No Comfort for the Lost

by Nancy Herriman

  “I was in the Chinese quarter, Signora Cascarino. Not near her place of employment.”

  Mrs. Cascarino clicked her tongue against her teeth. “That Mina,” she said. “We worry for her.”

  I would worry for her, too, if she were my daughter. As far as Celia knew, however, Mina Cascarino did nothing more than sing at the saloon where she worked. A situation far better than what other girls like Mina could claim.

  “Mina is a good girl,” said Celia.

  Mrs. Cascarino eyed her. “My Mina? You are kind to say, but . . .” She looked out the window behind Celia’s back and yanked the cord strung overhead, ringing the bell to signal the driver to stop. “You come for dinner tonight. You and Miss Barbara. You talk to my husband and tell him Mina is good. We pray every day.”

  “We would be delighted to come . . .” Oh no. Celia consulted the Ellery watch pinned to her waistband. She’d completely forgotten that she and Barbara were attending a meeting at the Ladies’ Society of Christian Aid in less than an hour. Celia was scheduled to give a talk urging the group to extend support to the Chinese women, and she expected opposition. “Actually, we cannot. We have a prior engagement this evening.”

  “One day soon.”

  “Indeed.”

  The horsecar arrived at their destination, and they both alighted. Angelo noticed a friend across the street and dashed over the muddy road to join him.

  “Good day, Signora,” Celia called, leaving the woman shouting at her son from the corner of Vallejo Street as the streetcar rattled off.

  She hurried up the steep wooden pavement that lined both sides of the street. Telegraph Hill rose to her left, the white building and its unused signal pole at its peak. A horse and rider pulling a water cask on wheels slogged up the hill, the dirt road slick from last night’s shower. There would be fog tonight because of the damp. The water carrier tipped his hat to her as she reached her house, two stories tall and sturdily built of brick, wedged between clapboard dwellings that stairstepped the incline. From here, the city flowed over hills in all directions, buildings crowding out the chaparral that still clung to the sides of Telegraph Hill and Russian Hill looming to the west. She wondered if she would ever grow accustomed to the drifts of tawny sand that clogged the streets when the wind blew hard, or to the overwhelming brownness of it all during the summer months. At least there was the bay and the green, green mountains to the east to ease her homesickness.

  Celia climbed the flight of stone steps and passed beneath the sign suspended from the overhang that read FEMALES’ FREE CLINIC and was repeated in Chinese and every other language she had been able to think of. Optimism had encouraged her to add the Chinese characters when she’d first opened the clinic two years ago. To date, only one Chinese girl had found her way there.

  Mrs. Cascarino had collected Angelo and was ascending the road with him as Celia entered the house. She gave them a parting wave. Hearing the front door open, Addie Ferguson wandered into the vestibule from the parlor, her attention fixed on the day’s copy of the Daily Alta California.

  “Men looking for positions and men looking for houses to let, but not a one looking for a wife! I’m wasting my time . . .” She glanced up and caught sight of Celia, who had dropped into the chair by the door and began wrestling off her boots. “Och, look at your feet! And those stockings . . . I’ll ne’er get that muck out of them.”

  Lean and strong, with snapping hazel eyes and curly brown hair pinned beneath a cap, Addie conveyed her disapproval—and concern—with the hastiest of frowns. Despite being younger than Celia and on the wrong side of the servant-mistress relationship, Addie never hesitated to express her opinion. The tendency had irritated Celia’s husband, whose broad shoulders and Irish wit hadn’t impressed the strong-minded Scottish maid the same way they had impressed an impetuous young nurse with a wounded heart. Patrick had demanded Addie be dismissed within a month of Celia’s employing her. All this time later, though, she was still with Celia.

  And Patrick Davies was the one who had left.

  “Has Barbara returned from checking on the girl down the street?” asked Celia, worried for the young woman, who’d burned herself cooking.

  Addie caught Celia’s boots before they landed on the floor.

