“What in tarnation are you talking about, Kathleen? Where did you get this photograph, and how do you know it’s a good likeness? Have you been over at the Ashburton house?”
Kathleen lifted her chin in defiance at his raised voice. “No cause to get all upset. I went there with Miss Dawson, this morning. She’s the one who took the photograph. I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea, but now that I know you will be looking through that ‘rogues gallery’ tomorrow anyway, I’m thinking it was a smart move on her part.”
“Did I hear Patrick?” Mary Margaret sat up in bed, her long, dark braid stark against the white of her nightgown in the candlelight.
“Yes, he came.”
Kathleen put down the clock on the small table in the corner of the room and pulled out the trundle bed.
“Did he take the photograph? Will he look to see if he can find any criminal record for Mrs. Ashburton’s son?”
Kathleen blew out the candle, not wanting her friend to see her tears. Patrick had been so very angry. He’d practically shouted at her. As she got under the covers on the trundle bed, she said quietly, “He agreed to look to see if anyone named Rafe Ashburton was ever arrested in town. But he wouldn’t take the photograph.”
“Why not? Did you tell him about your visit? How that man wouldn’t even let Miss Laura see my mistress?”
“Yes, I did. Mrs. O’Rourke was right. He was upset that I would ask him to do something he sees as unprofessional. He even said the son could get me or Miss Laura arrested for stealing.”
“Oh no! Do you really think that could happen? I never meant to get anyone in trouble.” Mary Margaret’s voice rose to a wail.
“Shush now. Don’t you worry. He was just mad because he was afraid of what Mr. Dawson was going to say when he found out what his sister’s done. Everything’s going to be all right.”
Kathleen pulled the covers up over her head and devoutly wished she could believe her own words.
Chapter 12
Friday evening, December 31, 1880
It was New Year’s Eve, and as Kathleen stood looking at the Christmas tree, she didn’t feel at all in the holiday spirit. She was worried that Ian, instead of enjoying his week off from school and playing with Jamie on the train set she’d bought him, had spent his whole holiday working. And this morning when she did get a glimpse of him as he waited in the back yard for Jamie, he looked so cold and tired.
And then there was Mary Margaret. Instead of becoming reconciled to the loss of her job, her friend had become more and more tormented by her conviction that Mrs. Ashburton was in danger from her son. The grocery’s delivery boy hadn’t helped this afternoon when he dropped by the additional goods Mrs. O’Rourke had ordered yesterday on her shopping trip. He should have been too busy to chat, but as he handed over the box of groceries to Mary Margaret, he brought up what a joke he thought it was that his employer, Riley, had thought Mrs. Ashburton had died.
Then he said, “Maybe Riley’s got that thing that the spiritualists have...that second sight. Cause I wondered if the old lady hadn’t at least been in an accident, when the son added kerosene to his order. My mother swears by the healing properties of kerosene. But someone would have to be pretty far gone to need two cans of the stuff.”
Not surprisingly, that had set Mary Margaret off. First of all, she was appalled that the son might be using kerosene instead of the good whale oil that Mrs. Ashburton insisted on, saying the smell of kerosene made the old woman ill. Then she started to worry about whether her mistress might have actually been injured in some fashion, which was why no one saw her downstairs. She started imagining Mrs. Ashburton with a broken leg, trapped upstairs at her son’s mercy, and the son being too ashamed to call in the doctor. That was when she remembered the blood stains Mrs. Kantor found on the handkerchiefs in the wash.
Kathleen thought Mary Margaret was going to have hysterics right then and there.
Thank goodness for Mrs. O’Rourke. She told Mary Margaret not to pay the grocers’ boy any mind; he was always exaggerating things, just to make his life more interesting. She said that the son had probably only ordered a small pint of the kerosene, which everyone knew was good for cleaning things. Finally, she told the girl to stop being a silly widgeon and to go back to mixing the cake batter or it wouldn’t rise. For some reason, that worked, and Mary Margaret had calmed down.
However, to be completely honest with herself, it wasn’t just Ian or Mary Margaret that had Kathleen out of sorts all day; it was the fight she had with Patrick last night. It was completely unfair for him to scold her for letting Miss Laura go to the Ashburton house.
