No Pity For the Dead

by Nancy Herriman

  “But is it true the police think Mr. Hutchinson might have killed that man?” Barbara asked.

  Celia glanced up at Mrs. Cascarino’s face, bent very near hers. The woman looked back with open curiosity, but she was far too polite to ask questions.

  “That is quite enough, Barbara,” said Celia. “You will need to hold his head very still, Mrs. Cascarino. This shall hurt.”

  Angelo paused his complaints to goggle at her in fear. Mrs. Cascarino grimly clamped his head between her two strong hands. Celia pinched closed the wound and plunged the needle through the skin, weaving the ligature through the wound as quickly as possible. By the time Angelo registered the pain and cried more loudly than before, she was finished.

  Barbara snipped the needle free of the thread, and Celia tied it off. Not her best effort, and the ragged stitching would likely leave a scar, but not bad, considering the situation.

  Celia daubed blood from the wound. “There, Angelo. You will look quite wonderfully fierce with those stitches. When people ask how you got them, make it a good story, all right?”

  He hiccuped a sob, then nodded and scrambled down from his mother’s lap. He ran to join his siblings, and they vanished from sight.

  “Thank you, Signora,” said Mrs. Cascarino, shaking her head over them. “Do I pay?”

  “Most certainly not,” she answered. For what spare money could the Cascarinos have? As far as Celia knew, they could barely afford the fifty or sixty dollars a month they spent renting this frame house with its paper-thin walls.

  “But you have the expenses also.”

  Mrs. Cascarino slid a glance at Barbara, who was repacking Celia’s supplies into her portmanteau. Celia understood why the woman looked at Barbara. The house Celia lived in belonged to her cousin, or it would once Barbara reached her majority, and Celia resided beneath its roof solely in her capacity as guardian. When Patrick had abandoned her, the entirety of her possessions containable within one medium-sized trunk and one carpetbag, she’d had nowhere else to go.

  “You know I have never expected my patients to pay me, Mrs. Cascarino.”

  “Grazie.”

  Celia rose from the chair. “Watch the wound for inflammation, Mrs. Cascarino. If you keep the site clean, it should heal properly.”

  Mrs. Cascarino showed Celia and Barbara to the door. “Thank you, Signora. And I tell that Angelo to be good.”

  “He is simply being a boy,” said Celia. “Although you might wish to have your husband relocate those stacks of crates. They are too tempting.”

  “You understand the children,” the woman said. “You make a good mother, Signora. You are kind and you are calm.”

  Celia smiled politely, recalling Maryanne’s contention that Celia was fortunate to not have children. Instead, the love she would have spent on any was given to Barbara and her patients.

  Running feet thudded over their heads, accompanied by childish screeching. Mrs. Cascarino scowled at the ceiling. “More calm than I.”

  Celia and Barbara offered their good-byes and descended the stairs to the street. Celia watched her cousin as she limped down the steps, too proud to ask for assistance.

  “I do wish that you had waited until we were alone to talk about the Hutchinsons,” Celia said to her. She could not fathom how Mrs. Cascarino thought she would be a good mother when she herself seemed barely able to handle a single cousin.

  “How could I be sure I’d have your attention?” Barbara shot back. “You’re always too busy with this or that.”

  “You have my attention now.” Celia paused on the pavement. “Jane is upset?” Yesterday, she’d seemed so composed when Mr. Greaves was questioning her. A brave front, apparently.

  “Grace thinks her stepmother’s afraid her father is going to be arrested.”

  “If Mr. Greaves intended to do so, he would have told me that last night.” Celia hadn’t meant to reveal that she had gone to his rooms to speak with him. Her cousin’s expression did not change, however; she must have suspected.

  “Grace also thinks Detective Greaves hates her father,” said Barbara, not taking her eyes off the uneven planking she walked upon. “At least, that’s what her father’s saying. He’s saying that the detective wants to see him hang.”

  Why was that? What lay in the past between the men? “Detective Greaves is simply questioning all the men connected to the person who died, Barbara. And no matter how much Mr. Greaves supposedly ‘hates’ Mr. Hutchinson, he will not hang an innocent man. Tell her not to worry.”

