by Dianne Day
He laughed and slapped his knee. “A female with spirit, and good-looking too! By thunder, I’ll take you on.”
“If by that you mean you have something for me to type, I’ll be glad to look it over. Do you have the material with you?”
“Nope. I’ve got me a secretary, but he don’t do typewriting.”
“What sort of business are you in, Mr. Furnival?”
“Land, my dear. Land. I’m the man on the spot for the Cypress Coast Company.” This announcement pleased him; he grinned, put both feet on the floor, and tipped his chair back, lacing his fingers across a broad but tight belly.
“On the spot?” I inquired.
“Del Monte Forest. I live out there, keep an eye on things, participate in development plans, that kind of stuff.”
“So presumably you might have reports to type, and correspondence?”
“Yep. Where you from, m’dear?”
The question was personal but I was determined to keep this conversation on a professional basis, so I replied, “My previous business was in San Francisco. I can, however, provide you with local references since I have been at work in this location for several weeks. I’m sure you’ll find the quality of my typewriting satisfactory.”
He shot me a knowing look and nodded his head a few times. I interpreted this to mean that he had received my subtle message. “I’m sure I will,” he said as he reached out and plucked his hat from the end of the desk where he’d placed it. He put the hat on his head, adjusted the brim to his satisfaction, and stood up with his right hand extended.
I rose and joined in a brisk handshake. He was a head and more taller than I, although I am tall for a woman.
“Fremont Jones. Fremont’s a famous name in these parts. Do you mind my asking—”
“Not at all,” I broke in, although in truth I could not help being tired of it. “John Charles Frémont was a distant relation. Fremont was my mother’s maiden name.”
“Oh. That explains it, then.”
He lingered and I waited, though my feet were feeling a bit fidgety beneath my skirt. I did have work to get on with.
“Lots of folks around here didn’t have much use for him, you know. Frémont, I mean. Hope that’s not causing you no trouble.”
“Not at all, Mr. Furnival. I quite understand. John Charles Frémont seems to have been a person whom other people either liked very much or disliked with equal intensity. No one felt neutral about him. It was the same in Mother’s family. He was something of a black sheep, and his wife, Jessie, was not mentioned at all. However I have always admired them both and wish I could have known them.” I gestured toward my typewriter. “Now, if you’ll excuse me …”
“I see. You got work to do. Well, one of these days soon I’ll be back with some work for you, Miss Fremont Jones.” A few long-legged strides took him to the door, but there he turned back. “Or is it Mrs. Jones? You wouldn’t be a widow by any chance, and you so young?”
Naturally he assumed I would not have a living husband and be working. I knew it was unreasonable to be irritated—anyone would have assumed the same; nevertheless my throat felt tight as I said, “I am unmarried and self-supporting, Mr. Furnival. Good day.”
On the way back to the lighthouse I stopped at the tobacconist’s shop, where one may also buy newspapers and magazines, and obtained a copy of the afternoon paper, which is called The Wave. Once I had smiled and nodded my way through the most populous part of town—that is to say, up to Pacific Street—I unfolded the paper and scanned headlines as I walked. I turned page after page, every so often hefting the strap of my bag up higher on my shoulder.
So assiduously did I search through the paper that I was unaware of entering the wood until relative darkness among the trees made the newsprint difficult to decipher.
“Oh, botheration!” I swore, pages rattling as I folded The Wave without attention to neatness. Various woodland creatures, startled by my noisiness, ceased their chattering and scampering. The wood became unnaturally quiet. A chill slithered down my spine, feeling like a premonition, in spite of the fact that I am not the least bit superstitious.
“Why?” I didn’t realize I had spoken aloud until I heard the word resound through the silent wood. Even my footsteps on the sandy dirt trail made scarcely a sound. Why, I reiterated silently, was there nothing at all in the newspaper about the Poor Drowned Woman?
