Emperor Norton's Ghost

by Dianne Day

  “How do,” Mr. McFadden replied abruptly, snapping his head up and down in a nod. He wore full whiskers that covered heavy jowls, in a now outmoded style once made popular by the younger Vanderbilts. He was an enormous figure, large without being fat; I thought him extremely unattractive. He looked, very simply, like a mean man. And he was clearly skeptical of me. His eyes roamed rudely over my body and he said, “A little late, isn’t it, to be doing errands of any kind.” It was a pronouncement, not a question, and he went on: “I assume your husband knows your whereabouts, madam.”

  “Of course,” I replied, taking a kind of prickly pleasure in the opportunity for mendacity. “My husband is fully supportive of all my charitable endeavors.”

  “The vehicle at the curb would be yours, then.” He said “vehicle” with disdain, as if poor Max were not at all good enough for a McFadden’s high standards.

  “If you mean the Maxwell, then yes, it is ours. My husband’s and mine.” I could imagine how droll Michael would find this conversation, with me repeatedly referring to him as my husband. I was rather enjoying it myself.

  “And the charity you support, which requires you to be out so late of an evening, what would that be?”

  “Why, the Widows and Orphans of Deceased Seafarers, of course,” I said, making one up on the spot. “Surely you’ve heard of our campaign?”

  “Can’t say as I have, no.” The enormous man rocked forward onto the balls of his feet, leaning toward me in a manner I found rather threatening, although I was separated from him by a distance of several feet.

  Frances was suddenly at my side, tugging my arm. “Mrs. Jones was just leaving. I’ve told her I’m overcommitted to my own charities at the moment. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. McFadden, while I accompany her to the door?”

  And with that, Frances had guided me deftly around her husband and into the hall. Once there, she’d kept grimly on toward the door and had refused to answer any of my whispered questions, only shaking her head. In nothing flat, I had found myself outside.

  Now Wish Stephenson said, “I can look up his club membership if you want me to. Living in a house like that, he must have a club. Then I’d go round and talk to the club help, find out all about him that way.”

  From behind the pages of The Chronicle, Michael said, “No need for that, Wish. Jeremy McFadden belongs to the Parnassus Club, like his daddy before him. Daddy was a land speculator. Jeremy does his speculating in the stock market. He’s seldom at his club, so it would do you no good to inquire there. Fremont”—he lowered the paper so that he could peer over it—“why do you want to know?”

  “Because,” I said, “his wife is afraid of him.”

  “Ah,” said Michael, nodding his head, as if that explained everything, and then he retreated behind the newspaper again.

  I turned to Wish. “It wouldn’t do any harm, I suppose—that is, if you just happened to be passing by the Parnassus Club—if you were to slip in the back door and ask a question or two? Even if he’s seldom there, someone might know something. Who knows, the cook could be his old nursemaid.”

  Michael snorted.

  I pretended I hadn’t heard, going on: “You’ll never know if you don’t ask. But don’t go out of your way, Wish. This isn’t a real investigation, not a paid inquiry or anything. Just my own curiosity, that’s all.”

  Wish grinned. He has an open, bony yet sensitive face and a wide mouth that seems even wider when he smiles. “I’d sooner go out of my way for you, Fremont, than for anybody rich enough to hire us, and that’s a fact! Sure I’ll see what I can do for you.”

  Michael snorted again.

  I buttered another muffin and winked at Wish, who blushed a bit and gulped down the rest of his coffee. With Michael, the two of us were often like a couple of kids plotting mischief against a favorite teacher. Not that we’d ever actually do anything …

  “Well,” Wish said, pushing back from the table, “I’m off.”

  “You still working that same case?” Michael lowered the paper to his lap.

  “Yeah. Checking the cemeteries now. I don’t think we’ll ever find that poor man’s daughter. I don’t feel good about continuing to take his money, and that’s a fact, but he says leave no stone unturned. Gotten down to the tombstones now.” Wish shook his head dolefully.