Doesn’t he understand it isn’t my place to tell Miss Laura what she can do or not do? I’d like to see him try to tell his Sergeant Thompson not to do something!
And then, when he told her she should have trusted Officer Stanley, a man and trained professional, to know his job, she had gotten really mad and said some cutting things of her own that she now rather regretted.
She called Stanley stupid, which wasn’t kind, and she said that the men of the police force would still be bumbling around with the Silver Strike case if it hadn’t been for the quick thinking of a couple of women like Mrs. Dawson and her.
Mrs. O’Rourke would have given her one of her rare tongue-lashings if she’d heard her last night. The housekeeper was big on loyalty and treating a man right. She once told Kathleen that it was one thing to tease a fellow, as Mrs. O’Rourke did constantly with her nephew, but another thing completely to make him feel small about his life and work.
I guess I shouldn’t have said what I did to Patrick…belittling him and the force that way. It’s just that he made me feel like my life isn’t as important as his. Like what I do doesn’t count.
“Kathleen, the tree still looks beautiful.” Annie Dawson, her mistress, had come up quietly behind her. Putting her arm around Kathleen’s waist, she said, “You’ve done a fine job keeping it watered and fresh. I was half afraid we’d have to take it down before tomorrow. That would have been a shame.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Miss Laura said the tree they had at the ranch was near as grand.”
“Well, it was bigger and covered with that tinsel she loves so, but it was looking pretty bedraggled by the time we left this morning. Didn’t help that little Frankie kept stealing all the ornaments within his reach.”
Kathleen chuckled, her heart suddenly feeling lighter. She said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come up tonight and help you finish getting dressed for the party.”
“Oh, Nate has gotten pretty good at lacing me up this past week. And thank goodness I can still fit into this royal blue velvet. Besides, the Newsomes are old friends of Nate’s, and they aren’t the kind of people who care about fashion.”
“But you are feeling well?”
“Splendid. And you? You were able to see all your brothers on your birthday? And did you like Patrick’s birthday present?”
“Oh yes, he took me out on Wednesday night and gave the earring to me then, but…”
“What’s wrong? You weren’t disappointed they weren’t a ring? I was sure you weren’t ready for that step.”
“Oh no, ma’am, it’s not that. It’s just, well, Patrick and I had a bit of a disagreement over what to do about my friend, Mary Margaret, the one who’s been staying here this week. And I hoped that I might be able to ask for your help.”
One of the worst frustrations of today had been that she’d not had a second alone with her mistress since she’d been back. When the couple first arrived from the train depot, Kathleen was busy ironing Mr. Stein’s shirts. Then she needed to help little Tilly serve lunch, so it was Mrs. O’Rourke who’d helped them unpack. When she did come up to help to dress Mrs. Dawson’s hair for the party tonight, Mrs. Stein was there the whole time. And now the Dawsons were about to go out for the evening.
Mrs. Dawson said, “Mrs. O’Rourke told me about how Mary Margaret was thrown out of the house by Mrs. Ashburton’s s
on, without notice. Just awful. I’m glad she came to you; terrible things can happen to a girl set adrift, alone, at night. Beatrice says Mary Margaret has been very helpful this week and that given her excellent domestic skills and experience cooking and managing a household single-handedly, she shouldn’t have any trouble getting another, maybe even better paid, position.”
“Yes, but…”
“Come, Annie, it’s already ten past seven. Put on your wrap,” said Nate Dawson as he walked down the stairs, shrugging on his topcoat. “I sent Jamie out to get us a cab. It should be out front any minute. Oh, Miss Kathleen, I didn’t see you there. I hope my sister hasn’t been getting into any trouble while we were out of town. She sent Mother a letter, said she was busy investigating something nefarious that was going on in the neighborhood.”
Mrs. Dawson gave Kathleen a last warm squeeze and said, “Look, I have to go. But I promise, you will have me all to yourself tomorrow morning, helping me get ready for my first New Year’s Day ‘at home.’ You can tell me everything. But please don’t wait up for us tonight. Who knows how late we will be out? From what I’ve heard about Tim and Lydia’s dinner parties, they can get pretty wild.”
