The Body Snatchers Affair

by Marcia Muller

  A bell above the door tinkled as Sabina entered the narrow anteroom with its three wooden chairs, all of which were empty. The odor of incense, meant to be exotic but in fact decidedly unpleasant, dilated her nostrils. The black curtain, decorated with more “magic” symbols, that separated the anteroom from the inner chamber parted almost immediately and Madame Louella’s turbaned head poked out. Her professional smile changed shape when she saw Sabina.

  “Ah, good,” she said in her deep, almost masculine voice, “you received my message. Come in, dearie, come in. No one else is here. Let me just lock the door to insure our privacy.”

  The rest of the woman’s large body appeared, draped as usual in her flowing robe of a somewhat tarnished gold color, emblazoned with a different set of cabalistic signs in black and crimson. The turban was gold as well, with a large blue jewel, obviously a cheap paste imitation, set into the middle of it like a third eye. Strands of none too clean curly black hair straggled from beneath the cloth.

  She produced a key from somewhere inside her robe. “Not that this is necessary,” she said mournfully as she locked the door. “Business has been dreadful lately, I might even say nonexistent. Not a fortune to be told in three days, and only two the entire week. It’s an affront to a woman born with Romany blood in her veins and the gift of peering through the mists of time to what lies ahead—”

  “Your spiel is wasted on me, Louella, you should know that by now.”

  “Have you no sympathy, dearie? The fortune-telling racket really has been poor of late.”

  “A sign of the times.”

  “Yes, and not likely to change in the forseeable future.”

  Madame Louella cackled at her little joke, one Sabina had heard before, then resumed her mournful pose as she led the way through the black curtain into her “fortune room.” The enclosure was small and dark, the walls painted black and unadorned, the single window thickly curtained to keep out light and mute the sounds of Cocktail Route revelry on the street below. It contained nothing other than a table draped in black cloth and two facing chairs. On the table sat one of the largest crystal globes Sabina had ever seen, treated with some sort of phosphorescent chemical that made it appear to emit an eerie inner glow, the room’s only illumination.

  The fortune-teller’s chair was large and pillowed; Madame Louella sighed again as she lowered herself into it. “How much will my finder’s fee be?” she asked when Sabina was seated across from her.

  “That depends on exactly what you have to tell me.”

  “Ten dollars’ worth, I should say.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I’m in arrears on my rent, dearie. Living hand to mouth.”

  Sabina doubted that. Madame Louella may or may not have few customers wanting their futures told, but as part of the thriving network of information sellers she made enough to keep her rent current and her larder reasonably full.

  “Business first. Your message said you’d know the whereabouts of Artemas Sneed by seven o’clock.”

  “And so I do. One of my friends”—Madame Louella’s word for her coterie of informants—“brought the information shortly before you arrived. I had to pay him five dollars for his efforts.”

  Sabina doubted that, too, but she made no comment.

  “I shouldn’t tell you how he came by it, but I will,” Madame Louella said in an obvious effort to curry largesse. “He shared a cell with Artemas Sneed for two years in San Quentin, and by chance encountered him a few nights ago in a Barbary Coast deadfall. It took him most of the day to find out where Sneed is living.”

  “And that is?”

  “A rooming house on the waterfront. The name and address are surely worth ten dollars.”

  “If in fact the information is correct.”

  “It is. My friend guarantees it.”

  “Secondhand guarantees are not always reliable,” Sabina said. “I’ll let you have five dollars now and five more after Sneed’s lodgings have been confirmed.”

  “Oh, now, dearie…”

  “I’ve always been fair with you, haven’t I?”

  “Yes, but given my financial difficulties, it’s a hard bargain you drive.”

  “Hard times, hard bargains.”

  Madame Louella heaved another of her sighs. This was an old game between them, a form of haggling that the fortune-teller seemed to enjoy indulging in. Sabina didn’t, but patience and a firm stance eventually brought the desired results.