I was beginning to think of her in capitals, as if that were her proper name. Surely there should at least have been a simple report that the body of a woman had been brought from the bay by the men of the ocean rescue. The ocean rescuers are local heroes; therefore one would assume their actions to be newsworthy.
I quickened my steps, with the consequence that grit from the sandy road worked its way between my shoes and stockings. The price of living near the beach! No matter; the sooner I got to the lighthouse, the sooner I could give The Wave a thorough perusal. Some sort of article had to be there. I told myself as I hurried along that the lack of a photograph was a good sign. Probably someone had already identified the unfortunate woman.
I came out of the wood to discover that there was more than one source of the gloom that had stopped my reading. The day was clouding over, and not with simple fog. A massive dark gray cloudbank rose up from the south, spreading so fast that its progress could be seen with the naked eye.
Quincy, laconic as always, was herding the Holsteins into the barn. “Dispatch come from the Coast Guard,” he called out as soon as he saw me. “Stuck it on the door.”
“Thanks, Quincy,” I called in return. Lifting my skirts I ran up the walk. My heart was pounding, not so much from the climb plus that final burst of speed as from sheer excitement. We had not had a storm since Hettie left, but if that ominous sky did not portend a storm I could not imagine what would!
The dispatch, which would have been delivered by a Coast Guardsman on bicycle from the Monterey station, said that their cutter returning from Point Sur (approximately twenty nautical miles south) had reported gale-force winds headed up the coast. I dumped newspaper and bag at the foot of the stairs and charged up to the watch room with its panoramic view. The ragged, rocky projections of Point Pinos were directly ahead of me, a northwesterly direction; to my right or eastward the vast curve of Monterey Bay dipped farther than my eyes could follow; and to the left or south lay the shallow curve of Spanish Bay and the jutting outline of Point Joe. The scene was breathtakingly bizarre. To the left was darkness, to the right was light, with Point Pinos the line of demarcation … but not for long. In this battle of dark versus light, the dark was winning. One could watch its progress either in the sky or on the water, where waves responded to the creeping darkness overhead by turning black in their troughs, and spurting forth whitecaps. A flock of seagulls, trying to fly southward, encountered a wall of wind that brought them to a standstill in midair, wings flapping frantically to no avail.
I confess a sort of sneaky fascination with wild weather. As a child, I thought a storm on the cape was better than any trip to the amusement park—including a ride on the Ferris wheel, which in my childhood was everybody’s idea of the ultimate thrill. But this approaching storm would have to thrill me later. For now, I had work to do. I took the procedures book from the shelf and read through the storm protocol, then proceeded to follow it.
The main thing was not to let the light go out. The same earthquake that rocked San Francisco in April of last year had jangled the Fresnel lens and sent the lamp’s flame soaring, but the only real damage had been to the tower structure. A crack opened up in the round wall, which had since been rebuilt with reinforced concrete. I checked the oil tank, which continuously supplies the lamp by means of a pump, and the water tank in case there should be a fire. Both were full.
Quincy had already closed the exterior shutters on the keeper’s quarters, and he had secured the horse and Hettie’s Holstein cows in the barn. I saw him out at the edge of our little oasis of grass, walking slowly around the
storage building and making it secure. I caught his eye and waved, and he waved back as he started across the grass toward his lean-to beside the barn.
The wind was tearing me to pieces—it was most exhilarating! I went back into the lighthouse, put on the kettle, and tidied my hair while waiting for the water to boil, then fixed myself a cup of tea, which I took up to the watch room. There by the light of a kerosene lantern I read every word of The Wave and watched the storm come on. Long after total darkness fell and I could no longer quite watch, I listened. The wind howled around the tower and pushed against its walls like a frenzied thing. The sea crashed so violently on the rocks that I was glad this lighthouse had acres of dunes around it. The foghorn regularly emitted its doleful sound even though it was not precisely foggy. And the ships stayed away. Not a single little light bobbed on the bay.
