It appeared everyone knew of Tom’s temper. Convince me it is not my fault, Mr. Greaves.
“He would not kill her,” said Celia, firmly. “I am certain of that.”
“Of course not. I shouldn’t have said that,” Elizabeth soothed. “Maybe then it’s somebody from the Anti-Coolie Association.”
“That was my initial thought, too,” said Celia. “But her plan to meet with someone that evening has made me reconsider that idea.”
“Li Sha likely never made it to her rendezvous with this benefactor, Celia,” said Elizabeth, offering a possibility Celia had not considered. “Mrs. Douglass is right to be worried about those awful people. The anti-Chinese groups threaten the peace. Threaten those of us who’ve simply tried to help the Chinese women. The society needs to focus on the reformable white women of San Francisco and leave the women of Chinatown to fend for themselves, I’m afraid. Maybe the Six Companies will finally take an interest in them and tend to their own.”
Celia doubted that would ever happen. The Chinese benevolent societies—there were six, hence their common name—existed to take care of their members, and the prostitutes were not members. The Six Companies seemed to care nearly as little about the women as the average citizen did.
“I will not stop helping the Chinese women where I can,” said Celia.
“You should take my advice and steer clear of Chinatown, Celia. You place yourself and your cousin at risk.”
“She’s right, Cousin Celia,” said Barbara.
“We will be cautious, of course,” Celia responded. “But I’m confident we will be fine.”
Elizabeth studied Celia as if she had never met a person who was so hopelessly naïve. “Li Sha probably thought she’d be fine, too.”
• • •
“He didn’t exactly go peacefully, sir,” said Taylor, returning from the street to Tom Davies’ room. “In fact, he kicked the constable who was loading him into the wagon to take him to the station.”
The front door to the boardinghouse must have been open, because Nick could hear Davies shouting down on the street, a string of Irish swearwords.
“Idiot,” said Nick. Davies’ yowling faded.
“Have you found anything else?” asked Taylor. He scratched his neck beneath his ear and looked around at Davies’ room. “What with Davies’ landlady saying she heard all the shouting and cursing last week, that he’d threatened that Chinese girl, that she’d ‘regret it’ . . . that’s enough, though, right?”
Nick exhaled. Word of the threats and the knife they’d found hidden in Davies’ chest of drawers were enough to arrest the man.
“Don’t need nothin’ else,” said Mullahey, righting a cane-seated chair that had been knocked over during their search, before turning his attention to the trunk shoved into the corner, its contents spilled onto the floor.
Nick bent to pick up the Bible at his feet. It was well-thumbed, with notes in the margin. Notes in an inexperienced hand, reminders to learn the meanings of specific words. They might be Li Sha’s notes. He recollected the bruised and cut body lying on that cold marble slab in Massey’s cellar, her dark hair spilling over the edge. If she’d hoped for God’s mercy and protection, it hadn’t come.
Gently, Nick placed the book in the bottom of the trunk and covered it with a patchwork quilt that had also been stored there.
“We can take care of cleaning up, sir,” said Taylor. “No call for you to be doing that.”
“It’s okay,” Nick said, straightening.
What they’d learned meant the noose was tightening around Tom Davies’ neck. It also meant Celia Davies was likely going to feel guilty about Li Sha’s tragic relationship with her brother-in-law for a damned long time.
“That China girl shoulda cleared out earlier, huh,” said Mullahey, dropping a pair of worn boots into the trunk. “Given what a cuss that feller is.”
Nick skirted the folding partition. The rug was rolled back, and the drawers from the chest lay upon the bed, making the hair-stuffed mattress sag. Besides the knife, there hadn’t been much in the drawers—a few items of clothing and an albumen carte de visite portrait of a man, woman, and young boy posed beneath a potted palm, its silver frame tarnished. Taylor had also found a letter from Davies’ mother, dated five years back, asking him to return home to Ireland. Nick gazed out the nearest window. Davies had propped it open for some reason, as if the stink outside could ever freshen the air inside. Tom Davies wouldn’t be going home to his mother anytime soon. He’d been sent to jail and would likely be staying there.
