Emperor Norton's Ghost

by Dianne Day

  When I looked at myself in the long mirror, to be sure I’d done up all my buttons properly, there was a film of tears in my eyes. I swiped at them once with the back of my hand, pressed my lips together firmly, and stood tall with shoulders square. That would do, but my disguise was not yet complete. It lacked the hat, which I was loath to put on because I hate hats.

  To tell the truth I was none too fond, either, of the long gray coat that covered me from neck to toe. It was absolutely plain yet tolerably well cut, buttoned all down the front with cheap but matching mother-of-pearl buttons. A more boring garment can scarcely be imagined, but that was the point: to render me unremarkable. Michael said it was quite a chore to render me unremarkable, due to my height—five feet eight inches, which is tall for a woman—and a number of other factors he declined to mention. Nor did I insist upon enlightenment, being somewhat wary of what he might say.

  It was the loathsome hat that made my disguise most effective. In a style that had been popular a couple of decades earlier, this hat came down low in the back to cover my hair, almost like a bonnet; it had a little peaked brim, trimmed in ruching, from which hung a half veil. That is to say, the veil covered half my face: forehead, eyes, nose. Altogether this did not leave much of me to be recognized.

  A few moments later I tapped on the door of Michael’s little private room downstairs and said in a slightly raised voice, “I’m off. Wish should be back here shortly but in the meantime—”

  The door opened so abruptly it startled me, and Michael was standing there with a gleam in his eyes, finishing the sentence: “I know, I’ll answer the telephone and listen for the door. You look so demure in that outfit, Fremont; it makes me want to ravish you.”

  I took a couple of steps backward. “Don’t you dare! I haven’t time to do up all these buttons again.”

  “A kiss then,” said Michael, aiming his lips toward the one section of my anatomy that remained uncovered. And a fine kiss it was, too.

  With a deep, abiding surge of affection I touched his cheek, replied, “I will,” to his counsel that I be careful, and sailed out of the house.

  ———

  When Michael proposed, several months ago, that he and I start up a business of private investigation, I had felt in one way excited by the prospect, and in another resigned to it—the latter due to something very bad, indeed irrevocable, that had happened to me the previous year. I didn’t like to think of it, and never spoke of it, not even to Michael; yet this bad thing had changed me. Even more than the Great Earthquake did—and that event had changed all of us who went through it.

  I parked the Maxwell a few blocks from my destination and walked the rest of the way, into a part of the City called North Beach. As I walked, I thought of the days when I’d first come to San Francisco, with nothing but a typewriter and a lot of hope. The memory seemed to shine with a kind of innocence, now gone forever.

  If Father ever finds out what I did last year, it will kill him.

  A shudder passed through me, but I raised my chin higher and quickened my steps, and the moment of unpleasantness was soon behind me. I walked briskly until Columbus Avenue came in sight, then I slowed to a sedate pace, relaxed my shoulders into a kind of Victorian slope, and directed my gaze downward. Or so it should appear. In reality, though the angle of my head suggested demurely downcast eyes, I was making the fullest use of my peripheral vision—albeit through a haze of gray veil.

  The J&K Agency had been hired to identify a petty thief whose crime sounded negligible until one realized that when small items are stolen day after day, month after month, the cost does mount. The police, when told of missing cabbages and spools of thread and suchlike, had not been particularly zealous in their attention to the problem. So the victims, Mr. and Mrs. Garofalo, had asked us to find out who was repeatedly robbing their corner grocery and dry goods store in broad daylight. This was my third day on the job. I suppose I needn’t say I had not yet had any results. As the Garofalos had been none too keen to have a woman investigator to begin with, I hoped to come through for them soon.

