Maids of Misfortune: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

by M. Louisa Locke

  Was the poison found just in the glass of whiskey or also the decanter? This would make a difference. If it was also in the decanter, then any one of the servants, well, probably not Cartier, but certainly Nellie or Wong, would be a suspect, since they both would have been able to put the poison into the decanter at any time during the day. But then there would be no guarantee that Matthew wouldn’t offer the poisoned whisky to someone else, like Malcolm Samuels, if he had showed up for dinner. I will just have to ask Patrick, he will know.

  Patrick had come by to see his aunt Bea on the previous evening, while everyone was sitting around giving Annie advice on how to be a good servant. He had been very willing to tell her everything he knew, despite his aunt’s patent disapproval. For example, she now remembered that he had said that a white packet had been found on the floor at Matthew’s feet, in the bottom of which they had found a residue of the poison.

  “That’s what cinched it for Detective Jackson, Ma’am,” Patrick had said. “Proved it was suicide, finding the packet like that, where the poor man most likely dropped it before finishing off the fatal drink.”

  As Patrick described what the police had found, Annie had thought to herself that the murderer had certainly done a good job of setting up the scene to look like suicide, note and all. Now she also realized that this meant that the person who poisoned Matthew had probably been in the room with him as he died, or at least had access to the room after he was dead, in order to place the fake suicide note and the packet. This would make it less likely that either Wong or Nellie were involved, since Patrick said both of them left the house while Matthew was still alive and had arrived back in the morning after the body was discovered.

  According to Patrick, Wong told the police that he had let Nellie out the back door at eight o’clock, as was usual for her night out, and Mr. Voss had let him out the front door at ten. This would seem to rule out involvement by these two servants. But what if Wong lied about letting Nellie out, couldn’t she have simply hidden up in her attic room and then come down in the middle of the night and let someone, like Wong, back in? But then, how would that someone have gotten Matthew to drink the poison? It was even possible that if Nellie stayed hidden in the house she could creep downstairs in the early morning hours to see if Matthew had indeed had his poisoned nightcap and was now dead. Then all the she would have to do is plant the evidence to make it look like suicide, steal whatever money or documents were at hand, and sneak out of the house. Oh dear, that was a problem, how could Nellie, or her unknown accomplice, have gotten out of the house without leaving some door or window open? Annie was sure Patrick had said he had made a complete circuit of the house as soon as he was called in, and he didn’t find any openings, except of course for the front door, which Mrs. Voss swore was locked until she opened it to let Miss Nancy go get the police.

  Patrick had clearly been very impressed by Mrs. Voss. He spoke about how brave and composed she had been to answer Detective Jackson’s questions, with her “poor husband’s lifeless body still lying right across the hall.” He said she told the police that she had been at the top of the stairs, after having just been downstairs to say good night to her husband, when she saw Wong leave and saw her husband lock the front door behind him. She thought that this was just about ten; she said she had then retired for the night. It wasn’t until she woke early in the morning that she discovered that Matthew had not come to bed. She said it was her husband’s habit to stay up until at least one in the morning, that he didn’t need much sleep, but that he had never before been absent when she awoke.

  Annie thought it spoke well of Wong that his mistress would be so quick to verify that he wasn’t in the house. Patrick said she was less specific about the rest of the household. She wasn’t sure when either Cartier, who had seen her right before she retired, or her sister-in-law, had gone to bed. She believed her son had gone out after dinner and wasn’t sure when he returned, although he was there the next morning when Matthew was found. Jeremy evidently told the police he had come in at eleven and gone right upstairs without speaking to his father. Not surprisingly, none of the four who were still in the house the next morning had any idea what the other three were up to during the rest of the night. Annie tried to imagine any one of them coming into Matthew’s study, pouring him a drink, and standing by to watch him die.

  She shuddered and her shadow danced crazily along the walls. Better concentrate on finding Matthew’s missing assets. Its stupid to stand here wondering if anyone in this house hated him enough to kill him. With that thought, Annie began to look around the room in earnest, looking first at the desk. Besides the lamp and an inkwell and pen there was nothing on top of the desk. She refused to think about why the desk blotter was missing. She was very surprised when she opened the file drawer and found nothing in it. In fact, accept for a few odds and ends--a ruler, magnifying glass, some pencil stubs, a box of matches--that she found in the shallow drawer underneath the desk top, the desk was empty.

  This can’t be right! Annie thought. The police would have found the lack of any files suspicious! Then she mentally kicked herself. Probably the police, or most likely Nate or his uncle, had taken the files to go over them. She would have to talk to him to find out if this had been his and his uncle’s handiwork. If it had been the police, maybe Nate could get access to the missing files and look through them. Then again, it might be that Matthew kept only household information in his study, and that the place needing a more thorough search would be his office at the furniture factory. She couldn’t remember whether Nate had mentioned if he or Matthew’s partner, Samuels, had looked there.

