Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

by M. Louisa Locke

  Simon Frampton had written back immediately saying that there was an opening Friday, but that he would need to meet with her Wednesday afternoon to see if her “essence” would be compatible with those of the other members of the circle. According to the newspaper article she had read, Simon and Arabella Frampton hadn’t arrived in the States until 1876, three years after her husband John had wiped out her fortune and killed himself. Her father-in-law had been pretty successful in keeping that information out of the press, so she was hoping they wouldn’t suspect she wasn’t a well-to-do heiress, prime for the plucking.

  In any case, Annie felt sure her “essence” would be found very much acceptable once she dropped the name of her “good friends the Steins,” who were certainly wealthy enough to impress someone who was looking for a new group of people to fleece. She had said in her letter that she hoped to contact her parents, which seemed safe enough. However, at the interview she planned on playing up her status as both an orphan and grieving widow. First time John has actually been of use to me, she thought with some surprise.

  Annie calculated that two dead parents and a dead husband should give the Framptons enough to work with. She hoped they wouldn’t feel the need to investigate her further. The last thing she wanted was to have them sniffing around her neighbors or boarders for information, on the off chance that they would discover that Annie Fuller and Madam Sibyl were the same person.

  The late afternoon sun, which was dipping down towards the Twin Peaks, felt good on her back as she and Kathleen made their way east down Harrison. The south side of the street was a hodgepodge of small, well-maintained businesses, offering a miscellany of services. In this one block you could get your shoes shod, your watch repaired, your chairs caned, your teeth removed, and your thirst quenched. Across the street a wall of tall hedges obscured all but the top floors of what were clearly a series of stately mansions left over from Rincon Hill’s heyday.

  Coming to Fifth Street, Annie noticed a small puddle next to the curb, left over from yesterday’s shower, and she raised her skirts to nimbly skip over it, uttering, “Be careful” to Kathleen, who grinned and jumped over it as well.

  “That would have been a shame, ma’am,” Kathleen laughed.

  “I don’t know if Miss Millie would have forgiven me if I had splashed mud on this new dress the first time I wore it. She worked so hard getting the flounce at the bottom right. I wish fashion permitted day dresses to be a little shorter. It’s one thing to be able to sweep the floor with a long train if you are going to a ball, but city streets are another thing completely.”

  “Seems to me I remember that you were quite happy with short skirts at St Jo’s Ball when you were dancing with Mr. Nate Dawson,” Kathleen teased.

  “Now, Kathleen, you promised not to bring him up. And if I remember, Mr. Dawson did not at all approve of the length of my skirt that night.”

  Annie looked over and saw Kathleen biting her lower lip and continued, “That’s right, not a word. I know you and Mrs. O’Rourke don’t think I should have sent him off so quickly Monday evening. But really, the nerve of the man! He acted like a rude schoolboy the last time I saw him, then ran off down the peninsula. Not a word for nearly two months, and then he drops in, unannounced!”

  “But ma’am, he was visiting his parents,” Kathleen blurted out, and then put her hand over her mouth.

  “Whose ranch is in Santa Clara County, not Timbuktu. He could have written! He could have even taken the train back to the city and visited for a day if he wanted to see me badly enough. No. He should be happy I agreed to see him at all.”

  Monday night, when Kathleen had told her Nate was in the front parlor, all she had been able to think of was the last time they had met, in that very parlor, and how angry she had been then. She should have been angry Monday as well, but, to her surprise, her dominant emotion had been relief, and she’d been forced to admit how afraid she’d been that she would never see him again.

  When she’d entered the parlor and saw him standing there, his top hat and long overcoat accentuating his height, his deeply tanned skin, hawk nose and prominent cheekbones lending him a slightly dangerous quality, and his warm brown eyes pleading with her for forgiveness, she’d had to work hard not to run into his arms. But it seemed wrong not to make it clear to him that his behavior had hurt her. So, instead, she’d pretended to be angry and gotten no little satisfaction from watching his efforts at an apology.

