by Oakley Hall
His coat fit him so prettily it weighed on me. I said I didn’t consider that any of his business.
“I speak for Mrs. Brittain, and I will speak frankly. Miss Brittain belongs to a station in life to which you cannot aspire.”
I blew out my breath to keep calm. “I wish you would come down to the True Blue Democracy Club and explain your meaning,” I said.
His face was pinched and schoolmasterish. He looked at me as though I was being purposefully stupid. How I disliked him, Amelia’s half brother.
“We call folks who live on Nob Hill ‘instant Aristocrats,’ ” I said. “Is that what you mean? For instance, your putative father went to the Washoe and found a bonanza, while mine found nothing but borrascas. Is that the difference?” Mine, in fact, had been euchred by his.
I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t, “Aristocrats go to whores and draw all over their bellies. Is that the difference?”
His face turned a dangerous red. “How dare you?”
“You don’t want to try tricks like that here,” I said. “San Francisco whores are tough.”
He stared at me with his mouth open. “Damn you!”
“No, damn you!” I said. “For the spoiled presumptuous twit you are.” I was aware of pushing this into something from which I could not withdraw, which pleased me.
He glared at me down his nose. “I demand satisfaction!”
I laughed at him. “Manhole covers at twenty feet?”
“Damned fortune hunter!”
“Bare knuckles in the basement,” I said.
I led him downstairs into the basement and through the door into the cellar next door, where there was an empty storeroom lighted by dusty clerestory windows that gave onto California Street.
Beau stripped out of the beautiful jacket. He’d had some boxing instruction. He danced around me, feinting lefts and rights while I took off my coat. I felt heavy, lumpish and poisoned.
He danced toward me. I knocked him down. It is easeful to your inner furies when you have bashed someone on the jaw, but the demands and responsibilities of the Brittain family were not Beau’s fault.
He bounced up again. The second time I knocked him down he managed to pop me on the nose, and I felt the claret starting.
Sprawled on the floor he gazed up at me as I mopped at my nose with my handkerchief. He pronounced himself satisfied.
He climbed to his feet, massaging his jaw and moving his shoulders in a manner distasteful to me.
“You know what the Morton Street whore who identified your photograph said?” I said.
“What is that?”
“She said there was a client of Esther Mooney’s who didn’t have a dingle. He used some kind of leather dildo. He might have been the one that killed Esther. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”
“Certainly not! The police—”
“Did they ask to see your dingle?”
“I don’t know what you are getting at, Redmond!”
Glaring, he stood poised with his elbows folded back and his chin out, as though he was going to assault me again or take flight. Suddenly he ripped at his placket and exhibited himself for my inspection.
“What about balls?” I said.
He cursed me in an unaristocratic manner.
“Listen,” I said, holding my handkerchief to my nose. “I apologize for my childish behavior. Don’t you know we are trying to save your bacon?”
“Yes, I do know that, Redmond.”
In the end we shook hands.
“Here’s another communication from our Comstock correspondent,” Bierce said, passing me a handwritten note when I returned to the office with my nosebleed stanched.
Dear Mr. Bierce,
If you are worried about who fathered Highgrade Carrie’s get, worry no more. Everybody knew Dolph Jackson was her beau.
A Former Spade
“He has no occasion for a ‘momento’ in this missive,” I said. “It is the connection between the murderers!” Bierce said. “The ‘Former Spade’ is my benefactor!”
Who was the Gent.
29
TRUTH, n. – An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.
–THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY
Bierce and I arrived at the McNair mansion fifteen minutes later than the six o’clock appointed hour. Marvins let us in, and we followed his stately guidance down an expanse of gleaming parquet past the piano octagon to a large room with windows looking south over the City. Chairs had been set facing a presiding table, as for a ceremony. Lady Caroline was seated at the table, flanked by Beau and Lawyer Curtis. In the chairs, craning their necks as Bierce and I entered, were Senator Jennings and a balding man with Yankee chin whiskers who had a lawyer look to him; Rudolph Buckle; Captain Pusey; and Mammy Pleasant in her black bonnet. I had been halfway afraid the Gent would be on hand, summoned behind my back; or Senator Sharon.
