Death on Telegraph Hill

by Shirley Tallman

  So far, Samuel and I had been able to keep the knowledge that I was representing Remy a secret from my father. Because of Papa’s position as superior court judge for the county of San Francisco, however, we knew this could not last for much longer. Any reprieve from the outburst we would face when he eventually found out, however, was appreciated.

  I was pleased when Samuel offered to accompany me to the courthouse for the arraignment. Not that I required his help, but I feared that Papa’s ire would be that much more volatile if he discovered I had attended on my own.

  Because I required Robert’s help, I reluctantly informed him that I had agreed to represent Mr. Remy. After he’d ranted on for a full five minutes, pointing out the folly of my taking on such a hopeless case, I was able to calmly catalog the tasks I wished him to perform. Naturally, this elicited another five minutes of thunderous objections. As he was a fair-minded man, however, and one who believed as firmly as did I in the principles of justice, he eventually relented. Getting him to agree to keep the stratagem from reaching my father’s ears was more difficult.

  After a good deal of calm persuasion (not threats about my safety in the event that he refused to help, as he continued to insist!), he realized the efficacy of keeping the plan to ourselves—the others consisting of Samuel, Fanny, and George Lewis.

  “It’s something that should have been ordered as soon as we discovered Aleric’s body,” George said when the five of us met in my office early that afternoon. “That’s proper police procedure. But since Lieutenant Curtis was convinced Remy was the killer, no further investigation was even considered.”

  We were discussing how best to go about questioning Remy’s neighbors, in the hope that someone might have seen him the previous Wednesday night. Robert had carried up two chairs from Fanny’s kitchen, and he, Samuel, George, and Fanny were comfortably seated about the room, partaking of the generous lunch my neighbor had provided.

  I was sitting behind my desk, taking notes of our meeting, when my office door flew open and Eddie charged into the room. As if drawn by a magnet, his eyes went instantly to the generous array of lunch food Fanny had laid out on my desk.

  “I saw Sergeant Lewis’s wagon reined up out front,” he declared by way of explanation. “When I saw Mrs. Goodman weren’t in her shop, I figured somethin’ must be goin’ on up here.”

  “Take a sandwich and sit down, Eddie,” Fanny told the boy with a smile. Hastening to do as he was told, he assumed his favorite perch on the windowsill and began to eat with his usual hearty appetite.

  “Whatcha talkin’ about?” he asked, his mouth full of bread. “Are we investigatin’ another killin’?” he added hopefully.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” I corrected him. “And yes, we’re discussing how to prove where Mr. Remy was on the night of Mr. Aleric’s murder.”

  “I heard he got tumbled for the job,” the boy said seriously, this time being careful to swallow his food before he spoke.

  “He was arrested, yes,” I told him. “I have agreed to act as his attorney.”

  “Well, then, he’s as good as out of the cooler, ain’t he?” said Eddie, displaying his customary, if somewhat idealistic, confidence in my abilities.

  “I appreciate your faith in me, Eddie,” I told him. “Actually, I’m glad you dropped by this afternoon. We would like you to assist us in our investigation.”

  His brown eyes lit up with excitement. “I reckon I’m yer man, Miss Sarah. What do you want me to do?”

  Samuel was trying hard to stifle a smile. He had grown fond of the boy over the past year and was assisting me in the lad’s education. Although I did not always approve of the reading material he passed Eddie behind my back—namely, lurid copies of the Police Gazette—I could not fault the boy’s progress. He had, in fact, used his newly acquired reading skills to help us solve a series of murders resulting from a séance Robert and I attended last year at San Francisco’s Cliff House.

  “We would like to hire you as our driver for the next few days, perhaps a week,” my brother told him. “Would that be possible?”

  “You betcha!” the lad exclaimed, in his enthusiasm very nearly choking on a slice of beef. Robert, who was seated closest to the boy, patted him hard on the back until the bite dislodged from his throat and he regained his breath. “Just tell me where you want to go, and I’ll get you there. Quick as greased lightning, too.”

