Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

by M. Louisa Locke

  *****

  The girl stood looking at the smudged window, and frowned. She looked around the room until she found the basket of old rags, which she sorted carefully through until finding a soft square of flannel. She then went back to the window and began vigorously cleaning off the accumulated dust and spider webs from each pane. When one window was done, she moved to the next, slowly making her way around the room until all four sets of windows were clean of debris. She stood at the last window for a long time, staring out at the setting sun. Suddenly, she noticed the now filthy rag in her hand and dropped it as if it were on fire. Sinking down until she was sitting on the floor, she silently began to sob.

  Chapter Five

  Monday evening, October 13, 1879

  “ROOMS TO LET: 423 O’Farrell--HANDSOMELY FURNISHED sunny rooms, suite or single, with or without board.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

  “Annie, my dear, I can hardly believe that Miss Pinehurst, our own Miss Lucy, asked if you believed in ghosts. Then she wanted you to help her, to do what?” said Beatrice, a frown narrowing her clear blue eyes as she dried her hands on the white apron that went round her ample waist.

  Annie chuckled affectionately, feeling, as always, the sense of well-being she got from sitting in her own kitchen, speaking to her dearest friend. Beatrice O’Rourke had never quite lost the lilt of her birthplace in County Cork, even though she had arrived in America at age eighteen and immediately started working for Annie’s aunt and uncle as a maid-of-all-work. She later accompanied them in ’51 when they made the long, dangerous voyage around Cape Horn to get to San Francisco.

  Beatrice once told Annie of her decision to come west. “None of the other girls would go. But I wasn’t afraid. Besides, I was that set on finding Mr. O’Rourke, who’d gone overland to the gold fields the year before. The fool said he would send for me when ‘he made his pile,’ but I wasn’t willing to wait. He might’ve died out here. Plenty did those first years. Mercy, I might never have known what happened to him. Your aunt, she was so kind. The whole trip she kept saying he’d be here waiting for me. Wouldn’t you know, second day we were in town I stopped a constable to ask the way to a dry goods store, and it turned out to be my Peter’s older brother, Andrew. Such a scamp, but bless him, he was the one who convinced Peter to join the police. I still says, no matter what happened, he was safer as an officer of the law than if he’d stayed in those mine fields.”

  Annie admired Beatrice’s lack of bitterness over the death of her husband ten years ago, when Peter O’Rourke had been killed in a gun battle with a local Barbary Coast gang. Widowed after fifteen years of marriage, she had returned to work for Annie’s aunt and uncle as cook and general housekeeper. When Annie came to San Francisco to take possession of the house when her aunt died, Beatrice had taken her under her wing, helping her set up and run the boardinghouse. Though over sixty, Beatrice managed to do all the cooking for nine boarders, supervise the one servant, Kathleen, and be a friend to Annie, all with unfailing good sense and humor.

  “So, dearie, are you going to tell me what Miss Lucy wanted with you, or are you going to just sit laughing at me?” Beatrice said, as she sat down at the kitchen table, groaning a bit from the hours of being on her feet.

  “Oh, Bea, it isn’t really a laughing matter,” Annie replied. “I know you remember when her nephew, Charlie, died this summer.”

  “Yes, it happened the first week in June,” Beatrice nodded. “Miss Lucy had just come to the kitchen for a cup of coffee when Kathleen brought down the message. She’d been staying nights at her sister’s to help nurse the boy, then coming home to change for work. Such a shame, she had just left his bedside when he must’ve died. She didn’t cry out when she read the note. More like turned to stone. It was terrible to see. She surely loved that boy as much as if he were her own.”

  Looking over at the older woman, who was busy paring apples for tomorrow’s fruit compote, Annie knew her friend had a personal reason for understanding how important Charlie had been to Miss Pinehurst. Beatrice and her husband hadn’t had any children of their own. However, with four brothers and three sisters between them, Beatrice now had enough nieces and nephews to fill a quarter of the pews in St. Mary’s, and she mothered every one of them.

  Annie continued, “It appears that, in her grief, Miss Pinehurst’s sister started going to a trance medium who claimed to have contacted Charlie,” going on to repeat the details Miss Pinehurst had poured out to her the day before.