Sgt. Nix stood straddle-legged, hands clasped behind him, against the walnut paneling. Elza Klosters sat with his broad-brimmed hat in his lap in a chair beside the door. His pale scalp gleamed with sweat.
Marvins closed the double doors behind us with a slap of sound.
I slipped into an empty chair while Bierce remained standing, his cold face glancing around at the company that had been summoned at his request.
Senator Jennings heaved himself to his feet. “What the devil is all this, Bierce?”
“Sit down, sir,” Bierce said. He moved at his stiff gait over to the broad window, where he could face the three at the table and the rest of us as well. His expression was that of having the Railroad where he wanted it. Jennings remained standing, big-bellied.
“I have asked Mr. Bierce to conduct these proceedings,” Lady Caroline said in her soft, British-accented voice, smiling a kind of general smile out of her porcelain mask. The fingers of her white gloves were tented together as she spoke. She wore a dress of black velvet trimmed with lace, with a high neck. Her pale hair flowed in waves to a high French knot stabbed with a diamond-headed pin. Diamond dewdrops glistened from her earlobes. She turned her smile to Bierce.
Jennings sat down. His cheeks were the color of raw beef. He leaned his head sideways to something his lawyer whispered.
Bierce said, “We are concerned with two murderers here. We will dispose of the obvious one first. I have already warned Senator Jennings that I will prove he murdered the widow of Judge Hamon.”
“One moment, if you please,” Jennings’s lawyer said, rising, a hand and a finger raised as though to a point of order.
“I do not please,” Bierce said. “Mr. Klosters, did Senator Jennings offer you money to murder Mrs. Hamon?”
There was a moment of silence, the lawyer still standing. Lady Caroline turned her fixed smile on Klosters. Jennings rose again, to hulk beside his lawyer, glaring at the enforcer.
“Offered me three hundred dollars,” Klosters said in his heavy voice. He remained seated, his hands holding his hat on his lap. “Told him I wouldn’t do it, so he offered me five hundred. Told him I was not in that game any more.”
“The Society of Spades,” Bierce said. “was formed to purchase control of the Jack of Spades Mine in Virginia City. There were five members. Two of them married, Caroline LaPlante and Nathaniel McNair. They enlisted a third, Albert Gorton, to form a majority to cheat the other two out of their shares of what was to become an incalculable profit. One of these others was an E. O. Macomber, who has disappeared or changed his name, the fifth person was Adolphus Jackson, who became Aaron Jennings and was elected a State Senator.
He let that settle, pacing, before he continued: “Jackson and probably Macomber were rightfully infuriated at the swindle that had been perpetrated upon them. Gorton was brained out of revenge, or because he had become a liability to McNair. That murder does not concern us, although Mr. Klosters may be able to clear it up.”
“It is not necessary that you respond to that, Elza,” Lady Caroline said. Her voice was drowned by Senator Jennings�
�s bellow:
“I do not intend to listen to this twaddle!”
“Then why are you here, sir?” Bierce said. “Captain Pusey, will you arrest Senator Jennings for murder?”
“I do not take my orders from journalists, Mr. Bierce,” Pusey said calmly. He was sitting with his arms folded on his uniformed chest, his legs crossed; he looked as though he had been trussed.
“Very well,” Bierce said. “I will have more to say of Senator Jennings as we proceed.”
He strutted before the window, a little showily I thought. He held up a finger before his chin.
“Some things have been clear from the outset. Captain Pusey knew from his connections with the London police that young Mr. McNair had been involved in a scrape in which he and some companions abused low women in ways that were to be transformed into butchery in the murders of the Morton Street prostitutes. It is clear that Captain Pusey knew of this from the fact that he showed Mr. McNair’s photograph, from his archive, to a prostitute who had had a glimpse of the murderer.
“Captain Pusey had also told another person of Beau McNair’s arrest in London.”
Bierce paused to pace some more.
