Bloody Lessons: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

by Locke, M. Louisa

  Nate shrugged. He’d been upset at first, but how could he complain when he was the one who got her into this investigation in the first place? Did he really expect Annie to play a passive role, content to rummage around in file cabinets? He said, “I just worry that if Buckley is the one behind the letters, one of his hoodlums will show up.”

  “That’s why Hoffmann chose the Chemistry lab as the meeting place,” explained Annie. “There is a small pass-through room between the lab and the classroom where the chemicals are kept locked away. It’s big enough for Emory, Blaine, and Hoffmann to stand in and overhear what is going on, and they can be in the room with me in an instant if they feel I am in danger.”

  Nate knew she was right. Emory and Hoffmann were both tall, strong men, and Blaine looked like he could take care of anything, bare-handed, so they would be able to protect her as well as he could. But he wished it wasn’t going to be Annie taking the greatest risk. Laura’s question to him reverberated in his mind. Would he ever ask her to give up her career or an investigation? He’d said no, without hesitating. Now was the time to prove to himself that he was telling the truth.

  Thinking of Laura, Nate said, “You didn’t tell her about this afternoon’s plan to trap the anonymous letter writer, did you?”

  Annie laughed. “No. I didn’t want her worrying. One Dawson’s furrowed brow is enough for me!” She reached over and ran her hand over his forehead. She then continued, “If this works today and we find that the persons involved had nothing to do with the attack on Laura, we must concentrate on figuring out if Buck was responsible.”

  “I know. I promise I will seek out Seth Timmons tomorrow, see what he’s learned,” Nate said. “Where is Laura?”

  “She’s out for the afternoon with Barbara, Jamie, and Ian. They went up to North Beach to Meiggs Wharf to watch the Italian fishermen bring in their catch. They promised to bring back some fresh fish for supper. Would you be able to get back here by seven and join us?”

  “I don’t know if I can get back by then. When do you expect to get home, given that you’ve staggered the times you asked each person to come to the school?”

  “Blaine insisted that I invite Russell to come first at three o’clock, then Della at three-thirty. So we could ‘get them out of the way.’ I invited Ferguson for four o’clock, and then Frazier a half an hour later, so I can’t imagine I won’t be home by seven.”

  “What are you going to do if someone shows up but seems to be innocent?” This had bothered Nate about the plan from the beginning, worrying about the legal ramifications of making a false accusation. Even worse, someone could accuse Annie of blackmail.

  “Well, I decided to address the note to ‘the anonymous letter writer’ and to say that they needed to come to ensure their ‘actions do not result in being prosecuted for libel.’ I figured that a person who wasn’t involved at all would either ignore the note or check with someone in authority about what to do. I doubt they would just show up.”

  “And you think the threat of libel will cause the guilty party to show up?”

  “Yes. If only to find out who sent the note and what information they had. I didn’t want to say anything about exposing them because that sounded too much like blackmail.”

  “Smart woman.” Nate’s attention was arrested by the quarter chime on the mantel clock. “Look, I have to go. I’ll get back here as soon as I can, hopefully be here before you get back. But let me take you out to dinner. Something special for Valentine’s Day. Something more than these sad flowers.”

  Annie put the nosegay up to her cheek again and said, “Don’t you speak ill of my violets. I love them. Now go. Don’t keep Cranston waiting.”

  Nate pulled her into his arms and hugged her tightly, then he said, “Be safe,” and left before he changed his mind and stayed.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Saturday afternoon, February 14, 1880

  "ADELPHI THEATER––"Uninterrupted success of the Great Local Drama: Female Detective, Miss Mollie Williams in Five Different Characters." ––San Francisco Chronicle, 1880

  At slightly after two in the afternoon, the winter sun had already begun its downward slide toward the Pacific, casting dark shadows along the southern side of Bush Street. Yet the day had been warm enough that Annie decided to wear just her light shawl over her brown wool polonaise. She assumed that one of the gentlemen would escort her home in a cab, so even if the fog rolled in she should be fine. Maybe she would get to ride home again in Blaine’s comfortable carriage as she had on Wednesday.

