Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

by M. Louisa Locke

  “Mrs. Voss . . . fortuneteller, where did you get . . .” Nate had just begun to ask Newsome to explain, when a hand clapped him heavily on the shoulder, and he turned to see Anthony Pierce at his side.

  “My boy, glad you waited. Sorry I’m late. Hope Farmer Timothy there hasn’t bored you to death with his grain reports. Come on over to my desk and sit awhile.”

  Nate nodded to Newsome and followed Pierce across the room to a desk that was scrupulously neat, with blotter, inkstand, and stack of papers all perfectly aligned. Since it had always been Nate’s impression that reporters, by nature, were messy packrats, this seemed unusual. Pierce, himself, was spectacularly untidy this morning, and the strong smell of stale alcohol and tobacco drifting in his wake suggested he hadn’t been home after what had been a nightlong revel in some dive. Yet, when he sat down across his desk from Nate, his brown eyes were bright, his ugly face animated, and he showed no lack of energy as he smiled broadly.

  “Dawson, glad you could come. Attorney General Hart got into town Tuesday evening. I met with his chief of staff, Jaffry. Good man. Turns out his wife came from my hometown in Missouri. Small world. Lots of social affairs were planned for this week. All the wives in town were showing off their parlors. Jaffry was ready to bust out last night after all that tea he’d had to down.” Here Pierce’s smile turned wolfish. “Man has appetites, I’ll say that for him.”

  Nate nodded ambiguously. “I was glad to hear from you. You said you had a proposition for me?”

  Pierce’s smile widened. “Now, young man, let’s not be hasty. Got to do the preliminaries.”

  He then opened up his bottom drawer and fetched out a bottle of bourbon, and two tumblers, filling them up and pushing one across the desk. Nate hated drinking this early in the day, but he felt he couldn’t turn the man down. He knew that politics and hard liquor went hand in hand, even among Republicans. If this was the world he wanted to enter, it behooved him to play the part. So he took the glass and drank the amber liquid down, feeling the hot flash of instant well-being.

  Pierce refilled Nate’s glass and then leaned back in his chair, holding his own glass up to the sunlight and saying, “Tell me, any new developments in your investigations on the Framptons? Client hasn’t decided to give it up has she?”

  Nate sipped at the drink, trying to bring his mind into focus. “I wish to hell she would. I mean, I haven’t turned up any evidence strong enough to interest the police, but my client is pretty determined. Feels sure that Simon Frampton and his wife are involved in some sort of swindle. Can’t say I disagree. There’s just nothing on which to base a criminal complaint. People don’t always understand that even though something’s wrong, it isn’t always against the law.” Nate thought he should try that argument on Annie tomorrow night if she went back on her agreement to make the séance on Friday her last.

  Thinking of Annie, Nate shook his head slightly, suddenly impatient. “Tell me, Pierce, what’s the story? Did you talk to Hart about me?”

  Nate noticed Pierce was frowning and he thought, God damn it, Tim told me to watch it. Damn bourbon.

  He tried to frame his next words, but Pierce intervened. “That’s what I like to see, enthusiasm. Next best thing, I talked to Jaffry, who really does all the vetting for appointments, and I puffed you up plenty. He’s interested, real interested. But, like Hart, he’s a busy man, so you’re going to have to jump when I get the word to you he’s got time for a meeting. Don’t know whether it will be sometime tomorrow or Saturday. I’ll send a boy round with a note, give time and place, and you better come on the double.”

  Nate’s first thought was this might mean he wouldn’t be able to honor Annie’s request that he accompany her tomorrow night, in the place of Kathleen. If he couldn’t go, Annie couldn’t either. It was time she gave up her part in the investigations anyway. Surely she’d understand this meeting takes precedence. After all, it’s her future as well as mine at stake.

