Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

by M. Louisa Locke

  “Oh, my, what did she say?”

  “Evidently, Sukie was so sure that Mr. Vetch had misunderstood what Simon had said to him that she promised she would stop pressuring him to come to any more séances if Charlie’s spirit asked him to do or say anything unethical. You can imagine how upset she was when the supposed spirit of their son immediately began to ask his father questions about the financial soundness of San Francisco Gold and Trust Bank.”

  Miss Pinehurst laughed dryly and went on. “How absurd, to think of our dear six-year-old Charlie using terms like ‘capitalization rate,’ ‘mining funds,’ and ‘secured personal loans.’ Her husband is correct, Sukie is not stupid, and I can just picture how upset she must have been. Mr. Vetch said she angrily asked Charlie why he was talking this way. Didn’t he want to tell his father how much he missed him, tell him about the lovely gardens he played in? Then she started to cry.”

  Annie said, “My goodness, the Framptons seemed to have overplayed that hand. They must have sensed that this might be the only chance they had to find out any information about Ruckner. I haven’t heard a whiff of scandal about this bank. Makes me wonder what they know that I don’t about the financial soundness of Gold and Trust?” And is it important enough to kill for?

  “They are certainly up to no good. Even that child who pretends to be Charlie said so. Mr. Vetch told me today that, when Sukie started to cry, the girl began talking in an entirely different voice and tried to comfort Sukie, saying that she was sorry, that the bad people had told her to say those things.”

  Annie started. “Bad persons? Did Evie May say ‘bad people’ or ‘bad man’?”

  Miss Pinehurst frowned. “I’m not sure, maybe it was ‘bad man’. Anyway, just at that point Mr. Frampton whipped open the curtain and Mr. Vetch said the two of them were hustled out of the room and the house, without any explanation.”

  “And that’s when your sister accepted that the Framptons were frauds? How devastating for her!”

  “Yes, her husband told me he feared for her life Friday night, she was so distraught. She couldn’t stop crying, moaning that she had lost Charlie forever. He then remembered the kind note that Mrs. Hunt had sent him last week, asking if she could be of service. He sent for her first thing yesterday morning, and she came immediately. Mr. Vetch couldn’t tell me exactly what she said to Sukie, because they met in private. But he said when Mrs. Hunt led her out of her bedroom, Sukie looked at peace for the first time since Charlie died.

  “Oh, Mrs. Fuller, she went to church this morning. When she slipped in beside me, and held my hand throughout the service, I knew God had answered my prayers. I don’t know how I can thank you, for you were surely his instrument in this.”

  Annie watched uncomfortably as Miss Pinehurst began to weep. She was happy for her, getting her sister back, and having her faith confirmed, but it made her uneasy to accept any part in a miracle. She was trying to think of what to say, when there was a loud rap on the door, followed by the precipitous entrance of Kathleen into the room.

  The young maid looked startled to see Miss Pinehurst, who was hastily wiping away her tears, and she stood for a moment, speechless. Noticing Kathleen was wearing her good outfit, and, like Miss Pinehurst, looked chilled and damp around the edges, Annie assumed she had been to afternoon mass. Also, Annie concluded that, like Miss Pinehurst, the young girl clearly had news of some import to convey.

  Annie got up and went over to her, saying quietly, “Kathleen dear, what is it?”

  After a brief curtsy, Kathleen blurted out, “Mrs. Fuller, you’ll never believe it! Mr. Hapgood tried to commit suicide yesterday morning. Biddy said he drank down a whole bottle of laudanum and nearly expired; but his wife found him just in time. Do you think those spirits from the séance drove him to it?”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Sunday afternoon, November 2, 1879

  “Arthur R. Watterson, Massachusetts, aged 41, poisoned himself with laudanum”

  —San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

  As Annie turned left on Hyde Street, she realized she had completely forgotten the promise she made to Nate that she wouldn’t go anywhere in the city unescorted. When she’d learned from Kathleen that the Hapgoods lived only a few blocks away on Hyde, she had simply made the decision to go alone, since this was officially Kathleen’s afternoon off. She told herself she would stop in quickly, leave her card, and be home before anyone, including Nate, was the wiser. She doubted that Hilda Hapgood would see her, but Annie wanted to reach out to the poor woman, express her sympathy.