  “Miss Barbara’s been home near to an hour now, ma’am. She’s been reading on the back porch. That Dickens book you assigned her. And grumbling all the while,” Addie added, holding the grimy footwear away from her hopsack apron, the newspaper tucked under her other arm. “I suppose this rush means you’ve no plans to eat?”

  “I do not have time, Addie.”

  “’Tisn’t my place, ma’am, but starving will do you no good.”

  “I shall not starve. I’ll eat when we return from the meeting.” Celia headed for the oak staircase in the center of the house, her fingers working the buttons of her crimson flannel garibaldi. The style of blouse had been named for a hero of the Italian independence movement, she recalled, thinking again of the Cascarinos and their chanteuse daughter.

  “And please tell Miss Barbara to be ready to leave in fifteen minutes,” she added.

  “Aye, ma’am.” The newspaper crackled as Addie withdrew it, ready to return to scanning its pages in her hunt for a man seeking a spouse. In all honesty, there were so many unattached males in San Francisco that if Addie really wanted a man, all she need do was step onto the street and snag one. “She’s none too happy about having to go.”

  “Well, I’m none too happy about having to go, either, but we must. For the sake of the women we are trying to help,” said Celia, climbing the steps.

  “By the by, ma’am, Miss Li didna come for dinner this afternoon.”

  Celia paused and looked down at Addie. Li Sha, the lone Chinese girl who’d found her way to the clinic—and a way out of her life of prostitution—regularly came for dinner at Celia’s invitation. She had never missed a meal before. “Did she send a note?”

  “Nae a word.”

  “That is not like her.” Not in the least. “Li Sha will have a good reason for her absence, and we are silly to fret.”

  “I am certain you’re right, ma’am,” answered Addie, sounding none too certain at all.

  • • •

  “We have always been generous,” Celia said, her gaze sweeping the women seated in the meeting room in the church’s basement. This evening the numbers were fewer than usual. “We can afford to be generous again in support of these girls, who have nowhere else to turn.”

  At the back, a woman rose, gathered her things, and exited the room. Mrs. Douglass, the chairwoman of the Ladies’ Society of Christian Aid, intercepted her before she reached the door. The woman, however, was not dissuaded from leaving. Heads leaned together as others debated following her lead.

  “I know this is a difficult choice to make,” Celia continued, “given how sentiment has turned against the Chinese who labor among us.”

  “Taking away jobs,” someone muttered, generating more restless shuffling of delaine and poplin skirts, more whispers.

  Celia studied each face; most of the women in the room had ceased meeting her gaze. “The Chinese should not be allowed to fall victim to prejudice. These girls require assistance now more than ever.”

  Her cousin, seated in the front row, stared down at her hands folded in her lap. It was because of Barbara that Celia had become so passionate about the Chinese women of this city. A sentiment clearly not shared by most of those gathered here.

  “There already is a Chinese Mission House in the city, Mrs. Davies,” pointed out a matron in plaid taffeta, a beribboned hat perched upon her graying hair. “The society doesn’t need to stretch its meager budget to provide charity to Chinese prostitutes when they already have an avenue toward a proper life.”

  Her comment received a flutter of applause.

  “Many of them cannot get to the m
ission, even if they wished to,” responded Celia. “They do not feel safe in the streets, and their own culture discourages them from leaving their homes and accommodations.”

  “Brothels, you mean.”

  “The society has supported other prostitutes who wished to turn their lives around. How are these women different?”

  “It’s obvious! They’re Chinese!” said the woman. Frowning, she slid her glance toward Barbara, whose hands were clasped so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. A young lady seated next to her took a chair farther away.

  It had been a mistake to bring her cousin here, Celia realized. In the past, these same women had always welcomed Barbara. Tonight, however, she was learning how readily professions of friendship could hide the bitterness of bigotry.

  Celia rapped a fist against the podium, her anger mounting. “And it is because they are Chinese that we must act as a force for good in this city, a city that is becoming obsessed with dangerous hatred.”

  “You’re mistaken, Mrs. Davies. We can’t afford to support these women,” said a third woman, who stood to leave, taking a friend with her.

