A Bitter Draught

by Sabrina Flynn

  “Caused after death. When the surfman pulled her from the water.”

  “And the scar on her head?”

  “I noticed,” he said testily.

  Isobel swallowed her disappointment. She preferred to be the one who noticed things first. “It looks as though it was quite severe.”

  “Which might explain her suicide. No doubt, the woman suffered from headaches, and who knows what other delusions. Are you with the newspapers?”

  Isobel did not answer, or perhaps she did not hear, as something had caught her attention. She frowned at the woman’s red hair, and spread a bit on her palm, turning it towards light. It appeared to be dyed. Just to be sure, she reached for the sheet.

  “Miss Bonnie!” the Coroner protested. His hands were strong, and he tugged the sheet back in place.

  Isobel glared. August stood his ground. “Yes, I’m with the Call, but I’m not looking for a story—I’m a detective of sorts.”

  “A detective?” August sounded dubious.

  “Give me ten minutes, that’s all.”

  “It’s against procedure, I’m sorry.”

  “At least look into her death further.”

  “There’s a morgue full of unidentified bodies,” he stated firmly. “I intend to place an inquiry with the newspapers. If she’s spent any time at all in San Francisco, then someone is bound to respond.”

  Isobel smirked at the coroner. “You’re afraid I’ll find something that skipped your notice. I understand. Men don’t tolerate being outwitted by a woman.”

  August frowned at her. “I don’t miss things.”

  “How do you know for a certain if you don’t let anyone else examine the bodies?”

  “Because I attended University.”

  “So did I.” Isobel did not add that it had only been for two months.

  “What did you study?” His interest was genuine.

  “Law.”

  Duncan August laughed. It was a single, full-throated sound that echoed off the cold walls. He quickly stifled his amusement, glanced at the empty room, and finally the body, with an apologetic look. Isobel noted that look, and quickly switched strategies.

  “Dr. August,” she said softly. “You’ve given me enough of your time. I’m likely mistaken. It’s only—my sister was murdered in much the same manner, and I need to put my own mind at ease, or this death will haunt me.”

  August looked at her square. “You’re a good actress.”

  “I’m a better detective,” she challenged.

  “Ten minutes,” he said. “I hope that I won’t regret this.”

  “A man, or woman, should never regret anything. There’s no going back,” she murmured, folding back the sheet.

  A triangle of black at the juncture of thighs confirmed that the woman was not a natural redhead, which also explained the lack of freckles. Satisfied, Isobel turned her attention to the rest of the body, making a thorough examination. There were no telling marks on the skin, nothing under her fingernails, and no other unusual scars. But then, Isobel had not expected to find anything. The sea had a way of scrubbing one clean. A tattoo, however, would have been convenient.

  Isobel straightened with a sigh to find August watching her in a superior manner. “I have two minutes left. Where are her things?”

  He walked over to a wall of drawers, retrieved a sack, and placed it on an unoccupied table. One by one, Isobel examined each item, and placed it to the side: a matching grey walking skirt and jacket with little purple violets, blouse (no tears or missing buttons), shift, a cameo brooch, and two necklaces: the Agnus Dei and scapular.

  Isobel looked at the round disc of silver, and turned it over. There were no engravings. She set it aside, and picked up the scapular, spreading the black square of cloth on the table. As with most scapulars, there was a holy image on the front. A woman, presumably Mary, stood with her usual glow, while two men kneeled at her feet. Instead of a traditional promise on the back, a red cross decorated the other side. The red cross knocked her memory. The Help of the Sick scapular. Nurses often wore them.

  A number of conspicuous items were missing: corset (who wanted to die in such a thing?), shoes, hat, gloves, and handbag. She questioned the coroner about the missing items.

  “They were not found,” he confirmed. “Likely swept away.”

  Isobel narrowed her eyes at the man as if he were a particularly dense child. “Swept away? So the woman stripped down to her under things, filled her skirt, blouse and jacket with sand, then carried all that unnecessary clothing into the sea with her?”

  “Perhaps she didn’t want anyone to profit from her death.”

