A Bitter Draught

by Sabrina Flynn

  “Well, until he does so, one less murderer roaming free will put my mind at ease,” Isobel retorted. “Did Violet have a habit of referring to herself in the third person?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Violet was found floating in the ocean, her clothes filled with sand, and a message written on shore.” Isobel recited the odd message.

  “Curious.”

  “You see why I’m suspicious?”

  “I do,” the nurse agreed. “But then nothing about Violet made much sense. Did you know she was trained as a nurse?”

  “Where?”

  “A nursing school on the East Coast. After her parents died in a carriage accident, she moved out here.”

  “Was she working as a nurse when she took the morphine and chloroform?”

  “A governess, I think. I don’t really remember,” the Sister admitted. “Violet’s first stay was short. She was back on her feet within a matter of days. Friends came to fetch her. It wasn’t until after her head injury that we became better acquainted. She mostly talked about the stage.”

  “The stage?”

  “Theatre,” Mary Riley confirmed. “A light fixture fell on her head.”

  Isobel considered this. From nurse, to governess, to the stage. After the first suicide attempt, it was doubtful that she’d be able to find employment as a nurse or governess. Violet’s character would be called into question. No one wanted a suicidal nurse caring for their children.

  “Do you remember where the accident took place?”

  “I don’t know, but at the time she was rooming at the Y.M.C.A. for ladies. Miss Wheeler has been the superintendent for years. If you like, I can write a note of introduction.”

  The Sister paused before she left. “Miss Bonnie, as strange as the message was, serious injuries can change a person. I’m not sure the woman who came to the hospital was the same woman who left.”

  ✥

  Her feet ached. Isobel wanted to rip off her impractical heels and toss them at the next man who turned his head to admire her silhouette: bosom pushed out, curving spine, tapered waistline, and sumptuous hips—all affected by undergarments.

  Surely a gentleman noticed the inconsistencies between a garbed female and an unclothed one? Although, in Isobel’s experience, thought appeared to be elusive to the male species when the latter was involved. At the very least, undergarments aided and abetted her deception. It would not do for anyone to recognize her in San Francisco. So she endured her disguise as Charlotte Bonnie, whose purpose was to attract attention, not walk. And certainly not to fall into Atticus Riot’s arms. She clenched her teeth and mentally kicked herself for her impulsive whimsy.

  Isobel readjusted her gloves as she walked towards the Y.M.C.A. It was an orderly brick building, well maintained, and quite rectangular. As much as Isobel loved her clipper ship, the Pagan Lady, it wasn’t always ideal for her purposes, not only because of its inconvenient location and security issues, but also for the attention her constant coming and going might attract. She required a less conspicuous place, where she could come and go in secret. Unfortunately, the Y.M.C.A, with its strict curfew and rules, would not do.

  A young Chinese woman with a cross around her neck and a plain blouse and skirt on her slight body opened the door.

  Isobel resisted the urge to bow. Childhood habits died hard. Hop, her family’s butler, had been more beloved uncle than servant.

  “I’m here to speak with Miss Wheeler. If you could show her this note.”

  The girl gestured Isobel into a sitting room, and abandoned her with the words, wait and please.

  Thoughts of Hop brought an ache to her heart—for her father, for Hop, for her twin, and surprisingly, her mother. Had Isobel unconsciously sought out Riot, or was it simply chance and spontaneity that had possessed her to involve him in her stunt? Perhaps it was a craving, to brush against someone who knew she lived—a bridge to her past.

  Further thoughts on the conundrum were cut short when Miss Wheeler marched in like a brigadier general. The bosom beneath a lacy blouse was thrust out like a pigeon’s, and her hair was pulled in the opposite direction by a severe chignon. Here was a woman who took the virtue of her tenants personally.

  Isobel shook the hand that was offered. “I remember Elizabeth well, but there’s little I can say on the matter. Only that the news is not surprising. The girl was not right in the head.”

  Isobel appreciated bluntness, and returned the favor. “When did Violet —I mean Elizabeth board with you?”