  With this thought, Nate stood up and leaned across the desk to shake Pierce’s hand, saying, “Sir, thanks so much. You can count on me. Send word and I will be there. No matter what else is going on.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Thursday morning, October 30, 1879

  “L. Pet Anderson, Medium, 850 Market, Developing class, Tues evenings”

  —San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

  Annie sat at a table with Mrs. Rowena Nickerson in the restaurant at Woodward’s Gardens and tried hard not to let her mind stray to the last time she was here, with Nate. That day had been cold and rainy, but today the sun had quickly burned off the fog and they were able to sit comfortably on the outdoor patio. She hoped the warm weather persisted so that the Halloween party tomorrow night could safely spill into the backyard. As of this morning, the number of young people who were going to attend had climbed precipitously when Kathleen got word her brothers and some of their friends were going to come. She had fussed about them being proper hooligans, but Annie could tell she was pleased.

  “Mrs. Hunt and her friend, Mrs. Gordon, seemed quite taken with my Evie May, don’t you think?” Mrs. Nickerson’s question brought Annie back to the here and now.

  Evie May’s mother continued. “I remember ever so well when Mrs. Hunt traveled to Lynn to speak, right before the war started. She was so young and beautiful. I went with my husband, Mr. Sewell Nickerson. Since his father owned one of the biggest boot and shoe factories in town, we had special seats, right up close to the stage. Nothing was too good for me back then. Of course I was quite young myself. A child bride, you would say. And to think that Mrs. Gordon was also a medium when she was young. Her name was Laura de Force? I think I remember hearing about her. I am so pleased that they are taking an interest in my Evie May. You said Mrs. Gordon is also a famous journalist? Good heavens, wouldn’t it be too wonderful if she wrote a piece about my Evie May for the papers. I have been telling Simon, dear man, that we need to get more press for my darling girl.”

  Annie chose not to tell Mrs. Nickerson that Laura de Force Gordon was no longer the editor of the Oakland Daily Democrat. Instead, along with Clara Foltz, another local San Francisco woman, she had plans to be the first woman admitted to the California bar. Mrs. Nickerson might not be as excited about associating her “darling girl” with anyone quite so controversial.

  Annie, on the other hand, had been delighted when Mrs. Hunt had introduced Mrs. Gordon this morning. Nate and she had talked about Gordon and Foltz this summer when the newspapers reported on their success in getting the “Lady’s Lawyer Bill” made part of the new constitution. Perhaps she could arrange a meeting between Nate and Mrs. Gordon. He kept talking about how old-fashioned his Uncle Frank was concerning the law; maybe Mrs. Gordon could be their new law partner. That would shake things up.

  Annie smiled and shook her head. I need to stop thinking about Nate and concentrate on Mrs. Nickerson. Annie had missed the last thing Evie May’s mother had said, but she simply murmured agreement, which she had discovered was all that was necessary to keep Mrs. Nickerson’s words flowing. But, now that Mrs. Hunt and her friend Mrs. Gordon had taken Evie May for a walk to see the animals in the Zoological Gardens, she should work harder to direct that flow into useful channels.

  “Mrs. Nickerson, do tell me a little more about yourself. You said you were from Lynn, Massachusetts? Is that where the rest of your family still lives? You do have other children besides Evie May?”

  The other woman’s perpetual simper dimmed slightly at this question, and she patted at the frizz of hennaed bangs on her forehead, as if to assure herself they still held their curl, before answering. “Oh, yes, I had four children in all. The two boys, Sammy and Tom, high-spirited lads, went out at a young age to make their own mark in the world. Nan, my oldest girl, married young and left home when Evie May was just a little tyke. I couldn’t complain. I married near the same age, so you might say she took after her own mother. But I miss them all sorely. Thank goodness for my precious Evie May.”


  Here Mrs. Nickerson took out a handkerchief and fluttered it in the direction of her eyes, which remained stubbornly dry.

  Annie noted that none of the names of the older siblings matched the names of Evie May’s “protectors” as she patted the woman’s hand sympathetically and said, “I can imagine she must be a real comfort to you, particularly after you lost your husband. How old was Evie May when her father died?”

  “He passed on just two years ago. A sad blow to us both. My husband may have had trouble with his boys, but he treated his girls like princesses. Nan’s marriage hit him hard. He didn’t feel the boy was worthy of his precious girl. But I told him, a girl like Nan, everyone said she got my looks you know, can’t stay forever in her father’s pocket.”