  “Mr. Hutchinson went to the station yesterday and yelled at Detective Greaves to leave Mrs. Hutchinson alone.”

  Oh dear. “That was not wise on his part.”

  “Grace was pretty proud of him,” said Barbara, reaching for the railing of the stairs that led to their porch and struggling up them. “I don’t like that she’s worried, though.”

  “I do not, either,” said Celia, even though she was worried herself.

  “Why, look. What’s this?” Barbara bent down and picked up a rose resting on the threshold of the front door. A yellow rose with a paper tag tied to its stem. She read the tag. “‘To Miss Ferguson.’ It looks like Addie has an admirer.”

  Celia took the rose from her cousin. “Someone left her flowers yesterday as well.” She scanned the length of the street. “I wonder who it is?”

  Barbara shrugged and opened the front door. “She’ll be tickled.”

  “She was very embarrassed yesterday.”

  Celia paused to look up and down Vallejo again. The deliveryman from Bateman’s Dairy was unloading a milk can from his wagon parked at the curb. Across the street, the Chilean woman who lived there was sweeping the ever-present sand from her steps, the whisk of her broom echoing off the clapboard walls of her house. At the corner boardinghouse, two men were loudly arguing on the long balcony that ran the length of the upper floor, their voices carrying to where she stood. They were fighting about the war that had ended more than two years earlier but was still quarreled over. Some of the neighborhood children were playing a rough game of tag in the street. One of the older Cascarino boys was with them. Celia would be stitching him up next.

  But no one looked as though they had left a billet-doux for Addie.

  “Joaquin,” she called to one of the boys, the only son of their Chilean neighbor, who’d gone from playing tag to tussling, kicking up sand and dirt. She gestured for him to come over.

  Reluctantly, he left his friends and slouched up the steps. “Señora?”

  She held out the rose. “Did you notice a man come to our house and drop this here?”

  “I leave it. A man from the . . .” Joaquin paused as he searched for the English word and gave up when he couldn’t find it. “From the florería give me a nickel to put it here.” He pointed with the scuffed toe of his right kip boot. “Yesterday, too.”

  A person with enough money to hire a florist to deliver flowers seemed to limit the potential suitors. “Thank you, Joaquin.”

  He ran off and Celia went inside, set down her medical bag, and headed for the kitchen. “Addie?”

  Barbara was there before her, waiting on a cup of tea. “I’ve already told her about the flower.”

  “Another one, Addie.” Celia set the rose on the table. “And you said there have been others. When did this start?”

  Addie glanced at it and blushed, looking over at the daisies on the windowsill. “Och, I didna tell you? Last week, a note. The week before, a cluster of blooms from a laurel bush,” she said. “Oh, and the week before that, sweets. They were verra good, those.”

  Barbara was grinning. She so rarely did, that it caught Celia off guard. What an incredible situation.

  “Do you suspect who it is, Addie?” Celia asked.

  “I’ve nae idea. And that would be my sort of luck—I finally have a man interested in me,
and he willna leave his name!”

  “Addie, you’ve had other admirers before,” said Celia. Somehow, though, she always managed to chase them off. Or run away herself.

  “I bet it’s Mr. Taylor,” said Barbara.

  Addie’s blush deepened. “What’s that? Him?”

  “Or the deliveryman from the butcher’s. Grace and I were right about him being awfully sweet on you.”

  “Whisht! Get on with you,” said Addie, flapping a corner of her apron at Barbara. “And if those are my choices, I’ll stay unwed, thank you verra much. A grinning galoot from the butcher’s or a gowk who laughs over my astrologer and is bound to get himself killed by a criminal sure as I’m standing here. What a selection.”

  “But why not leave his name?” asked Celia.

  “Perhaps he’s afraid she’ll rebuff him, and he wants time to win her over,” said Barbara, proving to be insightful for a sixteen-year-old.

  “Well, ‘faint heart never won fair lady,’” Celia quoted the idiom. In Addie’s case, though, a cautious approach might succeed.

