2 The Spook Lights Affair

by Marcia Muller

  “Wide enough and flat enough to walk on,” he observed.

  “You’re not thinking of going down there?”

  “And why not? I may not look it, but I’m a nimble gent. And I have no fear of heights.”

  “It’s still dangerous.”

  “Not as dangerous as it would be on a foggy night.”

  “Virginia wasn’t down there when she jumped.”

  He winked at her, and before she could protest he hopped up onto the parapet, caught hold of the nearest statue, and used it to help lower himself to the ground below. He may have been nimble and fearless, but it made her nervous watching him prowl back and forth along the wall, bent over and peering at the grassy earth.

  “John, for heaven’s sake, be careful!”

  “Always, my dear. Never fear.”

  One of the visitors saw him down there and called out a warning that he ignored. Others, drawn by the call, came to stand at the wall and exclaim at what one man called “a damn fool stunt.” Sabina had to agree with that, and with their urgings for him to climb back up to safety, which he also ignored.

  He was at the stunted cypress to the left now, poking among its limbs. Then something caught his eye, for he eased down onto one knee. Sabina caught a glimpse of what he picked up—a small shiny object that glinted in the sunlight. He clasped it into his palm, straightened, and to her relief finally lifted himself back onto the wall and jumped down beside her.

  He led her away from the indignant group that had gathered at the parapet, to a point midway across the overlook, before he showed her what he’d found—a small but heavy piece of metal with a tiny ring soldered onto one end.

  “What is it?”

  “A fisherman’s lead sinker. New, and not scratched or tarnished. It couldn’t have been down there very long.”

  “Dropped out of some visitor’s pocket, I suppose.”

  “Or lost in some other fashion.”

  “You’re not thinking it has any connection to Virginia St. Ives’s suicide?”

  “I don’t see how it could—at the moment.” He slipped the sinker into his pocket. “Tell me again exactly what you saw Friday night.”

  She told him, in as much detail as her memory would allow.

  “You’re certain that fluttery sound you heard was the skirts of her gown?” he asked.

  “Either the gown, or the wind.”

  “How distinct were the noises you heard after she jumped?”

  “Distinct enough. I didn’t imagine her body tumbling through the ice plant and over and down the cliff.”

  “No, of course you didn’t.”

  As they went on toward the stairs, Sabina asked, “John, can you think of any reasonable explanation for what happened to Virginia’s body?”

  “No. Well, a glimmering of one, perhaps.”

  She knew better than to ask him what it was. Her partner never shared his “glimmerings” with her or anyone else until they became certainties or near certainties.

  She wished she had a glimmering herself. And yet … perhaps she did. The same vague feeling of wrongness, of something she’d seen or not seen, that had bothered her before had nudged her memory again when she was repeating her account to John. Its exact nature continued to elude her now, but she had had that sort of feeling before and each time she had eventually grasped its significance. Sooner or later she would also grasp this one.

  9

  SABINA

  Homer Keeps was waiting for Sabina when she left her rooming house early Monday morning.

  She had peeked out through the front window curtains and had seen no sign of lurking reporters, but to be safe—or so she’d thought—she’d exited down the rear stairway as she had on Saturday and started across the yard toward the mid-block carriageway. And the chubby little reporter for the Evening Bulletin popped out from behind a poplar tree, startling her, before she was halfway there.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Carpenter,” he said cheerfully. He doffed his derby as he spoke, revealing his bald head with its thin, brown horseshoe fringe. His broadcloth suit was spotted with cigar ash; some other substance stained his stiff celluloid collar. All in all, an unappetizing sight this early in the day. “And a fine morning it is, or will be when the last of the fog burns off.”

  “It was until now, and will be when I’ve seen the last of you.”

  “Now, now, is that any way to speak to a member of the press? Distinguished member, if I do say so myself.”

  “Muckraker is more like it.”

  “Ah, you wound me deeply. Such insults are beneath a comely lady such as yourself—the result of too much time spent with that bibulous, conceited, and disagreeble partner of yours.”