  Annie noticed this last statement had the ring of a well-practiced complaint, and she wondered if there had been some jealousy between Nan and her mother. Annie mentally replaced Mrs. Nickerson’s hideous orange-dyed hair with a natural shade of red, stripped away the thick layer of powder to imagine a porcelain complexion, looked at a face bloated by water retention for the delicate features hinted at by the neatly shaped ear and chin, and concluded that, in her prime, Mrs. Nickerson might have been quite a beautiful woman. Her light-green eyes were still striking and could have outshined even those of Arabella Frampton if they didn’t always look so desperate.

  “Quite right,” Annie agreed, to what she wasn’t sure. “After your daughter Nan moved away, I expect that Evie May became the apple of your husband’s eye.” Why is it that I keep speaking in clichés when I’m talking to Mrs. Nickerson?

  “Oh, yes. He cosseted her so. In the evenings he trained her to bring him his slippers and pipe and dram of whiskey. Then she’d sit on his lap and they’d whisper together. I’d ask them what the joke was, and they’d never tell me. Made their own little world they did. That is until Evie May started having the fits.”

  “How distressing,” said Annie, wondering if the “fits” were the strange blank interludes she had witnessed when Evie May was deserted by one spirit and not yet inhabited by another.

  Mrs. Nickerson started, as if she hadn’t realized that she had been speaking out loud. “Simon has explained to me that this was just Evie May beginning to communicate with the spirit world. I wish my husband could have understood that. He got extremely angry with her, and she would disappear for hours, days at a time, leaving me alone to fend . . . it wasn’t a pleasant time. But then he became ill with a chronic bilious complaint, completely bed-ridden for the last four years of his life. Seeing him so weak, delirious at times, when he had been such a strong, handsome man, just broke my heart. As you may well imagine, I was prostrate with grief. Evie May took over. She was so good to us both.”

  Annie was appalled at the thought of Evie May taking care of a sick father and a malingering mother, at what age? She would have been no more than nine or ten when her father became ill, even younger if her mother was being truthful about her daughter’s age.

  “Oh, Mrs. Nickerson, didn’t your husband’s family do anything to help you out?”

  “No, they did not.” Mrs. Nickerson stiffened. “His father was a pig-headed tyrant. Soon after we married, he completely cut off all support. Heartless man, he didn’t even come to Sewell’s funeral. My mother-in-law tried to help a little from time to time, but she wouldn’t openly go against her husband. She gave us just enough to keep us from starving. It was awful.”

  For the first time Annie had a sense of kinship with this woman, remembering with bitterness how her own father-in-law had treated her after her husband’s death. No wonder Mrs. Nickerson and Hilda Hapgood had developed an odd sort of friendship; they both had disinheriting fathers-in-law to bond over. But Evie May, what effect had all this wretched experience had on her?

  “However did you manage, once your husband died?” Annie asked.

  “The spirits guided Simon Frampton to us, and he became our savior.” Mrs. Nickerson smiled and sighed heavily. “Evie May and I had moved to Boston and into a dirty, crowded boarding house when one day I insisted to Evie May that we just had to have some pleasure in our lives. With the few pennies I had left, we went to the local theater where Simon and his wife were giving a public demonstration. Evie May volunteered to come up on stage . . . well you could have knocked me over with a feather, this wasn’t like her at all . . . and the spirits possessed her. She began to declaim such beautiful poetry. I had never seen nor heard the like. Simon came to us after the show and explained to me about the spirits and Evie May’s talents, and he just took us under his wing.”

  “How did Evie May feel about all this?”

  “She is ever so grateful. Simon is like a father to her, better than her own father in fact. If only that woman wasn’t so jealous. Just because she didn’t want to have any children, she begrudges Simon the chance to raise Evie May as his own, train her talents.”

