by Dianne Day
“From the same spirit who came through that night?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I can’t be sure. Nor can Frances.” I had my suspicions that this was the case, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell him that—though in truth I could not have said exactly why.
Now Patrick Rule slid back into his chair, leaning urgently toward me. “An untrained medium who has made contact is like a door standing open, with no lock and no hand to close it.”
“But what can that have to do with the … the murder?”
“More than you know. You must believe me, that’s all. I’m determined to find Abigail’s killer. The police will never do it, you know. A dead medium is of hardly any interest to them. Whereas I … I have lost my life as surely as if the unknown perpetrator had killed me, too. Bring Mrs. McFadden to me, Miss Jones, or take me to her. I was a valued assistant to Abigail Locke, I know how to draw the spirits out when they show, and how to command them to leave. I cannot teach anyone to make contact—that part is still a mystery to so many of us—but once the contact has been made, I’m expert at eliciting information. In this case, I believe it would be valuable information. Certainly to me.”
Wheels, big wheels, began turning in my mind. “That may produce something helpful to you, and certainly I’d like to see Mrs. Locke’s killer brought to justice. But all the questioning in the world will not help Frances to learn to control whatever has begun to happen in her life. As her friend, that’s my primary concern.”
“It’s a bargain. Tit for tat. She does this for me; I provide a teacher for her.”
Those wheels gave one last turn and came to rest in a most satisfactory place. I reached into my pocket and drew out a business card for the J&K Agency. I put this card on the table between us, face up. “Mr. Rule, I am a private detective. As Frances’s friend, I cannot advise her to do as you ask, because her husband could take her to task for it. But if you were to hire me …”
He picked up on it right away, with enthusiasm. His face lit up and once again he was a handsome man. “Yes! I can see it! Together we may move through the shadowy world of San Francisco Spiritualism in search of the despicable person who stabbed my Abigail through the heart. Along the way you may, of course, wish to interview certain people—shall we say ‘in my presence?’ ”
I inclined my head in acquiescence.
“And Mrs. McFadden would be one of them.”
I inclined my head again.
“Oh, you were sent by the angels, Fremont Jones.”
Well, I supposed that was a little better than having been sent by God, which had been said of me (with little evidence) in the past, and so I remarked. This elicited the first smile I’d seen from Patrick. “Part of the payment for my services as private detective”—I narrowed my eyes—“will be your delivery of the kind of help Frances needs, and that part will be due at the outset. Is that understood?”
“Perfectly.”
“Come to my office now, Mr. Rule, and we’ll draw up the contract.” I stood decisively. In business I have found it is always best to continue to move briskly ahead, whether or not one knows precisely where one is going. The impression of forward motion is wonderfully effective. “Now, we’ll need a letter of agreement first thing, to specify exactly what I am to do so that there will be no misunderstanding.”
“Yes, of course. If you will allow me to get my hat? Oh, and Miss Jones. What are your fees for this service?”
“I have a fee schedule back at the office. I don’t carry about that information in my head.”
In truth, I hadn’t the slightest idea what to charge. This was my first real, unsupervised case and I was delighted beyond all proportion.
In fact, it did occur to me, as Patrick Rule and I descended the steps of the house on Octavia Street, that I must have a ghoulish streak, to be so looking forward to my descent (as it were) into the netherworld of Spiritualism in search of a murderer.
12
———
A Dreadful Message
Patrick Rule and I signed a contract late that afternoon. When we arrived (I had driven him in the Maxwell, as he did not have an auto, and he intended to go on somewhere else afterward) at J&K’s offices in the double house on Divisadero, I had to use my key to let us in. Michael had apparently grown tired of minding the store alone, so to speak, and owing to one of my more perverse streaks this pleased me well. I could choose my own time to tell Michael and Wish of this coup. My first case, and I had landed one that could make headlines in the newspapers! To think what the publicity would do for our agency, not to mention my own reputation as an investigator, a detective if you will.
Of course, it was always possible that I wouldn’t solve the case, and nothing would come of it but a bit of money (though of course I had no such thing as a schedule of fees, I had lied about that, and not being sure what to charge, I may have made it too little; besides, I was in a way also being paid by Patrick’s taking care of Frances), but even so …
So it was that I managed to keep my good news from Michael all night, and to make my announcement to both him and to Wish around the kitchen table during a morning coffee break. They expressed their individual degrees of surprise and amazement (and on Wish’s part, a bit of envy, I thought), which I accepted as graciously as if I had been the queen instead of just a penniless private detective on her first case.
That was in the morning; by noon everything had changed because another medium was dead: Ingrid Swann.
Frances was our messenger; she delivered this dreadful message in a hurried, breathless telephone call: “Fremont, Jeremy is in the—the necessary facility. I must hurry and get out of his study before he gets back. But I overheard him talking just now on this very telephone instrument. I was out in the hall—listening on purpose actually—he has seemed so intense lately, I just can’t help but wonder what is going on, so I eavesdrop.”
“Frances,” I interrupted her babbling, “you must get to the point, particularly if time is of the essence.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Jeremy said on the phone that Ingrid Swann is dead, it is to be in the afternoon’s Examiner. Can you imagine?”