  Kathleen had told her about meeting up with Biddy at afternoon mass and how Biddy described what she heard about Harold Hapgood’s suicide attempt from Mrs. Nickerson the day before. This was Biddy’s last weekend of work for the Framptons; she’d given notice last Monday. Evidently Evie May’s mother had gone to the Hapgood’s for a planned visit yesterday morning and found the household in chaos.

  The parlor maid, who had opened the door to her, had poured out the whole tale to Mrs. Nickerson, describing how her mistress had returned from the store that morning and found her husband lying in the upstairs bedroom, an empty laudanum bottle by his side, looking “dead as a doornail.”

  The maid had boasted that it had been her own quick thinking to run and get the doctor whose surgery was just “two doors up” that had saved him. Mrs. Nickerson had finally been forced to leave the Hapgood’s home without seeing Hilda, but she had announced to the Framptons, in Biddy’s hearing, that she was going to go back this morning to support her dear friend.

  In less than ten minutes Annie found herself at the Hapgood’s home, an older Italianate, with the typical flat roof and cornice brackets. The whole house was a nondescript, light-brown color, with oddly contrasting black trim, and the flower boxes under each window were empty. Since this was Annie’s own neighborhood, she knew the house had probably been built in the 1850s, and would have a substantial yard hidden in the back. In the front, however, there was only a small portico over a front door that was only a few steps away from the sidewalk. Annie felt uncomfortably conspicuous standing under that portico, using a black iron doorknocker to announce her presence.

  When the young parlor maid opened the door, Annie had her card ready to hand over. At Mr. Stein’s insistence, Annie had calling cards printed up when she had opened up the boarding house, although she’d protested that she couldn’t imagine she would ever again be involved in the elaborate social rituals of calling and exchanging cards. In the past year she’d only used about ten of the fifty cards she’d had made. The maid took the card and, unexpectedly, asked Annie to step into the front hall while she went to inform her mistress of her presence.

  Annie couldn’t believe that Hilda Hapgood had told her servant that she was “at home” to callers. What was the girl doing? Trying to embarrass her mistress? Or just hoping for another audience for her tale of how she saved the master of the house from certain death?

  Even more unexpectedly, Hilda Hapgood followed the maid down the stairs, grabbed onto her hands as if she were a woman drowning and Annie her life raft, and urged her to come and have a seat in the front parlor.

  Once the maid had been sent away to get a tea tray, Mrs. Hapgood turned to her and said, “Dear Mrs. Fuller, I am so glad you called. I have been desperate to speak with you. You have heard about my husband?” Here she faltered. “How he tried to take his own life?”

  Annie’s heart went out to Mrs. Hapgood, whose pale good looks had turned gray with fatigue, and she reached over and patted her hand, saying, “Yes, I heard, and I wanted to express my sincerest sympathies. I know how worried you were about his state of mind. Please tell me how I can help.”

  “If you could just tell me what went on at the séance on Friday night! I couldn’t think whom else to ask. You saw how he left so quickly? He didn’t even acknowledge I was there. Harold didn’t come home until dawn, and then he was so drunk I couldn’t get a word out of him. I’m afraid I was extremely
angry. I just put him to bed and went on to open up the store, giving the maid instructions not to disturb him. Thank goodness, midmorning I remembered I had asked Mrs. Nickerson to tea, thinking that Harold would be at the store. My brother George said he could handle the clerking alone while I went home to leave her a note. I almost didn’t go up to check on him.”

  At this point Mrs. Hapgood broke down, and Annie moved over to sit beside her on the sofa, putting her arm around the woman’s shoulders, rocking her gently, and remembering a morning six years ago when she, too, had returned to her own home and found that her husband, like Harold Hapgood, had been out all night, drinking. She’d returned from shopping and saw his coat on the hallstand, but she had just gone on through to the kitchen to put away the groceries. All she had wanted to do was sit down and rest her aching feet since she’d been up before dawn, trying to bring some order into her disordered household.