  I felt my pulse quicken, and a pleasant little tingle of alertness that comes when I arrive on the scene. Surveillance does not bore me as it does our more experienced investigator, Wish Stephenson. He says that’s because I’m new at it, and he may be right; but I think this business excites me because I know I have a talent for it. From the time when Michael first took me in hand (professionally, that is) and began to train me, I had excelled—for example, at being taken into a room, left there for five minutes, and then removed and asked to name the objects I had seen. Right away I’d been able to recite almost all. When it comes to remembering what I have heard, as opposed or in addition to what I have seen, I possess the curious ability of total recall. Entire conversations implant themselves in my brain word for word—yet if I were to read the same on a printed page, from memory I should only be able to paraphrase it. This total recall is not something I ever had to learn; I seem to have been born that way.

  Being able to acutely observe with one’s peripheral vision is definitely a learned skill, however, and it can give one a headache after a while. My head had started to ache, and I had been thinking that if I didn’t spot this thief soon Mama and Papa Garofalo would be sure to attribute my failure to my gender, when a blur of rapid movement off to my left caught my eye.

  Aha! I thought. I am about to be vindicated. I had proposed to the Garofalos a theory that their thief might likely be a woman, who could more easily hide upon her person the wide variety of objects that were disappearing; in fact, it was this argument that had finally persuaded them to accept me as their investigator. And now the only figure in the region where I’d seen the blur proved to be female. On closer inspection, she was not a woman so much as a girl who looked scarcely out of childhood, despite the fact that she appeared to be enceinte (as one says to be polite) herself.

  I watched this fallen angel for half an hour, and then I followed her home. She was clever. Like the deceitful child who shares by counting out “one for you and two for me,” she shopped by pocketing two items for each one she put in her basket, so that she appeared to be a paying customer. She lived in the neighborhood, and in fact, when I went back to the Garofalos’ store and told them to call the police to that address, they were shocked. They did not want to believe their thief could be their neighbor, a daily customer.

  “Nevertheless,” I said, “I observed her in the act of stealing. I expect the police will find that she has been doing a nice little business in selling and trading stolen goods out of her home; and further, that they will find this clever but bent girl is no more expecting a child than I am.”

  “Oh!” said Mama Garofalo, shocked that I would mention the girl’s condition. Her hand flew up to cover her mouth as if it had been she, not I, who’d said the indelicate words.

  I proceeded to be more indelicate still: “People naturally avert their eyes. Just think how many things could be hidden beneath her clothes, in a pouch that size!”

  Papa Garofalo bit his lip, narrowed his eyes at me shrewdly, and with one nod of his head, reached for the telephone. “Hello, Central,” he said, “get me the police.”

  With a great deal of satisfaction I said, “I won’t stay to see her arrested. I know they will find the evidence on her premises. And you will receive the bill for my services in tomorrow’s mail.” Then I sailed out of the door in fine fettle. The hat was off before I’d walked half a block.

  ———

  I stopped the Maxwell on Broadway in front of the McFadden house, which I supposed someone like Mr. Jeremy McFadden might call the McFadden mansion; it was certainly big enough. Being west of Van Ness, it had received very little damage in the quake and fire two years before. And while the formerly great neighborhoods like Nob Hill were still disrupted by the noise and clutter of rebuilding, this area had come into its own as a desirable place to live. The view, similar to that from my bedroom window on Divisadero, was rat
her spectacular and compensated for the precipitousness of the house’s hillside site.

  After carefully setting the handbrake, for I certainly did not want the Maxwell to roll away, I climbed the sidewalk and far too many steps up to the front door. It would have been much easier if I had driven up their driveway and parked beneath the porte cochère, as I’d done when Frances was with me, but on this occasion I thought it wise not to advertise my presence.

  I hadn’t thought about the extreme plainness of my dress until the maid who opened the door to my knock gave me the severest sort of scrutiny up and down. “I’m Mrs. McFadden’s friend, Fremont Jones,” I explained, “and I’d like to see her if she’s in.”

  “You’re not expected.” The maid, who was neither young nor pretty, but rather the opposite, stated this flatly.

  I did not like her tone at all, so I put on my best Wellesley-educated persona and declared, “Mrs. McFadden is always at home to me, and I’m sure she would like to be acquainted with the fact that I am here inquiring after her health. I know she had a bit of a turn last evening. It was I, in fact, who brought her home.”