  “John is not bibulous, and hasn’t been for some time. You know that as well as I do.”

  “Perhaps he isn’t. Conceited and disagreeable in any case. He even threatened my life once.”

  “Did he? With just cause, I’m sure. He may even threaten it again after the inflammatory article you wrote on Saturday.”

  “Inflammatory? I merely told the truth as it was presented to me.”

  “By Virginia St. Ives’s brother, who was not present when his sister leapt from the parapet. I was, and I know what I saw.”

  “Then you should have no objection to telling it to me.” With a flourish, Keeps produced a pen and a notebook from the pocket of his frock coat. “An exclusive interview, in your own words.”

  “Which you’ll misquote and then in your customary fashion distort into an attack on the competence and ethics of the Carpenter and Quincannon agency.”

  “Once again, you wound me deeply.”

  “Not deeply enough,” Sabina said. “The answer, Mr. Keeps, is no. No interview, now or at any time in the future.” She started away toward the rear gate.

  Keeps hurried after her. “It would be in your best interest to change your mind, Mrs. Carpenter. Silence on your part will only strengthen the case against you if Joseph St. Ives follows through on his threat.”

  “What are you talking about? What threat?”

  “Why, hadn’t you heard? He is contemplating a civil suit against you for negligence if his daughter is proven to have committed suicide.”

  Sabina stopped again, abruptly. The little reporter was smiling eagerly, all but rubbing his fat hands together. “Who told you that?” she demanded. “Joseph St. Ives is in Sacramento—”

  “Ah, no, he isn’t. He returned to the city yesterday.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I have my sources,” Keeps said slyly. “Well? Under the circumstances, don’t you think it would be wise to cooperate with an honest member of the press?”

  “If I knew one, yes. But my answer to you is still an unqualified no.”

  Keeps lost his smile and some of his composure. “You’ll regret that decision. As you’ll see when you read my story in tonight’s edition.”

  Sabina eyed him sharply. “Write anything remotely of a libelous nature, Mr. Keeps, and I won’t be the only one facing a potential lawsuit.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No more than you’ve threatened me.”

  She hurried ahead to the gate, leaving the reporter to stand sputtering to himself under the poplar tree.

  * * *

  Miss Hillbrand’s Academy of Art, on Post Street near Union Square, was a beloved San Francisco institution, having produced two alumna of note—Dolores Weston, a well-known watercolorist, and Eleanor Sand, whose ceramics were highly prized. Still-life, portrait, and landscape painting, as well as sculpting in clay and bronze, were taught to young ladies by Miss Hillbrand and her staff. It was de rigueur for wealthy families to send their daughters, artistically talented or not, to the academy for “aesthetic finishing.” One of those families was the DeBretts, one of the daughters Grace, Virginia’s St. Ives’s best friend.

  At eleven o’clock Sabina stood waiting in front of the stone-faced building, her eyes on its wide front door
. Fortunately she had had no other pressing business to attend to today; she would have had difficulty focusing on it if she had.

  The mystery surrounding Virginia’s disappearance had given her a restless night, and the confrontation with Homer Keeps and the unsettling prospect of a civil suit for negligence by the St. Ives family made her even more determined to get to the bottom of it. For her own peace of mind as well for the reputation and financial security of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. Puzzles such as this nettled her to the point of distraction. No matter how many times she reviewed Friday night’s strange events, she still couldn’t quite identify the feeling of wrongness that continued to plague her. If she did … no, when she did, she was certain it would explain, or at least partially explain, what she’d witnessed. Meanwhile, she was not about to sit back and wait passively for her memory to dislodge it. That was why she was here at Miss Hillbrand’s Academy, waiting for Grace DeBrett to emerge. The more she knew about the post-deb and her various activities, the better equipped she would be to ferret out the truth.