Until he was convicted and hanged for murder, that was.
Nick closed the window, latching it tight, and spared a parting glance for the photograph Taylor had left on the chest of drawers. Another family shattered. Nick could give a lecture on that topic.
“Finish putting everything back in order here,” Nick said to the policemen. He’d stop at Joseph Palmer’s office on Sutter before returning to the station. “We’re done here. On your way to the station, Taylor, visit Dora Schneider’s place and pick up the carpetbag Li Sha left with her. In case there’s something interesting in it. Mullahey, get to work on that liquor-smuggling case Eagan wants you to handle, since he won’t be happy to know I’m making use of two policemen on this case.”
“Sure enough, Mr. Greaves,” said Mullahey. “Eagan’s none too happy any of us are botherin’ with this China girl.”
“Looks like we can wrap up this case pretty quick, though,” said Taylor.
Nick lifted his hat from where he’d left it on the table, right in front of the chair where Celia Davies had sat and comforted her brother-in-law. “I’m not convinced we’ve got the right man, Taylor. And I don’t care if Eagan’s happy or not. He can take my job if he doesn’t like what I’m doing.”
Mullahey hooted with laughter. “Don’t be tellin’ Eagan that, Mr. Greaves, ’cause he might just take you up on the offer!”
• • •
Stretching, Celia yawned into her hand. She dug a finger through her skirt and beneath the bottom edge of her corset, attempting and failing to reach an itch. “Gad.”
She lowered the wick on the lantern on her desk and stood. The examination room’s small china mantel clock showed the time to be half five. The sun would set in thirty minutes. Just enough time to do some gardening before eating a light meal and going to bed early.
Yawning again, Celia clutched her mother’s shawl tight about her, the soft fabric comforting, and scanned the shelves, making a quick survey of her supplies. She needed more bandages, but that looked to be all for now.
She crossed the room to shut the window blinds, her hand pausing on the cord. She leaned closer to the glass. A man stood outside, down the road a short distance, and he was looking at their house.
“I thought you might want some tea before you head out to the garden, ma’am,” announced Addie, bustling into the examination room.
“Addie, have you noticed a man watching the house?” Celia turned and asked her.
“What?” The tea tray thumped atop the desk, and Addie came to her side. “Where?”
“There.” Celia pointed, but the man was no longer lurking in the shadows across the street. “He’s gone now. But I thought . . .”
Addie peered around the curtains. “Are you certain you saw someone?”
“It’s nothing, Addie. I am mistaken. The strain of the last few days is making me see things.” She smiled at her housekeeper. “Or maybe I need spectacles.”
“And hide your lovely eyes?” Addie clucked over the idea and returned to the kitchen.
Once she’d gone, Celia scanned the street again. Nothing. With a quick tug of the cord, she snapped the blinds closed.
• • •
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Palmer.”
“Anything to help the police, Detective Greav
es.” Joseph Palmer had a deep voice, his consonants soft around the edges. Southern origins, Nick would wager. Palmer gestured toward a man standing near the windows. “This is my associate, Mr. Douglass.”
Mr. Douglass, robust and outfitted in a black cassimere frock coat and pants, inclined his head. “Detective.” He leaned against a silver-headed walking stick and eyed Nick, not in a friendly fashion.
“You might prefer to speak to me alone, Mr. Palmer,” said Nick.
Palmer slid a glance at Douglass. “We shall talk later about this matter.”
Douglass nodded. “Good day to you, sir,” he said. He exited the room, his walking stick tapping against the floor, and shut the door behind him.
Palmer pressed his fingertips together while Nick made a circuit of his office, located on the topmost floor of a three-story limestone-faced building. Shelves held books on real estate legal matters and building methods and designs. Maps of California and San Francisco hung on the walls. A red, gold, and blue patterned carpet covered the floor, muting Nick’s footfalls. Overlooking Sutter were two floor-to-ceiling arched windows, through which he saw long shadows cast along the road. Nick could just glimpse the onion domes atop the towers of Temple Emanu-el farther up the street. All in all, a pleasant spot.
