2 The Spook Lights Affair

by Marcia Muller

  The restless mist was thick-pocketed that way; the side lamps on a hansom cab at the far intersection were barely visible. At a fast walk now, Quincannon continued another ten paces. Close by, then, he heard the nervous neighing of a horse, followed by a similar sound from a second horse. A few more paces, and the faint glow of a lantern materialized. Another, slender wedge of yellow appeared on the right. One of the horses nickered again, and harness leather creaked. He heard nothing else.

  He kept moving until he could identify the sources of the light. One came from a lantern mounted on a large brewery wagon drawn by two dray animals that filled the alley, the other from a partially open door to the building on the right—a two-story brick structure with an overhanging balcony at the second level. Above the door was a sign whose lettering was just discernible: MCKENNA’S ALE HOUSE.

  The wagon was laden with medium-sized kegs, which indicated a late delivery to the saloon. There was no sign of anyone human, though he could hear the mutter of voices from inside. He drew closer, peering to the right because that direction offered the largest amount of space for passage around the wagon.

  The thrown object came from his left. Quincannon saw it—one of the kegs—in time to pitch his body sideways against the ale house wall. The keg sailed past his head, missing him by precious little, slammed into the bricks above and broke apart. He threw his arm up to protect his head as staves and metal strapping and the contents of the keg rained down on him.

  The foamy brew, a green and pungent lager, drenched him from head to foot, got into his eyes and mouth and nose. Spluttering, he pawed at his face and shook his head like a bewildered bull. Once again he heard the pound of retreating footfalls, which impelled him to continue the chase. But in his haste to get past the wagon, his foot slipped on the beer-muddied ground. Down he went on his backside, sliding forward so that he was nearly brained by one of the frightened dray horses’ plunging hooves.

  The rear door to McKenna’s Ale House opened as he struggled upright and a pair of curious heads poked out. Quincannon, giving vent now to most of his vocabulary of cuss words, drew and brandished the Navy and the heads disappeared so swiftly that they might never have been there at all. He slid along the bricks, rubbing at his beer-stung eyes. The dray horses were still shuffling around in harness, though neither was plunging any longer. He finally managed to shove past them, stumbled out onto Folsom Street.

  The fog rolling up from the waterfront was as thick here as Creole gumbo. All he could hear was the ever-present clanging of fog bells. All he could see was empty damp-swirled darkness.

  Cantwell, damn his cowardly eyes, had vanished again. And this time there was no picking up his trail.

  6

  SABINA

  She spooned some of the glutinous, evil-smelling food that her cat, Adam, loved into his saucer and set it down on the kitchen floor. Happy rumbles came from the sharp-eared, long-tailed Abyssinian and Siamese mixture; his short golden fur rippled with pleasure as he tucked into his feast.

  Better you than I, Sabina thought.

  From her small icebox she took a piece of fresh tuna, placed it in another saucer, and set that on the outside porch for old Annie, the homeless woman. Annie would not come for her breakfast until Sabina had left the flat, but she would already be waiting and watching close by.

  A cup of morning coffee sat cooling on the counter. Sabina took it to the parlor and sat in the Morris chair there to reflect once more on the bewildering events of the previous night.

  After she, Mayor Sutro, David St. Ives, and Dr. Bowers had returned to the Heights from their futile search along the Great Highway, they had enlisted the aid of servants and some of the male party guests in a thorough canvass of the grounds by lantern light. That had also proved futile, as she knew it would. Virginia St. Ives was not to be found on Sutro Heights, just as her body had not been found on the Great Highway. No matter what anyone might think—and there was skepticism among others besides the girl’s brother—Sabina had not been mistaken in what she’d witnessed on the overlook. The ghostlike figure on the parapet, its leap, the scream, the sound of the body tumbling down the cliff—all of that had happened just as she remembered it.

  The question of what had become of Virginia’s body was puzzling. But so was the reason for her death leap. The suicide note was ambiguous and offered no hint as to what would compel a lovely, rich post-debutante with the most promising of futures to commit such a drastic act.