  It had been Callie, at yesterday’s luncheon, who had told her about Grace DeBrett’s art lessons. No one of her acquaintance knew the city’s social upper class more intimately than her cousin, and Callie “had it on good authority”—she always had information on good authority, although she refused to say exactly whose authority it was—that the young woman was given painting lessons at Miss Hillbrand’s from nine until eleven on Monday mornings. According to Callie, Grace was not only an unattractive girl but a rather dim-witted one, and overprotected by her mother as a result. This was evidently why Sabina had not been allowed to talk to the girl on Saturday. “It would be just like Mathilda DeBrett to shield her precious daughter from anything that hints of scandal,” Callie had said. “All that flapdoodle in the newspapers about you, no doubt. But Mathilda doesn’t accompany Grace to Miss Hillbrand’s, so she won’t be there to prevent you from talking to the girl.”

  Callie was a caution. She professed to know something about nearly everyone in this city, a claim Sabina had never disputed. She would make a good detective herself if she set her mind to it, she’d said once, and then audaciously suggested that Sabina hire her on a part-time basis so she could prove it. The thought of Callie working side by side with her and John, and of his fulminating reaction to what she would surely insist on doing to “perk up” the agency offices—lacy curtains on the windows, patterned pillows on the chairs—was wryly amusing. Fortunately, the suggestion had been made in jest. Genuine detective work bewildered and worried her cousin; Callie was forever warning Sabina against its dangers.

  Promptly at eleven o’clock a bevy of young women began to emerge from the academy, carrying sketchbooks, portfolios, and examples of their artistic efforts, arranging hats and capes, talking among themselves. Sabina recognized two or three who had attended Mayor Sutro’s party on Friday night. Normally their chatter would have been animated and punctuated by laughs and giggles, but today it was subdued. The suicide and the disappearance of the remains of one of their acquaintances was doubtless the cause.

  Grace DeBrett, like Virginia St. Ives and others in the current crop of post-debs, had been featured prominently in the society pages since her debut the previous year. Petite, with upswept brown hair, she had unfortunately been gifted by nature with a short neck, buck teeth, and a flattish pug nose. The fact that she and Virginia had been friends despite the contrast between her ugly-duckling looks and the St. Ives girl’s patrician beauty, came as no surprise. Many attractive girls chose homely friends in order to set off their own prettiness, and Virginia had been just such a type.

  Grace stood apart from the others, not taking part in their good-byes to one another, looking lost and forlorn. She remained in front of the academy until the other girls were gone, then crossed the busy street and entered a tea room called The Creamery. Sabina, following, found the girl seated alone at a small, white wrought-iron table at the rear, head bent forward and propped in one hand.

  Smiling, Sabina said, “Excuse me, Miss DeBrett. Would you mind if I joined you?”

  Grace blinked up at her. “Oh … it’s you. Mrs. Carpenter. You were there last Friday night when poor Virginia…” The young bud shook her head, unable to finish the sentence, the shake so fervent that one of the white ostrich plumes on her broad-brimmed hat nearly came loose.

  “I don’t mean to intrude, but I’d like to speak with you—”

  “Couldn’t you have stopped her from doing such an awful thing? Really, couldn’t you?”

  “I very much wish I’d been able to. But there simply wasn’t enough time.”

  “Her brother, David, said you were negligent. In the newspapers. Mama said so, too, that’s why she told Inge to tell you to go away when you came to our house Saturday morning.”

  “They’re wrong. Truly.”

  A waitress appeared at the table. Sabina took the opportunity to claim the seat opposite Grace. The girl didn’t protest; her attention was on the waitress. She ordered tea with milk and honey, Sabina plain orange pekoe. The shop, with its cozy atmosphere, reminded her of the one near South Park where she’d spent an irritating few minutes with the crackbrain—John’s term, which she wasn’t completely convinced was appropriate, for the Englishman who called himself Sherlock Holmes—listening to him lecture pompously on the subjects of tea, the superiority of the British Empire, and his perceived deductive genius.