In the midnight watch I climbed into the lantern itself. Shielding my eyes, I looked out into the wild night. It was a hypnotic experience to follow the broad white beam, which seems to turn, an impression produced by a metal drum that revolves around the constant, stationary light. Hypnotic to catch glimpse after glimpse of foaming waves, strands of sand borne on the wind like ghostly, gossamer scarves, scraps of uprooted scrub scudding over the dunes like fantastic crabbed creatures. And in the midst of it all I thought again about the Poor Drowned Woman, for I had found not a mention, not a single word about her in the newspaper. She might as well not have existed, for all anyone seemed to care.
“At least we found your body before this storm,” I said aloud, and then I made her a promise: “Even if we never know who you are, I will see to it that you get a decent burial.”
KEEPER’S LOG
January 16, 1907
Wind: W moderate
Weather: Mild and humid, high overcast
Comments: Tender off-loaded supplies in a.m.
The storm had done no damage to speak of, and three days later I survived cooking dinner for Misha—not to mention consuming it—with no damage to myself or to him. In fact the evening was quite like old times, until I mentioned my concerns about the Poor Drowned Woman. He refused to discuss her beyond reiterating that she could not have been from Carmel because none of Carmel’s residents was missing. The fact that I wanted to pursue the matter, and he did not, only pointed out how far apart we’d grown. He left soon thereafter. My great personal victory was that I neither burned the beef nor cried myself to sleep that Sunday night.
When an entire week had passed with no news whatsoever of the Poor Drowned Woman, I left my morning’s ledger and asked Quincy to come in and have a cup of coffee with me. Which I suppose was presumptuous as it was his coffee to begin with, but anyway he came.
To my great surprise, he took off his hat at table. I had never before seen him without it. Ducking his head, he scraped long gray locks behind his ears. I busied myself with putting a few cookies on a plate, to give him time to compose himself.
When I sensed he was ready I put the plate on the table and sat down myself. “Quincy,” I began, “I need some advice.”
He looked a bit wary. “I dunno, Miss Fremont—”
“Really, Quincy, if I call you Quincy, and I do all the time, you must call me simply Fremont. When you say ‘Miss’ like that, it makes me feel like somebody’s maiden aunt!”
He grinned and picked up his coffee mug without responding.
I picked up mine, too, and said, “I hope you don’t mind the mugs. I know Hettie always used china cups, but I prefer a mug myself.”
Quincy grinned wider and said, “You’re a caution, Miss Fremont, and no mistake.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes in an exaggerated manner.
Quincy said, “Sorry, I forgot. Just Fremont. This is good coffee, Fremont.”
“It should be. You made it yourself.” We both laughed, and I got back on subject. “Seriously, Quincy. You’ve lived here in the Grove for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Yep,” he nodded and slurped a bit.
“Do you have any friends on the police force?”
He reared back in his chair, looking at me as if I’d suddenly grown two heads. “Police?”
It was perfectly clear he didn’t consider the police as potential friends, so I tried another tack. “How about the coroner, Dr. Bright? Do you know him?”
“Nope.”
As I have previously observed, our Quincy is a laconic fellow. I tried again. “Have you any idea where Dr. Bright would have taken the body of that woman we found off Point Pinos a week ago? As far as I have been able to ascertain, there is no morgue either here or in Monterey. Would they take her as far away as Salinas?” Salinas, thirty miles away on the other side of the Santa Lucia Mountains, is the county seat.
Quincy scratched his head, his gentle eyes going all soft with thought. Eventually he said, “Don’t think so. Think the coroner took her over to Community Hospital—that’s what usually happens to people that drown in the bay. He hasta do that whatchamacallit—” “Autopsy?”
“Right. Before their people can come take ’em away for burying.”
“That’s just it, Quincy. I don’t think anybody could take that poor woman away, because nobody knew who she was. And there hasn’t been one single thing in the newspaper about that body being found. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
He looked at me solemnly and slowly shook his head. Without a word.
“Well?” I sounded impatient. Not being the laconic type myself, after a while it wears thin. “Come on, Quincy. You know something more, I can tell. Talk to me!