  I had to repress a little shudder at this promise, since riding in Eddie’s brougham all too often meant risking life and limb.

  “You can start by driving Miss Sarah on an errand this afternoon,” Samuel told the boy, then looked to me. “That’s agreeable to you, is it not?”

  “It is indeed,” I said. The day after tomorrow, I was scheduled to speak before the city council. I held a trump card up my sleeve, or at least I prayed I did. My work with Samuel at City Hall the previous day had provided me with the final documentation I required. Now, all that remained was for me to pay one last visit to Ricardo Ruiz’s property, which I planned to do that afternoon.

  Once that issue was settled to our mutual satisfaction, we moved on to how we would go about interviewing businesses near the restaurant where Aleric and his friends dined late Wednesday evening. As Remy had pointed out, it was going to be a long and tedious search, but one that must be undertaken.

  “I’ve got one or two friends on the force who might agree to help,” George added thoughtfully. “Off the record, of course. We can’t afford to be caught investigating the case behind Curtis’s back. We’ll have to do it on our own time, too.”

  “Of course, George, we understand,” I said. “It will be difficult for Robert as well.”

  “It’s possible I may be able to join you on Thursday afternoon,” Robert said, looking as if he still harbored a few misgivings about the operation. “Shepard and his wife are spending an extended weekend in the country, so I may be free on Friday as well.”

  “Since I haven’t gone back to working full-time yet, you can count on my help,” said Samuel.

  “Only if you’re feeling up to it,” I put in, determined not to endanger my brother’s recovery.

  He gave me a sidelong glance. “You’re a fine one to set conditions.”

  “The bullet that was fired at me missed,” I reminded him. “Yours didn’t. You’ll bring the wrath of our parents down upon both our heads if you suffer a relapse.”

  “Sarah is right, Samuel,” said Fanny, once again passing around the platter of sandwiches. “You must take care of yourself. Your health comes first.”

  “It was kind of you to prepare all this food, Fanny,” my brother said in an obvious ploy to change the subject.

  “That’s right, Mrs. Goodman,” Eddie chimed in, claiming his second sandwich from the platter. “Ain’t nobody makes beef fixings like you do.”

  I cringed. Although the boy’s progress in reading was truly remarkable, I could not seem to improve his language skills. How could he read so beautifully yet speak so appallingly?

  “Don’t forget that I’m free whenever you need me,” Fanny said, sitting down to eat her own sandwich. She was beaming almost as broadly as Eddie, obviously excited to be included in the plan.

  “You’re a good friend, Fanny,” I told her, blessing the day I had taken the rooms above her shop. “This is going to be a formidable undertaking.”

  “Do you believe we have a realistic chance of finding anyone who saw Mortimer Remy last Wednesday night, Lewis?” Robert asked, looking frankly skeptical.

  “I honestly don’t know,” George told him. “There’s always a bit of luck involved in an inquiry of this sort. But Miss Sarah is correct when she says it’s the only way to go about it. Very tedious it is, though, no doubt about it.”

  “Quite honestly, I find this entire affair baffling,” said Robert, shaking his head. “First Samuel is shot, Claude Dunn is apparently hanged, and someone tries to shoot Sarah. Next, Ozzie Foldger is killed, and now Jonathan Aleric has
been murdered. What do any of these crimes have to do with one another? They appear to be completely arbitrary.”

  “Obviously there must be some connection,” said George. “We just haven’t been able to find it.”

  “What does your Lieutenant Curtis make of the puzzle? Particularly the part where Sarah and I were shot?” asked Samuel.

  George couldn’t mask his vexation. “He continues to believe that you and Miss Sarah were accidentally fired upon by someone aiming at a fox or a skunk, or some other kind of small animal. He’s convinced that Claude Dunn committed suicide, and that Ozzie Foldger was killed because of a story he was writing, or by a person he might have maligned in the past. And of course he’s sure that Mr. Remy followed through with his threat to kill Jonathan Aleric. Curtis doesn’t see the crimes as being linked in any way, which certainly makes it all a great deal less complicated.”