Suddenly the doorbell pealed, and when Nate Dawson opened the front door, Jamie stood there, his cheeks red from the cold, telling them the cab was waiting. Before Kathleen knew what happened, the couple had disappeared into the night, leaving Jamie behind.
A sharp yip and the scrabble of tiny claws on the wooden floor alerted her to the arrival of the Boston terrier, Dandy, who’d clearly heard his master’s voice and escaped from the kitchen.
Jamie picked up the dog, who started covering his face with kisses, and said, “Miss Kathleen, are you coming? Mother said I can have my dinner down in the kitchen. Afterwards, Mrs. O’Rourke told me I can help put icing on one of the cakes and then lick the pan.”
Kathleen gave herself a shake. She didn’t know why she was feeling so gloomy. All week she’d told herself that once her mistress and master got home, they would take care of everything. All she had to do was wait until tomorrow morning, when she would be able to spill out her concerns to her mistress, and she would know what to do. What could possibly go wrong between now and then?
Chapter 13
Kathleen followed Jamie and Dandy down the stairs to the kitchen where Tilly and Mary Margaret were beginning to set the old kitchen table with plates and silverware. For once, every one of the boarders, except Jamie, were out––a highly unusual occurrence––so there was no dinner to be served upstairs.
The elderly dressmakers, Miss Minnie and Miss Millie, were about town doing the last fittings of the dresses they had been working on for their clients’ New Year’s Day festivities. The Steins’ youngest daughter, Hetty, was having her parents over for dinner. Laura Dawson’s forewoman, Iris, was hosting a party for all the print shop employees and their friends, and Mr. Harvey wasn’t due back in town from visiting his family in Sacramento until Sunday evening.
The most surprising defection had come when Mrs. Hewitt agreed to go out to dinner with Mr. Chapman. Kathleen didn’t know if Jamie’s mother was doing this out of pity for the man or if this meant she was finally beginning to heal from her painful past.
In any event, Mrs. O’Rourke had decided to have all the staff, and Jamie, sit down together for a nice supper. Usually meals for the servants were catch-as-catch-can.
“Come, sit, Kathleen,” Mary Margaret said. “You’ve been on your feet all day.”
Maybe that’s it. I’m just tired.
With Mary Margaret and Tilly to help Mrs. O’Rourke with her cooking and baking, Kathleen had spent most of the day back in the laundry room, ironing Mr. Stein’s shirts and starting to wash the clothes the Dawsons had taken on their trip. She couldn’t imagine how she used to do all the wash on her own, every week, before Mrs. Dawson started hiring Mrs. Kantor to help out.
She sat down, taking up the photograph of the Ashburtons that still sat in the middle of the kitchen table. She really hadn’t had time to examine the picture earlier. They looked like such a typical family. As was true for most family portraits, the parents sat stiffly next to each other on matching chairs, with their children standing in back of them. The daughter was behind her father, with her left hand on his shoulder, looking down at her mother. Her brother, Rafe, stood slightly apart from his sister, his arms crossed in front of him, staring directly into the camera. They were in front of some sort of painted backdrop that you usually found in photographs taken at a studio.
Mother and daughter were both wearing dresses in some sort of muted plaids with the tightly corseted bodices and voluminous underskirts that still prevailed at the end of the sixties. It looked to Kathleen like the dresses were made of either satin or silk, which would show off Mr. Ashburton’s position as a wealthy merchant. The mother looked severe, with her black hair pulled back from a central part. A row of curls along the side of the daughter’s face softened her look.
Both the father and Rafe were dressed in loosely fitting black frock coats with what looked like silk neckties and vests that were dark against the white of their stiff shirt fronts. You could see the glint of a watch chain and fob across Mr. Ashburton’s vest, and Kathleen wondered if that was the watch she’d seen Rafe wearing yesterday morning. She looked closer at Mr. Ashburton’s folded hands but didn’t see the heavy ring Rafe was wearing.
In this photograph, Mr. Ashburton’s dark hair looked like it had good deal of gray throughout, including in his mustache and beard. This led her to think she’d been right that the black stains on the towels laundered by Mrs. Kantor were the result of Rafe dyeing his hair. Perhaps he’d shaved off his beard and most of his mustache that first night, as well as dyed his hair, to remind his mother that he was the same boy who’d left home over ten years ago.