  “If that’s what he wants,” I said softly. The client had come to San Francisco from up in the northern part of the state, around Eureka, in search of his married daughter who had just stopped writing home about a year ago. He claimed he’d had one letter from her after the earthquake, saying she and her husband had survived, but nothing since. Missing people were still very hard to trace, because so many had simply left; and though no one talked openly about it, there had been bones recovered from the ashes of the great fire that would likely remain forever unidentified.

  “Yeah, well,” Wish said, “I’m planning to finish up today. I can’t stand much more of it myself. Stopping by the Parnassus will make a nice diversion, Fremont. See you later, Michael.”

  “Right,” Michael said, returning to his paper.

  “You’re unusually taciturn this morning,” I commented, licking butter from my fingers.

  Michael said nothing until we heard the front door close behind Wish; there is a little bell on that door, so it is easy to tell when someone goes in or out. I affixed the bell myself and am most fond of it, because it reminds me of one I had on the door of my first office, on Sacramento Street, some three years ago. As the bell’s silvery tone subsided, Michael carefully folded the newspaper in half, and then by half again, and set it precisely on the table beside his plate.

  “What?” I asked, already suspicious. I knew that look in his eye. It was a superior, I-Know-More-About-This-Than-You-Could-Ever-Hope-To sort of look.

  “You think your friend is afraid of her husband.”

  “I know she is!”

  “She confided this to you?”

  “She didn’t have to. I could tell!” I said hotly. “So would you have been able to tell, if you’d been there. And besides, she did say that he mustn’t ever know that she’d gone out of their house after dark. Imagine that! Even though we were together, properly chaperoning each other, and it was early in the evening.”

  “But you did go to a séance. Not, for example, to the opera.”

  My cheeks were burning. I knew he had a point there, but still my chin went up and I said: “So?”

  Michael wore his most serious face. He is of Russian descent, with almost black, silver-shot hair and beard, high cheekbones, a straight nose, eyes that are sometimes blue and sometimes gray, depending, I think, on his inner weather, and a most expressive mouth. His eyes at the moment were slate gray and his lips formed an uncompromising line. Yet, to my surprise, he did not meet me head on, but rather asked a sideways question. “Where, again, did you first meet Frances McFadden?”

  “At the little library on Green Street. We are both frequent patrons. We grew to recognize one another, and so one day last week, as we were leaving the library at the same time, I invited her to accompany me to that new tea shop over on Van Ness. Frances and I are most compatible, Michael.”

  Indeed, Frances and I had talked in a way that a woman may only talk to another woman, deeply and confidingly. Therefore I knew she had come from modest circumstances to marry a wealthy man; and she knew about my flight from respectability in Boston to freedom in San Francisco, and that I did not intend to compromise my freedom by marrying anyone. And then I’d mentioned my arrangement with Michael. Of course I’d feared rejection all the while I was telling her the truth, but she had not rejected me. Rather the opposite: Frances had been full of understanding and admiration. For such a friend I would do much, whether Michael liked it or not.

  “Your father must be an unusual man,” Michael said, still moving sideways.

  “I don’t quite take your point,” I said, though he hadn’t made one yet.

  “My point is this: It is not unusua
l for a man to be unhappy if his wife goes out without him, particularly after dark. And most men would be unhappy in the extreme to find out that their wives were becoming involved in Spiritualist practices.”

  “Why is that, why ‘in the extreme,’ Michael?”

  “Because the vast predominance of mediums are female. They seem to have certain, ah, powers. It smacks, my dear Fremont, of witchcraft. And anything that smacks of witchcraft makes us men uncomfortable. Most women too, I daresay.”

  “I thought that was what you’d say.” I nodded impatiently. “But I still don’t understand. Surely you don’t expect me to pay attention to something just because it’s the opinion of most people?”

