  “I, Madame Karpova, know these things,” she proclaimed, as she had so many times before. This morning, however, she lacked much of her earlier arrogance, and I thought this illustrated the strain of her confinement far more than her litany of complaints. Still, what she’d said about my head was uncanny. I lifted a hand to my hat, thinking that perhaps it had slipped and revealed my bandages, but it had not. I would have liked to question her further about this strange insight, but unfortunately there was no time.

  Pulling the chair closer to the cot, I told her I had an important matter to discuss. “It’s vital that you’re completely honest with me. Your life may well depend upon it.”

  She regarded me warily, then slowly nodded her agreement. “Very well, I will attempt to do so.”

  “Where did Dmitry go when he left your hotel all day?”