  She desperately hoped everything would be resolved satisfactorily today. There were too many people who could be hurt if all this didn’t go well. Barbara had been wonderful about not asking any questions, but she must be worried about what would happen if her qualifications to teach came under question. And none of this could be pleasant for Mr. Hoffmann. Even if he were blameless, would the parents of his students, or his wife for that matter, believe him if the rumors about him became public? She wasn’t as worried about Mrs. Anderson, who she suspected would be shielded by Mr. Emory from any negative financial consequences. Yet if scandal did erupt, the flirtatious widow might find it more difficult to find male sponsors in the future. And Kitty Blaine? Annie would do almost anything to try to protect that lovely young woman, and she hated to think what it would do to Laura if her newest friend had to leave town because her reputation was ruined.

  Going up the steps to the school, Annie saw Hoffmann waiting for her in the open doorway. He ushered her in, saying, “I am going to keep the doors locked until two-thirty when Blaine and Emory are to arrive. We don’t want some student or teacher wandering in by mistake.”

  “Quite right,” Annie replied. As they walked up the stairs to the third floor, she said, “Are you as nervous as I am?”

  Hoffmann paused and said, “I don’t know whether I am more nervous that no one will show up and this whole thing will drag on or that some tough of Buckley’s will turn up to say that his boss has taken all the accusations to the papers.”

  “Oh, don’t even think that,” Annie said. “I do believe that our best chance of success lies in my appearing confident that we have proof that this is a coordinated smear campaign and that all the targeted people are cooperating. That’s why I asked Mr. Blaine to give me a copy of the letter he received about his daughter. That, along with the copies of the letters we already had from Mr. Emory and a couple of other notes that have come into my possession, should make our letter writer think twice about acting once they see the evidence we have.”

  “Well, I must say you are a brave young woman, and I am very grateful to you for doing this.” Hoffmann continued to lead the way up the stairs.

  When they got to the second floor landing, Annie stopped and said, “Do you mind if we take a look at Della Thorndike’s room, see if there is anything in her desk that might implicate her? And does Mr. Russell have any sort of file cabinet or anything at Girls’ High that he uses for his classes?”

  “Russell just brings his materials with him in his satchel. But I happen to know he has been using Della’s classroom for his language classes and his Greek study group since she is teaching in the Normal classroom most of the time.”

  Annie knew that the most likely candidate was Ferguson, working alongside his sister to curry favor with the Democrats. This is certainly what Blaine and Emory expected. But she just couldn’t get rid of the thought that Della was involved in some fashion, even if just as the conduit of information to Ferguson through his sister or toRussell. She was getting as bad as Laura, letting a personal bias against someone cloud her judgment. Maybe there would finally be some concrete evidence in the classroom.

  Hoffmann used his keys to open up Della’s classroom. Located on the south side of the building, the room had enough sunlight coming in from the tall windows that they didn’t need to turn up the gaslights. When they got to the desk at the front of the room, they found it was locked.

  Hoffman
n swore under his breath, revealing to Annie just how anxious he was. She wondered if he’d told his wife anything about the trouble he was in.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “These desks all work on a few common keys. Our biggest concern is keeping the students from rifling them, not other teachers. I have several extra keys in my office. I’ll get them.”

  “Splendid,” Annie replied. “While you do, I’m going to look in the cabinet over there. We do have time for this, don’t we?” She looked at her pocket watch and saw it was only five after two, twenty-five minutes until Emory and Blaine were scheduled to arrive.

  Hoffmann nodded and sprinted out the door. In the classroom where she’d been teaching, the cabinet was filled with graph paper, protractors, some extra math texts, and odd wooden geometrical shapes that she assumed Hoffmann used for his geometry classes. The cabinet in Della’s room held a shelf of English Literature textbooks, extra pens, a rolled up map of England, a plaster bust of Shakespeare, and some reams of composition paper. She remembered that Laura had brought home some paper she found at the City of Paris store to check against the paper used for Hattie’s notes. While they’d been disappointed to discover the lines were spaced differently, Annie had noted that the paper for Hattie’s anonymous notes all contained a dark black spot near the right hand corner, as if someone had carelessly let a ink pen rest on the paper long enough for the ink to bleed through.