  “Very well, then, Mrs. Carpenter. But I’ll have the first five dollars in advance, if you please.”

  “Done.”

  Sabina produced a five-dollar gold piece from her bag and Madame Louella made it disappear as quickly as if she were performing a conjurer’s trick. Her thin mouth stretched in a satisfied smile; in the glow from the crystal globe, her eyes had an unnatural brightness in her round, pale face. Not for the first time in these surroundings, Sabina was reminded of nothing so much as the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.”

  “The Wanderer’s Rest,” Madame Louella said. “Number one-twenty Davis Street, room three.”

  “Using his real name?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long has he resided there?”

  “Not long, according to my friend. Less than two weeks.”

  “And how long has he been out of prison?”

  “About the same length of time. Paroled for good behavior.” Madame Louella cackled, a sound that made her seem even more witchlike.

  “What is he doing for money?”

  “He told my friend he had irons in the fire.”

  “Irons in the fire, that’s all?”

  “Wouldn’t admit to anything else.”

  “In which deadfall did your friend encounter him?”

  “He didn’t say. I’ll ask him … for another two dollars.”

  “Greed is the devil’s handmaiden, Louella.”

  “Phooey. Shall I ask him?”

  “Only if it becomes necessary.”

  Sabina got to her feet. Madame Louella remained seated, peering up at her. “Will you bring the other five dollars tonight?”

  “If I can. More likely it will be tomorrow.”

  “Are you heading off to find Sneed now? Yes? Well, be careful, dearie. Very careful in that neighborhood at night. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “Or your five dollars.”

  “Ah, you know me so well. Or my five dollars.”

  * * *

  The driver of the hack Sabina hailed on Market Street was dubious about her destination. “Are you sure that’s where you want to go, lady? Davis Street’s a fair rough place after dark.”

  “I’m sure. I may or may not be there long. Will you agree to wait for me?”

  It was plain that he disliked the idea, but the offer of double the amount of the fare convinced him and brought his reluctant promise. She sat back as he cracked his whip and set them in motion, her bag with the derringer’s comforting weight on her lap.

  Both the cabbie and Madame Louella were right about the neighborhood, though it was not as rough as it had once been. Part of the section of the northern waterfront stretching from Pacific Avenue to Filbert Street, it contained warehouses and lodging places that had once catered exclusively to sailors off, or awaiting service on, the multitude of ships anchored in the Bay. During the Gold Rush era and for many years afterward, John had once told her, the area had been second only to the Barbary Coast as a hotbed of shanghaiing; crimps and boardinghouse masters had worked hand in hand to drug, rob, and consign hundreds of sailors to venal ship captains who then forced them to labor at sea under harsh conditions for no pay. One of the most notorious of the shanghaiers, an evil old woman named Miss Piggott, had operated a saloon and lodging house on Davis Street, Sabina remembered. Nowadays, with the practice of shanghaiing on the wane owing in part to the activities of the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, the rooming houses in the district were no longer such treacherous places, though they
accommodated riffraff such as Artemas Sneed as well as able-bodied seamen.

  John would have had a howling fit if he knew she was on her way to Davis Street, alone after dark, in the hope of confronting a likely dangerous ex-convict. A fool’s errand, he would have called it. Stephen would have agreed; he had often chastised her for being fearless to the point of recklessness at times. Well, perhaps this was something of a reckless undertaking, but she was determined to get to the bottom of the business with Carson and Artemas Sneed as quickly as possible.

  John’s protectiveness toward her was not the same as her dear late husband’s, of course. Or was it? Neither underestimated her ability to take care of herself, or possessed the old-fashioned chivalrous notion that women should at all times be kept out of harm’s way; and John, too, genuinely cared for her. Once she’d believed his feelings were motivated by seduction alone, but she was no longer convinced of it. It was entirely possible that he fancied himself in love with her, that he yearned to occupy the empty space in her heart Stephen’s death had created—a prospect which made her uncomfortable in the extreme.…

  She forced her mind free of such speculation as the hansom rattled onto the Embarcadero and north past the Ferry House. John and their complicated relationship seemed to be creeping into her thoughts more and more of late, but this was hardly the time to be worrying about such matters.