“And the identity of that person, Mr. Bierce?” Curtis asked, peering past Lady Caroline. Beau was studying his hands.
“In good time, Mr. Curtis. There was great hatred here. As we have seen, Senator Jennings had been wronged, but there is another who was much more terribly wronged, and whose hatred turned to murderous insanity.”
This time when Bierce paused, no one spoke. Lady Caroline had her chin raised regally.
“Nathaniel McNair was not the father of Beaumont McNair,” Bierce continued. “Two other men had been told they had fathered Caroline LaPlante’s son. In one of those men’s family there is an occurrence of twins.”
Suddenly Rudolph Buckle was on his feet, his lips working as though trying to form words that would not come. Lady Caroline made an imperious motion with her hand. She had removed one of her gloves.
“Mrs. Pleasant pointed out to me that I was only looking at half the picture,” Bierce said. “Twins,” he repeated. “One of the twins was given to Mammy Pleasant. The disposer of unwanted babies disposed of the unwanted twin.”
Heads turned to Mammy Pleasant. Her gold hoop earring caught the light in a shivering round as she drew herself up.
“You may address this matter, Mrs. Pleasant,” Lady Caroline said.
In her soft staccato, Mammy Pleasant said, “The child was given to a Mr. and Mrs. Payne to rear. He was a stonemason. They had lost a child of their own.”
“Was there money involved, Mrs. Pleasant?”
“They were given two thousand dollars,” Mammy Pleasant said.
Lady Caroline had removed both gloves and was smoothing a cream-colored liquid from a small silver bottle onto her hands.
It was as though Bierce was a schoolmaster calling on her. He did not look at her directly but raised a finger inclined toward her.
“McNair would allow me to keep one baby but not two,” she said. “It was a punishment.”
“You chose to keep the better-looking or the stronger of the twins?” Bierce said. “Or was there some defect?”
“I do not intend to discuss that, Mr. Bierce.”
“I will point out that the hatred would be intensified if there was a defect. Hatred against his perfect brother as well as his mother.”
Lady Caroline wrung the liquid into her hands.
“I believe there was some flaw, a deformation,” Bierce said. “I believe the deformation was genital.”
He paused to glance at Lady Caroline. Color had mounted in her cheeks, but she did not respond.
Bierce continued, speaking very carefully: “As Beaumont McNair’s scrape with London prostitutes seems to show a discomfort with his mother’s history, so does the other twin’s particular viciousness.
“The twin’s object was to see his brother punished for these murders, but it was primarily to punish his mother. The incrimination of Beau was to serve the purpose of bringing his mother to San Francisco. There he would punish her as he had punished the other prostitutes. Certainly it was a mad scheme. It was a madman’s scheme.”
Lady Caroline now sat motionless with her beautiful head erect, watching Bierce with the smile that was no longer a smile.
“What is this young man’s name, Senator?” Bierce asked suddenly.
His name must be Payne.
Heads turned toward Jennings, who glared back at Bierce with his lips pressed together like a scar.
Mammy Pleasant enunciated the name softly: “George Payne.”
Bierce pointed a finger at Senator Jennings. “You believed you were the father of Caroline LaPlante’s offspring, the father of George Payne. The pregnant mother told you that you were, as she had also told another. She had decided that she wanted to be married, and you were her second choice, but you were a four-flusher as well. Nat McNair was her third choice. Perhaps you were, in fact, the father. The mother claims to be uncertain.”
Jennings snarled at him.
I wondered suddenly who else had been informed of his paternity. Was this the connection with Sharon that everyone denied?
“I don’t pretend to know how you came to know George Payne or his identity,” Bierce went on. “But encounter him you did. He worked as a barkeep in your saloon on Battery Street. Adolphus Jackson’s saloon, actually. It was George Payne who carried away from the fire the painting of Caroline LaPlante as Lady Godiva—it once hung in a saloon in Virginia City, and then in your office in Sacramento. And later still in the Washoe Angel saloon. It was the twin who carried off the famous painting of his mother, wasn’t it, Tom?”
Heads turned toward me. “Yes,” I said.
