Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

by M. Louisa Locke

  Mrs. Hapgood stared into space for a few moments as if she was reliving the experience. She then resumed speaking. “Marta, our nurse, returned from her night out early the next morning and it was she who discovered her. We called in the doctor, and he said she had died of heart failure, which he had been expecting. He actually told Harold that our good care of her had probably given her an additional six months of life.”

  Annie said, “How did your husband react? Did he accept that his mother’s death was inevitable, or did he feel responsible?”

  “At first we both felt such tremendous relief. We had been given our lives back, after eight long years, first taking care of his father, who had been bedridden by stroke, and then taking care of his mother. But then Harold got the invitation to go and attend his first séance. That was the beginning of all our troubles. When he came home that first night he said that the spirit of his father had visited him and blamed him for his mother’s death. He kept going back and, after a few weeks, he began to say to me that if he hadn’t gotten drunk and missed her medication, his mother would have lived. He even said the spirits also blamed me, for threatening to leave him, causing him to drink. I . . .”

  Annie held up her hand, stopping Hilda. “Wait a moment. I can understand how the Framptons might have learned details about your mother-in-law, how she looked and acted, and the kinds of general complaints she made about the two of you. The servants, the nurse, or even friends of the family could be the source of that information. Even your husband’s drinking problems might have been generally known. But who would have known the details about that night, that you were out of the house and your husband was drunk?”

  Hilda shook her head, twisting her handkerchief in her hands. “Oh, Mrs. Fuller, no one. I’ve not told a soul, until now. Only his mother would know, and she is dead. That’s what frightens me. Harold is convinced it’s the spirits of his parents and brothers who’ve been speaking to him. I kept telling him he was being foolish, but now, given your description of the last séance, I don’t know what to think.”

  “Could Harold have told someone else, confessed to someone about your fight, his getting drunk, your mother’s death?”

  “Maybe. He has admitted to me that when he drinks he blacks out and can’t remember much. But even he didn’t know about the necklace. You said the girl broke her necklace and the beads scattered? You see, my mother-in-law always wore these multiple strands of pearls, and they had broken and fallen all over the room. I didn’t notice them at first, and I must have picked them up on my shoes, because later I found a number of them all the way down the stairs, and near where Harold was sleeping on this sofa. While Harold was drinking the cup of coffee I had fixed him, trying to sober up, I picked up all the pearls I could find, down here and up in her room, and I never told him about her broken necklace.

  “I figured she must have had some sort of convulsion when she died, which caused the necklace to break, since her footstool and the table beside her chair were also knocked over as if she had thrashed about. I had to pick up all the little knickknacks that slid off. There was even a pillow from the bed on the floor.”

  Hilda paused and then said, “That’s strange, I hadn’t thought of the pillow before. How did it get on the floor behind where she was sitting?”

  Annie pictured the room as Hilda described it, and she began to feel the stirring of an idea. She said, “Hilda, if someone, like the nurse, had come into that room the next morning and found it the way it was before you straightened up, the furniture turned over, the pillow on the floor, the pearls broken, they might have concluded that there was something suspicious about your mother-in-law’s death, particularly if they found you missing and your husband blacked out on the sofa downstairs.”

  “What are you saying?” Hilda put her hands up to her mouth.

  “I am saying that it would have looked like the pillow was used to suffocate your mother-in-law, and, in the struggle, the furniture was kicked over, the necklace broken. The doctor might not have just assumed she had died of natural causes, and he would have examined her more closely. If so, you and your husband could have become suspects in her murder.”

  “No, no, you’re wrong. Harold would never have deliberately hurt his mother. How could you say that?” Hilda stood up and was looking down at Annie in horror.

  Annie stood as well and put her hands on Hilda’s shoulder, saying, “Mrs. Hapgood, please, listen to me. I am not saying I think your husband killed his mother, on purpose or accidentally. What I am saying is that it is possible someone else did kill her and wanted your husband to be blamed. Someone who knew you were out of the house, that your husband had blacked out and would probably not remember what had happened, someone who would have benefited in some way from either your mother-in-law’s death or Harold being accused of it.”

  And someone who would try to kill the nosy woman who was helping a lawyer investigate the Framptons if they thought she was getting too close to the truth, Annie thought, remembering that the accident with the barrels came the day after she had visited Hilda at the store.

  Annie drew Hilda back down on the sofa. Seeing the shock in the woman’s face, she poured her out a fresh cup of tea, putting in several lumps of sugar, and handed the cup to her.

  “Trust me,” Annie said firmly, “the spirits conjured up by Arabella Frampton are not real. In addition, if your husband didn’t know the detail of the pearls, and you haven’t told anyone but me, then the logical explanation is that someone else was in the house that night. That person must have been the one who told the Framptons and asked them to use the information to terrify your husband in the séances. If one of your servants, perhaps the cook, came upstairs, or your maid returned that day and saw what the room looked like before you cleaned it up, it is possible they might try to blackmail you and your husband. Has that happened? Is the maid who opened the door the same one who worked for you back then?”

