Death on Telegraph Hill

by Shirley Tallman

  By the time the lad reached the cab door, Robert had already exited the brougham and was helping me to do the same. I paused only long enough to tell Eddie to hand Robert one of the carriage lanterns to light our way, then extended my umbrella and headed off through the rain in the direction of the Filbert Street Steps. Thankfully, tonight’s temperature was more moderate than it had been on the night of Remy’s literary gathering, and although it was a bit slippery because of the moisture, at least the wind was nearly nonexistent.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” Robert called out from behind me as we reached the steps and commenced our ascent.

  I did not waste my breath attempting an answer but, holding fast to my skirts with one hand and my umbrella with the other, continued to forge my way upward. There was just enough spill of light from the lantern to guide my way.

  Honesty compels me to admit that I was a bit short of breath by the time I reached the top of the stairs, and I was pleased to have a moment or two to recover as I waited for Robert to conclude his own climb. I was hardly surprised to see Eddie following hot on my friend’s heels, then passing him as he practically flew up the steps; he would never willingly allow himself to be excluded from such an adventure.

  “Where do we go now, Miss Sarah?” he asked, seeming not in the least winded by his rapid hike. “Do you think they’ve gone and cut down the bloke what hung himself yet?”

  “I doubt they’ll do that until Sergeant Lewis has viewed the body,” I replied, straightening my hat as well as my disordered coat and skirts. The boy was now close enough that even through the rain I could make out his bright eyes and eager face. I was struck by a sudden, disturbing thought. “Eddie, you must promise that you’ll contain your enthusiasm and stay out of Sergeant Lewis’s way. The police may not be well pleased to realize that we have followed them.”

  As soon as Robert joined us, I turned and led the way up the now familiar path to Claude Dunn’s cottage. As I did, I wondered what was to become of little Billy Dunn. Not yet a week old and already an orphan, I thought bleakly. The poor little tyke. Who would take him in? Thinking of the well-intentioned but grim orphanages the city had to offer for such unfortunate children, I prayed that would not become his fate.

  We approached Dunn’s house to see the police wagon reined up in front and two men whom I knew to be “regular” patrolmen, or officers appointed by the police commissioners and receiving pay from the city. There was no sign of Sergeant Lewis. However, I did spy Lieutenant Leonard Curtis, a glum-looking, thickset man in his late thirties, sheltering beneath an umbrella as he hurried through the rain toward a smaller police carriage parked in front of the newly arrived wagon. With a sharp word to the junior officer driving the vehicle, Curtis climbed inside and was driven off.

  Preferring not to deal with the uniformed regular standing guard at the front door of the cottage, I waited until he was distracted, then led my little band around the side of the property. Lantern light illuminated a rear window, and approaching it, I saw George standing inside a back room, a handkerchief held over his nose and mouth. He did not see me, as his attention seemed riveted on something across the room, just out of my view. A second officer—I could not recall his name, although I remembered meeting him several months earlier beneath Rincon Hill’s Harrison Street Bridge—was standing just behind Lewis. Using a pencil and an artist’s pad, he was executing what appeared to be a quick sketch of the room. Although this practice was not officially sanctioned by the San Francisco police department, George had explained that it was growing increasingly common on the East Coast. He claimed that the drawings had proven valuable on more than one occasion when attempting to reconstruct the crime scene days, or even weeks, after the fact.

  I walked to the back door and started to go inside, then halted abruptly. I felt rather than saw Eddie as he started to push past me with his usual youthful abandon, and I swept out an arm to stop him. His eagerness vanished when he looked up and, eyes bulging in horror, spied the gently swaying body of a man hanging from a thick rope across the room. An overturned chair lay behind the victim, making it look as if he had used it to stand on, then had kicked it aside, where it had fallen against the wall.

  I daresay my face must have reflected every bit as much shock as the lad’s; certainly I will never forget the dreadful vision that assaulted my sensibilities. If I hadn’t known the figure dangling before me was Claude Dunn, I doubt I would have recognized the man who had so recently been a living, breathing human being. His face was a ghastly purple color, and his swollen tongue protruded from his mouth. The noose had dug so deeply into his muscular neck that it nearly disappeared into the folds of bloody flesh.