Tilly leaned over her shoulder, pointing at the photograph, and said, “So that’s the man what’s got Mary Margaret so upset. Certainly handsome enough, but he looks full of himself. The young woman’s his sister? Sure is a family resemblance, but she looks a lot nicer.”
Mary Margaret put down a platter with thick slices of beef on the table and said to Jamie, “Come, lad, have a seat.”
Then she looked at the photograph again and said, “The sister was still living at home when I first came to work. She was very nice, but I think she felt jealous about how much attention her parents had always paid to her brother. Back then, Mrs. Ashburton was always arguing with her husband, trying to get him to make up with Rafe, send word for him to come home. I wasn’t surprised when the daughter chose to marry a man who lived all the way down in Los Angeles. She’s a dutiful daughter. Writes once a week, comes to visit once a year. But I wouldn’t say she has a close relationship with her mother. I was thinking, Kathleen, do you think I should write the daughter? Make sure she knows about her brother’s return?”
There was a knock on the back door, setting Dandy to barking, and Tilly said, “I’ll get it. It’s most likely Davey with the oysters. He promised to bring them by tonight.”
Kathleen pulled her shawl around her tighter as the opening of the door let in a blast of cold, wet air. After several clear days, this evening a heavy fog had rolled in from the Pacific.
She went back to looking at the photograph and said to Mary Margaret, “There’s something odd about this picture. Would you say that the sister was tall or short? On one hand, she seems tall, given how her father’s head only comes up to her chest. But then he is sitting down. Or was he a particularly short man? Doesn’t look like it, given the position of his legs, but maybe he had a very short torso.”
Her friend frowned and said, “No, Mr. Ashburton was of more than average height. You’re right; Letetia, the daughter, is tall. Mrs. Ashburton, who is rather short, always commented that both of her children got their height from their father.”
Kathleen’s heart began to beat faster as she began to see the implications of that statement. “But Mary Margaret, Ra
fe Ashburton is short.”
“No, he’s not. See there, he’s a good couple of inches taller than Letetia. I never met him, mind you, before this week. But I’m pretty sure Mrs. Ashburton once said he was nearly six feet tall.”
Kathleen felt her voice rise, in part to make sure she was could be heard over Davey’s rather loud conversation with Tilly and Mrs. O’Rourke. “I don’t mean the man in the photograph. I’m saying the man who said he’s Rafe Ashburton. At least the one who let us into the house yesterday. I remember thinking that he wasn’t any taller than Miss Dawson.”
Mary Margaret gasped. “You’re right. I mean, the man I met was taller than me, but not by that much.” She turned to the door, where Davey was excitingly telling Tilly something, and said, “Davey, come here. You’ve met the man who says he’s Mrs. Ashburton’s son. Would you say he’s tall or short?”
Davey, who was a tall, well-built German, laughed and said, “Short. Absolutely. Man doesn’t come up above my chin. But listen, Mary Margaret. All your troubles might be over soon. The man’s leaving. If I had my guess, he might be taking off tonight.”
As Kathleen hurried across the dark yard toward the back gate, she wondered if she should have gone down the side walk to O’Farrell, instead of bumbling down the dark alley. But there wasn’t time to retrace their steps. All she could think of was Sergeant Thompson’s idea of crime being a puzzle. And how, back in the kitchen, suddenly the pieces of the puzzle that had been bothering her all week fit together to provide a picture that said there wasn’t a second to waste.
The first piece of the puzzle was the bearded man who showed up out of nowhere on the day after Christmas and kicked the only servant out of the house that very night. Then the next morning came the dye-stained towels and the blood-stained handkerchiefs that the man, now freshly barbered, gave Mrs. Kantor to launder. Another couple of pieces were the change he made in the orders to the butcher and grocers, changes that made no accommodation for an elderly woman’s sensitive digestive system, changes that included beer and whisky for a household where the owner had been an active member of the local Women’s Temperance Union for years.
Kathleen Catches a Killer Page 8
