by Dianne Day
“I don’t know why you’re so proud of yourself. Sounds like you just lost us a customer.” But a smile was tugging at the corners of my mouth. When Edna looked that pleased with something she’d done, it was always with good reason.
“That customer, dearie, is one you don’t want to have to deal with. He was in-ee-bree-ayted, oh my, yes, he was! Let him sleep it off or work it off and then call back. That’s for the best, I’m sure.” She scooted her chair up to the desk in rapid, efficient little motions that I could not have duplicated no matter how hard I tried. “Now if there’s nothing else, dearie, I’ve got some of your letters to type.”
“Just one thing.” I stood up, though I was myself uncertain as to what I should do next. “Who was that inebriated person on the phone?”
“Just that nazty man Higgins. Conrad or something. Ingrid Swann’s husband that was. And a real mess he sounds like, too.”
“Oh, Edna!” No longer amused, I could cheerfully have throttled her. “He might have had something important to tell me. I’m all at a loss on this case, it’s simply impossible, and I had so much hoped to have it all nicely wrapped up by the time Michael came back!”
“Michael?” She snapped her head up and tossed me a very curious glance over her small shoulder. “Coming back? Any time soon? You’ve heard from him?”
“No, I haven’t, but I know he was planning to come back after Father’s visit.” And he will have found out how long Father stayed, I know he will, he has his ways, he’s probably right here in the City even now.… It gave me an odd feeling to think that my friend and lover might be somewhere nearby without my knowing. But then, I’d often had odd feelings about him in the past. The constancy and trust between us now was of much shorter duration than my former suspicions.
That was not a good direction for my thoughts to be running. I shook my head a little and said rather severely, “Edna, don’t change the subject. I would have liked to speak to Conrad Higgins. You really should not have put him off like that!”
“Dearie, don’t be annoyed with old Edna. Believe you me, you don’t want to talk to anybody in the condition that body was in, and that’s a fact. Can’t trust anything they say when they’re like that. Besides, he sounded like one of them as could be dangerous when they get likkered up, if you know what I mean.”
“I suppose I do,” I said reluctantly, “but in the future, I’d prefer that you let me decide these things for myself.” I wandered slowly through the deep alcove and into the conference room; but then turned around and went back. “Did Mr. Higgins say what he wanted to talk to me about?”
Edna cast me an exasperated look. “He said he saw something would interest you. Hinted he wanted money before he’d tell. Likely it’s nothing, Fremont. Just him wanting money. Nothing good a-tall.”
She was probably right about that; still, I was feeling desperate enough that I’d have been willing to grasp at straws. I made some noncommittal sounds, for I didn’t want her to think I had or had not forgiven her, and went on into the conference room. There I sat at the table that was now my desk, thinking, for much too long a time. I wasn’t getting anywhere with this case I’d counted on to put us on the map, I was harboring a woman who had made someone angry enough that he’d tried to kill either me or her, my father was dying (or so I suspected), and I felt as if Michael had been away far too long … even though I really would have preferred to prove myself by solving the case before he returned, so I supposed I couldn’t complain about that. I wanted to complain, though; I wanted to complain about everything.
Instead, I went upstairs and changed from the blue silk dress into my working costume of skirt and blouse—dark green and white respectively—and then I set out in search of Frances. I took the Maxwell, as I had a good idea where to find her and was inclined to waste no time about it.
———
Patrick Rule came to the door of the house that was now his, on Octavia Street. He appeared relaxed, well rested, without that haunted and haunting hollowness to his eyes.
“Good morning,” I said, somewhat mollified by his undeniable handsomeness. “Is Frances here? If she is, kindly do not deny it, because I need to talk to you both.”
He smiled, quite genuinely, one might say almost incandescently. “Yes, she’s here. Do come in, Fremont. Did you know she’s left her husband? They are to be divorced. Isn’t that splendid?”