  I stood, frozen in place, trying to take it all in. As I did, I suddenly became aware of the pungent odor permeating the room. Sweet Jesus, I thought, clapping a hand over my nose. Now I understood why George had half his face buried inside a handkerchief and why, I belatedly realized, the police artist looked to be a sickly shade of green. For an awful moment, I feared I might gag. Then I saw Lewis staring at me in alarm and swallowed hard to contain my nausea. I had come here of my own free will, I thought sternly. I would not disgrace myself by being sick!

  As if he’d been caught behaving less than professionally, George dropped the handkerchief from his face, stuffed it into his uniform pocket, and said in dismay, “Miss Sarah, what are you doing here? This is no place for a lady.” He took in Eddie’s ashen face and added, “Nor a boy, for that matter.”

  For once I did not pretend that his words were anything less than the truth. “You’re right, George,” I admitted, trying to infuse my stupefied voice with at least some good grace. “We followed you on an impulse, and we have paid the price of our misguided curiosity.” I glanced at the man hanging above our heads, then quickly looked away. “No one should have to view the consequences of such a tragic act. Mr. Dunn’s life was too precious to be so carelessly thrown away, no matter how profound his despair.”

  George’s sudden look of interest let me know that he had not yet heard of the writer’s recent loss. “His wife, Lucy, passed away in childbirth just days ago,” I told him. “I personally witnessed his bereavement. Yet giving in to his misery has now deprived his pitiful new son of both a father and a mother.”

  George did not immediately comment on this. After turning back to the body, he regarded it thoughtfully for several moments, then seemed to reach a decision.

  “If you’ve finished with the sketch, you can leave now, Fuller,” he told the police artist. Without a word, the man gratefully closed his sketchbook, pocketed his pencil, and hastily departed the room. George gave a long sigh. “Here’s the thing, Miss Sarah. I’m not convinced the poor sod did take his own life. Lieutenant Curtis seems satisfied that it’s a suicide, but, well, I’m not sure that I agree.”

  “Good God!” Robert exclaimed from behind me. “You think the man was murdered?”

  Eddie gave a little cry of excitement. “Well, dog-gone it! If that don’t beat all.”

  I stared at George, not bothering to mask my own surprise. “What leads you to that conclusion? It certainly appears as if the poor man did himself in.”

  George ran fingers through his mop of brown hair, a familiar gesture when he was concentrating on a case. As usual, it caused an errant lock of hair to fall over his eyes, once again giving him a youthful look. His expression, however, was anything but boyish.

  “I’ve seen my fair share of suicides since I’ve been on the force, Miss Sarah,” he said solemnly, “and this one just doesn’t add up quite right. You see, when a bloke decides to end it all, he usually makes some mistakes, starting with not allowing himself room enough to drop.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Robert. “What possible difference does that make?”

  “It makes all the difference in the world to the victim,” George explained patiently. “If a person is determined to kill himself and falls far enough, he’ll break his neck. That means h
is death will be fairly quick and more or less painless. To be sure that happens, he needs to fall at least six feet. On the other hand, if he stands on a chair like that one”—He pointed to the overturned chair lying against the wall—“he’ll have only a foot or two to drop when he kicks it over. That’s rarely enough of a fall to break his neck, especially a man of Dunn’s size, and the poor sod ends up choking to death. That’s when he usually decides he doesn’t want to die after all, and tries everything he can to untie the rope, or pull the noose off his neck.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” Robert agreed, still looking puzzled. “But what makes you think this fellow didn’t panic after the chair went over, and behave exactly as you described?”

  George unhooked one of the lanterns off the wall and carried it closer to the body. He took hold of one of Dunn’s arms and held up the hand. “Look at this.”

  To better see the hand, it was necessary to approach the hanging body. Eddie and I did so after a brief hesitation, but Robert hung back, studying the appendage from over my shoulder.

