Maids of Misfortune: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

by M. Louisa Locke

  When Annie reached the kitchen, Miss Nancy was gone, and she wondered if she would also be present for tea. She hoped so, because, after looking at the pictures in Miss Nancy’s room, she was curious to see how the older woman acted around Malcolm Samuels.

  Annie found her wish fulfilled when she entered the parlor with the coffee, tea, and cake. Miss Nancy had preceded her and was already engaged in a bitter exchange with Samuels. Again clothed in unrelenting black, she stood stiffly, with her hands twisted in front of her, saying in a voice cracking with emotion, "You would like that, wouldn't you. To take over the company. Run it into the ground, most likely. But why stop at the business? A fine ambitious man like you. 'All day long the wicked covets, but the righteous gives and does not hold back.' Proverbs 21."

  Amelia Voss, who was standing at Samuels’ side, placed her hand on his arm, as if to restrain him, and Annie could see that she was gripping the cloth tightly. Miss Nancy glared at her and then turned and again addressed Samuels, saying, "I know there are other things of Matthew's besides the business that you have always coveted."

  Jeremy threw a startled glance at Samuels, whose good-humored smile seemed frozen in place, and then he walked over to his aunt, taking her hands in his. "Now, Aunt Nan, don't go all religious on us," Jeremy cajoled. "Uncle Malcolm doesn't deserve it. He is just trying to help. You are the one who is most against selling the company, but if we don’t sell, we will need his help. I can't run the factory side of the operations all by myself. I'm just not good at business. Here is Uncle Malcolm offering to help me, and you get all upset. If you want to be angry with someone, be angry with me; I'm the fool who has gotten us in this mess."

  As Jeremy spoke, she shook her head in denial. She then spoke in a tone so low that only Jeremy, and Annie, who was behind them setting out the cups, could hear. "You could run the factory without his help. I'd help you. If we stick together, you and I, the true Vosses, we can do anything we put our minds to. You shouldn't go talking down about yourself. That was your father's fault--he always undervalued those of us who loved him the most. He was the fool, putting his trust in a ne'er-do-well like Samuels instead of his own flesh and blood. I would have done anything for him. Did he care? No, I was never a pretty young thing, my looks was all used up caring for others. What was I to do while he and that fine wife of his went gallivanting all over Christendom? What did it matter to him if I had to live the rest of my life with strangers? It wouldn't be the first time I had to leave home for Matthew. Like Moses, 'I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.'"

  With this, Miss Nancy turned away from her nephew, and Annie saw that tears ran down her face. When Miss Nancy turned, it brought Annie into her view and the older woman glared furiously at her and rasped out, "Stop your gawking, girl, and skedaddle. You still have the wash to attend to, and help Wong with lunch."

  Annie looked over at Mrs. Voss for permission to follow Miss Nancy's orders and caught an expression that looked like fear reflected in those beautiful blue eyes, but when Mrs. Voss saw she was under observation, this look vanished. Instead, Mrs. Voss summoned forth one of her enchanting smiles and nodded to Annie, saying, "Yes, Lizzie, that will be enough here; you must get back to your work. But before you do, please ask Wong to come to my sitting room. I need to consult him about dinner."

  After Annie curtsied and was leaving the room, she heard Mrs. Voss go on to say that she was sorry to end Mr. Samuels’ visit, but that she had to attend to some household duties. Annie paused outside the door, having remembered this time not to shut it all the way. Jeremy was expostulating with his mother, saying that they had to come to some decisions, and Malcolm Samuels was supporting him.

  Mrs. Voss went on pleasantly but firmly, saying, "No, Jeremy, I am afraid we shall just have to postpone any further discussion. It is really all too complicated for my poor understanding. But it seems to me that we shouldn't do anything precipitate until our lawyers, Mr. Hobbes and that nice young nephew of his, get back to us. I feel sure that there must be some stupid mistake and the money will be found. We mustn't rush into anything until we have all the facts."

  Mrs. Voss’s voice quavered at this point, and Annie heard her give a sad little laugh. "Now, didn't that sound just like Matthew? Maybe some of his good sense rubbed off on me after all."