  Another ten minutes had passed when the driver made the turn onto Davis Street. This was the first Sabina had seen of the area at night and it did indeed appear mean and dreary. It was lighted by street lamps, some with broken globes, but so palely that the shadows beyond their reach were thick and black as ebony. The long bulky shape of a warehouse loomed along one side; on the other stood rows of two- and three-story board-and-batten structures, all lodging houses except for a saloon on the corner of the next block—rat-infested firetraps dating back to the Gold Rush era. Lamplight glowed behind a few windows, diffused and dulled by grime- and salt-caked glass. The street was deserted, only a scattered few pedestrians abroad on the boardwalks.

  The Wanderer’s Rest turned out to be the third rooming house beyond the saloon. When the driver drew up in front, he stayed on the box; not for him the gentlemanly act of helping a lady passenger alight in this neighborhood. He leaned down as Sabina stepped out into a shivery wind off the Bay, nervously asked for half the agreed-upon fare. She refused; if she paid him the half, he might not wait for her.

  She turned away from his protest, drawing her cape tightly around her shoulders, and hurried along a cracked brick path leading to the Wanderer’s Rest. The faint, tinny sound of a badly played piano came from the corner saloon; a pair of angry voices rose briefly inside the lodging house next door. Otherwise the night was quiet. A scrawny cat darted across in front of her and disappeared into the shadows as she mounted rickety steps to the entrance.

  The door, fortunately, was unlatched. Sabina stepped into a gloomy, gaslit vestibule heavy with damp, stale air; two closed doors faced each other on either side of a staircase leading to the upper floors. Sneed’s room, number 3, would be on the second floor. She lifted her skirts and made the climb slowly to minimize the creak of warped stair risers.

  The hallway was so poorly lit that she had to peer closely at the first door she encountered to make out a crudely painted numeral 3. A thin strip of lamplight shone at the bottom of the door, indicating that the room was occupied. She slid her hand inside her bag, grasped the derringer’s handle, then laid her ear close to the door to listen. No sounds came from within. She drew the Remington and tapped its short barrel on the panel.

  The door was off its latch; she heard a faint creak and another thin strip of light appeared along its vertical edge. There was no response to the knock, nor to a second. Sabina held a deep breath, raised the derringer, and pushed the door inward with her free hand.

  What she saw brought a sharp release of the held breath. Yes, the room was occupied, but not in the way she’d expected. The man lying curled on his side on the bare floor, a patch of blood gleaming on the front of his linsey-woolsey shirt and eyes open wide in a sightless stare, was quite plainly dead.

  19

  SABINA

  Sabina stepped quickly inside, easing the door shut behind her. This was not the first time she’d encountered a victim of lethal violence, but the suddenness of her discovery and the stench of death that permeated the sparsely furnished room caused her gorge to rise. She locked her throat muscles and took several deep breaths to steady herself before she approached the body.

  She had never seen the man before. He had been in his forties, partially bald, his craggy face pale-skinned beneath a thin growth of reddish whiskers. Roughly dressed, although the boots he wore looked to be new and fairly expensive. Artemas Sneed? The pale skin prison pallor?

  She bent to gingerly place two fingers against a none too clean neck. The flesh was pliant, still warm. Not long dead, she judged, no more than two hours, perhaps as little as one.

  A pistol was loosely gripped in his right hand, but the absence of a gunpowder smell told Sabina that it hadn’t been fired. And that he hadn’t been shot. She peered more closely at the chest wound, and saw then with some surprise that there was a similar wound in his back. Slits, both of them, thin and half an inch in width. Neither had bled much; death must have been instantaneous. No knife of any sort had made those slits, but rather something long and thin that had been thrust into him with enough force to pass all the way through his body. Not so much stabbed as skewered.