  Unrequited love was one possibility, a serious illness another. A third was pregnancy out of wedlock.

  Adam sauntered in and jumped onto Sabina’s lap. She stroked him absently as he settled down to wash his face and paws.

  Would the fact that the girl had been forbidden to see Lucas Whiffing be sufficient cause? It didn’t seem likely. Once her parents returned from Sacramento, they couldn’t have expected Sabina or anyone else to spend days on end watching over their daughter; there were any number of ways she could have continued to keep company with the boy.

  Illness seemed just as improbable. Virginia had been too pink-cheeked and clear-eyed, too energetic, to be suffering from a severe malady. There were moments, in fact, when she had seemed to glow.…

  Didn’t cousin Callie and her friends describe women who were with child as glowing? Yes, but those discussed pregnancies had occurred within wedlock and in all cases the children were wanted. If Virginia’s glow had been the result of pregnancy, it was probable she and Lucas would have wanted the baby, and as was usual in such circumstances, the St. Ives’s would eventually have accepted their grandchild, if not Lucas as their son-in-law. Virginia would have had no cause to take her unborn baby’s life as well as her own.

  But the situation might have been far more dire than it appeared on the surface. If Virginia had indeed tossed her bonnet over the windmill and found herself in a family way, and Lucas Whiffing had refused to marry her, death might have seemed preferable to facing shame and social banishment. She wouldn’t be the first or the last eighteen-year-old girl in trouble to make that senseless decision.

  The door chimes sounded.

  Now who could that be at this early hour? She set down her coffee cup, brushed Adam off her lap, and went to peer through a parting in the draperies that covered the windows overlooking the street. Two men, one bare-headed, the other wearing a felt slouch hat, stood in the vestibule. She recognized the little chubby one in the derby: Homer Keeps, a muckraking journalist with the Evening Bulletin. The other man would undoubtedly be a reporter as well. She might have known that the press would catch wind of the tragedy at Sutro Heights, despite the mayor’s desire that the story not be made public, and come haring to her with a barrage of questions and insinuations.

  Sabina was in no frame of mind for such harassment this early in the day. Quickly she caught up the reticule in which she’d put cousin Callie’s ruined gown and slippers, snatched her jacket from the hall tree—last night’s fog had mostly burned off and the weather would be sunny and mild enough for a light wrap—and hurried through the kitchen to the back door. Down a short flight of steps and she was in the rear yard, which was screened from the street in front by trees and shrubbery. A gate in the black-iron fence beyond the carriage house led to an alleyway that bisected the block. She made her way along there to the next cross street and then downhill. It was still too early to venture downtown; she boarded a westbound cable car instead.

  * * *

  The handsome Victorian Callie French shared with her husband was in the fashionable neighborhood just beyond Van Ness Avenue. Sabina surprised her plump blond-haired cousin by her early arrival, and surprised her even more when she presented her with what was left of the borrowed garments. “My Lord,” Callie exclaimed, “these look as if you were playing outdoor tag instead of attending a ball last night.”

  “I was, more or less,” Sabina said ruefully.

  She apologized profusely for the damaged garments, but Callie waved it away. “Stuff and non
sense. The gown was too small for me anyway. What happened?”

  “It’s a long story. You’ll no doubt read about it in the newspapers tonight.”

  “The newspapers? Oh, my! You haven’t gotten yourself in some sort of trouble, have you? And at one of the mayor’s parties, of all places?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes, but through no fault of my own.”

  “Did something happen with the young woman you were watching?”

  “To her, yes.”

  “Well? What, for heaven’s sake?”

  “That is what I intend to find out.”

  “Pshaw! You’re being very mysterious.”

  “I don’t mean to be. It’s just that I haven’t time to discuss the matter right now—I have an appointment downtown.” Which wasn’t quite true, but close enough to her intention. “I only stopped by to return the gown and slippers and to apologize. We’ll have a luncheon soon and I’ll tell you everything in detail.”