  “Or perhaps her murderer carried the items away,” Isobel suggested.

  “You’ve exceeded your allotted time by four minutes, Miss Bonnie.”

  “So I have,” she extended her hand. Startled, he shook it. “Thank you, Doctor. I’ll share anything I find with you. I don’t expect you to do the same, but just in case, you can contact me at the Call.” Isobel hoped at any rate.

  “I will share,” he said, surprising her. “I was going to contact the newspapers with the details. A kettle of reporters will dig up any story.”

  “Whether or not a story is there. Give me one day,” she bargained. “If I don’t get results, then you can throw it to the vultures.”

  “One day,” August nodded.

  Isobel gathered her things, and left Duncan August to his room of quiet dead.

  ✥

  Isobel passed from the shadow of San Francisco’s skyscraper, through its arches on Market, and into the Call building’s gilded bosom. Her heels clicked on the marble as she walked through the crowded lobby of suits, reporters, and morning diners headed to the top floor. The flow took her towards the elevator and she let herself be caught in its grip.

  Voices droned in the cramped confines: women chatted, newspapermen talked business, and Isobel shifted facts like pieces on a chess board. It was early in the game yet. The opening moves gathering for something greater—all centered around Violet.

  On the thirteenth floor, the doors opened, and Isobel stepped into a fog of cigar smoke. A dozen clacking typewriters beat on her ears, and in between the steady clicks, the shuffle of papers, harried voices, and half-smoldering tempers assaulted her senses. A clang of telephones were cymbals to the discordant orchestra.

  She steeled herself, fighting down an urge to find the nearest stairwell and flee. Determined, she gritted her teeth and wound her way through desks until she found one suitable for her designs: empty, neat, and painfully clean. The occupant, a Mr. Abrams according to the name plate, was either a rare breed of meticulous newsman with no deadline, or absent.

  Isobel hoped for the latter as she set down her umbrella, handbag, and finally her backside. She tore off the typewriter cover, located paper, and carefully fed it into the Underwood. Her own single-finger tapping joined the drone.

  “What’s all this, Miss?” a voice pierced her focus and burst it like a bubble. She glanced up in irritation, leaving her project only half done. The owner of the voice had sparse red hair, the jowls of a mastiff, and a mess of a nose that resembled a lopsided mushroom.

  Isobel erased the irritation from her face and summoned a smile. “I’m terribly sorry, my typewriter sputtered out on me, and the editor wants this article by noon.”

  “We haven’t met,” the Mastiff changed his tone to molasses mixed with oil. “I know all the pretty faces.”

  Isobel thrust out her ink smudged fingers. How, and when she had acquired ink, she could not say. “Charlotte Bonnie. I was hired on Monday.”

  The man took her hand and kissed it with all the suavity of a pimp. Finally, she thought, a scoundrel—in the wrong place. “Mack McCormick.”

  “Charmed.” Isobel retrieved her hand. She doubted Mack had spent a day of his life in Scotland, not with the affected accent (she was surprised he wasn’t wearing a kilt) but his knuckles had the scarring of a pugilist, and his nose spoke for
itself.

  “How are the matches this week, Mr. McCormick?”

  Surprise flashed across his eyes, and his chest swelled until the buttons looked about to burst. He placed a chewed cigar between his lips. “You’re a sporting woman, then?”

  “Not that kind.”

  He chuckled. “Never been to a match, then?” Mack answered his own question. “Women tend to shy away from the brutality.”

  “Probably reminds them of home and their husbands.”

  Mack did not know how to reply to her observation, so he fell back on charm. “And what of Mr. Bonnie? Is he a sporting man—or the squeamish type?” He had, at least, noticed the ring on her finger.

  “Mr. Bonnie died under suspicious circumstances. Poison.” Isobel smiled. “Let me know when the next match is. I do love watching men beat themselves senseless. The bloodier the better.”

  The large man took a step back. “Right,” he murmured. “I’ll leave you to your work.”

  “Have a pleasant day,” she said cheerfully, returning to typewriter.