  Then he’d made her laugh, and she knew she had better end his visit soon before she lost any of the high ground she had obtained. Consequently, she told him briefly about Miss Pinehurst’s request for help, asked if he could look into the Framptons on her behalf, pled tiredness, which was true, and then requested that they meet again on Saturday. She did hope he could help her with her investigations, but she also wanted more time to consider exactly how she felt about resuming her friendship with him. And she had refused to discuss those feelings with either Beatrice or Kathleen, who she knew would argue on his behalf.

  Looking over at Kathleen, whose lips were resolutely pressed together, she relented and said, “You know, I was hoping to wear this outfit when Mr. Dawson and I meet on Saturday, so it is doubly important to keep it clean. I hope that he will have had a chance to look into the Framptons. If he comes up with useful information, I may just forgive him.”

  Kathleen laughed.

  “Oh, my stars,” Annie exclaimed as they crossed Fifth Street. “What a difference a block makes!”

  On this stretch of Harrison, the small businesses had a decidedly melancholy air. Peeling paint, grimy windows, and boarded up doors provided a definite contrast to the prosperity in evidence the block before. When they had reached nearly the middle of the block, trying to find an address that wasn’t obscured, Kathleen stopped and pointed across the street.

  “Ma’am, you said the Framptons lived at 525 Harrison, didn’t you? It must be that large place in the center of the block across from us. It’s ever so fine! I didn’t think they would have such a grand place.”

  Kathleen was pointing at a large dark brown house, which was indeed an imposing edifice. This classic Italianate, with the usual flat roof supported by thick brackets, was topped by a short squat cupola, whose arched double windows gave the odd impression of eyes peeking out at the top of the house. The front doorway was framed on each side with narrow double windows, a pattern repeated in the three windows on the second story, and each window had buff-colored shutters that matched the color of the brackets and the cornices along all the edges of the house. Unlike her own home that sat cheek by jowl with its neighbors, this house sat gracefully in the middle of a large lot, set a bit back from the street, a carriage drive on the left and a garden on the right.

  My, the Framptons must be doing quite well to be able to afford such a house, Annie thought to herself. Such a shame that this prosperity has been built on the pain and delusion of men and women like Sukie Vetch!

  The brown and buff paint on the Framptons’ house looked fresh, in stark contrast to the paint on the rest of the houses on the block. The house to its left, although equal in size, had stripes of what must have been its original pale yellow paint alternating with the gray weathered boards, reminding her of a butterscotch tabby cat she had when she was a child. The slightly askew shutters, the missing shingles on the mansard roof, and the padlock and chain around a rusting front gate advertised this as an abandoned house. The house to the right of the Framptons’ was in better repair, and the smoke rising from its chimney testified to occupancy, but its landscaping had run amok. The house was covered with half-dead vines, tall weeds were cheerfully destroying the front walkway, and a row of shaggy firs menaced the fence between this house and the Framptons’ residence.

  Annie, checking to see that there wasn’t a wagon or carriage coming down the street, grabbed Kathleen’s gloved hand and pulled her across Harrison to stand at the foot of a short flight of steps that led to a gate in the low wrought iron
fence. She glanced over and saw Kathleen pat at the small straw hat sitting at a jaunty angle amidst her curls and then square her shoulders under the tight bodice of her neat herringbone wool dress, as if going into battle.

  “Kathleen, you look the perfect lady’s maid. You will puff up my consequence with the Framptons splendidly. Is the hat new? It is really quite fetching.”

  “Thank you, ma’am, I bought it with last month’s wages.” Kathleen smiled up at her and said, “Let’s go in before I lose my nerve.”