  “Remarkable.” Samuel shook his head. “I know Curtis has relatives at City Hall, but how he ever attained the rank of lieutenant is unfathomable. If you ask me, that’s the real mystery here.”

  The third item on my agenda was to examine Jonathan Aleric’s life before he came to San Francisco two years earlier. As I had mentioned to Remy, it was necessary to know as much about the murder victim’s life as possible if we were to find his killer. And hopefully make sense of this puzzle.

  In the end, we decided on a plan that assigned people to various neighborhoods and streets, at times they could manage given their work schedules. Samuel would help George question the residents of Telegraph Hill, but first he promised to take advantage of some of his journalistic connections to find out everything he could about Jonathan Aleric’s life before he arrived in San Francisco.

  When everyone but Eddie had left my office, I double-checked the list of people I hoped to speak to for the remainder of the day. Upon ascertaining that everything was in order, I donned my coat and the lad and I departed in the brougham for South Van Ness and Twenty-second Street.

  After the first hour spent on Ruiz’s Mission District property, I began to suspect that either Robert or Samuel had taken the boy aside and instructed him to guard me as if I wore the crown jewels of England. Observing Eddie’s furtive behavior as I made my way through the blocks, speaking to as many people as would open their doors, I found it difficult not to laugh. He looked for all the world as if he had stepped out of the pages of one of Samuel’s Police Gazette magazines. As he clicked his dappled-gray along, careful to keep the carriage parallel to me, his squinty eyes continually swept up and down the street, suspiciously following every man, woman, and child as if he’d seen their faces featured in a rogues picture gallery.

  Ironically, a brougham cab crawling along the street, sans a passenger, attracted far more attention than if I’d been walking the block on my own. I would have to tell Samuel that his young watchdog was nothing if not resolute in carrying out his responsibilities.

  Only one or two of the houses I visited yielded fruitful results. I was more successful at several of the corner stores in the area. These general stores sold a large variety of goods, including salt, spices, sugar, tea, coffee, and pickles, as well as beer, whiskey, and the canned goods that had become widely available after the Civil War. I quickly realized that these owners were far more threatened than most of their neighbors and began to concentrate my efforts on the other shops and restaurants in the area.

  It was after six o’clock when I finally completed my trek through the neighborhood, climbed wearily back in the brougham, and instructed Eddie to take me to the law offices of Shepard, Shepard, McNaughton and Hall. As arranged, Robert was waiting for us in front of the building. Once he had joined me inside the carriage, we began the trek toward my home on Rincon Hill.

  “What a lot of bother just so your father will believe you spent the entire day in your office,” Robert commented as we made our tedious way through heavy evening traffic.

  “Do you want him to think that you have broken your word?” I responded shortly. I assuaged my guilt by reminding myself that if Papa had not taken it upon himself to rule my life in this overbearing manner, I would not be forced to resort to such machinations. “This way you can state with absolute honesty that you escorted me to my front door every day for a week.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true enough.” He held on to his briefcase as Eddie took a corner rather faster than safety dictated. “Tell me, did you meet with any success in the Mission District?”

  “Not as much as I hoped, but enough to convince the court, I believe. This evening I’ll draw a map of the blocks I covered. Then I shall know if I’ve located enough tenants. I fear I still have a great deal of work to do before Mr. Dinwitty and I visit City Hall.”

  “Yes, I can well imagine.” He was silent for a moment, then blurted rather abruptly, “Can I be of help? Perhaps tonight, when you have to correlate and write the new brief? I know you plan to spend most of tomorrow with Mrs. Goodman, visiting businesses near the restaurant Aleric frequented the night he was killed. You’ll have to complete the SPCA work tonight if you’re to be ready to submit the material the day after tomorrow.”

  I stared at him in surprise. “You’re offering to help me, Robert?”