  She’d had to dismiss Nancy, their servant, months earlier. There just wasn’t enough money, and no matter how hard she worked, John criticized her housekeeping. He got angry when there were too few courses served at dinner, or there was a wrinkle in the tablecloth, or he found dust on the mantel. When John got angry, he drank. Of course, by that time he was always angry; at the plummeting stock market, at the failing banks, at the bad run of cards, at the horse that didn’t cross the finish line. Mostly, however, he was angry with her.

  She remembered putting the kettle on, sitting down, and putting her feet up, thinking with disgust that John was probably passed out, fully clothed, on their bed. She was sorely tempted to just let him be, let him wake up in his own filth. But, when the kettle sang, she’d poured him a cup of tea and dragged herself up the stairs, responding to some remnant of her sense of marital duty.

  She also remembered being puzzled when she had opened the door to their bedroom and found it empty. The smell emanating from the small study had then hit her. Burned gunpowder and raw flesh. Like Harold Hapgood, her husband had tried to take his own life; but, unlike Harold, he hadn’t permitted any chance of rescue, no chance of redemption. Instead, a gun shot to the head was John’s final, angry act against the wife he must have known would find his shattered body.

  The servant’s return with the tea tray brought Annie back to the present and prompted Mrs. Hapgood to compose herself. Wiping her eyes, Hilda directed the maid to come in and deposit the tray, then asked her to leave and ensure they would not be disturbed.

  Turning back to Annie she took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fuller, for my outburst. I guess I hadn’t let myself consider how close I came to losing him. But I am frightened that if I can’t figure out what caused him to decide to take this step, he will only try again. You see, this has happened before, when he was young; he tried to commit suicide when he was in college. I am so concerned; he won’t talk to me, and he just lies with his back turned to the room, restlessly picking at the sheets. The doctor said that this is a normal response to an overdose of laudanum, but I know it is more than that.”

  “He certainly was upset by what happened at Friday’s séance,” Annie responded. “Unlike previous séances, this time it was the young medium, Evie May, who spoke to him, channeling the spirit of his mother. Somehow she conveyed the impression of being a large woman, sitting in a chair. She had her hair up in a circle of braids and strands of beads around her neck. Her voice was quite shrill, and she had a heavy cane she kept pounding on the floor.”

  Hilda Hapgood gave a small cry, and she looked around the room, as if she expected to see the spirit of her mother-in-law appear in the parlor. She clutched at Annie’s hands and said, “Tell me exactly what she said.”

  “Near as I remember, she first said that your husband deserved to die. Then she went on about having six sons, and something about five of them dying, and that your husband was the baby, her most precious child, until he turned his back on her. He cried out at that, said she had turned her back on him.” Annie noticed that Hilda nodded vehemently at this last statement.

  Annie paused, trying to recall what Evie May, as the old woman, said next. “I think she complained that you and your husband left her all alone while you went out on the town. Then she seemed to be describing the circumstances of her own death. She said she was cold because the fire in her room had gone out, that you were gone, but that your husband was in a drunken stupor downstairs. Finally, she accused him of causing her death, that she died of neglect . . . I think she said that she suffocated, and then she very dramatically broke her necklace.”

  Hilda Hapgood moaned and then whispered to herself, “Oh, Harold, it was her. I didn’t believe you, but there isn’t any other explanation. She blames you, they all blame you, and they won’t let you rest until you’re dead. What should I do? What can I do?”

  Annie, shocked at what she was hearing, tried to calm her down. “Mrs. Hapgood, please, even if it looks like this was the spirit of your husband’s mother, I am sure there is a rational explanation. You need to tell me the precise details of your mother-in-law’s death, and then we can figure out how the Framptons learned those details, and who might benefit from using them to frighten you and your husband. Tell me, exactly how did your mother-in-law die?”