  Miss Wheeler had brought a leather bound book with her, and now, she adjusted her pince-nez, opened the accounts and consulted her records. “She arrived November 2nd 1898, under the name Elizabeth Foster.”

  “The month she tried to kill herself.”

  “Three days after she arrived,” the woman confirmed. “I nearly gave her notice, but afterwards, she found employment as a companion to an elderly woman and moved out herself. Shortly after, the woman died, and Elizabeth returned at the end of January. Not two days passed, and she fell ill. She had me summon a physician.”

  “Another suicide attempt?”

  “I feared so,” Miss Wheeler confided. “But the physician said it was a gastric ailment and thought she would recover. When Elizabeth did recover, she started acting peculiar.”

  “In what way?”

  “Elizabeth changed her name to Violet and dyed her hair—red.” Miss Wheeler paused, arching a confiding brow as if such a change was the ultimate sin. “She began leaving early in the morning, before it was light, and did not return until just before curfew. She stopped dining with the other boarders, and kept to herself. A week later, she informed me that she was studying for the stage. As you can imagine, I tried to dissuade her.”

  Isobel nodded in sympathy, not for Miss Wheeler, but for her own twin brother, who had defied their parents in every way possible to pursue the stage. “Did she find employment?”

  “She was studying music with a Mr. Emilio Bolden. I do not know the particulars, but shortly after that, in February, the stage light fell on her.”

  “Do you recall the theatre name?”

  Miss Wheeler shook her head. “The injury left Elizabeth—Violet by this time, queerer than before. As soon as she recovered, she left for Los Angeles with the Kiralfy Theatre Company, and I did not see her again.”

  Isobel filed away every detail, sorted the pertinent ones, and concluded that Violet Clowes was either impulsive (unlikely for a nurse) or fleeing—someone or something. “Before Violet’s first suicide attempt, did she have many visitors?”

  “I’m not a hotel guestbook, Miss. Bonnie.”

  Isobel thanked the woman, and paused at the door. “If you should remember anything more, leave a message with—” She nearly said the Call, but remembered that she was supposed to be a city-sanctioned investigator. “The coroner’s office, with a Mr. Duncan August.”

  7

  The Other Half

  VOICES WASHED OVER ISOBEL as she walked into the Liaison, a cafe where swirling lines and gold gilt collided with pond fronds and soft paintings. A group of assorted men crowded around a table for four. As with every diner in the restaurant, the men’s garb varied, from stiff collars and creased trousers to flamboyant velvet suits and ruffled shirt fronts.

  The whirlwind of male enthusiasm centered around a slight man with golden hair that caressed his shoulders. The man was striking: grey eyes, high cheekbones, delicate lips, and a voice that drawled over his crowd of admirers.

  Isobel seated herself at a table in the corner. The waiter appeared. She ordered tea to calm her mind and sat sipping as conversations flowed over her ears.

  She drank her first cup, and ordered a second. Unfortunately, when she reached the dregs, the group of men, having nothing better to do than occupy themselves with idle talk, showed no signs of uprooting themselves. But then the focal point of the gathering had that affect on people. Laziness was catching.

  Isobel fished the
depths of her handbag, retrieved pen and paper, and scribbled a note, folding it and pressing into the waiter’s hand with instructions to pass it to the ‘handsome blond gentleman’.

  The waiter did not so much as blink. In a cafe called Liaison it was hardly his first delivered note.

  Beneath the rim of her broad hat, Isobel watched the waiter deliver her message to the gentleman. Without breaking his narrative of a Parisian faux pas, the man casually unfolded the note and glanced down.

  All conversation stopped. Grey eyes flickered to the lone woman sitting in the corner. Isobel tilted her chin, catching his gaze with a flash. She tossed a dime on the table, and stood. But the man rose as she did. Defying her instructions, he walked right up to her. Their grey eyes were level, their noses identical, and whereas one was pale with fright, the other burned with fury.