“I suppose that depends on how one looks at it,” I replied, pausing in the vestibule while he closed the door behind me, “but I will say I’m glad she’s not with Jeremy any longer. No matter what kind of reputation the man may have around town, I know he was harsh with her, and that sort of thing is never good.”
“Certainly not. She and I are in my dear departed Abigail’s private drawing room. It’s toward the back of the house, if you’ll follow me.”
“Still,” I persisted while I followed him down a short hall, “she is in a precarious position. She has no money, no means of any sort, which will be difficult for her. Jeremy has taken complete care of her since she was quite young, I believe.”
Patrick turned around and stood blocking my way, looking down at me, and said with quiet intensity, “She does not have to worry. I’ll take her away from here, to the East. I’ll work with Abigail’s former contacts there, set up some private bookings for us. Frances is an excellent somnambulist, and beautiful besides—when working with the public that never hurts, you know—and we will do well. I’ll take care of her now. She will want for nothing. You aren’t going to stand in our way, are you, Fremont Jones?”
Like lightning the thought flashed through my mind: But what if he is the one who killed Abigail, and Ingrid, too? Could a man look so relaxed and happy, and yet be guilty of such a heinous crime? Perhaps. Particularly if he had now gotten what he wanted, and so was enjoying himself.
“I won’t stand in your way as you are now standing in mine,” I said pointedly, poking him in the chest with my walking stick—I was not going anywhere these days without it—“but as for the rest, we shall see. As I said, there is something I need to discuss with you both. Shall we join Frances?”
“As you wish.” He stood back and motioned me ahead of him with a bit of a flourish. “To your left.”
I entered the room, which was something like a library but without so many books. There were shelves on one wall with only a few; but the room’s main feature was a large round table in the very center, and at the table sat Frances McFadden with a map open before her, and something like a locket on a chain dangling from her hand.
“Oh, hello, Fremont!” She looked up at my approach. Though the inside of this house was gloomier than most, owing to the heavy curtains at seemingly every window (one supposed a medium like Abigail Locke would have wanted the means to shut out the light whenever she preferred), there was plenty of light from an electric chandelier overhead. In her peach dress, with her red-gold hair, Frances McFadden positively glowed in that light. “I’m surprised to see you. I thought you’d be with your father again all day.”
“He left this morning. I saw him off on the ferry. Whatever are you doing with that locket, Frances?”
“It’s not a locket, it’s a pendulum. I’m letting it choose the places I will visit clairvoyantly. It’s great fun, and good practice, Patrick says. What are you doing here?”
Though I hadn’t been invited, I sat down at the table, choosing a place near the windows from which I could see the door into the room. Patrick had not come in with me, he had disappeared into the bowels of the house somewhere, and that worried me. Not much, but a little. I said, “I was concerned about you when I found you weren’t at home. At my house, that is. I seem to recall we had an agreement about your keeping out of sight. Someone may have tried to kill you, you know.”
“Me? That’s nonsense. It was your bed that got slashed. And besides, you weren’t even worried that much yourself. You didn’t even tell me until the next day. Anyhow, Wish says it wasn’t anything person
al to either of us. Most likely it was just a burglar who was angry that you didn’t have any jewels or anything good to take.”
I frowned. It is one thing to be charming and lighthearted, quite another to be irresponsible. “Wish and I were both trying to protect you, because we thought you had already been traumatized enough. The truth is, even though the intruder is not likely to return to Divisadero Street, he could conceivably follow you if you leave the house, Frances, and now you have led him here—”
“Where Patrick will take care of me!” She beamed, then turned her head to the door a fraction of a second before the man himself appeared there.
Egad! I thought. She is so attuned to him she knows when he is about to enter a room. Criminals or not, whether or not they had lied to me about not knowing each other previously, Frances and Patrick were most certainly in love now. Not only that, but he had already begun taking care of her, because he looked quite domestic, carrying a tray bearing cups, saucers, and a steaming pot of coffee.