  A paragraph in and the flare of a match interrupted her furious key poking. Isobel tore her eyes from the page, and looked up to the face of a heavyset woman with the look of an imp in fine clothes.

  “You don’t work here,” the intruder said.

  “I aim to by noon,” Isobel admitted.

  The woman laughed, full-throated and free. Isobel liked the older woman immediately. “Cara Sharpe,” the woman said, thrusting out a hand, one that showed wear.

  Isobel stood and shook hands, supplying her own nom de plume. There was strength in the newswoman’s grip.

  “Watch yourself around Mack, but I wager you already know that. I’ve never seen a woman get rid of him so quickly.”

  “I believe I left him with the impression that I’m a murderess, but I thank you for the warning.”

  Cara’s rouged lips curled like a tabby cat, one that was sitting in a glow of confidence. “The newspaper is a tough business, even for the men. They’re fiercely competitive, and as a woman—”

  “One must be smarter.”

  “And quicker,” Cara agreed. “We also stick together. If you last, the Sob Sisters keep their desks in a quieter room.”

  “The Sob Sisters?”

  “A nasty nickname given to us by our male counterparts,” Cara explained. “Women reporters tend to write more personal pieces. But what most these fellows don’t like to admit is that those articles usually make the front page.”

  Cara winked, and sauntered off, leaving a trail of wispy smoke. Isobel watched her leave, noting that everyone got out of the woman’s way, and even nodded in greeting as they did so. Whoever Cara Sharpe was, she had seniority, or the editor’s ear. Isobel sat back down at her pirated desk, and frowned at the nearly finished article sitting on the ribbon. Coming to a decision, she removed the paper, tore it into neat strips and let them flutter into the trash bin.

  If Isobel were going to secure a job at the San Francisco Call, she’d need something that would make every woman stop and read.

  ✥

  Isobel marched up to a horseshoe-shaped desk and handed her article to the harried desk editor. “I’ll be at Abram’s desk. Let me know if it makes the cut. Cara Sharpe is waiting for me.”

  The squinty man blinked at her like a light-blinded mouse. Before he could open his mouth and formulate a question, she made herself scarce, following the sound of clanging telephones to three booths. As soon as the occupant left, she dashed in, shutting herself in a cocoon of tobacco smoke and muffled noise. Ten more minutes in the newsroom, and she would go mad. Pushing a mounting headache to the side, Isobel picked up the earpiece, inserted her nickel, and requested the Park and Ocean Railroad offices.

  Long minutes passed as the pleasant voice at the switchboard made the necessary connections. “Hello there, I hoped you might help me. I left my handbag on the Ocean Street line yesterday morning. The conductor might have passed it onto the next shift. Are they on the telephone? Oh, I see. You would? It’d put my heart at ease. Thank you.”

  Isobel scribbled down names and address, and clicked off to summon the switchboard operator. This time, she requested the Cliff House Railroad. Her inquiries were a shot in the dark, but it was a shot nonetheless. Violet could very well have been living in the Ocean Beach area, or been staying at one of the holiday hotels, but given the quality of her clothing and dyed-hair, Isobel would wager that she was from downtown, or out of it entirely. She recorded the name and address of the conductors for the Cliff House line and asked the operator to connect her with Mary’s Help Center, a home and hospital for women and children.

  No one remembered treating a Violet, or any woman with so severe a head wound. Isobel thanked the Daughter of Charity, and bothered the operator again. There were a hundred different possibilities: that Violet received the head wound as a child, in another country, that her name was not Violet at the time (or ever), or that she was treated at a hospital with no Catholic connections. But Isobel did not like to wait, not for the morning edition of the newspapers and the off chance that in this hectic, self-centered city someone would claim the dead woman—especially if she had been a prostitute.

  That was the beauty and tragedy of San Francisco. Any one could sail into port and reinvent himself a dozen times over. No one asked questions, or gave a wit about a person’s past. In the city by the bay, one was who he (or she) claimed to be.

  “St. Mary’s Hospital,” a brisk voice crackled on the other end.