“You’ve built up a nice business for yourself,” said Nick, continuing his circuit of the room. “How long did that take?”
“Since I and my family arrived in ’sixty-two,” he answered. “Hard work, but a man cannot be afraid of that if he wishes to succeed.”
“Suppose not.”
Palmer folded his hands over the leather blotter atop his mahogany desk, its wood polished to a blinding sheen, and followed Nick with his gaze. His eyes were hawklike, and he wore a suit of clothes as costly as his friend’s. A gold watch chain looped across his checked silk vest and a ring glimmered on his left pinkie. Nick had once served under an officer who’d worn a pinkie ring. He’d never thought much of the man.
“Would you care to explain why you might be here, Detective?” Palmer asked.
Pursuing a lead that nobody except me is going to care about, now that Tom Davies has been arrested. “I have some questions about the Chinese girl killed on Monday. I’ve been told you knew her.”
“Ah. Li Sha.” He frowned. “She was a poor creature, God rest her soul. The crime in this city. Hmm. But I would not say I knew her. Not really.”
“Not really?” Nick asked, arching an eyebrow.
“I do not care for what you are implying, sir.”
“So you weren’t a client.”
The man didn’t break a sweat. “What an unseemly suggestion.”
“Okay, so you’d only met her once.”
“Mrs. Celia Davies introduced us at a Chinese Mission function. She was proud of her efforts to assist Miss Li with her new life and wanted those of us who support her clinic to see that her work could go beyond merely curing ills.” Palmer studied him. “I presume Mrs. Davies is the one who told you I had met Miss Li.”
Nick straightened a silver inkstand on Palmer’s desk, aligning it with the desk’s edge. A cedar cigar box occupied another corner of the desk, and the air was sweet with the smell of recently smoked Havanas. Two stubs rested on a brass ashtray. “I’ve learned that on the night she was murdered, she approached somebody for money in order to leave town. Was that person you?”
“Why, no, Detective Greaves. I was in Santa Clara County that night. Had been for a number of days. Looking at some land I would like to buy, as well as visiting some associates of mine who live in that area. I didn’t return home until the next afternoon.” He grazed his knuckles over his goatee. He had hands that had never seen manual labor, his wealth earned by cunning rather than brawn. “I was due to return on Monday, but the horse I hired caught a rock in his shoe and pulled up lame. I rested him overnight, then rode on. Mighty inconvenient.”
“Where’d you stay?” And would somebody verify his story?
“I camped in a dilapidated old adobe I came across. It was raining. I was awfully lucky to find dry shelter, even though I had to share it with a family of mice.”
“Yep. Lucky.” Nick eyed letters stacked in a shallow wood tray. One had come from the governor’s office. This man had friends in places higher than the police office. “Who do you think murdered her?”
“Why, I have not had the time to consider, Detective. But I am sure I don’t know. A woman like that . . .” Palmer shook his head mournfully. “It could have been anyone. There are so many disreputable men in this city. Such a shame.”
A shame that Li Sha was dead? Or that there were so many disreputable men?
“I am wondering, though,” said Palmer, “why the police are bothering with this case.”
“I bother with every single case, Mr. Palmer.”
“Do you, now.” He pushed back his chair and stood, pulling his gold watch from its pocket and flicking open the engraved lid. Nick recognized the signs that he was about to be dismissed. “I wish I could assist further, but I have a dinner engagement in fifteen minutes, Detective Greaves. I’m obliged to wish you a good evening.”
Nick gripped the brim of his hat. “I’ll be back if I have more questions.”
Joseph Palmer snapped closed the pocket watch lid. “I expect that won’t be necessary.”
CHAPTER 8
“How are you?” Celia asked the girl the next morning, even though her patient couldn’t understand her any better than she had on Monday.