  “I said outside,” Isobel growled under her breath. In reply, the man slapped her, hard. Every voice in the cafe fell silent at the strike.

  Shock reigned.

  With the sting of his flesh radiating on her skin, Isobel calmly collected her things, and left.

  ✥

  The sting followed her to a little garden square. Isobel sat on a bench beneath a shaded tree, and waited in the relative quiet. She did not know if he would come. But he did. She stood, steeling herself for what was to come.

  Brother and sister faced each other, one a mirror of the other. Grey met grey. “I had hoped to avoid a scene,” Isobel said calmly.

  “You bastard!” Lotario hissed. He slapped her again, on the other cheek, but the tears in his eyes hurt far worse than the pathetic blow. Isobel stepped towards her twin brother, and he went into her arms, burying his face in the crook of her neck.

  “If I’m a bastard, then so are you,” she mocked, stroking the nape of his neck. A sound, half-sob, half-snort, exploded against her collar. “I’m sorry, Ari. I thought you would piece everything together.”

  Lotario squeezed her once, sniffled, and stepped back, dabbing his eyes with a lacy handkerchief. Kohl stained the white.

  “Of course I knew,” he sniffed. “The moment that detective showed up asking to buy the Pagan Lady. He didn’t strike me as a sailing sort. But that was after your funeral, Bel. You let your twin brother believe that you were murdered for a full week. And it was just that—a suspicion. The detective wouldn’t say a word, even after I interrogated and tried all my tricks on the fellow. I could only hope. I might have flung myself into the sea,” he announced.

  “You love yourself far too much for that. All your beauty would go to waste. Besides,” Isobel said dryly, “you can swim.” She reached into her handbag for a mirror, thumbed the latch, and turned it towards Lotario so he might arrange himself. When he was satisfied, she clicked it shut, and found her twin studying her in a thoughtful, calculating way.

  That look heartened her greatly.

  “You owe me,” he said slowly. “All that business with Kingston—you never would tell me what you were up to.”

  “Because you would have done something foolish, just as you did in the cafe. If I’m found out, I’ll be in a heap of trouble, and that goes for anyone who knows I’m still alive. Trust me, Ari, I’m better off dead.”

  “I can keep secrets,” he protested.

  Over the years, it was a sentence she had heard countless times—generally followed by a lengthy pout. Lotario was the opposite of discreet.

  “You’ve never trusted me.” And the pout began.

  “I don’t trust anyone,” she quipped. A flash of pain contorted his features, and she sighed, pulling him down onto the bench. They sat in silence for a time, watching lives pass in and out of a moment.

  “I didn’t want you involved,” she admitted. “It was dangerous, still is, and you could have been hurt—I can’t bear the thought of anyone, especially Kingston and his ilk, ever finding out about you.”

  “God forbid a scandal should ever touch me,” Lotario snorted, and waved a languid hand. “Please, in the future, don’t go to such drastic measures in my name. I’ll simply move to France. I don’t see why you had to fake your own death to protect me. That doesn’t make a wit of sense.”

  She hesitated, only for a moment. “I needed to get away from Kingston.”

  “Your pig of a husband,” Lotario stated, glancing at his nails. “There are less dramatic ways of ending a relationship, you know. It’s called divorce.”

  “Not when blackmail is involved. Kingston was ruining Father and the family business.”

  Lotario blinked. “What could he possibly have been blackmailing Father about—his book collection? And why put yourself at risk? Mother and Father sent you away to Europe. The two of us are stains on our family name.”

  Isobel sighed. An old argument, an old pain, still raw. Isobel steered the conversation away from those treacherous familial waters by confiding in her twin the full story: the accidents, the lost contracts, her investigation, and subsequent confrontation with Kingston (an extremely foolish one), his offer of blackmail-laced marriage, her ongoing investigation into his affairs, and finally, their older brother’s true involvement—and Curtis’ death.

  “You shot Curtis?” Lotario whispered. Rather than accusation, there was sympathy—a sympathy that she would have traded for anger any day. Lotario’s hand tightened on her own, and she withdrew to adjust her hat.