  To raise Evie May as his own? Did this mean Simon planned to adopt Evie May? As her guardian, he would have full control of her and any money she would make. He wouldn’t need Mrs. Nickerson anymore. I wonder if Mrs. Nickerson understands the implications of that, or is she so deluded that she thinks that it will be Arabella he won’t need anymore? How foresighted of Flora Hunt to have Mrs. Gordon, an expert in California law, come to this meeting. Annie hadn’t thought that there might be legal issues involved in trying to protect Evie May from Simon Frampton, or her own mother for that matter, but clearly there were.

  Annie noticed that Evie May was walking back towards their table, chattering excitedly to both Mrs. Gordon and Mrs. Hunt, who each held the girl by a hand. A striking difference from when Evie May and her mother first arrived at Woodward’s Gardens. Then Evie May had been very shy and non-communicative. At least her mother had dressed her appropriately for her age and sex today. Her outfit was a loosely-cut Basque top and contrasting gored skirt made of a soft light-brown tweed, trimmed with dark-brown velvet, and her hair was held back with a matching velvet bow. As she watched the girl tell her mother about seeing the camels, and the bears, and the huge buffalo, Annie thought to herself that this was the first time she’d seen Evie May just being Evie May.

  Until the girl, taking advantage of her mother’s attention being claimed by Mrs. Gordon, turned to Annie and in Eddie’s distinctive tones said, with a cock of the head and a wink, “Maybelle sends her love and said to tell you to watch out. The bad man isn’t very happy with you.”

  *****

  That night, the girl sat in the large armchair, wearing a loosely-fitting white dress of a vaguely nautical cut, white stockings, and black three-button shoes. A man was standing over her, and he reached down and tipped her head up with his index finger so that she was staring up at him. He spoke slowly and distinctly, staring back into her eyes until her eyes closed.

  The second man, standing in the shadows at the edge of the room, shifted his position. The girl’s eyes flew open and she twisted around in the chair until she was staring straight at him. Her thumb popped into her mouth, and she turned away to drag the china doll out from behind the chair’s back cushion. She began to cradle the doll, humming.

  The first man shrugged, took the doll from her, and again tipped up her now tear-stained face, speaking slowly until her eyes began to flutter closed.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Friday Evening, October 31, 1879

  “Mrs. McDonald, Medium. No 9 Mason st. and Market. Sittings daily; meetings Tuesday and Friday evenings, 50 c 8 o’clock p.m.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

  Annie’s heart steadily thumped, filling the darkness with a regular beat in counter syncopation with the soft exhalations of breath from the men who sat on either side of her. It was her last séance, and she thought how oddly comfortable she had become with the strange ritual of sitting in the dark, holding hands with relative strangers, temporarily sightless, waiting. For a brief time she had attended a Quaker meeting with a school friend in New York, an
d she was reminded of the long slow minutes of sitting silently, her mind, like a caged monkey, swinging and shrieking from idea to idea, image to image until, exhausted, it stilled, and she had felt at peace.

  Tonight there would be no peace, because tonight, spirits, whether real or not, would soon arrive to shatter the silence and drown out the beating of her heart. Spirits, real or not? Could Eddie or Maybelle be the spirits of some little children who have passed on? If not, who or what are they? These thoughts had possessed Annie since yesterday morning when she recognized Eddie peeking out of Evie May’s eyes.

  “On this night of All Hallow’s Eve, the spirits of the departed are closer to us than any other part of the year,” intoned Arabella, dressed in a pale-rose satin gown that glowed in the red light emanating from the cabinet room. An odd dissonant tune from the piano upstairs began to play, soon joined by a slow, soft drumbeat. Albert and his wife are busy tonight, was Annie’s first thought. She recognized that she found it easier to mock the obviously manufactured spirit manifestations of the Framptons’ séances than to contemplate the possible existence of real spirits. Spiritualists like Flora Hunt believed that all souls lived on after death, in an afterworld where they continued to develop and progress as spiritual beings, capable, in time, of providing ethical and moral guidance to the living. For Flora, Spiritualism brought peace and an explanation for the strange voices that had spoken through her all of her remembered life. There was no hell or evil spirits in her belief system; All Hallow’s Eve would hold no fears for her.