  Alerted by the rustle of skirts approaching the door, Annie left her eavesdropping post and slipped down the hall to the back stairway. As she entered the kitchen to deliver the message to Wong, she thought to herself, At least I have learned two things. If Miss Nancy ever did have romantic feelings for Malcolm Samuels, they are long gone, and I was right to think that she was hurt and angry that Matthew hadn’t considered her in his plans for the family. But is that enough motive to have killed him?

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Monday, early afternoon, August 13, 1879

  Nate had been sitting on a hard wooden bench outside Chief Detective Jackson’s office for nearly an hour, and he was beginning to lose his temper. Last night, after he had dropped Annie off at her home, he had gone right to the central police headquarters to inform Jackson of Nellie’s death. But of course, Jackson had already been apprised of the discovery of a dead Cliff House waitress and was on his way to the scene. Nate had been left to sit for hours waiting for the detective’s return, but he never got to see him. Instead, Nate was eventually questioned by a Sergeant Thompson and then spent another hour writing out his statement. He didn’t get home until well after one in the morning.

  After he caught a few hours sleep, he’d got up and spent a tedious three hours drafting wills. At lunch he had had a very unpleasant conversation with his Uncle, who couldn’t understand why he would have taken Mrs. Fuller to question a waitress at the disreputable Cliff House. Nate, himself, wondered why he'd been so foolish. Now, after being summoned by Jackson to come back to police headquarters this afternoon, he’d been left cooling his heels, like a naughty boy called to the principal’s office.

  The detective’s door opened and out came Sergeant Thompson, escorting a man that Nate was startled to recognize as Nellie’s boyfriend, Jack. Today Jack wasn’t wearing his natty checked coat or red silk cravat, nor was he sporting his jaunty attitude. The only similarity between his Saturday night finery and the sweaty work clothes he was wearing today was the red of the bandana around his neck. His eyes were swollen, his mustache drooping, and when he saw Nate he growled, “I wish I’d never seen you, you bastard. Gent’s like you don’t give a damn about a girl like Nell. If you didn’t kill her you got her killed and I’ll see you in hell.”

  The sergeant, not unkindly, herded Jack down the hall, while saying over his shoulder to Nate, “Chief will see you now. Go right on in.” Nate stood for a moment, watching the two men, and then he walked into the small cluttered office. Chief Detective Jackson had been in the detective division for over twenty years, and his office appeared to have files from every case he ever worked on during that time. When Nate’s Uncle Frank had first asked him to be the liaison with Jackson on the questions about Matthew Voss’s death, he had secretly been elated. He chaffed under the limited scope afforded by working as the junior partner of his uncle’s firm, feeling more like a glorified clerk than a true partner, and he had nurtured hopes that a good working relationship with one of the most powerful men in the city would lead to opportunities. Jackson, while a Republican, maintained cordial ties with both the Democratic Party and the upstart Workingmen’s Party. His good opinion went far in San Francisco. As Nate stood in front of the Chief Detective, who failed to even acknowledge his presence as he wrote methodically in a small black notebook, his hopes turned to ashes. Standing there as the minutes crawled by, the feeling he’d had in the hall of being treated like a naughty schoolboy reappeared, and out of the ashes burned a fierce determination not to be patronized by this man.

  “Sir, I believe you wished to see me,” said Nate. “But I can see you are busy. Perhaps I should come back at a later time, when you aren’t
so preoccupied?”

  “Mr. Dawson, take a seat, I will be with you in a minute,” said Jackson.

  Nate briefly contemplated walking out, but instead pulled a chair closer to the desk and sat down.

  A few moments later Jackson put down his pen and looked up, saying, “Well, I’ve read your report, Mr. Dawson. You took it into your head to meddle in the investigation into Matthew Voss’s death, and now a young woman’s dead. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Well, he certainly wasn’t pulling any punches, Nate thought, but I’ll be damned if he will intimidate me. “Sir, I sincerely regret if my actions contributed to Nellie Flannigan’s death. I would never have made the effort to find and speak to her if I had thought this would put her in danger. I assume that the police had come to a similar conclusion, since you hadn’t made any effort to find her in the week following Mr. Voss’s death. It appears we both underestimated her importance and possible complicity in Voss’s murder. You do accept that Voss was murdered now, don’t you?”