  “Heavens be, who are these Framptons?” asked Beatrice, scowling as if the name referred to some dockside gang.

  “Simon and Arabella Frampton are a married couple who are originally from England. They arrived in San Francisco last April and have taken up permanent residence here. They seem to have been quite successful since, like Madam Sibyl, they don’t take walk-in business. All day today, between clients, I have been looking through back newspaper issues and my clippings. The Chronicle did a long article on them in May, part of a series one of their reporters wrote on Spiritualism in San Francisco. I’d remembered reading the series because he’d not been very complimentary about clairvoyants and fortunetellers. Thank goodness he didn’t mention Madam Sibyl. The Framptons, on the other hand, came off pretty favorably in the story he did on them. The reporter, Anthony Pierce, wrote that Simon Frampton was a ‘world-renowned mesmerist’ and his ‘lovely wife, Arabella,’ was an ‘unusually skilled test medium.’”

  “What in the world does that mean? She tests what?” Beatrice asked Annie.

  Annie laughed. “A person tests the medium, not the other way round. A test medium is supposed to be able to give answers to questions that only the departed could know, proving they are indeed in communication with the spirit world.”

  She continued in a more serious tone. “From what Miss Pinehurst told me, this is how the Framptons convinced Sukie Vetch that Arabella was communicating with her son since the spirit knew the pet names she had used for her Charlie, as well as his favorite toy.”

  Beatrice put down her paring knife and tilted her head. “Gracious me. No wonder the poor dear believed them.”

  “Now, it isn’t as strange as you might think,” Annie said. “The nurse who brought Sukie to the Framptons was probably working with them, getting a small ‘gift’ for every new client she brought to them. She could have given the Framptons all sorts of information about Charlie, which would convince Sukie that she was really communicating with her son.”

  “That’s terrible! The nurse, you say? I hope you told Miss Lucy to have her brother-in-law fire that wicked woman this instant! Now I understand why Miss Lucy told you about all this. How clever of her to realize you would know what to do. They need to get rid of the nurse. But, first they need to get her to admit to the shenanigans she has been up to, threaten to tell the police. I can tell you, they don’t take kindly to this sort of swindle,” Beatrice said, taking up her knife again and slicing each quarter of an apple with ferocious intensity.

  “I wish it were that simple. Mr. Vetch did fire Mrs. Hoskins as soon as he realized the role she had played, but that was over two months ago, and his wife refuses even to consider that the Framptons are frauds. Miss Pinehurst said they have tried everything.”

  Annie stopped speaking, interrupted by the bell that signaled that there was someone at the front door. She looked over at the clock on the wall and said, “It’s past eight. Who could that be at this hour? Mr. Harvey probably forgot his key again. Isn’t this about the time he comes home? Well, Kathleen will get it.”

  Beatrice stood up and took the apple parings over to dump them in the waste-bucket, saying over her shoulder, “If it is Mr. Harvey, Kathleen will give him what for. Last Monday he forgot his key, and she was elbow deep in soapy water when he rang the bell. Poor man, I swear he works the longest hours. I heard him go out before seven this morning. He can’t be making all that much clerking in a dry goods store.”

  Annie nodded. “He
told me he hopes that old Mr. Johnson will eventually take him in as partner, then he could afford to bring his wife and children down to San Francisco to live with him. I understand his wife suffers from some sort of lung problem, and she and the two boys live with her folks in Sacramento. Such a shame. Mr. Harvey must miss those two boys terribly.” That melancholy reflection turned Annie’s thoughts back to Miss Pinehurst and her sister and brother-in-law, and how much they all must be missing Charlie.

  She sighed and said, “Beatrice, I wish I knew for sure I could help Miss Pinehurst.”

  “But Annie, dear, I still don’t understand what more she figures you can do. You’ll not be telling me she thinks that you would have any truck with one of those charlatans? ‘A penny to shake hands with your sainted mother.’ Such foolishness.”

  “Oh, Bea! That is exactly what Miss Pinehurst thinks. She feels my experience as Madam Sibyl makes me particularly suited to prove to her sister that the Framptons are frauds. Miss Pinehurst seems to believe in the old adage that ‘It takes a thief to catch a thief.’”

