Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

by M. Louisa Locke

  Nate took her by the arm, giving it a squeeze, and said, “Good idea. These fellows deserve our full attention. My sister Laura told me the last time we visited there are at least fifty varieties of freshwater fish in these tanks. Unfortunately, she felt the need to read off the name of every single one, in Latin, just to annoy me.”

  For the next three-quarters of an hour, Annie and Nate walked slowly through the exhibit, peering into all of its sixteen tanks. Annie noticed that Nate was taking full advantage of the limited light and cool temperatures in the building to keep his arm around her shoulders. As he regaled her with stories about his sister, who had just graduated from San Jose Normal School and was teaching for the first time, she realized that one of the reasons she was attracted to Nate was his obvious affection for and pride in his sister.

  When they eventually made their way out of the aquarium, Annie asked Nate the time, surprised when he said it was just past five. She suggested they have dinner at the Gardens restaurant before heading home, and he agreed with flattering alacrity.

  Annie noticed as Nate took off his overcoat at the restaurant that his suit jacket seemed a bit tight about his shoulders, and she imagined him digging postholes and wrangling steers all fall. This prompted her to inquire after his visit with his parents.

  Nate seemed to hesitate, then he said, “I always enjoy the time spent outdoors, a good break from my usual desk work. However, the visit was . . . less satisfying than usual.” He then told her about how his father had handed over the running of the ranch to his younger brother, Billy.

  “Is he to inherit the ranch?” Annie asked, then she said, “I’m sorry, that was none of my business.”

  “No, that’s quite all right. Yes, it has always been understood Billy would get the ranch. My inheritance was the money to go to college and law school, and I have never minded that. It’s just . . . well, growing up Billy always felt the need to challenge me. He had to ride farther, faster, harder than me, be the better man with the rope . . . lift a bale of hay by himself, that sort of thing. Stupid really. Seemed like every time I came home, first from boarding with Uncle Frank while I was in high school, then after getting my bachelor’s from Western Reserve, and the last time when I returned from Harvard, we would get into a fist fight.” Nate sighed.

  “Does that still happen?” Annie asked, fascinated by this new insight into Nate.

  “No, Pa put an end to it a good few years back. He could see that I was having more and more difficulty. I mean when we were young, I would let Billy win. What else could I do? He is four years younger than me, my little brother. But by the time he was sixteen I could either really hurt him, or let myself get beat up pretty badly. Fool boy doesn’t know his own strength.”

  “So what was the problem this year? Did you fight again?”

  “No, on the surface everything was fine. It was me. I didn’t mind working side by side with Billy, when Pa was giving the orders. Just didn’t like Billy bossing me around. He enjoyed it too much. Don’t get me wrong, Billy’s a fine man, and he’s doing a great job with the ranch. He’s been working to shift the operations from cattle to orchards and truck farming, which seems to be the future for the Santa Clara valley. I just didn’t like being his hired hand.”

  Nate paused for a second, then continued. “I guess I felt like I had gone from the frying pan into the fire. First Uncle Frank bossing me around, treating me like a first year law clerk, then my pipsqueak little brother telling me how to throw a rope.” Nate sighed again, and Annie fought a desire to lean over and pat him on the shoulder.

  The waiter came with their orders, and Annie thought it might be a good time to change the subject, so she asked after Nate’s mother and laughed as he described Billy’s very pregnant wife Violet following his mother around like a puppy.

  Wiping his mouth with his napkin, Nate leaned back when they had both finished eating and said, “Well, Annie, I think it is time you told me a little more about what got you so upset at that séance last night. I hope you noticed I didn’t say a word about your decision to start investigating again, which shows remarkable restraint on my part, given what happened last time. But you need to tell me exactly what your plans are. I will be glad to help, but not if you leave me in the dark.”