  “Well, that really isn’t the issue at hand, is it?” Jackson said. “We haven’t determined anything, except that Miss Nellie Flannigan was found drowned. Whether this was the result of an accident, or if the unfortunate young lady took her own life, or was killed by someone else, it is too soon to tell."

  “You can’t think this was anything but murder?” Nate leaned forward. “She must have been involved with whoever robbed and killed Mr. Voss; whoever was her accomplice must have felt she was a danger and got rid of her. What did her boyfriend Jack have to say?”

  Jackson snorted. “He said a slimy lawyer feller named Dawson tricked him into telling him where Miss Flannigan was, and then killed her! Lucky for you, the evidence is pretty clear that she died yesterday afternoon, sometime between twelve and one, when you were evidently on the way to the Cliff House. The stable where you rented your carriage says that you didn’t leave the city until just before noon, and it would have been difficult for you to get to the Cliff House much before one, which is confirmed by the waitress you talked to there. Now of course it would help if we could also have the name of the young woman who was with you for corroboration.”

  “Sir, I am afraid I must refuse your request,” Nate replied, stiffly. “The lady is a friend of mine, a respectable widow, and I simply can’t in good conscience drag her name into this affair. I can, however, assure you that she had nothing to do with the death of either Mr. Voss or Miss Flannigan, and there is really nothing that she could add to the details I have already given in my report.”

  Jackson stared at him for a second then gave a quick laugh, saying, “Well, I suspect you are in enough trouble with the lady for dragging her out on a Sunday picnic as a cover for interviewing a servant girl and then subjecting her to a dead body, so I guess I won’t get you in any more hot water.” Jackson then poked his index finger in Nate’s direction, saying, “But believe you me, if this whole thing should ever come to trial, and her testimony is needed, you will tell me her name. For now, the inquest is going to be sometime Wednesday morning, and I expect you to be there to give your testimony.”

  Nate, feeling much easier now that he had made it through the dicey question of revealing Annie Fuller’s name, nodded, and asked, “Do you think that there is the possibility that Miss Flannigan’s boyfriend might be involved in either death?”

  “There doesn’t seem to be much chance of that. The night of Mr. Voss’s death he and Miss Flannigan were at an all-night party at Shannon’s dance hall, with at least a hundred witnesses. The afternoon of Miss Flannigan’s death he was down in the hold of a ship, welding, along with twenty other men. That’s not to say he doesn’t know more than he’s saying. But beyond his tale that she was getting favors from a young gentleman, like yourself or Mr. Jeremy Voss, he hasn’t been all that helpful.”

  “Chief Detective, why drag Jeremy Voss into this? Seems to me that if someone killed Miss Flannigan that it would be someone outside the household. Someone who would need her help as a servant to get into the house and locate the stolen money and assets, maybe some confidence man that hooked her into his scheme. I know you’ve dealt with cases like that.”

  Nate watched with irritation as Jackson leaned back in his chair and smiled and then said, “Well Mr. Dawson, I will say this for you, you do a good job of trying to protect your clients. But consider this, maybe if someone did kill Miss Flannigan, and I’m not saying we have the evidence to conclude that yet, maybe it wasn’t for what she did, but for what she knew.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Monday, late afternoon, August 13, 1879

  “Wong, thank heavens, I think I am finally done.” Annie folded the last sheet and stood up straight, put her hands against the small of her back, and bent backwards slightly, groaning. Wong had tried to help her out as much as he could by assisting her in lifting the large kettles of water off the stove to pour into the tubs and then later helping her carry the tubs out to the back to drain. But he was pretty well occupied the rest of the time with preparing, serving and cleaning up after lunch. That settles it, she thought. As soon as she got back home, Beatrice was to start looking for a good washerwoman to come in on Mondays and Tuesdays to do the laundry and ironing. Kathleen could still help out with the occasional light load of delicate clothes, but never again would Annie ask her to do a full wash by herself. That is if Driscoll didn’t succeed in taking the boarding house away from her! Pushing that defeatist idea away, Annie stretched again and thought about a more immediate problem, with every muscle in her back aching, she had no idea how she would get through serving dinner tonight.