  When the waitress departed, Grace sighed, blinked at Sabina, and resumed speaking as if there had been no interruption. “Inge is our downstairs maid. She’s not really fit for the position, she’s Swedish or Norwegian, I don’t remember which, and her English isn’t very good, but she tries and Mama says she’s coming along.”

  “Miss DeBrett … or would it be all right if I called you Grace?”

  “I suppose so. It’s my name, after all. Such a pretty name, but it doesn’t fit me at all. I’m not graceful and I’m not pretty. Mama says I am, pretty that is, but I’m not. I’m just—Oh, here’s the tea. Do try the scones, they’re dreamy here.”

  Babbling, Sabina thought, to mask her discomfort and her grief. Eating too much, too, for the same reason, judging by the amount of butter, jam, and clotted cream she heaped on to a scone.

  “About Virginia. You and she were close friends?”

  “Oh, yes, very close. Virgie … she…” Abruptly the girl’s eyes filled with tears. She took a huge bite of the scone, her cheeks puffing out like a chipmunk’s, swallowed, and then frowned, and said accusingly, “She didn’t like her parents hiring you to watch over her.”

  “They felt it was necessary for her own good.”

  “But it wasn’t, was it? For her own good?” Abruptly Grace’s face scrunched up and two large tears trickled down her cheeks; she dabbed them away with her napkin. “Virgie … oh, God, I can’t believe she’s gone. She was so full of life, so … here. I miss her terribly already.”

  “I’m sure you do. Grace, do you have any idea why she would want to do away with herself?”

  “None at all. It’s just so … so unbelievable.”

  “Did she seem depressed or disturbed recently?”

  “No, she was just … Virgie.”

  “And at the party Friday night? I noticed you and she talking not long before she ran out. Did she seem in any way despondent then?”

  Grace shook her head again. “She seemed … I don’t know, kind of nervous and excited. I thought it was because she was going to meet someone outside, on the overlook.”

  “Oh? Who? Lucas Whiffing?”

  “I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. She said I’d find out when I went out there with her.”

  “… I’m not sure I understand. When did Virginia ask you to go with her? Friday night?”

  “No. A couple of days before.”

  “Why did she want you there?”

  “Well … to sort of act as a lookout. So no one would bother her while she was with
whomever she was meeting. But then at the party she said she’d changed her mind.”

  “Did she give you a reason why?”

  “No, she merely said she wouldn’t need me after all. I guess it was because she’d decided to … you know, do what she did.”

  Sabina stirred her tea, digesting this information. Then she asked, “Did Virginia ever confide in you about her beaux?”

  “Sometimes. Well, not everything about them. I think there were some things she kept to herself.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well…” A faint blush colored the girl’s cheeks. “You know, intimate things.”

  “Do you think she’d been intimate with one of her beaux?”

  The blush deepened to a rose hue. “Of course not! You don’t think Virgie wasn’t a … that she … no, not before marriage. Never.”

  Protesting too much? Sabina wondered. She said, “I’m sure you’re right,” though she wasn’t sure at all. “Did Virginia ever mention Lucas Whiffing?”

  “Yes, but not as if he was anyone special. They rode bicycles and flew kites in Golden Gate Park and lunched a few times, that’s all. She liked him, she said, but not enough to go against her parents’ wishes when they objected. They didn’t want her seeing him because he’s only a clerk in a sporting goods emporium … well, you know that.”

  “I understand that’s where she first met him, in F. W. Ellerby’s.”

  “No, that’s not right. She met him through David.”

  “Did she? How did that come about?”

  “I don’t know. Virgie never said.”

  “But she did say definitely that her brother had introduced them?”

  “Not introduced them, just that he was somebody her brother knew and that’s how she met him.”

  So Lucas Whiffing had lied. To conceal his relationship, whatever it was, with David St. Ives? If so, why? In any event it confirmed Sabina’s suspicions that he was not the charming, trustworthy individual he pretended to be.

  She said, “What can you tell me about David?”