  Mrs. Hapgood shuddered and then began to speak. “The doctor said it was heart failure. She had a very bad heart, but she continued to indulge her appetites. She weighed nearly three hundred pounds and hadn’t walked on her own in years. With help, she primarily moved back and forth from her bed to a chair in her room. Harold and I had to wait on her hand-and-foot. She would pound that cane on the floor, morning, noon, and night. God, how I hated that cane. She’d hit you with it, if she felt you weren’t moving fast enough to serve her.

  “The morning of the day she died, Harold and I had a terrible fight. She’d hit me, hard, on the back, when I brought her breakfast, and I’d told him I couldn’t stand it anymore. I said we needed to move out of this house, live on our own again. We were already paying for a full-time cook, parlor maid, and nurse; we didn’t have to live in the same house with her. I didn’t care if we lived in a hovel, as long as I didn’t have to live under the same roof as her.”

  “How did your husband respond?”

  Hilda shook her head. “As usual. He repeated that he had promised his father he would take care of his mother and he couldn’t break a promise. I told him I was leaving, going back home. I even packed a small bag.”

  “Oh, my,” Annie murmured.

  “I left, but I didn’t go to my parents. I knew they would just say that I had to return; it was my marital duty. Instead, I walked around the city, and then I took the horse car out to the Cliff House and walked on the beach. It was a lovely June day, the sun didn’t set until nearly eight. When I came back to the city I had a late dinner at a small restaurant in North Beach. Then I came home. I had simply needed some time away.”

  Annie nodded encouragingly.

  “When I got to the house it was around ten o’clock. I found Harold passed out in this parlor. He hadn’t had a drink in four years. I blame myself. He must have been devastated when I left. I ran up to check on his mother, to make sure he had put her to bed and given her the heart medicine she took every evening. There wasn’t anyone else to do it because it was the nurse’s night out, and our maid had been gone for much of the week because her mother was ill. And the cook doesn’t live in. Harold told me later she went home around seven, when he got back from the store and told her he wouldn’t be wanting any supper.” Hilda Hapgood stopped speaking.

  Annie waited while the seconds slipped by, then she said quietly, “When you went up to check on your mother-in-law, she was dead, wasn’t she?”

  *****

  The girl stood, holding onto the back of the chair, as if this was the only thing keeping her upright. She picked up a doll from the chair and held it fiercely to her chest, whispering harshly. She then looked up, glared, and pointed a finger at the man who stood, looking back at her, his face fille
d with curiosity. She said, her voice shaking so badly with anger as to make her words nearly incomprehensible, “You won’t succeed. He tried to hurt our girl, but he failed. You’d better watch out, or your end will come very, very soon.”

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Sunday, late afternoon, November 2, 1879

  “J.D. Fay’s Death: A Belief by Some of His Friends That He Was Murdered.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

  Annie knew she was pushing Hilda Hapgood to reveal a potentially damaging secret, but she also knew that this secret could reveal who was trying to torment Harold Hapgood to death and perhaps even who had tried to have her killed her last night. So she waited, praying the woman beside her on the couch would give up her secret.

  After what seemed an eternity, Hilda let out the breath she had been holding and said, “Yes. When I got upstairs, my mother-in-law was still sitting in her chair. At first, I thought she was just asleep. But when I said her name and gave her shoulder a little shake, her head flopped to the side. It was horrible! I ran and got the looking glass from the dresser, put it up to her mouth, and there was nothing. She couldn’t have been dead long, her skin was still warm to the touch even though the fire had gone out.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I know it’s terrible, but all I could think of was the possible scandal if the doctor felt her death was due to my husband’s neglect. So, I went downstairs and, after much effort, roused Harold. When I got through to him that his mother was dead, he sobered up enough so that he could help me undress her and move her to the bed. While I can imagine this sounds awful to someone else, the whole process didn’t differ much from what we went through each night. Afterwards, I straightened the room, picked up the pearls that had scattered, and . . . well, then we went to bed.”