  Wouldn’t Kathleen laugh at her, a few loads of wash and Annie was feeling like a decrepit old woman. Oh, how she was homesick for that laugh. She also couldn’t help but wonder what Nate was up to, if he had met with the police again, if he had been successful in keeping her name out of their investigations. It had been less than ten hours since she left her home, but, if it wasn’t for the regular tradesmen who came to the back door making deliveries, she might well believe the rest of the outside world had disappeared. She’d never realized how isolated a servant might feel, unable to simply leave the house to take a walk or visit friends whenever she wanted.

  Thinking of tradesmen reminded Annie of one strange occurrence that happened right before lunch. Cartier had come to the kitchen with some excuse about making sure that Annie took care of a stain on one of Mrs. Voss’s dressing gown cuffs, but then she had hung around for awhile, simply getting in Wong’s way as he prepared the noon meal. She didn’t seem interested in talking, but when the young boy who delivered the meat knocked at the back door, she bustled over to unlock the door to take the wrapped beef from him. This was so out of character that Annie had stopped her washing and stared at her, getting a glimpse of a folded piece of paper that Cartier slipped to the delivery boy before sending him on his way.

  Who would have imagined it, she thought. The refined Miss Cartier engaged in some sort of secret correspondence with a delivery boy. What a come down. Then her amusement had been swept away by the thought that maybe this event was more sinister; if Cartier had been involved with Matthew’s murder, maybe she was communicating with an accomplice, someone she had let into the house to steal Matthew’s money and kill him. If this was true, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine Nellie finding out, and maybe that was why she had to die.

  As she picked up the basket of clean clothes and moved to put it at the base of the back stairs, she stopped to listen for a minute, struck by the oppressive stillness of the house’s upper floors. It was as if the kitchen, filled with the hiss of fat dripping off of the roast in the oven, the gentle bubbling of soup stock, the steady click, click, click of Wong's vegetable knife, contained the only sounds of life in the place. Jeremy had left the house with Malcolm Samuels before lunch and was probably now well on his way towards another night of depressed debauchery with his friends, so his quarters would be dark and silent. All three of the wome
n in the house had retired to their respective rooms before dinner. Annie imagined Cartier, holed up in her room, writing to her unknown correspondent. As for Miss Nancy, Annie pictured her crouched and muttering over that massive Bible. Mrs. Voss would be sitting quietly in her lovely sitting room, her chatter temporarily stilled. Annie imagined her embroidering fantastic scenes of medieval chivalry and hiding her fears behind her unreadable, beautiful eyes.

  The door chime interrupted these thoughts, and Annie looked over at Wong, who was sitting at the kitchen table while he chopped. He looked up, then said, “Miss Lizzie, I will answer the door, if you would but please sit and finish dicing these carrots.”

  “Oh, Wong, would you? I will gladly chop up every vegetable we have in the house if it would mean I could sit down for a while.”

  Glancing at the kitchen clock, Annie was surprised that it was already near six o’clock, a very odd time for callers, and a very inconvenient time for Wong. He seemed to have planned a more elaborate menu than usual this evening, and Annie assumed this was in honor of Mrs. Voss, who was finally eating her dinner downstairs. He was going to start with an asparagus soup, then a fish course of marinated salmon followed by fricasseed quails, and finally the roast beef. For dessert he had made an orange cake. Annie's job was to assemble a fresh salad of greens and steam the carrots and peas. The smell from the simmering quail sauce permeated the kitchen, effectively eliminating the smell of bluing that had dominated the room for most of the day and making Annie’s stomach rumble. I must remember to get the recipe from Wong, Annie thought to herself. Whoever the visitor is, when he smells dinner, he'll wish he’d been invited.