  The maid, who was looking to me more like a prison matron every minute, planted herself quite solidly in the middle of the entry and said, “No one is expected today. The Missus is not up to seeing anyone, and Mister said she’s not to be disturbed. Not by no one, all day. So good afternoon.” And she started to close the big door.

  “Just a moment!” I stuck my hand out, risking a sore wrist if she closed it in my face. But she didn’t; she held the door with her fingers curled around its edge and simply glared at me.

  I reached into the pocket of my long coat. I had no calling cards—I hadn’t thought about needing any, what with everything else that had gone on since I’d lost my former home on Vallejo Street—but I did have some of our J&K business cards with my name at the bottom, and our address and telephone number. I never went anywhere without them; in business, one should always be prepared to advertise. “My card,” I said, thrusting it in the woman’s face so that she was forced to take it or risk being blinded, “which I trust you will give to Mrs. McFadden, along with my most sincere wish that she will be feeling better soon.”

  Was it only my imagination, or was there a momentary softening of the eyes in that hard face? I took advantage by urging quietly, as if the maid and I had just become confidantes, “Please? Everyone needs a friend.”

  “Huh!” she snorted, and this time she did close the door in my face.

  4

  ———

  Pure Evil

  Wish Stephenson was sitting at his desk when I returned to Divisadero Street. Owing to his seniority in the investigation business, he has the desk with the most privacy—that is to say, it is farthest from the door. I do not begrudge him this in the least, but I did wonder why he took so long before looking up when I entered. Surely he’d heard the bell?

  “Wish?” I inquired, setting my hat down on my own desk and moving toward him as I began the long unbuttoning. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, Fremont, I—” His head jerked up and he regarded me with a slightly dazed expression, as if I’d brought him out of a deep reverie. Or as if he’d recently been hit upon the head and lost some of his wits. He rubbed at his forehead with unusually long, big-knuckled fingers. “I’m sorry, I forgot to go by that club for you.”

  “It doesn’t matter, and was not what I inquired about anyway. I merely asked if you were all right, because you appeared so, shall we say, distracted.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m okay. I guess, somewhere in the back of my mind I heard the bell on the door, but this cemetery thing … It’s really getting to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I sympathized. I turned a ladies’ chair—so called because it was made without arms, to accommodate the huge skirts of the previous century—to face him and sat down. As I carried on undoing all those buttons on my gray coat, I asked, “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “You first,” he said, brightening; he had a wonderful facility for letting go of his own woes. “How did your surveillance go today?”

  I smiled with genuine pride and pleasure. “I identified the thief! As I had suspected, it was a woman.” My smile faded. “Unfortunately she was more of a girl, not long out of childhood. I’m glad my part was only to identify her, not to place her under arrest. I fear I would have been tempted to give her a good tongue lashing and then let her go. I wouldn’t make a very good police officer, Wish. How did you bear it? Didn’t you ever feel sorry for the criminals?”

  “Um-hm, some of them,” he nodded, his long face serious. Everything about Wish is long, or big, or bony. But he had been growing into himself, as it were, during the past couple of years, so that he no longer looked like a gangly youth. Nor was he so awkward physically as he once had been. Now he moved with the kind of gentle gravity that many big men have, as if they must be careful of all creatures smaller than themselves—in other words, of most of the rest of us. With that same gravity he said: “But I concentrate on the victims, and that gets me through. When laws are broken, Fremont, somebody always gets hurt.”

  “That’s true,” I agreed, chewing on my lower lip as I thought about Mama and Papa Garofalo. They were honest and kindhearted; from the hours I had spent in their store I knew there were people in the neighborhood for whom the Garofalos kept a tab. In some cases, I suspected, a very long tab. If that girl had only asked for their help instead of stealing from them, what might they have been willing to do for her?

  “And what’s more,” Wish continued, “there’s people who’re always wanting something for nothing, or wanting to get away with all sorts of lawbreaking just to prove they can do it. They’re your run-of-the-mill sort of criminal. But the really big ones …” He shook his head from side to side, letting his words trail off. Then suddenly he finished, in a voice so low I had to listen hard to hear him: “The really big ones are pure evil.”