  Annie felt her temper flare, but then she took a deep breath and let the anger go. She had asked him for help, and it was reasonable for him to want more information. When she looked up and saw how anxiously he was examining her face, she chuckled. “Oh, Nate, I suppose I should thank you for not lecturing me about minding my own business. As you might guess I have already gotten a variation on that theme from Beatrice and Esther. Kathleen, on the other hand, is quite excited, and I do believe she is reading that series of short stories about the Pinkertons that came out last year, looking for tips on undercover investigations.”

  “Heaven help us, I am not sure the Framptons know what they’re facing,” Nate said. “But, back to my point, what upset you last night and who is this young girl you mentioned?”

  Annie told him everything she had learned about Evie May, her extraordinary talents, and her odd mother. “She is some sort of chameleon. Kathleen said when she met her she acted like a young woman in her twenties. On Friday I saw her transform, pin front of my eyes, from a young girl, supposedly Judge Babcock’s daughter, to an older woman, who said she was my mother.

  And then she turned into a six-year-old girl, but I’m not ready to tell him about Maybelle or that I thought she might be the spirit of my own daughter.

  “Judge Babcock? Judge Zebulon Babcock?” said Nate.

  “Yes, he is a permanent member of the Friday séance. That’s why I asked you about him. Do you know him?

  “No, I don’t. He’s not from San Francisco. But Uncle Frank remembered there was a Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Zebulon Babcock in the forties and fifties, and I was able to find a few old-timers who knew of him. There’s this saloon that is frequented by members of the legal profession, and round about lunchtime you can find four or five retired lawyers and judges who play checkers there and tell stories about the good old days. I stopped by and asked if anyone had heard of Judge Babcock being in town. Two of them spoke up and said he had arrived a few months ago. Staying at the Baldwin Hotel.

  “Did they know why he was in town?” Annie asked.

  “It did sound strange at the time, but now it makes more sense. Judge Fullerton said he had heard rumors Babcock had decided that some girl was the reincarnation of his daughter and had followed her to San Francisco. Fullerton seemed to think Babcock had gone senile and was reluctant to say anything else. All of the men sitting around the table were at least eighty, so I guess this was a subject that made them pretty uncomfortable. Does this help?”

  “Gracious me, that poor man. Nate, don’t you see? This is just what happened to Sukie Vetch. They have used this poor man’s grief to . . . you should have seen the Judge! He ran and held onto Evie May like a man drowning, and when he came back from his session in the cabinet . . . it was downright disturbing. He acted like he had just been with a lover, not the spirit of his dead daughter. Do you think we could talk to him, try to convince him of how he is being defrauded?”

  “Whoa, Annie, I don’t think so. You don’t know men like Babcock. Judges, especially someone who has been a Supreme Court justice, they’re like gods. They don’t want to hear someone tell them they’re wrong, about anything. Believe me, if he has picked up and moved out west because he has decided this girl is his daughter brought back from the dead, he isn’t going to listen to any evidence from you or me. Besides, you are operating on the assumption he is sane about this issue, which from your description and what Fullerton intimated, is debatable.”

  Annie sat and thought for a moment, picturing Judge Babcock as she saw him last night, and sighed. “You may be right. Frankly, I don’t have any confidence that proving Arabella is a fake, or exposing the way the table moves or where the music is coming from, is goi
ng to be enough to convince Sukie Vetch, either.”

  “How do you think you are going to convince her?”

  “I told you about Kathleen telling Arabella Frampton that I had had a son who died at about age two. I hoped that at the séance last night the Framptons would produce the spirit of that young son, and then I could tell Sukie it was a lie, as proof they were making everything up. Instead, Evie May portrayed the spirit of my mother. This doesn’t mean they won’t come up with the boy in subsequent séances, but it does mean I am going to have to keep attending until this happens. I also would like to see if there are any other people who attend these séances who would be amenable to helping expose the Framptons, even if the Judge isn’t a good prospect.”

  “Do you think there is anyone who might be upset enough to support you, if you were able to show them how the tricks worked?” Nate leaned forward towards her.