  * * *

  F. W. Ellerby’s bicycle and sporting goods emporium was on Powell Street a few doors off Market. The space it occupied was small—an uptown business district showroom rather than a full-sized store. Its plate-glass front window displayed three bicycles—a man’s, a woman’s, and a tandem—and a small selection of other items artfully arranged to attract the attention of passersby. It had just opened for business when Sabina arrived.

  The showroom’s interior was crowded with several more bicycles and a wide range of sporting goods, from firearms to archery and croquet sets to a colorful array of kites. The first employee Sabina encountered was a heavy-set, middle-aged man dressed in a rather garish flower-patterned waistcoat. When she asked for Lucas Whiffing he said somewhat stiffly, “I am not sure if Mr. Whiffing is here today—I’ve only just arrived. Illness or whatever may have kept him home yet another day this week. But I’ll see.”

  Mr. Whiffing was there, having apparently just come in himself. The young man who emerged through a doorway at the rear and approached her was more conservatively dressed than his fellow employee, small of stature, and darkly handsome except for a haggard look around the eyes that might have been the result of recent illness or a simple lack of sleep. The smile he wore under a narrow waxed mustache was the boyishly charming sort Sabina instinctively distrusted. It was the first time she had set eyes on him, though he had been described to her by Virginia St. Ives’s mother. Mrs. St. Ives considered him “a slick and devious fortune hunter,” though she seemed never to have met him, either. Whether or not the appraisal was apt remained to be seen.

  “Yes, Madam, what may I do for you?”

  “My name is Sabina Carpenter.” She presented him with one of her cards. “I’d like to speak to you privately, Mr. Whiffing.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said when he finished peering at the card. “A woman investigator?”

  “You find something wrong with that?”

  “Wrong? No, not at all. What is it you wish to speak to me about?”

  “Virginia St. Ives.”

  His only reaction was a wry twist to his smile. He seemed not to know yet of the girl’s suicide or the strange disappearance of her body. Nor to have recognized Sabina’s name.

  “What about Ms. St. Ives?”

  “In private, please. It’s important.”

  “Well … Mr. Ellerby doesn’t like employees using his office when he isn’t here, but we can talk in the storeroom.” He ushered her through the rear doorway and into a narrow room lined with well-filled shelves and redolent of leather, rubber, and linseed oil. “If you’d like to sit down, Miss Carpenter, I can fetch a chair—”

  “Mrs. Carpenter. No, that isn’t necessary. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you about Virginia St. Ives, if you haven’t already been informed.”

  “Virginia? No. Has something happened to her?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Briefly and with a minimum of detail she told him what had happened the night before.

  He reacted with shock, bewilderment, distress—all of it seemingly genuine. He leaned heavily against one of the shelves, shaking his head, his eyes moist and glistening. “My God, are you certain she couldn’t have survived the fall? If her body wasn’t found, then she might still be alive.…”

  “I can’t explain the missing body, but no, it’s virtually impossible for her to have survived such a plunge.”

  “But why would she do such a thing? She was so young, so full of life.…”

  “You have no idea?”

  “No. Absolutely none.”

  “I’ve been told you and she were quite close.”

  “We were keeping company, yes, until her parents refused to allow her to see me any longer.” A touch of bitterness underlay the grief in his voice. “They consider me beneath her station. ‘A lowly clerk who lives in the squalor of Carville,’ in her father’s words. I may be only a clerk and stockboy at present, but Mr. Ellerby is planning to open a second store and has promised to make me manager. And whatever Carville may be, it’s certainly not squalid.…” He broke off, scrubbed his face with his palms.

  Sabina asked, “How serious was your relationship with Miss St. Ives?”

  “Not as serious as it might have become had we been permitted more time together. I may one day have asked her to be my wife.”

  “But it hadn’t reached that stage of intimacy yet?”

  “No. If only she hadn’t listened to her father…” The hands came down and he frowned at Sabina as if just struck by a thought. “I suppose he’s the one who hired you. To make sure Virginia didn’t disobey his orders.”