  Attempting to breathe through my mouth rather than my nose, I examined Dunn’s hand. I could see nothing strange about it; as far as I could tell, the palm and fingers seemed typical enough for a writer—that is, the hand looked as if it had engaged in little manual labor. There were no calluses, unusual marks, or even a single broken fingernail.

  “I see nothing wrong with the fellow’s hand,” Robert said, his ruddy face having gone a shade or two paler as he stared at the body. I noticed that he, too, seemed to be trying to breathe through his mouth. The smell in the room was really quite awful. Swallowing hard, he took another step or two back from the corpse. “Spit it out, Lewis. What are you getting at?”

  I nodded in agreement, for a moment as baffled as my companion. Then it hit me, and I felt a little thrill of excitement, suddenly understanding what Lewis was trying to tell us.

  “That’s it, isn’t it, George? It’s the very fact that there’s nothing wrong with his hands. When he found himself choking to death, he would have done everything possible to free himself of the rope, just as you described. But his hands are normal. They show no sign of rope burns or even broken or cracked nails.”

  George gave me a gratified smile. “Exactly, Miss Sarah. Because of that, I suspect that Dunn was already unconscious when he was strung up. Poor gent never had a chance of saving himself.”

  “Son of a—” Eddie stopped abruptly as I nudged him none too gently in the ribs.

  “If you’re right and it’s murder,” Robert said, “it would have been difficult to string up a man of his size.”

  “Yes, it certainly rules out a woman,” said George.

  “But why go to all this effort?” I wondered. “Someone went to a great deal of trouble to make it appear a suicide.”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” George replied. “Although I doubt I’ll be given an opportunity to ask it. The lieutenant’s convinced Dunn did himself in, and that’s that.”

  Through the sound of rain pounding on the roof of the house, we heard the loud clang of police bells and the sound of another carriage pulling up in front of the house. Without bothering with an umbrella, George went outside to meet the new arrivals. A moment later he returned, leading two policemen who were carrying a stretcher and several blankets; the Black Maria was here to collect the body. George, his head and coat dripping water onto the wood floor, nodded grimly toward Claude Dunn, then stood back to allow the men to do their work. Taking up the same lantern he had used to examine the body, he indicated that we should follow him into the front room of the cottage.

  “I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes, if that’s all right,” he said, indicating that Robert and I should seat ourselves in the two chairs the room offered. Eddie sat cross-legged on the floor, while the sergeant remained standing. “Even though I expect the lieutenant to close the case, I’d still like to find out everything I can about Dunn, including where his new child might be. I’ve already searched the house, and the baby isn’t anywhere to be found.”

  “I have no idea where he is,” I admitted, abashed and beginning to worry. “Isabel Freiberg, who lives farther down the hill, was helping to take care of him, but she was at Platt’s Hall tonight with Stephen Parke, another neighbor.” Suddenly I remembered Mrs. Sullivan, the woman who was wet-nursing the baby. I told George what I could about her, including the area where I had been told she and her large family lived, and he immediately sent one of the patrolmen to see if the baby was there.

  “All right, then,” he said when the constable had hurried off. “Now, tell me everything you can about Claude Dunn and his late wife.”

  Sympathy for the man’s appalling fate, and reticence to speak ill of the dead, caused me to hesitate.

  “Please, Miss Sarah,” George prompted, obviously guessing at my thoughts. “This is no time for social niceties. I’d appreciate it if you’d be as plainspoken as possible about the man.”

  He was right, of course. If there was any possibility that Dunn’s death had not been a suicide, we would have to start by examining the character of the victim himself.

  I cast back in my mind, trying to remember everything I could about the night of Wilde’s talk in Remy’s cottage, as well as yesterday afternoon when Mama, Celia, and I visited Dunn’s cottage bearing gifts for the new baby.