  “Yes, Betsy has been with us for four years. She isn’t all that bright, but both she and the cook have been quite loyal to us these past months, despite our troubles. We pay them well, and their duties are so much more pleasant now that my mother-in-law is gone. But there hasn’t been a hint of them having a secret or trying to get anything from us. Marta, the nurse, is actually one of my cousins, and I absolutely can’t imagine her as a blackmailer. I also don’t see any of them as murderers either.”

  “I would agree,” Annie said. “Even if one of them acted out of anger, and your mother-in-law certainly sounds like someone who might drive someone to strike out, I can see no reason why they would be funneling the details to the Framptons. No, I think it is very possible someone deliberately killed your mother-in-law, in the hope that you and your husband would be blamed. But, when you came home, which was not expected, and moved the body and cleaned up the room, so that the doctor declared it a natural death, they were stymied.

  “Normally a murderer would be delighted to have gotten away scot-free. But in this case, he or she might have seen the murder as a means to an end. The end being your husband’s death. If they couldn’t get your husband executed for murder, they hoped to drive him to take his own life. It has to be someone who knows about your husband’s history with suicide. When your husband wasn’t accused of murder, the real murderer must have turned to the Framptons, fed them the details about that night to create such fear and guilt in your husband that he would take his own life, or, at the very least, drink himself to death.

  “Mrs. Fuller, this is fantastic. Who would do such an evil thing. My poor Harold never hurt a soul.”

  Annie sat back, worried that Hilda was correct, and that she had let her imagination carry her away. “I know, the motive does seem to be the weak link. I suppose someone could have a secret hatred for your husband, but money is usually the motive, and I can’t see how anyone but you would benefit by the death of both your mother-in-law and your husband.”

  “Mrs. Fuller, I may have disliked my mother-in-l
aw, but I never wanted her dead, and Harold, how could you . . .”

  “No, Mrs. Hapgood, you misunderstood me, I simply meant that I assume that you would be the one who would inherit if Harold died.”

  “Oh, no. The business and the house are all part of a trust, which Harold, in conjunction with the bank, administers. If Harold were to die, I wouldn’t get anything, beyond a few personal bequests.”

  “Really? How extraordinary. What happens when Harold dies, who gets everything?”

  Hilda frowned. “I think if we had a child, the child would inherit. But I haven’t been able to conceive. Another reason my mother-in-law disliked me so.” Her voice trembled. “In my heart of hearts, I believed that once we were finally out from under his parents’ roof, we would be blessed by a child. Now, I just don’t know.”

  “But if there were no child, what then?” Annie asked, feeling a pang of sympathy for Hilda, whose marriage seemed to have held nothing but unhappiness.

  “I think that Harold said when his mother died that his father’s sister and her offspring were named as the next beneficiaries. Harold felt badly about the terms of the will, that despite all the time and effort I had spent caring for both of his parents, his father had still cut me out of any inheritance. I tried to explain to him that I didn’t care, that I hadn’t married him to become wealthy.”

  “Does Harold’s aunt live in San Francisco?”

  “No. I think she lives in Missouri. You can’t possibly think she is behind any of this. She must be in her eighties, and her son says she’s in ill health.” Hilda sounded shocked.

  “Her son?”

  “Yes, Harold’s cousin Tony, he lives in San Francisco. He’s really Harold’s best friend, and he has been very kind the last few months, trying to help me turn Harold’s mind away from his troubles. He came by immediately yesterday when I sent word to him about what Harold had done, and he talked to him a long time, trying to get him to see how foolish he’d been.”

  Annie said, “Is it possible that Harold might have told him about what happened the night his mother died? Or might he have stopped by that evening?”

  Hilda looked uncertain, but she said, “I can’t believe Tony would do anything to harm Harold.”

  “Does that mean that Harold might have confided in him?

  “Tony would be the one that Harold would turn to if he was upset. In fact, I wasn’t surprised when Harold told me later that he thought he remembered seeing Tony sometime on the day his mother died, but Tony said later he’d been out of town, which is why he didn’t hear of my mother-in-law’s death for several days. He travels a lot as part of his job.”

  Annie’s suspicions grew, and she asked, “What exactly does Tony do?”

  Hilda said, “He is really quite famous. In fact, this morning when Mrs. Nickerson stopped by, she recognized him from this photograph of him and Harold.”

  She stood up and walked over to pick up a framed picture off the mantel, handing it to Annie and pointing to a short, squat man with a wild mane of hair, straggling mustache, and broad smile. “His name is Anthony Pierce. You may have heard of him, he is a featured reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.”

  Chapter Fifty

  Sunday evening, November 2, 1879

  “Michael Shannon, a native of Ireland, aged 38, died in the city Hospital from the effects of a knife wound, inflicted by unknown parties. No arrests have been made.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

  When Hilda Hapgood told her that Harold’s cousin Tony was the journalist Anthony Pierce, Annie felt like someone had just leaned over her shoulder to put in the last piece of a puzzle, revealing for the first time a complete picture.