  “I need your help,” she said.

  Lotario’s eyes narrowed to slits.

  “You can’t breathe a word to anyone.”

  “You need my help?” he repeated. There was a low, dangerous edge beneath his lilting voice. “You came back from the dead, not because the brother with whom you shared a womb for nine months might be comforted to know his twin is alive, but because you needed my help?”

  “If you’d like to think of it that way—then yes.”

  “You are as cold-hearted as I told that detective you were.”

  “You told Riot that I was cold-hearted?” she demanded, and instantly regretted her slip of control.

  “Riot,” he tasted the name, and leaned forward. “The prim looking bookish fellow with a deliciously dangerous way about him? Is that where you’ve been? I wager he knows his way around a boudoir.”

  “He’s all yours,” she replied indifferently.

  Lotario pursed his soft lips. “I doubt that. My charms appeared lost on him.”

  “Keep your doubts.” But the touch of Riot’s hands lingered in memory. She looked down at her umbrella, and casually rubbed a gloved finger along its handle. “Since you neglected the Lady, I sailed her to Alameda to have her refitted, and then took a train to Los Angeles,” she confided. Even she wasn’t foolhardy enough to sail down the California coast in winter.

  “Kingston?”

  “I see your brain is working for its daily hour.”

  “It only turns on for you, dear sister.”

  “You should use it more often.”

  “I prefer the other one I was given.”

  “Still living at the Narcissus?”

  Lotario smiled like a cat in the cream. “It suits me. As does singing and dancing at various venues. What do you need from your sprightly brother?”

  “Two things: I need you to keep your ears to the ground for any morsel of information involving Kingston—and to keep your tongue still,” she warned.

  “My tongue is usually occupied while my ears remain open.”

  “Multi-tasking,” she mused. “We have something in common after all.”

  Lotario winked, and settled back on the bench, draping an arm around her. “Tell me about this Riot fellow.” He scooted closer.

  “Most people would ask after the second favor.”

  “I’m not most people.”

  “There’s nothing to tell, Ari,” she said primly. “Will you help me, or not?”

  “Don’t keep me in the dark,” he warned.

  “I won’t,” she promised. Lotario held her gaze a moment, searching for deception; sat
isfied, he sat back, crossing his legs. Her twin smelt like rosewater and spring, and she leant into the lithe body that mirrored her own in so many ways save their gender. Flesh and bone were reunited after a long separation.

  “And your second request?”

  Isobel told him of her current investigation, of Violet Clowes and her strange message written in the sand.

  “You don’t know Emilio Bolden?”

  “The theatre is a whole different world,” she replied. “That’s why I came to you. You know everyone.”

  Lotario basked in her compliment for a full a thirty seconds before he replied. “I happen to know Emilio, or Leo as he’s called by friends, but this Violet sounds like stage decoration. Actors come and go all the time. I don’t bother learning the names of bit actors unless they’re tall, dark and handsome—like your fellow Riot.”

  Isobel clenched her jaw, and nearly hit her brother over the head with the umbrella in hand. “Riot’s not tall, and he’s not my fellow.”

  “Pining for Kingston?”

  The jab pushed her too far. Isobel brought her hand up. The slap jolted his head to the side.

  “That will leave a mark,” Lotario drawled, unconcerned.

  Isobel stood, breathing hard.

  “Remember, sister dear,” he said. “You do feel after all.”

  Isobel glared down at him. “Always pushing, always prodding.”

  “You must have bullied me in Mother’s womb,” he said, pulling on a pair of thin gloves.

  “Is it possible to question Leo today?” she asked impatiently.

  “We may not question Leo, but we can certainly make a social call and see what emerges,” Lotario corrected. “We’ll have to visit one of my dressing rooms and change first. Leo knows me as Madame de Winter.” Lotario’s favorite book was the Three Musketeers (and every thing mother and father had not wanted him to read). “I think,” he corrected, tapping his chin in thought. “Perhaps not,” he sighed.