  “I only met him twice, George,” I said at last. “But honesty forces me to admit that on those two occasions I was not favorably impressed by the man. He struck me as being a selfish and ambitious individual, a man who put his own welfare above those of his wife and child. He kept going on about how was he going to continue writing without the income she earned cleaning houses, and how could he manage raising a son he hadn’t even wanted.”

  “My God, Sarah!” Robert cried, looking scandalized. “The man must have been a cad.”

  “Be that as it may,” George said, bringing us back to the subject at hand, “we need to concentrate on who would want to kill the bounder. The fact that he was a poor husband and father hardly provides us with a motive for murder.”

  “Unless his late wife, Lucy, has family in the city,” I speculated. “Say a father, or a brother who sought revenge for the way Dunn treated his wife. He did allow—more likely encouraged—the unfortunate woman to engage in heavy physical labor right up to the time of her delivery. Perhaps one of her relatives felt Dunn’s behavior contributed to her early death.”

  Once again, George withdrew his notebook and pencil and began to write. “I’ll check on that, without Curtis knowing, of course.” At that moment, with hair falling across his forehead and the tip of his tongue showing between his lips as he concentrated on his notes, I thought he resembled a mischievous boy rather than a seasoned policeman. I could not help feeling a deep fondness for my brother’s friend. “Any other ideas, Miss Sarah? Anything at all that might help?”

  “Well,” I said, struck by another thought, although one unlikely to have had anything to do with the writer’s death. “I saw Dunn speaking to Ozzie Foldger yesterday afternoon when my mother, sister-in-law, and I visited the Hill to pay a condolence call on Mr. Dunn.”

  “Foldger? You mean the newspaper reporter?” George asked in surprise.

  “Yes,” I replied. “They were talking together behind the house, as if they didn’t want to be seen by anyone. I’m almost certain that Foldger gave Mr. Dunn quite a bit of money.”

  “I remember you mentioning that last night,” Robert put in. “I thought you must have been mistaken. I mean, why would that grubby reporter give Dunn money?”

  “I have no idea,” I answered. “I thought it very peculiar at the time.”

  Robert was shaking his head doubtfully. “Even if you’re right, it doesn’t mean Foldger had any reason to murder Dunn.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” George put in, looking from one of us to the other. “We must be missing something.”

  Eddie suddenly popped up from his place on t
he floor, saying excitedly, “Maybe that Dunn gent had somethin’ on Foldger and was rookin’ him. After a while, it might have put the reporter in enough of a pucker to string the sharper up.”

  Both Robert and I stared at the lad blankly, not understanding a word he had spoken.

  Despite the severity of the circumstances, Lewis had to work to repress a smile. “The lad is suggesting that Dunn might have been blackmailing Mr. Foldger, eventually making the reporter angry enough to commit murder.”

  “Good heavens,” I said.

  Robert rolled his eyes, giving me an accusing look. “I thought you said you’d been working on the boy’s vocabulary.”

  “I have,” I said, my tone rather more defensive than I’d intended. “It has proven to be a formidable task.” I turned to George. “Who discovered the body?”

  “Evidently, the death was reported by one of Dunn’s neighbors.” He consulted a page in his notebook. “A Mrs. Annabelle Carr, who lives next door. She says she brought him his dinner a little after seven o’clock. When he didn’t answer her knock, she came inside to leave the plate in his kitchen. That’s when she found him. Since I was at Platt’s Hall, Lieutenant Curtis responded to the boy she sent to the station to report the death. You know the rest.”

  “Yes,” I said thoughtfully. “So, all we know is that he died sometime before seven this evening.”

  “I’m afraid so,” George agreed.

  “Is there no way of telling how long he’s been—that is, when he died—by examining the body?” Robert asked.

  “Not really,” answered George. “At least not by me. Despite Lieutenant Curtis being so sure it’s suicide, I intend to ask the coroner to have a look for himself. It’s nigh on to impossible to establish the exact time of death, but it won’t hurt for him to try. And I’d particularly like to hear his views on whether it was suicide or murder. The coroner owes me a favor, and I trust him to keep the examination to himself.”