  By what type of weapon? A saber, possibly, but hardly anyone carried one in San Francisco, not even the officers stationed at the Presidio. A sword cane, more likely. Many men carried such instruments, respectable citizens for self-protection (John had one that had served him on more than one occasion), the more sophisticated breed of criminal for intimidation and assault.

  There was no sign of the weapon in any case; the murderer had wiped it off on the linsey-woolsey shirt—bloody smears on one shoulder attested to that—and taken it away with him. An overturned chair and a cot askew against one wall indicated a brief struggle before the fatal blow was struck. Some sort of confrontation, perhaps over money? Possibly, but not between Sneed and another man of his ilk. Pistols and knives and coshes were their weapons of choice.

  Sabina steeled herself, breathing through her mouth, and knelt to search the man’s clothing. In one trouser pocket she found a purse, inside of which was a small wad of greenbacks and two five-dollar gold pieces—a total of more than sixty dollars. Robbery hadn’t figured in the killing, then. Which likely meant that the murderer was someone other than a Barbary Coast felon.

  There was nothing on the body to identify the dead man. A small wardrobe contained an inexpensive sack coat, a pair of trousers, and two shirts; the pockets in all were empty. A cloth travel bag under the cot yielded nothing, either, and the only items on a low table beside the cot were a packet of matches and another of cheroots.

  Was the victim Artemas Sneed? It seemed probable, since this was his room. If so, a man with Sneed’s background and propensities might have more than a few enemies. Any one of them might have ended his life, for any of a hundred reasons. He was also an alleged blackmailer, and blackmailers often preyed on more than one victim. Blackmail could have been the source of the sixty dollars he carried. But then so could gambling, and such crimes as petty theft, armed robbery, and fraud.

  And then there was the type of weapon that had been used.…

  Carson? Oh, Lord, could Carson have done this?

  The thought opened a hollow feeling inside Sabina. He didn’t seem the type of man capable of killing another in such a brutal fashion as this, even in self-defense, but then neither did he seem the type to have been involved in a gold-stealing scheme that left him open to extortion. She simply didn’t know him well enough to make an accurate judgment. One thing she did know: The type of long, slender stick he carried could conceal a deadly piece of steel.

 
The time had come to face him with her suspicions; she couldn’t put it off any longer. Whether he was innocent or guilty of any magnitude of wrongdoing, she would be able to tell it from his responses and his demeanor. No man had ever successfully lied to her about an important issue such as this. She fervently hoped Carson would not try.

  * * *

  The Nob Hill mansion owned by Carson’s father occupied most of a steep block of California Street not far from Huntington Park, on the opposite slope from the Blanchford estate. It was similar in style to the grand French Second Empire–style home built by Leland Stanford, one of the “Big Four” tycoons and architect of the Union Pacific Railroad, though smaller and not quite as elaborately designed. Even at night, illuminated by street lamps and a scattering of electric lights, the three-story, mansard-roofed edifice and its surrounding gardens were impressive.

  After alighting from the hansom, Sabina once again asked the driver to wait for her. The cab fare was already substantial; a few dollars more wouldn’t and didn’t matter. The driver was as happy to bring her here as he had been to depart Davis Street and its dismal environs. The fact that his passenger had chosen to travel from squalor to the height of wealth obviously puzzled him, but to his credit he held his tongue.

  Sabina hurried through a gate in the spike-tipped iron fence that enclosed the Montgomery property, then through a considerable amount of greenery to the house. A heavy bronze lion’s head knocker made a booming noise when she lifted it and let it fall. The door was opened after a short wait by a middle-aged butler in full dress livery. If he was surprised to see a comely young woman calling alone at this late hour, he didn’t show it.

  “Yes, madam?”

  “I’m an acquaintance of Mr. Carson Montgomery,” she said, and presented her card along with her name. “I’d like to speak to him if he’s home.”