“I really do not require refreshment,” I protested, but quickly gave it up as a lost cause. Being forceful would get me nowhere with these two. I should have to be devious instead, and I might as well sit and drink coffee while planning exactly how to do that.
“Fremont, truly,” Frances said while pouring out prettily, “Jeremy doesn’t want me anymore. He won’t waste any time on me now. He thinks I’m soiled. He’ll just wash his hands of me, cast me off, get his divorce, and that will be an end of it where I’m concerned. I won’t fight him, I don’t want any of his dirty old tainted money. I want to be like you—I want to earn my own!”
Accepting a cup, I tried not to grimace. Frances was not exactly prepared to earn a living in the same way I had been prepared, but I couldn’t tell her that. “You’re sure about Jeremy? It strikes me that a man who was so possessive of you that he would physically hurt you, and lock up your clothes and so on—”
“That was before he thought I’d been with Patrick”— heightened color came up in her already rosy cheeks—“when he thought he was the only one who had ever, well, you know, touched me in that particular way. He said so, specifically. You remember. I told you that word he called me. It’s as if I’m dirty to him now.”
“Don’t talk about yourself that way, dearest,” Patrick said, reaching out and taking her hand. “You could never be dirty. Only the worst sort of mind would think so.”
“You’re so sweet,” Frances said.
For the moment, I might as well not have been in the room, and that was fine with me. I had some thinking to do.
Suddenly I had it, an inspiration! Oh yes, a real, true, bonafide inspiration … and it came in the form of none other than the Emperor Norton himself. Just as I had seen him so recently in my dreams.
I got the lovers’ attention by rapping on the table with my knuckles, and then I explained to them in some detail what I had in mind. Briefly, it was this: That they should give Frances’s spirit mentor, the Emperor, his due. For if they did not, he might become angry, and then things would not go well. What the Emperor wanted (or so I said, and indeed I was convinced of it myself by the time I’d finished) was that Frances should take on the pursuit of his lost treasure. She herself, with Patrick along if she preferred, must follow the instructions he had set out in the automatic writing.
While they were doing that, I boldly stated (although I had no idea whatever how I would accomplish it), I should bring the investigation into the murders of the mediums to a successful close. After which both Patrick and Frances could leave San Francisco and go East with impunity.
Patrick took up my cause with alacrity. Apparently it made sense to him that the spirit of the Emperor, who was very real to Frances, might not otherwise take kindly to Patrick’s whisking her away from him—as it were.
And so it happened that some twenty minutes later I, waiting just around the corner in the Maxwell, saw Frances and Patrick set off up Octavia Street and turn on the next corner up onto Green Street, walking toward Van Ness. Off on Emperor Norton’s quest, no doubt, which might or might not be a wild goose chase.
While they were gone, I intended to be on a quest of my own. As soon as they were well out of sight, I left the auto, rummaging inside my leather bag for a hairpin as I walked back to the house they had just left.
I was not the least bit certain that the lock would yield to my amateurish ministrations, and reminded myself to talk to Michael again about getting a set of lock picks. Wish Stephenson had qualms about private investigators having tools not available to the police—and the police are not supposed to pick locks. Though why they do not do that, when they do any number of far worse things they are not supposed to do either, I could not imagine, nor did I waste my time trying. Still, Wish had a few of these pruderies that were truly annoying and restricting.
“Oh!” An involuntary, soft little cry escaped me when the hairpin suddenly engaged the tumblers in exactly the right sort of way and the lock clicked open as if by magic. Such a sweet, gratifying little sound. How nicely the door swung open.
I do love being in places where I am not really supposed to be, I admitted to myself as I entered the hall, taking care to close the door behind me. I wondered if Father would find that shocking or amusing.
Now, the question was, where to go first? I intended to search the house for Abigail Locke’s belongings, looking for anything that might give a clue as to who had killed her. Of course, if Patrick had done it, he would have destroyed anything incriminating by now. But maybe not, one never knows.