Celia set her black portmanteau on the bamboo stool, which teetered, its legs unsteady on the dirt floor. The girl’s eyelids fluttered and her body shook with tremors. This time, her stupor had nothing to do with the opium they’d given her for the pain. This time, the cause was much, much worse. Traumatic sepsis had set in.
The old woman with the long twist of gray-streaked hair watched from the doorway, her face set rigidly, no expression of concern to be read on its broad, flat width.
Celia rested her fingertips on the girl’s uninjured arm, lying atop the threadbare blanket that had been thrown over her. Celia felt for a pulse in the girl’s wrist. Weak and quick. She labored for breath, shaking from the chills of fever, and her face was splotched with red. She was fatally ill.
Celia gently unwrapped the bandages from the wounded arm and removed the wad of linen she’d placed there. Five days. They had left it like this for five days. The wound oozed, and redness had spread up the arm to mingle with the purple bruises.
“She’s poorly, isn’t she?” asked Barbara, entering the room, her limp more noticeable on the uneven ground.
“I wish they had let you see her the other day, because they did not follow my instructions to regularly clean the wound. And now it is too late for her.”
Celia recalled a soldier in the Crimea who’d suffered shrapnel wounds on the battlefront, wounds that had been severe but deemed treatable by the field doctor. By the time the soldier had arrived at Scutari hospital, however, he was delirious and shaking with spasms. Celia and the other nurses had looked on helplessly as the man, once so handsome with his blond hair and gray eyes, had succumbed in a matter of hours.
Once sepsis set in, death followed shortly.
“Bring me some water, Barbara.”
Celia tossed the filthy linens onto the floor and took fresh ones from her bag. Once her cousin returned, Celia set about cleaning the wound, the girl shivering and moaning the entire time. Celia washed the arm with carbolic acid and wrapped it in fresh bandages.
“Tell the old woman I have brought more quinine for the fever. The inflammation itself . . .” She had nothing that would help at this point. “Tell her I will try to find a surgeon to remove that arm. It is all that might save the girl. Tell the woman that.”
Celia would never be allowed to leave Chinatown with her patient and take her to a surgeon. He would have to come
here.
Barbara translated for Celia. The elderly woman scowled. A prostitute disfigured by a missing arm was as useless to her as a dead prostitute.
“You bring nobody here!” The old woman said more in Chinese to Barbara, then added, “Go! You no good.” She jabbed a thumb in Celia’s direction.
“We should leave,” whispered Barbara.
The old woman scowled and folded her arms within her sleeves. “You go. You not come back.”
“I shall come back. If not to help your girls, then to help the other prostitutes living in these filthy streets.” Celia grabbed her medical bag. “And have that arm removed.”
Celia marched out of the room and into the alleyway.
Barbara limped as she hurried after her. “Will she die?”
“Possibly. Probably.” Celia slowed, all the while feeling eyes upon them, the watchful behind curtained portals and barred doors. “I’ll try to find somebody to come and remove her arm, but even if the woman allows a surgeon into the room to do the work, I’m afraid it will be too late.”
“Oh.”
From their left, a young Chinese woman darted from a doorway, calling out to them. Celia recognized her as her patient’s friend.
They paused. From a pocket within her loose cotton trousers, the girl pulled out a bundle of red paper strips covered with Chinese writing and handed them to Barbara.
“What are they?” asked Celia.
“Sayings from Confucius that talk about the vanity of earthly things,” said Barbara. “You’re supposed to scatter them on the ground in front of Li Sha’s funeral procession. They’re a sort of prayer.”
Barbara thanked the young woman. They started to walk off, but she tugged on Barbara’s sleeve and looked anxiously around her. No one seemed to take notice of them, though. Not the merchants calling out descriptions of their wares; or the boy climbing the steps of a nearby basement cigar workshop, carrying a crate in his skinny arms; not even the two gossiping women in brightly colored silks who shuffled past.
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