  “Well, I never! It is certainly a shame if her sister’s being made a fool of, but that don’t mean Miss Pinehurst has the right to go insulting you.”

  Annie smiled at the picture of outrage Beatrice made, her arms all akimbo, her blue eyes snapping. Then Kathleen, Annie’s maid-of-all-work, burst into the kitchen, dancing in excitement.

  She sketched a brief curtsy, shoved back some of her dark brown curls, which had escaped from her cap during her precipitous rush down the stairs, and said, “Ma’am, you’ll never guess who’s come to visit. I put him in the front parlor, thinking you would want some privacy. Mrs. Fuller, it’s Mr. Dawson come to call!”

  Damn, she is more beautiful than I remembered, Nate thought, as Annie entered the parlor. The whole time he’d been away he’d tried to picture the exact shade of brown of her eyes, and now he remembered that they changed, depending on her mood. In the lamplight, against her skin, which was as pale as old ivory, her eyes looked coal black, and angry.

  Bowing, Nate took a deep breath and said, “Mrs. Fuller, Annie, I am so sorry to call this late. I arrived back in town night before last, and I hoped to come yesterday, but my Uncle Frank has kept me completely tied up with business . . . never mind my excuses, I just hope you don’t mind the late hour.”

  Annie gave him a chilly smile and said, “Mr. Dawson, please don’t apologize. If your uncle needed your expert legal advice, I have no doubt it was over a serious matter.”

  Nate’s stomach clenched. She clearly hadn’t forgiven him for suggesting his work was more important than hers. He fell back on the polite formula of strangers, saying, “I hope you have been in good health, and Mrs. O’Rourke? I almost came to your place right from the train station on Saturday, thinking about those wonderful oat cookies she made for me last time I visited.”

  “Mrs. O’Rourke is well, although I am afraid that she is finding the long hours standing in the kitchen more and more difficult. She won’t admit it, but I can see she hurts at the end of the day. I wouldn’t be surprised if she is downstairs right now, making up a batch of those cookies for you,” Annie said in a slight tone of disgust. “She has missed having you to cook for.”

  “And Miss Kathleen, is she still being courted by both the butcher’s boy and Patrick McGee?” asked Nate, feeling as if he were leaping from one conversational stone to another, hoping not to fall.

  “Oh, yes, although I would say that the butcher’s boy is a very distant second at this point. I think she strings him along just to make Mr. McGee jealous. Shall we sit by the fire? The night has grown rather chilly,” Annie remarked, nodding to the two chairs next to the fireplace.

  “If you wish,” Nate replied, relieved at this sign that she expected their conversation to be of some duration. After having sat down, he searched for something else neutral to say. Finally returning to that old standby, the weather, he said, “Such a change from yesterday, when we were having a touch of Indian summer. My uncle tells me that the fall has been unusually mild.”

  “Yes, yesterday I took the new Sutter Street line out to Laurel Hill, to visit Matthew’s grave, and the grounds were awash with people picnicking.” Annie looked up at him and said, “But then you haven’t been in town, have you? So how was the weather down the peninsula? And your parents have been well, I hope? They seem to have kept you very busy this fall.”

  Nate knew it was now or never if he hoped to explain his failure to write.

  He leaned forward. “Please, Annie. I know I should have written. And yes, I was busy, but that is no excuse. You have every right to be angry with me. I just felt like such a fool after the last time I saw you, I . . . nothing I wrote down seemed adequate.”

  “Nate Dawson, don’t be ridiculous. You are a lawyer, you make your living communicating. Don’t tell me you couldn’t write and at least tell me how you were doing?” Annie said, glaring at him.

  “That’s just it. I didn’t feel I could write to you about the weather, or the number of new calves; I had to try to explain why I acted so childishly that last night. But everything sounded like a legal brief.”

  “Well, you were behaving like a child.”

  “I know. It was unfair of me to be angry with you because you were working, after I had had to cancel because of work myself. I was angry with my uncle for ruining our plans earlier in the week and disappointed, so I took it out on you.”