  Pulling the top ream of paper out into the light, she felt a spurt of triumph when she saw a similar dark spot. She opened the folder of anonymous letters she had brought with her and removed Hattie’s notes. When placed side by side, it was obvious they had come from this same ream of paper. Proof that someone who had access to this room had written the notes to Hattie.

  When Hoffmann returned and Annie showed him what she found, she cautioned him, saying, “You know, Mrs. Washburn, Andrew Russell, and Della all could have taken the paper from this cabinet, so this doesn’t prove which one was the anonymous letter writer. But it does indicate we are on the right track.”

  Looking for additional evidence, they turned to the desk. After several tries, Hoffmann hit upon the key that opened up the drawers. In the middle drawer, they found nothing but pens and pencils, erasers, chalk, and bookmarks that looked like gifts from students, and the side drawer held old student papers and a stack of grade books. Hoffmann showed her some heavier bond paper, which did look similar to the paper that had been used for the letter to Blaine, but it didn’t have the same water mark, so it wasn’t a match.

  “Well, it really would have been too good to be true to find additional proof, and I still have difficulty believing that Miss Thorndike is directly involved,” said Hoffmann.

  “Conversely, if she is the letter writer, it might mean she is clever enough not to keep any incriminating materials at work. At least we have the composition paper. For a person with a guilty conscience, that might be all it will take to get a confession.”

  Hoffmann locked the desk, and they went on up to the third floor. As he opened the door to the Chemistry lab, he noted, “It’s nearly two-thirty. Go on and check out the room, and I will go down to wait for Blaine and Emory. I hope they will be on time.”

  Annie walked into the laboratory. The room was large and filled with four rows of tall tables, their centers crowded with glass beakers in stands, various metal implements she didn’t know the names of, and scales and weights. A sharp tang of chemicals tickled her nose. She saw the door to the pass-through was open, so she went and looked in. There was a little light coming from the laboratory and the adjoining classroom, but most of the narrow room was nothing but shadows and the dark shapes of cabinets. The chemical smell was even stronger here, and she hoped that Blaine, Emory, and Hoffmann wouldn’t have to stay closed up in the room too long. She also hoped they would be able to hear what was being said with the door just slightly ajar. She would test this with Hoffmann and the other men when they got here.

  Walking back into the chemistry laboratory, Annie put the folder on the end of the center-most table. Her hands shook, her mouth felt dry, and the chemical smell began to make her feel slightly faint. Turning towards the windows, she worked to unlatch and open one of them a crack, and then she took several deep breaths of fresh air.

  “I told you Mrs. Fuller was behind this. She’s nothing but a blackmailer. And you saw Hoffmann leave the building. He’s in it with her. I’m sure of it.”

  Annie swirled around to see Della Thorndike and Andrew Russell standing at the door to the laboratory.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Late Saturday afternoon, February 14, 1880

  "William Zimmerman, teacher of German in the Boys' High School...was arrested yesterday on the charge of libel on the complaint of George Schwartz. The libel was alleged to have been committed in sending anonymous letters to the Investigating Committee of the Board of Education."––San Francisco Chronicle 1880

  Annie repressed her sense of triumph in seeing Della Thorndike and Andrew Russell in the doorway. She’d been right in her suspicions! Now the hard work began, getting them to confess to writing the letters and agree to stop. And where in Heaven’s name is Hoffmann, and why did Della say he left the building? Annie needed to guide the conversation carefully, hoping Hoffmann had seen Della and Russell arrive early and was out intercepting Blaine and Emory so they wouldn’t give themselves away as they made their way upstairs.

  Taking a deliberate breath to steady herself, she said, “Please, Miss Thorndike, Mr. Russell, do come in. What can I do for you?”