“Good heavens!” I said. “Another medium. How very … odd. And terrible, of course, it’s terrible.” As if, I thought with a chill, someone had decided to murder all the mediums in San Francisco, one by one. Oh, surely not!
This new development put a different light upon my investigation on behalf of Patrick Rule, I saw that right away.
“Who can be doing this, Fremont?” Frances cried, “Who would be so monstrous as to do such a thing? Right on the heels of Abigail!”
“I haven’t a clue, but I expect I may come closer to finding out than you can believe, Frances, before this business all plays out.” Then I told her how I’d been hired by Patrick Rule to investigate Abigail Locke’s death.
“We want to interview you,” I added, in as offhand and casually nonthreatening a manner as possible. “I could bring him to your house, by the route I came in the other day. Or if you prefer, you may come here.”
I did not tell Frances what else I intended. She would be hostile, I was sure, to anything that might affect her free and easy fantasies about the ghost of this Emperor Norton.
“Not today, tomorrow— Oh, he’s coming! Noon tomorrow, I’ll come to you!”
In a stunned state I’d hung up the telephone and conveyed Frances’s information to Michael and Wish. We were still all seated around the kitchen table, where we’d spent the morning in a kind of staff meeting. Our light-hearted mood had been broken. Very shortly I excused myself and went to my desk, Wish went out somewhere, and Michael retired to his office.
I got out paper and pencil to make a list. The first order of business must be to obtain a copy of the Examiner, to confirm what Frances had overheard. I wrote that down, and then I wrote: Jeremy M.—How did he know before it made the papers?
The most obvious way, of course, would be if he had done the m
urders himself. Or caused them to be done. But that was too obvious. Wasn’t it?
I pondered this possibility. Could Jeremy McFadden be so jealous of his wife’s time, attention, and affections that he would commit murder in order to … to what? To keep Frances from attending any more séances? To scare Frances off such activities?
“Oh, pshaw!” I muttered. Surely that couldn’t be, it was too outlandish, no one could possibly be that possessive. Or, being that possessive, go to the extreme of murder. Twice.
And yet, having had the idea, I could not let it go no matter how outlandish. Maybe it was just that simple, and the police didn’t know to look at Jeremy as a suspect because I hadn’t wanted to get Frances in trouble by reporting Abigail’s body.
Oh Lord. I was seized by a horrid, creeping sense of guilt. If that did prove to be the case, if Jeremy McFadden turned out to be the murderer of both these dead mediums, then I myself could be held responsible—morally, anyway—for the death of the second one, Ingrid Swann. Because the police didn’t know, they had no idea, that Frances McFadden had been in any way involved. If I hadn’t decided not to report Abigail Locke’s murder to the police … I couldn’t even bear to finish the thought.
I felt as if my career in detection had been the briefest on record, and now must be over before it began. How could I carry on in the business if I had no more sense than to conduct myself in such a way as to get people killed? I was supposed to be solving crimes and puzzles and conundrums, not making them!
For I don’t know how long I sat still as a stone, my mind a complete blank. I just could not deal with this. I didn’t know how. And then, suddenly, I did.
I pushed back from my desk and went back to Michael’s office, intending to confide in him, to tell him what I’d done, to ask what I should do now. His door was open and he sat bent over a book, reading with the absolute concentration he has that shuts everything else out. Even me. I stood there for a heartbeat or two, and then stealthily I went away. Back to my desk, to make my list, to answer the telephone, to watch the hours of the clock creep around to two, when the afternoon edition of the Examiner would begin to hit the streets.
I was sure my situation now was not one my mother could ever have visualized, but I applied her lesson nonetheless: This was a burden I had to carry alone. My first case. I had to do it right, at least from this point onward, and I had to make it on my own.
———
“You have heard, I presume,” I said to Patrick Rule late the next morning. We sat at the long table in the conference room, preparing for Frances’s arrival at noon.
He nodded gravely. “You mean about Ingrid.” His face seemed drawn and was pale, hollow-eyed, as if he had been for far too long without sleep.
“Yes,” I said.
The Examiner article had been terse and to the point: The body of Ingrid Swann, world-renowned medium now based in San Francisco, had been found by her brother, Ngaio, early the previous morning. She had died from stab wounds to the chest. Whether or not the wounds themselves resembled those in the chest of Abigail Locke, the newspaper article hadn’t said. This morning’s more sensational press had had less compunction, they’d come right out with banner headlines proclaiming MURDERER OF MEDIUMS ON THE LOOSE IN CITY BY THE BAY! Michael, ever helpful, had brought all the morning editions home with him from his breakfast bakery run, and the papers lay now fanned out on the conference table.
“Perhaps the police will work harder now to catch the killer,” I said, hoping to allay Patrick’s misery.
He nodded again but said nothing further, and as I did not know what to say myself, we sat in silence. I could hear Michael as he turned the page of a book in his office, it was that still; I could hear the tick of the hands and the tock of the swinging pendulum of the old wall clock out in the kitchen. It was a sunny day, with light pouring through the lace curtains (perhaps not all that appropriate for an office, but this had been a dining room before and they’d come with the house) to make intricate shadow patterns on the rug. In the next room, Michael turned another page. From the kitchen, the clock struck in rapid little pings, twelve of them: high noon.