  As Annie pushed through the gate and walked toward the small porch at the entrance to the house, she noticed that on closer examination the front of the house revealed a slightly different picture of the Framptons’ prosperity. She could see the glossy brown paint had been hastily applied over the previous un-sanded layers, producing the texture of a scabrous reptile that would most likely begin to peel away with the first storm of winter. To her right, a break in the neatly trimmed hedge dividing the front yard from the side yard provided a glimpse into a garden badly gone to seed, a tangle of weeds and vines that were choking whatever flower beds had existed previously. Even the front door, while a lovely polished oak glowing in the afternoon sun, was marred by a series of long raw scratches above the brass door handle. Unbidden, she saw the image of a decaying corpse, cosmetically enlivened by the embalmer’s arts. Annie shivered as she raised her hand to pull on the doorbell.

  Chapter Seven

  “Mrs. Crindle, Physical and Test Medium, 681 Mission and Third. Correct information on stocks. Circles Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, 50c. Sittings, $1.” —San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

  “Mrs. Fuller, so pleased to make your acquaintance. Do have a seat. May Albert pour you some tea, or perhaps some sherry, before he goes?”

  Annie permitted Simon Frampton only a brief second to shake her hand before slipping free and turning towards the chair he had pointed out, saying, “No, thank you, Mr. Frampton, that will not be necessary.”

  Albert, an imposingly broad-shouldered, middle-aged man dressed in the formal livery of an upper-class butler, bowed slightly to her and pulled the chair back so she could sit down. After nodding her thanks, Annie sat, placing her small beaded purse in her lap before looking up at Mr. Frampton, who stood smiling down at her from the other side of an imposing mahogany desk.

  Simon Frampton was a surprise. As had been Albert. When Annie finished ringing the front doorbell, the last person she expected to greet her was a formal butler. She found herself wondering if they had brought Albert over from England with them, and, if so, if he had any other special duties beyond that of butler? And who calls the butler by their first name?

  Mr. Frampton, like Albert, revealed his origins in his British accent, but what surprised Annie was how his voice and demeanor quietly asserted that he was an upper-class English gentleman. She realized she had expected Simon Frampton to represent one or the other of the two kinds of Spiritualist impresarios she had encountered in Boston. There were the businessmen, whose waistcoats were always a little too flashy and a little too tight, since shopping the afterlife clearly had provided the cash for sartorial and gastronomical over-indulgence. Then there were the purported ministers or professors, who seemed determined to prove their ready access to a “higher plane” through the emaciated nature of their physique and the seediness of their apparel.

  Simon Frampton was entirely different. He was only of moderate height, and he was slim, yet conveyed an impression of strength. He wore a conservative but well-tailored black frock coat, with matching waistcoat and trousers, blindingly white starched collar and cuffs with heavy gold studs. The tasteful navy and burgundy paisley of his silk cravat offered the only hint of color.

  There was a sprinkle of gray at his temples, yet his neatly trimmed mustache and beard were quite as black and glossy as the rest of the full head of hair that framed regular features. In fact, on the surface, there was nothing remarkable about Simon Frampton, except the cultured tone of his voice and the intensity of his gaze.

  Annie held that gaze, and then looked down again at her lap, her heart pounding. As Madam Sibyl, she made a living by her ability to judge men. Her disastrous marriage had taught her the danger of resting that judgment on what a man wore or what he said. She had learned to dig deeper, gleaning information about the true nature of a person from the tilt of the head, the nervous tap of a finger, the odd habits of phrase, and the slight shift of the eyes. What she had never before encountered was a stare that conveyed such assurance and power. For a split second she had felt a physical pull so strong that she wasn’t sure she hadn’t actually leaned forward towards the man.

  “Dear Mrs. Fuller, don’t be nervous,” Frampton said, sitting down at the desk, “this interview will be completely painless, I assure you. It is really for your benefit. The spirits are such sensitive creatures that they will not tolerate any sort of disharmony. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that each circle be composed of like-minded souls.”

  Annie’s heart rate slowed. Good, he has misjudged my reaction as shyness. Of course that is how I should play this role, timid, easily flustered.