  He fidgeted in his seat, arranging and then rearranging his briefcase in his lap. “Of course I am. You’re going to wear yourself to a frazzle if you keep this up. Dealing with Ruiz’s bullring was demanding enough, without taking on a first-degree murder case. I don’t know what you were thinking.”

  “I was thinking that as far as the police are concerned, they have Jonathan Aleric’s killer safely locked up in city jail,” I told him with fervor. “The evidence against him is circumstantial, but extremely damaging. If someone doesn’t take immediate action, the authorities will have him put on trial, found guilty, and hanged before he knows what has befallen him. I cannot stand by and allow that to happen.”

  “No, of course you cannot.” He sighed, sounding weary but resigned. “But you don’t have to do it alone. If it’s agreeable with your parents, I’ll help you tonight. That way you can concentrate your attention on Remy’s case tomorrow.”

  He gave me a sidelong smile. “And perhaps you won’t faint away from exhaustion.”

  * * *

  My mother was taken aback, but not in the least dismayed, that I had invited Robert to dinner without arranging it with her first. Cook always prepared more than enough food for one or two extra guests, and Mama was fond of Robert. I’m certain she was secretly delighted that I had invited an eligible man to the house—at this point in my spinsterhood, she would probably have been thrilled if I’d shown interest in a chimney sweep!

  Since my father found my colleague far more interesting than other guests we had entertained over the years, the conversation at dinner that evening was lively, covering subjects that my brother Frederick and his wife would have considered gauche had they been there, which, fortunately, they were not.

  When Samuel quietly asked me how we would deal with questions having to do with Remy’s arrest, I had to admit that we had come up with no real plan. My colleague and I would be forced to improvise if the subject was broached.

  Which, of course, it was. To my dismay, it became the primary focus of our dinner conversation. Thankfully, Papa still appeared not to have heard that I was representing the defendant, yet Robert and I were forced to skirt the issue uncomfortably, attempting to answer his questions without telling an outright lie. Through it all, my brother looked on in ill-disguised amusement. If only he had been sitting next to me, I thought, I would have given his shins a solid kick beneath the table.

  Professing, honestly enough, that we had a great deal of work to accomplish on the bullring case, we retired to the library. I can’t say that I was overly surprised when my father and a grinning Samuel joined us a few minutes later, followed by Edis, who was bearing a tray laden with coffee and Papa’s beloved brandy. I was relieved that we actually were working on the SPCA case and not
Remy’s defense. At least my father could not accuse either of us of lying when he inevitably learned the truth.

  Since my brother was privy to my newly hatched strategy to defeat the bullring, he lounged languidly back in his chair, feet propped up on a hassock, drinking his brandy-laced coffee, and apparently enjoying himself immensely. If he thought either Robert or I would slip and drop a careless word about what I was really up to these days, he was disappointed. Robert impressed me by being discretion itself, never telling an outright falsehood but subtly veering away from topics that threatened to cross into dangerous territory.

  As it turned out, Papa was keenly interested in what I planned to present to the city council. It came as a pleasant surprise to learn that he had presided over a number of cases of adverse possession, which were evidently common, especially in the West. He even offered several suggestions to augment, and at the same time simplify, my legal arguments. The evening flew by as we sat in companionable discussion, happily poring over papers, documents, and maps I had drawn of Ruiz’s landholding.

  “I wish I could be there with you and Dinwitty on Wednesday,” Papa said as I placed our completed documents in neat folders. “Will you be going with her, Robert?”

  I cursed silently. The agreeable evening had caused me to temporarily forget that as far as my father was concerned, I was obeying his stricture not to leave my office without an escort, a male escort.

  “Robert has to work, Papa,” I answered, finishing the last of far too many cups of coffee. This beverage rarely interfered with my ability to sleep, but tomorrow would be a full day, and I needed to get a good night’s rest. “Samuel has promised to accompany me.”

  “Yes,” my brother said. Despite his relaxed posture, he appeared weary, and I said a silent prayer that our plans for the next several days would not exhaust him. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”