Still no Frances.
Patrick Rule bestirred himself, adjusted his necktie, fiddled with his collar, and aimed his curiously empty eyes toward the front door.
Ready and waiting, I thought. Then suddenly I recalled how he had looked not at me but through me to the door beyond at the séance, and had announced Mrs. Locke’s arrival before that door behind me opened. What curious ability did he have, to perceive someone’s coming before they came?
Whatever it might be called, he certainly possessed it, for in that very instant the door opened, its bell rang, and I hurriedly said, “I need to prepare her. She isn’t expecting you. I was able to leave her only the briefest message. Stay here, please. We’ll be right in.” Raising my voice, I called out, “Frances! Wait right there if you please. I’m coming out.”
The Emperor Norton, ghost or no ghost, was doing well by this young matron. I had never seen Frances McFadden so glowing, nor more attractively dressed. Her day dress was a rich, deep shade of blue, of some simple material like chambray, but far from simple in design. The collar and neck insert were of sheer white cotton, embroidered with little blue flowers, and so were the cuffs on the long sleeves. Her modishly short skirt just grazed her ankle tops and showed enticing flashes of a similarly embroidered petticoat when she moved.
I tendered the usual greeting, then drew her aside, speaking rapidly and low: “Frances, I must brief you about this meeting before it begins. Mr. Patrick Rule is in the other room. He has hired me to augment the police investigation into the murder of Abigail Locke.”
Frances’s eyes widened enormously, her lips parted, but I covered them with my own fingertips before she could say anything. “Part of the bargain I’ve made with him concerns you. In return for my help, Patrick Rule is to find you a good teacher and mentor for your mediumship.”
“My … mediumship?”
“You do want to develop that talent, don’t you?” So that you can get away from a husband who mistreats you, I thought but did not say.
Too surprised to argue, she merely nodded. I’d been counting on that.
“Just one thing,” I said. “No matter what happens, you must say nothing about our having been the first to find Mrs. Locke’s body. I wish now that I’d acted differently, but I didn’t and that is that. Do you agree?”
“Yes, of course. Whatever you say, Fremont.”
“Good. Well then, are you ready?”
“Oh yes. Where is he? In the next room?”
Before I could answer, Frances began to move toward the dining room like a woman in a dream, like a woman being reeled in on an invisible line. How extraordinary!
Some minutes later, watching them together, I had a new and altogether unexpected thought: Mr. Rule has found his next medium. The instant rapport between those two astounded me.
Either Patrick and Frances had been made for each other, and only just now found their chance to come together, or the things he’d told me about himself the previous day had been a lie. This was not a performance by some mere “sensitive” man who could sometimes receive thought messages in a passive way from a woman, one woman only, and she now dead. In fact, this man was not passive at all. He had somehow, instantly, established such sway over this particular woman, Frances, that she was focused on him like a hypnotized snake. Yet he had not hypnotized her, I knew that because I’d watched and listened every minute. Still she swayed, as it were, to the curl of his fingers, the curves of his voice.
Theoretically, Patrick Rule was only here to test the range of Frances’s natural abilities, something I was far from qualified to do myself. He was only asking her questions, and she answering them; questions of a routine sort, such as, When did you first become attracted to Spiritualism? Was it idle curiosity or had you had some experience? But I sensed there was more going on, and it made me uneasy.
Frances closed her eyes. She leaned a little from side to side, as the weeping willow will bend to a wind so slight it can scarcely be felt. My own skin broke out in goose bumps all over. I leaned forward.
Patrick Rule, without taking his eyes from Frances, placed his left hand on the table, palm up. I knew somehow he meant me to take it, and I did; I placed my own right hand in his left and his fingers closed over mine. His touch was hot and electric, producing a shock of a most embarrassingly sexual kind. I felt it in that part of my body that I have come to think of as the seat of pleasure—but only for an instant, then it was gone, and my attention back on Frances. Patrick’s own attention had never left her.
Have I mentioned that Patrick had an exceptional voice? A smooth, rich baritone that he could manipulate to good effect. He spoke now as if bringing up that voice from deep in his chest: “If there is any spirit present who wishes to come through this woman, Frances McFadden, I invite that spirit to make itself known.”
Eyes closed, Frances frowned; she bent forward, as if straining … straining … In sympathetic tension, I felt Patrick’s fingers tighten over mine. Indeed, his grip became almost painful.
Frances exhaled a long breath from her mouth, incredibly long, it seemed to me. I wondered how she could have any breath left in her body after that. Then rather noisily she drew in an equally great breath through her nose, her bosom rose … and just when I had the absurd, not to mention irreverent, thought that she might burst like a balloon, her eyes opened. Her shoulders settled into their usual fashionable slope, and she looked at us with quite her normal, pleasant expression.
“The dogs were there,” she said, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world, describing some tea party she’d been to, or a sporting event, “and they will not let him cross.”
“Were you in contact with the spirit?” Patrick asked.