  “I prefer a saying from the home country, ‘They that love most, speak least.’” With a crisp nod of her head, Addie tucked the rose in among the daisies and turned back to the Good Samaritan stove, wrapping her apron around the handle of the kettle to lift it off the rear grate.

  “Another mystery, I guess,” said Barbara, looking up at Celia.

  “A more pleasant one to contemplate than who killed Virgil Nash.”

  * * *

  “Look at this, sir.” Taylor dropped a newspaper onto Nick’s desk and jabbed a thumb at an article on the second page. “A story this morning about Virgil Nash and a lawsuit. Says the fella who’d brought it isn’t going to be winning his case, now that the defendant has been found dead.”

  Nick pushed aside the file he’d been reviewing, a case Mullahey had wrapped up. “What’s this, Taylor?”

  “Seems somebody named Enright was suing Virgil Nash for trying to kick him off the plot of land Enright was renting. Guess Nash had even gone so far as to try to tear down the man’s cooperage!”

  Nick scanned the story. Mr. Horatio Enright had been protesting Nash’s efforts to negate the rental contract for the lot Enright’s cooperage was located on. The author of the article had inserted his opinion of the case by mentioning that Enright was a regular visitor to the Board of Supervisors meetings, objecting to the fees he’d been levied to plank the sidewalks, install Nicolson pavement in the nearby alley, and put new redwood cisterns along the road.

  “So did Enright merely like to complain, or was our Mr. Nash busy making enemies of more folks than the ones who work at Martin and Company?” asked Nick. “I think I’ll have a talk with Enright after I go see Nash’s mistress. See what he can tell us about his dispute with Nash.”

  “Nash’s death solves one of Enright’s problems, doesn’t it, sir?” Taylor grabbed the newspaper, folded it, and tucked it under an arm. “Looks like we’ve got another suspect.”

  “Another suspect, Taylor.”

  * * *

  “Please follow me, Mr. Greaves.” Lydia Templeton led Nick to the hallway behind the Metropolitan Theatre stage. They passed a man carrying a large oil lantern, its glass shade painted with a thin red coating. He nodded to the actress and barely glanced at Nick, uninterested that she was taking a man to her dressing room.

  “We’re debuting Mephistopheles Jr on Monday to open the season,” she explained as they evaded ropes tied to scenery-painted cloths suspended from the ceiling and stepped around a man touching up a backdrop. “It’s Mr. Howson’s creation, and he’s trying to evoke the fires of hell. As bad as rehearsals have been going, we’re already there.”

  With long-legged strides, she marched through the chaos, her green dress—the color surely chosen to show off her fine chestnut hair, and the waist pinched to a ridiculously tiny diameter—swaying with each step.

  “Here we are.” She paused at a door marked PRIVATE and led him inside. Striking a match, she lit the lantern on a small corner table. “Welcome to my home away from home, Detective.”

  Nick removed his hat as Miss Templeton wended her way between spangled costumes and discarded stockings littering the floor. On one wall, she’d tacked a framed review, the paper turning yellow. The room smelled of her ambergris perfume and of cigar smoke, a reminder of Miss Templeton’s most recent male visitor.

  She lifted a purple silk robe off a chair, tossed it aside, and dragged the chair over to a table covered with enough lamps to light a city block. The large looking glass hanging above it reflected her pained expression.

  “I’ve read the news. Poor Virgil,” she said, sitting down.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Templeton.”

  “Thanks, Detective.” She motioned Nick to take a seat on the sofa shoved against the wall. “Just give me a moment, okay?”

  She rummaged through the miscellany covering the table—pots of makeup, combs and brushes, feathers and other ornaments for her hair. Once she’d located a handkerchief, she wiped her eyes. Her hand was shaking.

  Nick sat back, turning his hat in his hands, and contemplated Miss Templeton as she cried into her handkerchief. Even while sniffling and blowing her nose, she was pretty. She looked to be about the same age as Alice Nash, but the tiny lines around her eyes and lips made Nick think she liked to laugh. Unlike the sober Mrs. Nash. Maybe Virgil had found Miss Templeton a refreshing change. God knew Nick would.