  “While he and his wife were away in Sacramento, yes.”

  “Why were you chaperoning her last night? Did you think Virginia might try to sneak off to meet me somewhere?”

  “I didn’t think anything, Mr. Whiffing. I was merely attending to my duties.”

  “Not attending to them well, if you weren’t able to prevent her from hurling herself off that cliff.”

  “I had no idea what she was planning to do. I truly wish I had.”

  “So do I.” He sighed heavily. “Oh, God, poor Virginia,” he said then. “She was … downhearted the last time I saw her, but I thought it was because she’d been forced to end our relationship.”

  “That was at your meeting at Coppa’s Restaurant last week?”

  “Yes. She said she couldn’t go against her father’s wishes, that he would disown her if she did. I was more upset than she was, at least outwardly.”

  At the breakup itself, Sabina wondered, or at the end of his chances of marrying into a considerable fortune?

  Lucas said, “But she must have been depressed, deeply depressed about something else to do what she did. I can’t imagine that it had anything to do with me.”

  “She gave no indication of what it might have been?”

  “None. I would have questioned her if she had.”

  “Did you have any contact with her after that day?”

  “No. I kept hoping she would change her mind, try to get in touch with me, but she didn’t.”

  “Do you know if she was seeing anyone else?”

  He shook his head. “If she was, it was at the forceful urging of her parents. But I don’t believe she was. At least not during the time we were together.”

  “And how long was that?”

  “Three months.”

  “How did you and she meet?”

  “She came in one morning to view our new line of bicycles. Our conversation was friendly enough so that I was encouraged to invite her to a noon-hour stroll through Union Square, and she agreed. I bought her a corsage at old Giovanni’s stand—pansies, her favorites.”

  “How often did you meet after that?”

  “Whenever my job and her busy schedule permitted. Public places. The little tea room in Maiden Lane, restaurants where it’s permitted for young women of her station to dine alone with gentlemen. The Chutes Amusement Park on one occasion, Golden Gate Park on another.”r />
  “Always just the two of you? Or did you share some of these outings with others of your acquaintance or hers?”

  “Just the two of us. I was never introduced to anyone in her circle, but that was not because she was in any way ashamed of me.” Lucas said this defensively. “The opportunity simply never arose.”

  “Did you spend an entire day, well into the evening, in her company?”

  “No. Our outings lasted no more than two or three hours.”

  “Were you ever alone together in private circumstances?”

  “Private circumstances? No, never. Why would you ask that?”

  “I’m sure you realize one possible reason for Virginia’s despondent state is that she found herself caught in a shameful situation—”

  Color came into Lucas’s cheeks; he drew himself up angrily. “Are you suggesting that she might have been with child and I the father? That is an insulting and completely false notion, Mrs. Carpenter. Virginia and I were never intimate, never exchanged more than a chaste kiss.”

  The truth? Or was he protesting too much? “Pregnancy by another man might still be the cause.”

  “I refuse to believe that. Virginia could be gay and impulsive at times, but underneath she was an extremely virtuous young lady. I don’t care how many beaux she had, she would have remained pure until her wedding night.”

  Sabina wasn’t so sure, but she saw no reason to argue the point. It would not have done her any good to try; Lucas ended the interview abruptly, saying that he didn’t feel well and needed a breath of air, and leaving her to find her own way out through the front of the store.

  A curious young man, Lucas Whiffing. His answers to her questions had seemed honest enough, and yet Sabina was left with the feeling that he hadn’t been completely straightforward with her. Either he was an habitual liar, or he knew and was hiding something for reasons of his own. Or both.

  * * *

  Virginia St. Ives had many friends her age, but evidently only one close enough to have been a confidante—Grace DeBrett, the girl whom Sabina had met at the St. Ives home and who had been at the mayor’s party last night. Miss DeBrett lived with her family in a Nob Hill mansion, Sabina’s destination by hansom cab after leaving F. W. Ellerby’s.