  Michael chuckled; for just a moment his eyes flashed, but then he sobered again. And perhaps by contrast to the moment of jocularity, he seemed even more somber than before. “Fremont, I do not think it’s a good idea for you to come between a man and his wife,” he said, “and I am deeply concerned. Jeremy McFadden’s father was a rough character, and I have no reason to believe Jeremy is not equally rough himself. If you continue to befriend Frances, it had better be on terms that are acceptable to her husband.”

  I arched my brows and wriggled my toes, just itching to tap my foot under the table, but I did not. I said: “Or else … what?”

  3

  ———

  Father, Dear Father

  I did not get my question answered—which was just as well, since probably I should not have liked the answer—because at that moment the little bell on the front door jingled and someone called out, in a rather timid voice, “Hello?”

  “I’ll go,” I said quickly, and sped away.

  I arrived in the front office (the former parlor) just as a young man in a Western Union uniform came to a halt in the doorway, with a confused look on his face.

  “Come in,” I said in a manner I hoped would encourage him to overcome his hesitation.

  He looked down at the envelope in his hand, then at me, and took two steps forward. He was a pale fellow, and from beneath the uniform’s cap his yellow hair stuck out like straw, suggesting a truly dreadful haircut. He had a lost air, and my heart went out to him.

  “I’m looking for somebody named Fremont Jones,” he said. “This is the right address. But is it a house or a business? I got a residence address.”

  “It is both, my residence being upstairs and my business being right here. I am Fremont Jones.” I smiled warmly and moved forward. “You are in the right place. I take it that you have a telegram for me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He made as if to hand me the envelope with one hand, while getting a notebook from an inner pocket with the other. For a less awkward person this would have been easy, but this poor fellow became all elbows and angles, as the notebook stuck in his pocket and he let go of the envelope before it was quite in my hand.

  I restrained my impulse to retrieve the telegram, else we should have bumped heads; I had to restrain my impulse to laugh, too. He would have thought I was laughing at him, although I would have been laughing at the situation, and at the awkwardness of boys in adolescence. He could not be long out of school. Or perhaps circumstances had forced him to work when he would have preferred to be at his lessons.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he muttered, handing over the envelope a second time.

  “That is perfectly all right,” I replied, moving to my desk and opening the top drawer, while glancing curiously at the telegram. I would have loved to rip it open right on the spot but a desire to be kind to its deliverer took precedence.

  “You have to sign for it!” he cried, as if afraid I would disappear, although I had moved only a few feet.

  “Of course,” I said, rummaging in the drawer and coming up with a half dollar, “and so I shall, if you will be so good as to come over to the desk.”

  He came like a cautious cat investigating new territory, shoulders hunched and eyes wide. “I don’t get asked in much. I mean, mostly people just keep me standing at the door.”

  He fumbled his notebook open and offered it to me, indicating with a callused finger the line for me to sign. This boy had until recently done some heavy physical work, judging by the condition of his hands.

  I signed with a bit of a flourish and returned the notebook. “And this is for your trouble,” I said, slipping the large coin into his hand.

  “Oh,” he said, shaking his head, “I got no troubles now. I got a fine job, soon’s I learn how to do it some faster, learn my way around the big city and all.”

  Now I did laugh, lightly; and I sensed that Michael had arrived somewhere behind me, but he was hanging back. I cannot tell how I am able to do it, but I usually know when Michael is anywhere about, whether I can see him or not. To the Western Union boy I said, “You must keep the money anyway—it’s a gratuity for services rendered. A tip.”

  His face shone as if the sun had come up behind his light brown eyes. “Oh, a tip! Yes, ma’am, thank you, ma’am. It’s my first one of those.”

  “How many days have you been on the job, then?”

  “This is my second, and I best be moving on. Thanks again.”

  “You are entirely welcome.”

  Michael came forward as the bell jingled behind the delivery boy letting himself out.