Not having the slightest clue what I was looking for, it was hard even to begin to know where to look. I decided to search the downstairs first, as there are always more places to hide in bedrooms if one is about to be caught. There are wardrobes, cupboards, large chests, and in dire circumstances (as I had actually been once, in Michael’s bedroom, of all places) if there is no time to find a better place, one can hide under the bed. Starting in the formal parlor, I looked everywhere that might provide a hiding place, or even just a container, for something else; and I found nothing of note. I did find a cache of money, in twenty-dollar gold pieces, inside a hideous ceramic vase on the top of an étagère. I wondered if Patrick knew it was there, if in fact he had put it there himself? Somehow I rather doubted that, and made a mental note to tell him before he and Frances set off—if they ever in fact did get to set off together. They could use that money.
Here I was thinking of helping them, while I was also looking for evidence to incriminate them. How disgusting! It just went to show the state of my confusion.
In the kitchen the most remarkable thing I found was a whole drawer full of mousetraps, which smelled of both mice and old cheese—eeuw! And in a funny, deep little drawer set into the clothes tree in the hall there was a cache of odd buttons, some of them quite beautiful and some of them odd indeed (such as three silver ones shaped like ducks). But nothing that had anything to do, even remotely, with anyone murdering anyone.
I was not really concerned about Patrick and Frances returning to the house any time soon, so I took my time upstairs. Patrick was not sleeping in the bedroom where Frances and I had found Abigail Locke’s body, that was evident. In fact, he had kept it intact—if not exactly like a shrine, then certainly in pristine condition. Perhaps he simply didn’t like to come into the room, which did have an eerie feel—or was that just my imagination, building upon the fact that I’d discovered the body there? Whatever it was, a shiver of the most unpleasant proportions raced down my spine as I crossed at the foot of that bed. I opened the wardrobe to find Abigail Locke’s dresses—all in either white or cream, not a single bright or dark color among them—hanging there like little ghosts themselves.
At one point in searching that bedroom, I could have sworn I heard someone moaning: “Oooooooh!” Followed by the even worse sound of a long, outrushing sigh, as if that were their last breath on this earth. But I ignored it. At that point I was meticulously searching through a ma
ssive chest of drawers.
In a pale pink silk satin lingerie carrier, one of those that folds like a large flat envelope, tied with a braided silken coil, I found the letters. Not many, perhaps ten, and obviously treasured. I sat down on the bed, opened the first one, and read until I got to the signature: Willie.
Willie who?
26
———
Someone’s Sleeping in My Bed
Wish Stephenson still had not returned to Divisadero Street when I got back myself in midafternoon. His mother was worried about him, but she clothed her worry in annoyance:
“I’d just like to know what he’s thinking,” Edna said, “off doing his own thing, not even a job that pays, when we’ve got all these calls coming in all of a sudden. It’s irresponsible, that’s what it is, and that’s not like my boy at all, not a-tall!”
That perked my ears right up. “All these calls, Edna?”
“Oh yes, you just take a look at these messages, if you please. There’s at least a dozen. I thought maybe if you’d sort through them, I could call back and start making appointments for you. For Aloysius, too, if he’d just get on back here. You put ’em in order, Fremont, from the most important down to the least important. That way I’ll know who to call first.”
“I’ll be more than happy to do that,” I agreed. I took the notes to my table-desk in the conference room and began to read and evaluate, which took longer than I had expected—especially when Edna began to return calls and set up the appointments. It was certainly a stimulating way to spend the last couple of hours of the workday.
Wish never did return. Unlike his mother, I did not think that was particularly remarkable; if anything, I saw his prolonged absence as a sign that things were finally moving on this mysterious private concern of his. I told his mother so, in an attempt to placate her that seemed to work. She did mumble, though, as she was getting ready to leave at the end of the day, about the likelihood of Wish showing up at home just in time for supper. Apparently this was something he had managed with a great deal of regularity when he was on the police force—even when he was working the four-to-midnight shift.