  “I don’t know. I am planning going to the Monday night circle, and I will go early enough to get more acquainted with the people who are attending. Surely one of the regulars would be upset if they discovered that they had spent all that money on a group of confidence tricksters. Just think, someone like Sukie, who attends two circles a week at $2 a night, and several private ‘sittings’ a week, which are more expensive, is spending as much as $10 a week. That would mean Sukie is handing over as much as fifty percent of her husband’s salary to the Framptons. No wonder her poor husband is frantic.”

  Nate whistled and then said, “The Framptons must be making a lot of money.”

  “Yes, but they also have a lot of expenses. Renting that house can’t be cheap. Kathleen thinks there are at least four servants, and the Framptons seem to be living quite well. I can’t help but wonder if they aren’t using the power over their clients to make money from them in other ways than just the fees they are charging.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Annie shook her head. “I’m not sure, but I have heard of mediums getting clients to will their fortunes to them, or getting them to invest in risky stock schemes. I just had a thought. Even though the newspaperman, Pierce, wrote favorably about the Framptons in his article, he was skeptical about Spiritualism in general. When you meet with him, you might see if he would be interested in writing another article, if you could get him details about the tricks they use, but also about how they are exploiting poor people like the Judge and Sukie.

  “That’s a great idea. I assume you want to keep your own name out of this when I talk to Pierce. I thought I would do the ‘friend of a friend’ angle. But you need to think about how to handle this if he agrees to write up a story. Maybe I need to start attending some of the séances, then I could keep you right out of it.”

  “Wouldn’t your attendance at a séance hurt your reputation as a lawyer in town? I can’t imagine your uncle would permit it.”

  “Hang what Uncle Frank says. I’ve been thinking about leaving the firm striking out on my own. Anyway, if it ever came out, I would just let it be known that I was ‘helping the police with an investigation.’ Now that I think about it, I might just stop by Detective Jackson’s office tomorrow, see what the police think of the Framptons, if they have any dirt on them.”

  “Beatrice would support that idea. As soon as I told her about my plans, she said I should leave it up to the police. We could get her nephew Patrick involved. It wouldn’t do his career with the police any harm if he participated in the exposure of some swindlers.”

  Annie realized that Nate’s willingness to share in her investigation of the Framptons had buoyed her spirits. She found the idea of him attending one of the séances with her particularly attractive. She would ask Simon on Monday if there were any chance of extending the circle’s membership on Friday. You would think they would be glad to add a lawyer to their list of clients. If not, maybe she could figure out a way to get one of the regular members to drop out. Mrs. Larkson didn’t seem to be taking the séance seriously.

  “So, Annie,” Nate broke into her thoughts. “Shall I escort you home? I don’t want to get into Mrs. O’Rourke’s bad graces by bringing you back too late.” As he helped Annie into her coat, he continued. “Perhaps I should meet you at the Framptons Monday night. Escort you and Kathleen home. I could ask Simon Frampton about attending a séance myself, and then I could tell you what I learned from my meeting with Anthony Pierce earlier in the day. I must confess I have developed a hankering to meet this Evie May.”

  Annie shivered and buttoned her coat all the way up as they left the warmth and lights of the restaurant. Much as she talked about finding out how the ghostly effects of the séance were created, or tricking the Framptons into producing a son that never existed, Annie knew that the only way to convince Sukie Vetch she wasn’t meeting her son, Charlie, was to get to the bottom of Evie May’s strange abilities. And that meant getting back into that cabinet herself and confronting both Evie May and the spirit of Maybelle, which Annie knew with a certainty she didn’t want to do at all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Monday afternoon, October 20, 1879

  “On Saturday, J. C. Ainsworth, President of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company and the Managing Director of the Northern Pacific Railroad…arrived in San Francisco and was interviewed by a reporter of the Chronicle, at his rooms at the Baldwin.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

  As Nate walked down the short flight of steps into the entrance of the Elite, a restaurant that lived up to its name with dark wood paneling, crisp white table linen, and French cuisine, he realized he didn’t have any idea what Anthony Pierce looked like. He may have run across him a few times when he stopped by the old Chronicle offices to see his friend Tim Newsome, and he’d certainly read a number of his articles. Pierce was known for his biting political satire, but Nate had never been introduced to him.