  The grumbling increased. Mrs. Douglass, sensing serious trouble, swept forward between the chairs and stopped in front of the podium.

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Davies. Perhaps at another time we can discuss extending support to the Chinese girls in this town.” She clapped politely and signaled for the next speaker to come up.

  Seething, Celia stepped out from behind the podium. She collected the reticule she had left on her chair and clasped Barbara’s elbow. “Come, it’s time to leave.”

  Tears in her dark eyes, her cousin rose awkwardly to her feet.

  “Keep your chin up, Barbara. They must not defeat us,” Celia whispered, marching out of the room while every eye remained on them.

  “Cousin Celia, please wait!” Barbara called, hobbling into the stairwell. Her left foot, disfigured since birth, made it difficult for her to walk quickly.

  Celia slowed and helped her climb the stairs that led to the church’s vestibule.

  “I shouldn’t have dashed off like that, but I was angry,” Celia said by way of apology. “It was a mistake to bring you here.”

  “I hate them!” Barbara spat, all of her youth exposed in the angry outburst.

  Her cousin was only sixteen and not much different from Celia at that age—sensitive, awkward, baffled by the world. To be half-Chinese and afflicted with a clubfoot made life that much more difficult.

  “At the moment, Barbara, I feel precisely the same,” said Celia, stepping through the church’s main doors and descending onto the street. The sun had set, and the corner streetlamp puddled light over the pavement. A man across the road shot Barbara a black look. Celia hoped her cousin hadn’t noticed.

  Celia hailed a hackney coming up the cobbled road. They climbed into the dark, quiet interior and the carriage pulled away from the curb.

  “How could those ladies be so mean?” Barbara asked, her voice breaking on a sob. “It’s just like when Papa sent me to that school and everybody made fun of me.”

  Celia wrapped an arm around her cousin’s shoulders, drawing her close. Barbara rarely allowed such attention, and Celia relished it.

  “Shh,” she murmured. “We must stay strong, you and I, because there will be times when strength is all we have to rely on.”

  Her words only made Barbara cry harder.

  Celia sighed and let her weep. We are both pitiful. A reluctant daughter and an inexperienced guardian who could not replace the parents Barbara had lost. They both had so much to learn.

  • • •

  “It’s a bad ’un, Mr. Greaves.”

  Detective Nicholas Greaves shifted his gaze from the crumpled pile of indigo cotton and black hair tangled in the staves of a discarded broken barrel to stare at the policeman. He squinted against the morning sun. “When, exactly, aren’t they, Taylor?”

  The man frowned. Lifting his hat, Taylor pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat beading his forehead. It was turning into a typical San Francisco spring day—cool, a breeze off the water climbing the hills, chasing off the fog. The weather wasn’t making Taylor sweat. The dead body was.

  “Give me the details,” Nick requested. His assistant had a weak stomach and probably shouldn’t have been on the detective force, but he was thorough in his work. Nick would forgive a lot for thoroughness.

  Taylor retrieved a small notebook from the inner pocket of his knee-length gray coat and consulted it. Out in the bay a few yards distant, a seagull bobbed on the waves while its companions swirled overhead. Behind Nick, at the land side of the quay, a crowd had gathered—warehouse workers and longshoremen in shirtsleeves, a couple of chapped-skinned Italian fishermen in blue serge coats, neighbors and nearby shopkeepers. Their gossiping voices rose and fell as children roamed among them, their eyes wide. Where were the parents to keep them away? No one needed to see this, certainly not a child.

  Nick rubbed his left arm where it always ached, clenched and unclenched his fist to ease the tingling in his fingers, and nodded to Taylor, who’d waited for his attention.

  “Chinese female. Young, maybe in her early twenties. Given that her feet were never bound, she wasn’t from one of their higher classes. A prostitute, I’d guess, especially considering the face paint. Though the regular sorta dress she’s wearing don’t make sense. Sliced across the torso. Deep gash in her right hand, cuts on her forearms. From fighting off her attacker, maybe. Another wound at the back of the head, like something smashed against it.”