“Dunno as I should,” he mumbled down into his coffee mug.
I got up and poured more coffee for him. No sugar or cream—he drank it black. As do I.
I sat down again and leaned toward him. “Please?” It took him a while to make up his mind, and while he was doing it he looked everywhere but at me. The clock ticked. The wind, which blows variably but constantly out here on the point, whispered at tiny cracks along the window frames. Finally Quincy graced me with his dark eyes.
“I heard tell,” he said, “that she weren’t no better than she should be. So it ain’t fitting that a lady like yourself should be concerned about her. Mrs. Hettie would say as how the thing to do is leave well enough alone.”
“From whom did you hear this?” I had tried myself to get people in town to talk about the subject, with no success.
He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Folks at church. You know how they talk.”
I didn’t; I am probably the only halfway respectable female in Pacific Grove who does not go to church on Sundays. Hettie had advised me to pick a church and start going, if not for religion then for the social contacts, but this was one piece of her advice I hadn’t heeded. I would feel like a hypocrite, and hypocrisy is something I cannot bear in others, much less in myself. I persisted. “Did the folks at church happen to mention the woman’s name?”
Quincy tugged at his earlobe and said to my left shoulder, “Them kinda women don’t use their real names. But anyways, nobody said nothing ’bout a name.”
Under cover of the table, I impatiently tapped my foot. “By any chance do you happen to go to the same church as Euphemia Wells?”
He seemed startled and reared back again. If Quincy were a turtle, most likely he’d have retracted his head into his shell. “No s’ree bob!” he declared with his Adam’s apple quivering.
I surmised that Quincy was just as awed by Euphemia as everyone else was reputed to be. Since he said nothing further, I decided it was time to take pity on his obvious discomfort. “I only asked because Euphemia was there when the ocean rescuers brought the woman in, and at the time she implied something similar, while also admitting that she did not specifically know her. I fear that Euphemia Wells and others like her may be impugning a dead woman’s reputation without one shred of proof.”
“Say what?”
“Telling tales, Quincy, spreading rumors about a poor dead person who cannot defend herself.”
>
He shook his head. Sadly, I thought. “They say as how Miss Euphemia has some very definite ideas. And what she says goes in the Grove. That’s just the way it be.”
I stood up decisively. “You’ve been very helpful and I do appreciate it. I shall have to go into town an hour earlier than usual today. Can you take the eleven o’clock watch?”
“Sure can. I’m always here, Miss—er—Fremont, always glad to help out. Mrs. Houck, she had her social engagements and her committees and such. You have your other work. I reckon as that’s important.”
I thanked him and got ready to leave. I wasn’t going to work, at least not right away, but Quincy didn’t have to know that.
Dr. Frederick Bright was not only the coroner, he was also the pathologist at Community Hospital. I discovered this salient information by the expedient means of looking him up in the telephone directory at the public library. I decided against calling ahead for an appointment, and hopped on the first streetcar going down Lighthouse into Monterey.
One transfer and some small confusion later, I strode confidently into the hospital pathology suite as if I knew exactly where I was going and had every right in the world to be there—which was hardly the case. I’d chosen to wear my good suit of olive silk gabardine and had put my hair up, which I don’t usually bother doing but it does make me look older. Therefore, one would hope, more authoritative. This pathology suite was a rather depressing place: no windows, rather dark, and at the moment it felt empty as a tomb. Also it smelled, an odd, acrid odor I could not quite place.
Through a partially open door on my left I saw long tables topped by laboratory equipment, beakers and vials and such, and high stools on which the laboratorists—or whatever they are called—might sit. At the moment there was no one in the room. Two doors on my right were closed. I drew near the first and listened, hard, for the sound of voices behind it, but I heard nothing. Likewise at the second door. I went to the end of the hallway down the center of this suite of rooms, where a double door bore two words, one on each side: AUTOPSY THEATER. How macabre!