  Lydia Templeton blew her nose one more time and tucked the handkerchief away.

  “I knew when Virgil didn’t meet me at the ferry this past Wednesday that something was wrong. But murder?”

  “He was seen with you at the back door of this establishment the evening of May twenty-eight, the day he was killed,” said Nick. “You had a bag with you, and you climbed onto his horse and left. Later, a witness saw you and Mr. Nash heading out of town. Any explanation for that?”

  “If someone claims to have seen me leaving town with Virgil,” she said, “they were mistaken. He did collect me from the theater that evening, though. I was scheduled for a series of theatrical performances in Oakland, and we wanted to have supper together before I left on the last ferry out of San Francisco.”

  “Did he mention plans to visit with Martin that evening?”

  “Virgil went to see him? I wish I’d known. I would’ve stopped him . . .” Her lips began to tremble, and she paused to regain her composure.

  Nick didn’t know if he should be buying what she was selling, but she was awfully good at selling.

  “He took me to the Davis Street dock and said he would see me on my return. That was the last I saw of him,” she continued, her emotions steadied. “I returned this past Wednesday. He was not at the dock to meet me. I was worried, but not worried enough, apparently.”

  “Did a Detective Briggs ever interview you?”

  “No, but then I was out of town. Although everyone here at the theater knew where to find me.”

  Good old Briggs. So thorough. “Who might’ve wanted to kill Mr. Nash, Miss Templeton?”

  She’d left the door open, and she turned to stare at the hallway beyond. Out in the theater, the orchestra was playing, a woman singing along. Miss Templeton winced when the vocalist hit a sour note. The music ground to an abrupt halt, and a man, probably Mr. Howson, started shouting.

  “He did have enemies,” she admitted. “Men who resented him.”

  “Because he’d gotten rich mining the Comstock? Or as a successful gambler?” Nick asked.

  “Both,” she said, without a hint of apology or shame. “He didn’t talk much about his time in the Comstock, though. He lost his brother, Silas, there, and it pained him still. Murdered by a knife-wielding madman.”

  “Mrs. Nash told me about Silas. Did Virgil ever mention to you the name of the man who’d killed him?” Nick asked,
making a note to have Mullahey contact the police in Virginia City for details.

  “Cuddy Pike. Isn’t it funny that I can remember his name? Apparently he thought Virgil and his brother had encroached on his lode, driving their shaft into Pike’s ore vein in order to mine it.”

  A claim jumper, then, like Matthews had said.

  “Virgil only mentioned him once or twice. He was furious that the sheriff allowed his brother’s killer to get away. He’s never been located, as far as I know,” she continued. “No, Virgil preferred to talk about his adventures, how wild and carefree it was in those days. Desperate men desperate for wealth and living like hungry wolves. It wasn’t easy to pull silver from those stones. Not at all like panning for gold. Virgil was very proud of his success and had little tolerance for the weak and the quitters. He used to say that the injury to his arm was proof of how hard he was willing to work. His forearm was crushed when a hoisting cage cable broke, Detective, and he was nearly thrown to his death at the bottom of the mine. He was awfully proud about surviving the accident, too.”

  “I’ve been told men owed Mr. Nash money. Gambling losses. What do you know about that?”

  “Virgil was skilled at playing faro—now that he’s dead, I suppose we can admit that,” she said. “Wouldn’t Alice be shocked.”

  “Where did these faro games take place?” Nick asked.

  “Everywhere and anywhere men take wagers—their houses, private rooms in hotels, basement dens beneath saloons. An alleyway, if necessary.”

  “Any particular hotels or saloons, Miss Templeton?”

  “He’d favored the Golden Hare lately. Not much to look at on the outside. Intentionally so,” she said. “But his fancy for that place would’ve eventually passed, I’m sure. Once the cut was decided for or against, he would no longer have a need to go there and would’ve moved on. Virgil was restless.”

  “What does the Golden Hare have to do with the cut?” Nick asked, noting how many conversations kept coming around to the Second Street cut.