“The young man’s hatred was fed,” Bierce said, turning toward Lady Caroline. “Captain Pusey had conveyed the information about Beaumont McNair’s London transgression and arrest to Senator Jennings. They were well acquainted. Pusey knew Jennings was a convicted arsonist named Adolphus Jackson and had been blackmailing him for years. Jennings passed along Pusey’s information to his employee. There had to be a starting time for these vicious murders. The starting time was Beaumont McNair’s return to San Francisco.
“George Payne’s hatred was fed by Senator Jennings,” Bierce said.
“One moment!” Jennings’s lawyer said, rising, hand and finger rising also.
“You have no proof of any of this!” Jennings shouted. He shoved his chair noisily back as he lurched to his feet. “You damned calumniator! I am getting out of this shithole, Ted!”
Shoulders hunched and head forward as though ducking beneath rifle fire, he plunged toward the double doors Marvins had closed behind Bierce and me. He flung them open and disappeared with a hurrying crack of footfalls on the parquet. Neither Pusey nor Sgt. Nix made any move after him. His lawyer, grimacing at Lady Caroline, followed more sedately, closing the doors behind him.
“May we call this murderer an extrapolation, or merely hypothetical?” Curtis said in a stifled voice.
“Bos,” Lady Caroline said.
“Are you saying that Senator Jennings was the intellectual author of these murders?” Buckle said.
“At least the impulse to them.”
“Can the police find this twin?”
“We will find him,” Pusey said calmly.
“You will find a man who has been mistaken for Beaumont McNair many times,” Bierce said. He paced before the window. Lady Caroline’s eyes never left him.
“The hatred these two shared was very powerful,” Bierce said. “They complemented each other. The twin might not have turned murderous without Jennings. Jennings might have forgotten his old grudge without George Payne, whom he considered his wronged son.”
He had broken through to the Railroad at last. He had connected the SP with the Slasher.
“So Lady Caroline is in danger,” Pusey said, still with his arms and legs entwined.
; “George Payne has been gaining access to this mansion for years,” Bierce said. “He believed it should have been his house. The servants knew of him as the ghost. It may be that Mr. Buckle has actually encountered him.”
Heads turned to Buckle, who was still standing. His lips moved, but he did not speak. He was breathing heavily.
“Is this true, Rudy?” Beau demanded.
“I believe this meeting can be concluded,” Lady Caroline said, before Buckle could respond. She rose to her feet. “Thank you, Mr. Bierce. I am very impressed by your conclusions. We have certainly been forewarned.”
Curtis rose. Others shifted in their chairs, rising. Mammy Pleasant elbowed and switched herself around. Her posture, and her first steps as she turned toward the door, were those of an old woman.
I heard the clatter of heels on the parquet of the hallway outside. The door burst open. Beau McNair, in a slouch hat and a gray muffler, panting, pale-faced, took two steps inside, his face aimed at Lady Caroline like a weapon. But it was not Beau.
It was the young man I had seen in the barroom at the Bella Union, and whom I had seen appear out of the shrubbery here, night before last.
A shot convulsed the room. The hat on Elza Klosters’s lap exploded into the air, where it flopped and fell like a shot duck. George Payne toppled straight forward, arms extended, dropped with a crash and did not move again. Klosters rose, his smoking pistol in his hand. There was an acrid whiff of gunsmoke. I snatched Bierce’s revolver from my pocket.
I slammed it down on Klosters’s hand. He yelped and dropped his own weapon. He yelped again as I jammed the muzzle into his ribs.
“Tom!” Bierce called, as though I was a puppy who had misbehaved. “Tom!” Klosters stared at me with his catkiller eyes and his mouth open in a circle of pain, his right hand gripped in the other. I kicked his smoking gun under the chairs.
Lady Caroline had risen to stand looking down at her dead son. Beau moved to embrace her. She raised her chin, pointed her face to the ceiling, white as Bierce’s skull but so very beautiful. Marvins, holding a Navy .44, filled the doorway. Mammy Pleasant backed away from the body, crossing herself.