  Della walked determinedly into the room and announced in a stern school-teacher voice, “Mrs. Fuller, don’t play games with us. You know very well why we are here. We are here to make it clear to you that you and Hoffmann and your other confederates will not get away with your threats.”

  Della was dressed as usual in an exquisitely tailored suit, the shades of sky-blue in her tweed wool jacket and satin underskirt highlighting the odd pale-blue color of her eyes. Her dyed kid gloves, the small, fancifully decorated hat, and her sleek blonde hair added to the general impression of competent femininity. The blotches of pink staining her cheeks were the only sign she wasn’t in complete command of herself.

  Russell, on the other hand, with ink on his shirt front, a book stretching out the pocket of his wrinkled jacket, and his badly cut hair, looked wind-blown and thoroughly confused. He muttered, “Now Della, please, I don’t understand why you keep insisting that Tom Hoffmann is involved in…whatever this is, and I am barely acquainted with this Mrs. Fuller, so why would she be threatening me?”

  Annie decided to ignore him and addressed Della, saying, “Miss Thorndike, please enlighten me. In what fashion have I threatened either you or Mr. Russell?”

  The pink on her cheeks fading, Della smiled as if Annie had handed her a present. “Don’t pretend ignorance, Mrs. Fuller. Dorthea Anderson told me you were hired to teach at Girls’ High as a pretense to spy on us. I assume when you found nothing, you decided to send both Andrew and me letters, threatening us with libel. Did you think you would make a little money on the side? Do the people who hired you even know you and Hoffmann are doing this?”

  What a fool Mrs. Anderson is. Annie prayed she hadn’t ruined everything, but she knew she needed to tread even more carefully since Della had been forewarned. Producing a smile of her own, she said, “Miss Thorndike, what I don’t understand is, why are you here? Did you receive a letter addressed to you?”

  Della pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and walked towards Annie, waving it. “Here it is, Mrs. Fuller. Shall I read it to you? It says, ‘Please come to the Chemistry Room at Girls’ High at 3 p.m to ensure your actions do not result in being prosecuted for libel.’ Now tell me you didn’t write this and it wasn’t meant as a threat.”

  Annie reached out and took the letter from Della, purposely knocking the rack of glass beakers beside her as she did, trying to cover up the slight noise she’d heard to her left. A noise
she desperately hoped was the sound of Hoffmann and the other two men moving into the room next door.

  “Actually, neither I nor Mr. Hoffmann wrote it,” Annie replied, while internally congratulating herself for having the foresight to ask Kathleen pen the short note for her, although why it was important not to lie to this woman, she couldn’t say. Pretending to look at the letter, she asked, “Why do you insist the letter was addressed to you? It says, ‘Dear Anonymous Letter Writer.' Did you write any anonymous letters?”

  “No, I did not! I…”

  “Then I don’t see that there is any reason for you to be here,” Annie interrupted.

  Della was momentarily flustered. Leaving the note in Annie’s hand, she walked back towards Russell, who’d been following their conversation with a puzzled look on his face.

  “However, before you go,” Annie said, “I do have a question. Why did you tell me that it was Mr. Hoffmann who thought Mrs. Anderson was the best candidate for her job when it was actually you who objected to the other candidate, Frazier?”

  Della whipped back around to face her. “That is not true. Mr. Hoffmann would have hired Mrs. Anderson no matter what I said because all he is interested in is currying favor with members of the school board.”

  “And how would the hiring of Dorthea Anderson curry favor? Isn’t she qualified for the position?”

  “No, she is not. Everyone knows that Irving Emory is her special friend.” Della shot back.

  “Really? Mr. Russell, did you know of this special relationship between Mr. Emory and the Girls’ High art teacher? Or is it possible that you heard this piece of gossip from your friend Miss Thorndike and decided to use it in a letter to the other school board members?”

  Russell just shook his head and said, “Art teacher? Mrs. Anderson? I barely know her. I don’t know what you are talking about.”