  Pure evil! That gave me the chills, and I shivered in the small silence that fell. Gathering myself together, I shrugged out of the gray coat and let it drape over the back of the chair. “Well,” I said briskly, to break the pall, “at any rate, I told Mr. and Mrs. Garofalo who their thief is, where she can be found, and instructed them to call the police. Now all I have to do is send them the bill: case successfully concluded. Your turn, Wish. What was that you said, about the cemetery thing getting to you?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t quite know what precisely is bothering me. That’s the hell of it. Probably best not to talk about it.” He turned away and began to fiddle with some papers on his desk.

  Ordinarily Wish would have said heck of it, so I knew this was serious. I couldn’t stand not knowing, so I somehow had to persuade him to say more. I tentatively ventured: “I gather this is something to do with Mr. Fennelly’s daughter?”

  No response. I tried again: “Oh dear, I’ve forgotten her name. Poor girl. And poor you, to have to go poking about in the cemetery looking for her.”

  “Cemeteries, plural.” My young colleague turned back to me. He was wavering, but he was also a little cross.

  “And her name is Tara, but I’ve given up on her. I’m not going to find her. This thing … it’s something else.”

  I leaned forward. “Michael is out, isn’t he?” He usually was at this time of day.

  Wish nodded, frowning in most un-Wishlike manner. “So?”

  I urged, “So tell me. If it’s tricky, I’ll keep it to myself.”

  “We-e-ell …”

  “Come on, Wish! You know I’m not as conservative as Michael, and I can keep my mouth shut if need be. Surely you need someone to talk things over with; who better than me? I mean, I?”

  A look of relief flooded Wish Stephenson’s open countenance, for which I was glad, because I would hate to have caused him further discomfort. Almost as much as I would have hated not knowing what was bothering him so. He leaned back in his chair, placed one ankle on the other knee, and said: “Okay
, but I do want you to keep it to yourself until I’ve decided what to do.”

  I nodded encouragement. “I promise.”

  “I s’pose you know most of the cemeteries in this city are up on Lone Mountain.”

  I nodded again, for I did know: that hilltop, to the west and south of the Presidio, was called San Francisco’s necropolis. There were a few architectural monuments in the area that were said to be rather grand, but I had not seen them myself, having no reason and less inclination to go there.

  “So that’s where I was for most of the day,” Wish said.

  “It cannot have been pleasant.”

  “While I didn’t find Tara Fennelly Roberts, I did come across something else. Nobody would have wanted me to find it; and as a matter of fact, maybe it’s not what I thought it was. Most people wouldn’t have noticed, and if I hadn’t been investigating, I probably wouldn’t have noticed either.”

  I gave him a look such as I imagine a big sister might give a little brother, and said softly but sternly, “If you do not tell me right now, Wish Stephenson, what it was you found, I swear I will take you back up to that cemetery and tie you to a tombstone!”

  His face turned a shade whiter. “Fremont, it’s not so much what I found as what I didn’t find. I swear to the Almighty, there’s empty graves up there!”

  His eyes got wider, and so did mine; but we had no chance to speak of it further because at that moment the door opened, jingling its bell.

  Michael came in, removing his hat and pulling a white scarf from about his neck. “Well,” he said, “what are you two hatching, all huddled up together like a couple of conspirators?”

  And Wish and I popped up straight in our respective chairs, pulled our lips into similar grins and said brightly, almost simultaneously: “Nothing!”

  ———

  Michael and I do not spend every night together. There are good reasons for our not living precisely as man and wife. I admit most of them are mine. Such as: I do not wish to be regarded as chattel, which is how many men view their wives. Indeed the history of the Western world, at least—I cannot answer for the history of the Eastern half of it, as not much of that was taught at Wellesley—is full of examples. For illustration one need go no further than the Bible itself, to the Ten Commandments, where one finds written: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything else that is his.