  Annie scanned the room again and thought with a sigh that the only place left to look was the bookshelves, and that could take all night. She leaned over to look at the clock she had noticed on the desk and almost let out a gasp when she saw the hands at 4:30. No, that can’t be right, she thought, not that much time has passed. Then she realized that the clock was silent, probably hadn’t been wound since Saturday. So what time was it? No more than fifteen minutes could have passed since she entered the room. She stood and listened carefully, but could hear only the sound of her own breathing. Well, she thought, I should at least look closely enough to see if it looks like any papers have been stuffed between any of the books.

  Annie crossed over to the end of the shelves to the right of the door and had just raised the candle up high to get a better look at the top shelves when a soft sound at the door gave her barely enough warning to snatch the candle down and snuff out its flame. The door was shoved open to its full extent, effectively boxing her into a tight triangle, with her back against the wall, the bookshelves to her left and the door a few inches from her nose. Annie held her breath and hoped that the candle, which she held clutched to her breast, didn’t have enough heat left in the wick to set her robe on fire. Clearly whoever had entered the room had their own candle, since flashes of light cut through the edges of the door against the bookshelves and then jerkily stabbed through the long opening between the door and the doorframe. She slowly turned her head to the right so she could look over her shoulder through this opening. She was so relieved not to see an eye peering through the door hinge at her that she almost let out a sigh. Instead all she could see was a narrow strip of the end of the book shelves on the other side of the door, but the concentrated brightness of the candle light indicated that the person who had entered that room was standing right next to those shelves.

  There was a light click, and then a sound of wood sliding against wood. A small rustling noise was followed by the sliding wood sound again. Before Annie had time to blink, a figure moved rapidly past the strip of light, closing the door behind them, and Annie stood alone, in the dark, trying to make sense of the image that had flashed before her eyes.

  She had seen a person, in a dressing gown, holding some sort of oversized folders or books. But that was all she could recall. No face, since the head had been turned away. A dressing gown, bu
t that didn’t help; she couldn’t tell if it belonged to a man or a woman. She did think that the person had been taller than she was, but that would only rule out Mrs. Voss, not Cartier, Miss Nancy, or Jeremy, and there was no one else in the house. Standing there in the dark, Annie finally took a breath. Minutes ticked by where the thump, thump of her heart was the only thing she heard. Then, as her heart and breathing slowed, she noticed the small sting on her thumb and forefinger where she had pinched the candle flame. A small bubble of relief tickled its way into a giggle, which she quickly stifled.

  Annie finally got up enough courage to pull out her matches from her robe pocket and relight the candle, her hands shaking. Ruthlessly repressing the small voice in her mind that was saying, that could have been the murderer, she went over to the bookshelves and stood, moving the candle back and forth and looking for what might have made the sounds she heard. Running her left hand across the books in the middle shelf, she noticed a section that felt different. Instead of leather, what she felt was carved wood; as she looked more closely, she could see the wood was painted to look like books. She pressed and heard a click, and this whole section slid to the right to reveal a hidden shelf. Oh Matthew! How this hidey-hole must have delighted you, she thought. She wondered if anyone had told the police about it. Certainly, his family, and Nellie, who would have discovered it during dusting, must know about it.

  The candlelight revealed a metal box sitting on the hidden shelf, with its lid open, empty. Otherwise there was nothing else in the hiding place. She didn’t think that the box was big enough to hold the items she saw being removed from the room, but it was certainly big enough and deep enough to hold a stack of property deeds, stock certificates, or even money. She didn’t think whoever had just been in the room had had time enough to open the box and take things out, so she had to assume it was already empty. So what had just now been removed from the hiding place? And why had anyone come down in the dead of night to get it?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Saturday evening, August 11, 1879

  "His name is Jack O'Sullivan, Ma’am,” Kathleen said, “And as I told you, my friend Moira says he's been courting Nellie Flannigan for nearly six months. Moira says she can't imagine them missing this dance for the world.”

  "Are you sure this is the Nellie that worked for Mr. Voss?” said Annie. “Seems an awfully common name. Do we have any description of her, or this Jack?"

  "Oh yes, Ma'am, I'm sure it's her. Moira worked with Nellie in another position two years ago, and they kept in touch. She knew all about her working for Mr. Voss. Told me Nellie is short, got a good figure, has striking red hair, and frizzes her bangs something awful. Said Jack's a typical Irishman--all blarney and a big mustache.”

  It was nine o’clock in the evening, and Annie and Kathleen were standing just inside the entrance to the Parker House, where the St. Joseph’s Annual Parish Masked Ball was in full swing. The foyer of the hotel rang with excited chatter, and small groups of laughing people coalesced into a tight mass at the entrance to the ballroom. The entrance fee was twenty-five cents, which, at half the usual ticket price for most city amusements, made it a real bargain. The purpose of the event was to raise money for parish charities, and a good number of the individuals dispensing punch were dressed in the elaborate black robes and white wimples of the Sisters of Charity. These good women's august presence did not seem to be dampening the enthusiasm of the young people dancing. The three famous gas-lit chandeliers in the Parker House ballroom illuminated a swirling kaleidoscope of dancers twirling around the floor, some dressed in full costume, others merely masked.