  Anthony Pierce! Who better to work as partner with the Framptons? As a reporter, he could move with ease among his fellow San Franciscans, both high and low, and he would know where all the skeletons were buried: who had cheated on their spouses, neglected their aged parents, had a drinking problem, skimmed a little money out of the till, or fallen asleep when they were supposed to be watching a patient. In exchange, Simon probably gave him a cut of their proceeds, alerted him to possible scandals that might be turned into stories for the Chronicle, and did him the favor of directing a series of spirit messages to his cousin, Harold Hapgood.

  She wondered if Pierce had made his arrangement with the Framptons before he planned the murder of Harold’s mother, if it was even planned. He couldn’t have foreseen Hilda leaving on that particular day and Harold getting drunk for the first time in four years. No, if her understanding of what happened was correct, this had been an impulse killing. He may have been looking for an opportunity for years, perhaps from the moment he had discovered that he would eventually inherit the Hapgood’s fortune, if both Harold and his mother could be gotten out of the way.

  Then, as fate would have it, everything was handed to him, the perfect constellation of events. Hilda gone, supposedly for good, after a fight over her mother-in-law; the servant and the nurse out of the house; Harold conveniently having imbibed to the point of blackout, probably encouraged by his dear cousin Tony. All Pierce had to do was go upstairs, suffocate the old woman with a pillow, leaving the evidence scattered about (she wondered if the trail of pearls down to the sleeping Harold had been his touch, or just an accident), and let himself out.

  As a journalist with police connections, he probably thought he could nudge the police in the right direction if the doctor didn’t immediately alert them himself. But Hilda had come home, cleaned up all the evidence, and the doctor obligingly called it a heart attack, and any nudging of the police by Pierce would make him look suspicious. No, the Framptons must have simply been a fallback plan.

  She wished she knew more about Pierce. What was his motive? Pure greed? Annie wondered how long Pierce would have been willing to pursue this indirect route, waiting for the spirits to drive Harold either to commit suicide or drink himself to death, before taking matters into his own hands and arranging an accident for his cousin. Perhaps he didn’t feel the need to hurry events along while his mother was still alive and he was just a contingency beneficiary. But Nate had told her that the reason Pierce hadn’t been able to meet with him at first was he was back home attending his mother’s funeral. No wonder the spirit attacks on Harold had gotten worse in the past two weeks, the inheritance was now right within his grasp if Harold could just be gotten out of the picture.

  Annie found herself curling her hands into fists at the thought of how Pierce had manipulated Nate. Had Pierce known from the very first that she was investigating the Framptons? She knew that Nate had been careful not to mention her name, but then he had shown up at the Framptons to escort her home. That had been at the end of the same séance when she found the first threatening note. It was possible Pierce had immediately made the connection between them if he had been at the Framptons that night. He had done that series of articles on local mediums and fortunetellers, and he may have even checked Madam Sibyl out and remembered that she lived in Mrs. Annie Fuller’s boarding house.

  This would explain why Simon seemed to know about Madam Sibyl but didn’t find the connection particularly worrisome. Pierce must have simply warned him that Mrs. Fuller had already had some dealings with a local rival. On the other hand, Nate’s stated purpose in investigating the Framptons and finding out if they were engaged in criminal activity would have been what concerned Pierce the most at the start. When he learned of the connection between Nate and Annie, then she would have become more dangerous.

  Oh, heavens, Nate would be so upset when he discovered that Pierce’s promises to get him a job in Sacramento had probably just been a way to distract him from further investigations into the Framptons. Annie was glad Nate had already come to the conclusion he didn’t want the job, less humiliating that way. For a moment, she let herself get distracted by the sweet memory of last night when he apologized for how seriously he had misread her. Thank goodness he’d come to that conclusion when he did and l
eft the restaurant to find her, or she might be dead!

  But why try to have Annie killed? Why not Nate? Pierce must have felt pretty confident he had been successful in distracting Nate. Annie, on the other hand, had persisted in coming to the séances, despite the threatening notes and the push off the horse car. She then reminded herself that the barrel incident happened the day after she visited the Hapgood’s store and spoke to Hilda. Oh my! Hilda had mentioned a cousin who was bringing her husband home from the Monday séance. Annie would have to ask Hilda if she had mentioned her visit to Pierce. If so, Pierce would feel she was getting too close to guessing the truth.

  This would mean the barrel incident really had been an attempt on her life, and the man that Jamie saw run away was most likely the same man who assaulted her last night. Not hard to imagine the reporter having connections with local hoodlums, any one of whom could be hired to do the actual killing. How upsetting for him when, despite the scare with the barrels on Thursday, she had showed up the next night for the séance, thereby witnessing Evie May’s performance, which was obviously the climax of the campaign against Harold and would have been successful if Hilda hadn’t checked on her husband when she did.

  Thinking of Evie May, Annie felt a spurt of anxiety. Once again, she couldn’t get out of her head Eddie’s message to her from Maybelle, warning her to watch out for the ‘bad man.” If the “bad man” were Pierce, and he suspected that Evie May had been talking to Annie outside the confines of the cabinet, then he might see Evie May as a direct threat. Equally upsetting was the thought that Evie May’s mother might have come to a similar conclusion as Annie had about the connections between Pierce, the Framptons, and what had happened to Harold Hapgood.