  “You were lurking at the other side of the arch, I take it,” I commented without turning around. There is a deep archway between the office and the conference room—it is, in effect, a little tunnel about three feet in depth. It is an architectural anomaly that neither Michael nor I have accounted for, as the space between the walls of what used to be parlor and dining room is not occupied by any cabinet or closet.

  “I was listening to you flirt with the delivery boy.”

  “Eavesdropping.” I slit the envelope with a letter opener.

  “Spying,” said Michael with his version of an evil chuckle.

  “Michael!” I exclaimed. “This is astonishing! I do believe I had better sit down.” I sat in the chair at the desk and read the telegram again.

  “May I inquire who it is that has so astonished you?” Michael leaned against a corner of the desk, crossing his ankles.

  “My father! First of all, he has addressed the telegram not to Caroline but to Fremont, and he’s never done that before!” In fact, my use of my middle name rather than my first name had been a sore spot between us ever since I began the practice on my move to California three, going on four, years ago. “Let me read it to you:

  “ ‘DEAREST DAUGHTER STOP AM COMING TO SAN FRANCISCO TO CELEBRATE YOUR BIRTHDAY WITH YOU STOP HAVE MADE RESERVATIONS AT HOTEL SAINT FRANCIS STOP ARRIVING NEXT MONTH ON THE NINTH AT FOUR PM STOP COMING ALONE STOP YOUR LOVING FATHER.’

  “I must say, I’m stunned.”

  “So I gather. But why? Other than speaking of the devil, of course.”

  I frowned up at my partner, my friend, my lover, about whom my father knew absolutely nothing. Yet. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Speak of the devil and he sends you a telegram. I mentioned your father not long ago, when we were in the kitchen. I said he must be an unusual man. Surely, Fremont, you will be glad to see him. Especially as he says he’s coming alone. As I recall, it is your stepmother you’re not too fond of.”

  “Don’t call her that! Eeuw! I prefer not to hear the word ‘mother,’ in any form, in the same sentence with that woman. Just call her by her name, which is Augusta. Anyway, you are quite right, I’m not at all fond of her, but Father is besotted. He positively adores Augusta. How odd that he would come alone!” I jiggled my foot and tapped the telegram against my lip, thinking.

  “If he’s coming to celebrate your birthday, and he knows how you feel about Augusta, then I should say he’s being considerate of your feelings.”

  “Yes, I suppose so, but still, it’s most peculiar.”

  “You don’t look very happy about it. You haven’t seen your father in, let’s see, how long?”

  “Since January of 1905. As it is now mid-
March of 1908, it has been three years and three months.” As I toted up the months and years in my head, I felt a pang, a deepening ache that told me I had indeed missed my father more than I wanted to allow myself to know, or to feel.

  “And how old will you be on this birthday, which, as well as I remember, will take place on the tenth of next month?”

  “I will be twenty-five.” I looked up at my lover. “So old.”

  “No, my darling,” he said, bending to kiss my lips, “so young.”

  ———

  I had a job to do, I could not hang around the office fretting over Father—or rather, fretting over what I suspected Father would think about my chosen style of life when he saw it with his own eyes. It was one thing to persuade myself I did not care, with Father a whole continent away; quite another thing entirely, now I knew he was coming. But I mustn’t think about that now.

  I went upstairs to my abode, which was quite spacious, lacking only a kitchen; this was not inconvenient in the least because I generally joined Michael for meals, in his side of the house. If for some strange reason I felt inclined to prepare a meal, I could always do it in the kitchen downstairs on the first floor. I had turned my second-floor rooms into a parlor, a bedroom, and the beginnings of a library. As I was furnishing them myself out of my meager means, everything looked rather sparse still.

  Father will be shocked, I thought as I opened my shabby little wardrobe cabinet and retrieved the garment that constitutes my disguise.

  I was dismayed by my inability to put his visit out of my head, and to stop caring what he would think. It is so hard to bear the disapproval of a parent, especially so for me with Father. I was only fourteen when my mother died, and he did not marry again until after my twenty-first birthday, so the bond between us had grown especially strong.