  He was surprised Pierce had named the Elite as their meeting place, since its prices were pretty steep, and from Tim’s frequent complaints he’d understood that reporters made even less money than junior law partners. Nate only dined here when a client was paying. He supposed, since he was asking Pierce for a favor, he would have to foot the bill. But it would be worth it if he enlisted his help in exposing the Framptons. Annie would be so pleased.

  When the maître d’ came up and Nate murmured that he was meeting Pierce, the man nodded and led the way to a small table tucked into the far back corner of the restaurant. Good, this will give us some privacy. He walked up to the table where a spectacularly ugly man was sitting. Pierce, who rose and shook his hand, was quite short, and only his powerfully muscled neck and shoulders kept his large head from appearing ridiculous. Disheveled black hair failed to hide a pair of jug ears, and his nose, which had clearly been broken at some time, reigned over a straggling mustache; yet his wide grin and fine dark brown eyes turned the disaster of his other features into a pleasing whole. Nate found himself grinning back at Pierce, attracted by his air of extreme confidence.

  “Well, well, Mr. Nate Dawson, what a pleasure. Tim speaks highly of you, which must mean he owes you, because in my experience, old Tim Newsome doesn’t throw around praise lightly. What’ya do for him? Give him a tip on the harness races? Provide an alibi for him to his wife?” Pierce laughed heartedly.

  “Why, Mr. Pierce, Mrs. Newsome would box my ears if she thought I was in cahoots with Tim,” Nate said. “No, I met him when I was a boy. He was a senior at Boys High when I was a freshman, and I am afraid he was instrumental in leading me astray. Been trying to make it up to me ever since.”

  After their meals were ordered and Nate and Pierce had mined the fertile subject of local politics and what the recent election of Isaac Kalloch, the Workingmen’s Party candidate for mayor, was going to mean to the city, Pierce finally introduced the topic of the Framptons.

  “So, Nate. Don’t mind if I call you Nate, do ya? What’s your interest in Simon and Arabella Frampton? Your message was pretty cryptic.”

  “One of my clients, you unde
rstand I can’t say who, has a relative who has become a frequent participant of the Frampton séances. My client is worried that he might be getting involved in something unsavory and dishonest. Undue influence and all that. I remembered that you had written some articles about local mediums, and I thought you might be able to give me a little background on them.” Nate stopped, hoping that Pierce wouldn’t press him on the identity of the client or their relative.

  “You want to know if they’re honest?” Pierce rubbed his head vigorously, further encouraging a wayward cowlick. “Guess it depends on whether or not you believe in the ability to talk to spirits. Now, for myself, it seems like a lot of claptrap. After fighting in the Union army for four years, don’t know I would want ready access to the dead. Haunt me enough in my dreams, so I don’t have any desire to pay good money to have them chatter at me in the daytime. But, if you do believe in such things, the Framptons, as far as I could see, give good value for the fees they charge.”

  “Good value. What do you mean?”

  “You see, I attended a couple of their séances, and they put on quite a show. Lights, music, spirit voices, and a strange girl in a cabinet. Now, are you asking me if all of it was real? Don’t know. Probably not, but I didn’t see any tricks. No strings or fake hands on sticks or mediums slipping out of the circle to prance around as ghosts. And the folks sitting around the table seemed satisfied with the little talks they were having with their dearly departed. Not like some of the other mediums and fortunetellers in town.

  Pierce again indulged in one of his full-throated laughs and then said, “Lord almighty, there was one woman who promised if you would let her connect you up to a battery then the electric current would rearrange your magnetic fluids and reacquaint you with your past lives! I tell you, after the hours I spent sitting in dark rooms, having some old gypsy fondle my hands and give me bad advice, or peering at the indecipherable scribbling on slates by so-called professors, the Framptons’ séances were a treat. And that Arabella, have you met her? Easy on the eyes, I’ve got to tell you. I didn’t mind letting her hold my hand at all!”