  Annie hadn't been in a gathering with this many people in years. Indeed, most of the Irish population of San Francisco appeared to be in attendance this evening. This was, of course, why they were there. Where better to find Voss’s former maid, Nellie Flannigan, and her beau, Jack O'Sullivan?

  When Annie had arrived at her home a few hours earlier for the start of her night out, she was feeling discouraged. After she had finally gotten up the courage to return to her attic room from the study earlier that morning, only four hours remained before her morning chores began, and the day had turned out to be a frustrating repetition of the day before. Jeremy went out, Mrs. Voss stayed in her rooms, Cartier continued to irritate, and Miss Nancy kept ordering her around as she did her chores. When she returned to work on Monday, she would finally get a chance to check out the upstairs rooms and she hoped to finish looking through the rest of the house in a day or two. At this point she wasn’t sure she had learned enough to justify the two days of lost income as Sibyl.

  The only odd thing that had happened was that as she was leaving the Voss house to come home, an extremely tall and slender gentleman stopped her in the back alley. Fashionably dressed, he had pulled the brim of his top had down to shadow his face, and he acted very nervous. He politely asked if she could tell him if Jeremy Voss was at home; when she said no, he had tipped his hat and slipped quickly down the alley and vanished. She supposed that if she hadn’t been so tired she might have gone after him to find out what he wanted with Jeremy; instead, she had just plodded down to the corner to catch the horse car home. She was so tired she even fell asleep on the car and almost missed her stop.

  Consequently, Annie felt more exhausted than excited when Kathleen greeted her at the kitchen door with the news that she had identified the missing Nellie, and that she, Patrick, and Annie were all going to meet Nate Dawson at a local charity ball to try and talk to her. Kathleen had it all planned out. Patrick would engage a hackney and come by to pick them up so they could get to the ball by nine o’clock. This would give Annie just enough time to bathe and get dressed.

  Then Beatrice had stepped in, saying, “Now you just shush girl, you’re getting way ahead of yourself! I told you not to pester Mrs. Fuller. There’s nothing wrong with you and Patrick going to the dance and searching for that Nellie. But it isn’t proper for a lady like Mrs. Fuller. Sides, can’t you see she’s completely worn out!”

  Kathleen had immediately backed off, apologizing for being so thoughtless and not considering how tired Annie would be. Annie wasn’t sure whether it was a desire to prove herself in her young servant’s eyes, or that Beatrice’s words had been so reminiscent of her mother-in-law’s constant refrain about what was “proper” for a lady to do, but, in any event, Annie immediately started to defend her right to go to the ball, reminding Beatrice that she had all day Sunday to recuperate. The truth of the matter was that once she had decided to go, she had begun to feel better.

  Since Kathleen was adamant that it would be safer if Annie attended the ball as another servant, the question of what she would wear arose. Kathleen had a solution to that as well, saying she had just the thing for her to wear. “My friend Lillian can’t fit in it no more, so she let me buy it off her for just five dollars. I was going to start working on cutting it down to my size, but, Ma’am, I just knew it would fit you.”

  Which is how Annie came to be squeezing through the doorway of the Parker Hotel dressed in an outfit that was a far cry from the virginal white gowns of her days as a proper young woman or the somber clothes of wifedom and widowhood. Her outfit’s under skirt, a dark green satin, contrasted with the green and burgundy plaid tarlatan overskirt that swooped back, culminating in a huge matching satin bow over the bustle. While this was a style Annie would never have chosen for herself, she had solemnly agreed with Kathleen when she pointed out how wonderful it was that the satin bow just exactly matched the satin trimming on the dress’s short-sleeved cuffs and square neck. The colors were a little dark for summer, but overall she did feel quite festive.

  Kathleen’s friend Lillian was clearly thinner than she and a good deal shorter because it had taken some very tight lacing of her corsets to get her into the dress, and there was a good deal of ankle left showing. Not just her ankles were exposed, but a substantial portion of her breasts spilled out over the neckline as well. But hers were not the only br
easts or ankles showing in this crowd, so Annie stopped worrying about how she looked and just took in the sights and sounds.

  She stepped up to Kathleen, who was surveying the dancers with obvious anticipation, and whispered, "It's all quite exciting isn’t it, Kathleen? But we mustn't forget we have a job to do, and I'm afraid much of the responsibility for finding Nellie or Jack rests with you and Patrick."

  Kathleen wrinkled her brow and nodded once to prove her seriousness. "You're right, Ma'am. I know just what to do. I'll send Patrick to the side doors where the single men gather to smoke. One of them's bound to know Jack O'Sullivan. Meanwhile, I'll go along to the punch tables and ask the servers. The Sisters are very good with names. Then, if we get word that either of them have been sighted here and what they're wearing, we'll be in good shape. Maybe they came in costume--that might make it real easy to spot them."