  “Oh, Mr. Frampton,” Annie glanced up and back down again, letting her voice catch slightly on the first word, “I am afraid I am feeling very unsettled. I’m not even sure why I wrote you. I happened to see your advertisement. Normally I never look at such things, but for some reason it called out to me. I felt compelled to write, as if my dear departed father were whispering in my ear.”

  Annie took another artificially short breath and looked up at Frampton, who continued to smile at her encouragingly. “Do you think that is possible? I have been so lost since his death. There was my husband. But, you see, John never understood the bond that I had with my father, and then he died too.” Annie paused, giving a small sigh.

  “Mrs. Fuller, you must believe that the bonds we have on earth are not lightly broken, even by death itself. Do let me get you some sherry, and we will have a comfortable chat.”

  As Frampton got up from behind the desk and went over to the sideboard, Annie took advantage of his turned back to glance around. When the butler, Albert, had ushered her into the library, her first impression had been polished wood gleaming in soft lamplight. Now she also saw that a set of dark brown velvet curtains covered the windows, and all the rest of the walls were filled with floor to ceiling bookshelves. A striking oriental carpet of vibrant greens and browns covered almost the entire floor, and Annie could feel its soft deep pile under her feet.

  I wonder if they brought the carpet with them from England as well? Annie had an absurd image of Albert walking off a ship’s gangplank, the rolled carpet on his shoulder. I can’t imagine it came with the house. It certainly fits with the overall impression of wealth and good breeding that Mr. Frampton is cultivating.

  Since Annie had been careful to cultivate a similar image for the parlor in which Madam Sibyl met her clients, she fully appreciated Frampton’s motives. She felt sure that a young woman like Sukie Vetch would have been suitably impressed.

  Frampton placed the sherry, in a delicate cut-glass goblet, in Annie’s hand, pulled a chair over, and sat across from her, their knees practically touching, saying, “Mrs. Fuller, you believe that it was your father, Mr. Edward Stewart, who guided you to us?”

  Annie took a small sip of the sherry, sending a small apology to Miss Hamilton, her English Literature teacher under whose tutelage she had taken the “temperance pledge” at the age of sixteen. She then put down the glass on the small table Frampton had placed at her side, saying, “Yes, I feel quite sure it was he. However, I am unclear why he should want to communicate with me now. He has been gone for over six years.”

  “If all goes as we hope, he will be able to tell you himself,” said Frampton, leaning over to take Annie’s hand, giving it a warm squeeze. “Now, why don’t you tell me a little bit about your father. Remember I only want to determine if the Friday circle will be right for you. I find that a person’s
memories of the departed reveal a great deal about whether they will feel comfortable in the presence of the other spirits attending a particular circle.”

  Annie let Frampton continue to caress her hand, glad that she had decided to keep her gloves on for this meeting. Then she pulled away and opened her purse to take out a handkerchief, which she used to dab at imaginary tears as she began to talk about her father.

  “Oh, my, I don’t know. He was a very serious man, always reading the paper and rushing off to business meetings when I was little. Then my mother became ill, and we moved to Los Angeles. Well, a ranch outside of Los Angeles. We had been living here in San Francisco before that. Those years on the ranch were wonderful. Father took me riding. Percy was my horse’s name, a bay. I had my own saddle, and father even let me go on roundup in the fall. Once there was a stampede; I was very frightened. But the little calves were ever so cunning. Mother would be quite cross when I got back, said I was turning into a hoyden. She was a schoolteacher before she married father, so she taught me my sums. I was good at math, not so good at spelling. Then she died.”

  Annie let her prattle stop at this point, again using her handkerchief to good effect. That should give him enough information to work on, she thought.

  “I am so sorry, Mrs. Fuller. How old were you when your mother passed?”

  “Twelve. I don’t remember much about it; I was here visiting my Aunt Agatha and Uncle Timothy when she died.” Annie paused, then pushed away that painful memory and continued to feed Frampton information, most of which he could easily verify if he had any sources among the San Francisco businessmen who knew her father. She hoped to keep him from feeling the need to dig any deeper in her past, or present.