  “Charlotte Bonnie here,” Isobel greeted, stretching a finger to plug one ear while pressing the earpiece firmly against the other. “I’ve a friend named Violet who, some years ago, received a nasty head wound on the back of her head. The old wound is currently giving her issues, but she’ll only see the physician who treated her. The funny thing is, she can’t remember the name of the hospital, but she wears a Agnus Dei and a black devotional scapular.”

  “What was the physician’s name?”

  “I’m afraid she can’t remember,” Isobel said in despair as she had to the other nurse, and repeated the description.

  “Red you say?”

  “Dyed, yes,” Isobel answered. The sister asked her to wait, and Isobel held her breath.

  Five minutes later, the line crackled. “There was a Violet Clowes whom we treated last year. She had a nasty head wound. The nurse remembers her well. Violet converted during her convalescence.”

  “Splendid,” Isobel exclaimed. “Will the nurse be there for a few more hours? Wonderful. I’ll bring her in. What is the nurse’s name? Sister Mary Riley. Thank you, that ought to reassure Violet.”

  Isobel hung the earpiece on its hook, and returned to Abram’s island of order. Her thoughts picked over the information: Violet Clowes, who was not born Catholic, or with red hair. Clowes wasn’t exactly an immigrant’s surname, but then it was so easy to change one’s name. Isobel did it every day.

  “Miss,” a voice that reminded her of a yipping lap dog snapped her to the present. Isobel looked up to find the desk editor with her article in hand. “I don’t recognize you.”

  “Just hired on space and detail,” she said, supplying her name, and stealing his hand for a shake before he could refuse.

  “And who gave you this detail?”

  “It’s an exclusive.”

  “Is the story true?”

  Isobel began gathering her things. “The things that count,” she said with a small smile. “You can confirm it with Brown’s steamship office on Market. Does it pass?”

  “It’ll make the morning edition.” He handed her a five dollar bill. “For the column.”

  Isobel tried not to scowl at the bill as she walked out of the torturous office. With that pay, she’d need to make up a whole heap of stories.

  6

  A Twisting Trail

  SISTER MARY RILEY WAS not the stern, no nonsense, knuckle-thumping nurse Isobel expected. Her eyes shone with joy, and when Isobel offered a
hand, the nurse encompassed it with both of hers. Warmth and comfort radiated from the woman like a stove, and her kindness burned. Something pricked Isobel’s eye, and she blinked to rid herself of it, swallowing down a sudden swell of emotion.

  “I’m sorry to hear about Violet’s troubles, but not surprised. Where is the dear girl?” Mary asked. The nurse’s eyes flickered over Isobel’s shoulder as if Violet was hiding in the sunlit room. Isobel could affect apologetic meekness with the best of them, but one look at the nurse decided her course.

  “I lied,” Isobel stated, bluntly. “I’m afraid she’s not with me, or anyone in this world, Sister.”

  The joy turned dark—not with anger but acceptance. “Violet finally committed suicide, then?”

  With that single sentence, all of Isobel’s theories and murderess hopes were dashed. “She tried to kill herself before?”

  Mary turned a critical eye on her. “Did you know Violet at all?”

  “I did not,” Isobel replied. “I’m working with the coroner as his investigator.” It was nearly the truth.

  The Sister of Mercy touched her own devotionals hanging around her neck: the black scapular and Lamb of God. “Violet did attempt suicide—the year before last, in late 1898, with morphine and chloroform. Violet Clowes is her stage name. Her real name, as far as I know, is Elizabeth Foster. She was comatose when she was admitted to the hospital. After her discharge, she complained of constant headaches.”

  Isobel frowned. “Even with her past, I’m not entirely convinced it was suicide, but the coroner is ready to write it off as one. Either way, I’d like to find the truth of the matter.”

  “You sound as if it’s personal.”

  The comment struck Isobel, and sent her off kilter. This would be, or was supposed to be, her very first murder investigation. She wanted to catch a killer—perhaps it was personal. She recovered quickly. “Shouldn’t it be?”

  “There’s murder everywhere, Miss Bonnie. God will put things right,” Sister Mary said with the reverence of the devout.