  Nick crouched at the girl’s side while Taylor continued his litany of observations and guesses. She hadn’t been murdered here; there was no blood on the wharf planks, though last night’s rain might have washed it away. Bruises marred her face. The man who had found her in the water bumping against a timber pile had left her in a heap, her bare legs tangled in her skirt, her right arm bent awkwardly beneath her. Nick cast his gaze down the length of the girl’s body, at the bloodstained bodice and skirts that stuck to her, revealing her soft curves, the gentle bulge of her belly. A few months pregnant, it seemed, and wearing an oversized dress to accommodate—or hide—the increasing swell. That the gown wasn’t the cheap cotton sacque most prostitutes wore indicated something, but what? Nick wondered why her hair wasn’t braided into the long pigtail the Chinese—both men and women—favored. He wondered where her shoes had been left. Perhaps they had fallen off in the water. One thing Taylor hadn’t mentioned was how lovely she was beneath the bruises and the clinging tendrils of hair.

  Nick swept the lush blue-black mass out of her eyes and off her high cheekbones, piling the tresses at the base of her neck and trying not to think of Meg. One day he’d stop seeing his sister’s face in that of every fallen woman. One day he’d stop feeling guilty for having failed her.

  One day.

  “Don’t you think, Mr. Greaves, sir?”

  He glanced up. “Don’t I think what, Taylor?”

  “I said bad luck for him that when he tossed her off the pier her clothes snagged and she didn’t sink.”

  “She would’ve shown up eventually, in these shallow waters,” said Nick, standing. “And we don’t know that whoever tossed her in was a he.”

  A flush joined the sweat on the policeman’s face. “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve told you that you don’t need to call me ‘sir.’”

  “Can’t help myself, sir. Em, sorry . . . Mr. Greaves.”

  “It’s okay, Taylor.”

  Nick looked out at the water. Goat Island was a rocky outcrop in the bay, and the Contra Costa hills rose in the distance. The nine-o’clock ferry was chugging toward Oakland, creating a wake. Several three-masted ships and steamers were angling into nearby piers, the slap of paddle wheels and the clink of rigging carrying across the water. Stacks belched streams of smoke i
nto the sky, reminding him of the girl’s long black hair. It wasn’t likely she had been in the water long, even though this particular wharf wasn’t one of the busier ones and currently sat empty of any ships. A harbor official had rowed out to intercept a schooner making for the quay, halting it before the boat could dock and add to the confusion.

  “When was she found?” Nick asked.

  Taylor eyed the workers assembled ten yards distant. “Sunrise this morning. When the workers arrived for their shift. Two ships are due in today, one from Panama. It was that one that found her. A customhouse inspector.” He nodded toward a man who was slouched in a dark coat and drawn-down cap and stood apart from the crowd.

  “Perfect evening last night to commit a crime like this,” observed Taylor, “what with the rain keeping folks indoors.” He made the mistake of looking down at the girl’s body and blanched.

  “Agreed, Taylor.”

  “And a good spot to dump a body. Wharf hasn’t been very busy these past coupla weeks.” Taylor used the butt end of his notebook to scratch at his neck above his collar. He studied the book’s contents one last time before restoring it to the breast pocket of his coat. “From what I’ve been told.”

  “Yes, a good spot,” Nick said absently, scanning the ground nearby.

  He poked among the bits of detritus, barrels marked SODA ASH and TAR OIL, casks of crockery and fire clay, piles of lumber. No handy footprints were visible. No bits of cloth or dropped cheroot butts to collect as evidence. No incriminating weapon hiding among the stacked crates.

  “Don’t think I missed anything, sir,” said Taylor, sounding uncertain.

  “I’m sure you didn’t.”

  Straightening, Nick brushed his hands together and sighed.

  “I know you, Mr. Greaves, sir,” said Taylor brightly, misunderstanding his superior’s exhalation. “You’ll get to the bottom of this quick as a wink. Even if the captain isn’t gonna want us bothering about some murdered Chinese girl.”

  “When have I ever not bothered, Taylor?”

  “Well . . . never, sir.”