  There was a pause, and Nate looked at Annie, hoping to see some sign of softening. She was staring down at her hands, frowning.

  She glanced up at him and said, “And the Miss Moffets! You were so rude to those dear souls.”

  Nate, frustrated, blurted out, “Hang the Miss Moffets; I was rude to you, and for that I apologize.” He pressed his lips together and looked away, upset that he had let Annie goad him into losing his temper.

  There was a very long silence, and then he heard Annie say, “My goodness, Mr. Dawson. Your language, sir. I am shocked!”

  Startled at this display of outraged femininity, he looked up and caught sight of dimples peeping out from either side of her mouth, as Annie appeared to be trying, unsuccessfully, to stifle her laughter. In that moment, the iron band that had been constricting Nate’s heart simply vanished.

  Chapter Six

  Wednesday afternoon, October 15, 1879

  “Spiritualism—Mrs. Eggert Aiken, trance and test medium, 313 Geary Street, Sittings daily from 9A.M. to 9 P.M. Séances Sunday, Tuesday, Friday at 8 P.M.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

  “Ma’am, I’m terribly glad you asked me to come with you to see these Framptons. I can’t but think that with such shady characters, having a respectable maid with you will make sure they mind their manners.”

  Annie smiled down at her maid, Kathleen Hennessey, who walked beside her. The young woman was nearly eighteen, but so petite you could mistake her for a child. Annie knew those looks were deceptive. In fact, from what she knew of her history, Kathleen had never had the luxury of being a child and the slight frame contained a tough, tireless dynamo who kept Annie’s home spotless and her boarders very satisfied.

  The two of them had taken a Central Rail horse car, getting on at Taylor, just a half a block from the boarding house on O’Farrell Street. The car crossed Market and went down Sixth. They got off at Harrison, the street where Simon and Arabella Frampton lived. She could understand why the couple might have chosen to live in the Rincon Hill district, which was now a far cry from the fashionable district it once was, before the Second Street cut had decimated the neighborhood and sent all the nabobs north to the heights. Some of the streets still clung to their old glory, and it was well serviced by both the Central line they were on and the South Park line that went down Third, making it easy for clients from practically anywhere in the city to get to them.

  Kathleen said, “Ma’am, while I’m glad to accompany you, I’m just not sure what you expect of me.”

 
“What I am hoping is that someone in the household will try to pump you for information while I am having my interview with Simon Frampton, who seems to be the business manager of the operation. What I want you to do, if that happens, is make it clear I have money, that I am gullible, and that some of my boarders might be good pigeons for the plucking as well.”

  “Oh, ma’am, to be sure they won’t have any trouble believing you’re a woman of wealth, your new navy polonaise is that elegant. The Miss Moffets did a fine job. But what if they ask me personal information, I dunno, maybe about your past? What should I say?” said Kathleen, tilting her head to the side.

  “You can tell them I’m a widow, that you believe my mother died when I was young, and that my father also passed fairly recently. That’s no more than I will be telling them myself. But remember, if you get a chance, I want you to hint that I had a child who died young. All the other information is true, of course, and I suspect that Simon Frampton and his wife Arabella have already spent the day finding out as much as they can about me, and my father, Edward Stewart. My father’s reputation in this town is still pretty well known, and I made sure to mention his name in the letter I wrote asking for an appointment. However, it is with this fictional dead child I hope to trap them. If I can get them to produce the spirit of a child, when none existed, maybe I can use that to convince Miss Pinehurst’s sister that they are frauds.”

  “Yes,” Kathleen nodded earnestly. “I will try to tell someone you had a little boy that died, just like Miss Lucy’s nephew.”

  Annie thought about Kathleen’s questions and hoped that she was not depending too much on the young woman. She was nervous enough about her own coming interview with Simon Frampton. She had written a fairly long letter, begging him to accommodate her attendance at his Friday night séance. She needed to avoid attending the same evenings as Sukie Vetch, who attended both Tuesday and Thursday evening séances, since she might realize that Mrs. Fuller and her sister’s boardinghouse owner were one and the same. Annie currently only had one regular client scheduled for Friday nights, at six, so she wouldn’t have difficulty attending the evening “circle,” as Frampton called it, at eight.