No Quiet among the Shadows

by Nancy Herriman

  Anger flared. He wouldn’t discuss Meg with Eagan, who wasn’t asking out of concern.

  “That’s my family’s private business, Captain.”

  “Don’t get touchy, Greaves,” he responded. “I simply thought you might sympathize with McHugh. Spur you to want to work hard on finding his sister.”

  Nick clenched his teeth, loosened them again. “I’ll work hard on finding her, sir.”

  He hadn’t located Meg in time to save her.

  He’d be damned certain Corrie McHugh didn’t suffer the same fate.

  • • •

  “How was the parade, ma’am?” asked Addie, descending the steps from the first-floor rooms.

  “Very patriotic,” said Celia. “I need you to attend to Owen for a while longer today, Addie. I have decided I should respond to Mr. Smith’s note immediately.”

  “Now?” said Addie. “He’ll nae be at his offices, ma’am. Not today.”

  Celia strode into her examination room. “A message slipped beneath his door telling him I wish to meet him first thing in the morning will work.”

  Her housekeeper’s eyebrows curved skeptically. “The message canna wait another day?”

  “No, I am afraid not.” The timing of the investigator’s note and her sighting of a man who looked like Patrick was too coincidental. “I should have gone to see Mr. Smith yesterday. He never requests a meeting unless his news is truly urgent.”

  “Ma’am?”

  Celia scribbled a hasty message on a scrap of paper, retrieved the reticule she’d left upon her desk, and tucked the note inside. “I’ll not be long.”

  Celia sprinted from the house.

  “Ma’am, what has happened?” Addie called after her. “Ma’am!”

  Celia wanted to explain, but what would she say? That she’d seen Patrick, a dead man? She wanted proof first. Proof that might come from Mr. R. Smith.

  She hurried down Montgomery. A streetcar would be quicker, but the few she spotted were overfilled with passengers on their way to the next festivity.

  She dodged a boy in a tattered coat sweeping up bits of ribbon and petals that had fallen from flower-adorned carriages, remnants from the parade. A passing wagon trampled a discarded handkerchief under its wheels, and a pair of gulls swooped down to pick at an unrecognizable piece of food in the gutter. The festive pennants decorating the buildings along the road drooped in the midday sun. Celebrations had shifted to another part of town, taking the cheering crowds with them and leaving behind the already fading memories.

  Darting across the street, she turned down Sansome. Raucous laughter and music, coming from every nearby tavern and lagerbier saloon, chased her along the road. A group of inebriated men on horseback clattered past, celebrating by firing their guns into the air. One of the men winked when he spotted her.

  On the bottom floor of a sliver of a building wedged between two taller ones, Mr. Smith’s office cowered as though intimidated by its more impressive surroundings. R. Smith: Investigations was inscribed upon the window glass in fading white paint. He’d pulled down the blinds, and the room beyond them was dark. She shifted, trying to see inside. A blur of movement caught her eye.

  She pounded on the door. “Mr. Smith?” she called out. “Is that you in there?” No one answered. “Mr. Smith?”

  Strange.

  Withdrawing her note from her bag, she bent to shove it under the door. But what if he did not come to his office for another day or more? She had to know if she’d seen Patrick—or Patrick’s shadow. She could not wait another day or more.

  She returned her note to her reticule. Across the street, a lad had stepped through the front door of a tobacconist’s and was locking it tight.

  “Excuse me,” Celia called out to him. “Might you know where I can find Mr. Smith?”

  He glanced over. “Ma’am?”

  Celia waited for a buggy rattling along the road to go by before dashing across the street.

  “Mr. Smith?” she said, inclining her head toward the investigator’s empty office. “Where might I find him?”

  “That one?”

  “Is there another Mr. Smith in the vicinity?”

  The fellow squinted at the investigator’s windows. “Looks like he ain’t in. It’s the Fourth, after all.” He turned his squint on Celia. “You know, the Fourth.”

  “I comprehend that his office would be closed for the holiday,” she replied tersely. “Which is why I’d like to know where Mr. Smith lives.”

  “You goin’ there?” His gaze narrowed further. “To visit him? In private?”

  “I need to consult him about an investigation I hired him to conduct,” answered Celia, providing more information than was required. “Now.”

  “Hmm.” He scratched the burgeoning stubble on his chin.

  Celia opened her reticule and removed three quarters. Possibly a third of a day’s wage for a young assistant.

  She held them out. “Perhaps a few coins will help you remember?”

  He snatched the quarters from her outstretched palm. “Ain’t far. The men’s hotel just around the corner on Commercial Street. You can’t miss it.” He pocketed the coins and scanned Celia from top to toe. “Rough bunch there. You need to be careful with them.”

  A “rough bunch” had never deterred her. She thanked the man and headed for Mr. Smith’s lodgings. Two young girls ran past, the bengal lights they carried trailing sparks from their sticks, threatening to ignite the one girl’s pigtails. On the corner, several boys set off a string of firecrackers. The deafening noise echoed off the buildings.

  Her ears were still ringing as she rounded the corner onto Commercial. Which explained why she’d not initially heard the screams.

  “What is going on?” she asked. No one paid her any attention, far more interested in the people collecting around a crumpled pile of clothing on the ground.

  A woman shrieked.

  “What is it?” Celia pushed her way through the crowd, more gathering by the minute. “I am a nurse. Can I help?”

  “Too late for anybody to help. Damn if it ain’t,” a heavily whiskered man answered. “’Scuse me, ma’am.”

  “No need to apologize for cursing.”

  It was too late for anyone to help. For on the ground was not a crumpled pile of clothing.

  But the bloody, dead body of Mr. R. Smith.

  Chapter 4

  Nick climbed the steps from the police station, located in the lowest level of the City Hall building, up to the side alley. Leveling the brim of his flat-crowned hat with a sweep of his hand, he strolled over to the corner and glanced at Telegraph Hill, rising to the north. For most folks, it would be only about a ten-minute walk from City Hall to the house where Celia Davies lived. He could make it in seven. Or less. But he didn’t budge from his spot.

  Don’t be so damned stubborn. You know you want to see her . . .

  Celia Davies had a way of lifting his spirits that no other woman had ever managed. Sure, he’d found plenty of females to spend hours with, to lose himself in, forgetting. But none had made him feel the way she did. Made him willing to live for a reason other than reparation for all the mistakes he’d made in his life.

  Some of those mistakes had taken pieces of his heart. He’d loved unwisely, cared too much for the wrong sort of people. He couldn’t afford to repeat those blunders again.

  “Hey, copper!” A drunk, locked in the basement jail, had spotted Nick. He pressed his broad nose against the bars of his jail cell window, only the top half of his face showing above the level of the sidewalk.

  “What do you want?” asked Nick.

  The prisoner, a black eye swelling the left side of his face, stuck a hand between the bars and made a rude gesture. “How about this?”

  “Nice. Very nice.”

  Nick drew in a breath, exhaled it just as rapidly. No point in standing there, the bunting and flags attached to the building at his back snapping in the breeze, the sun baking. Wrestling with whether or not
to play safe.

  “Sir!” Taylor, out of his police uniform, was striding up the road toward him. He glared at the drunk who’d gone from rude gestures to shouting obscenities. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “I told you yesterday I intended to work today.” After he’d received Mrs. Davies’s note. “I was just headed out for a bite to eat. Want to join me?”

  “I already had lunch, sir. You should’ve marched with us this morning, though. But I gotta admit I’m mighty tired,” said Taylor. “How goes the search for that girl?”

  “Miss McHugh remains missing.”

  “You’ll find her, sir. I’ve got faith in you.”

  Thank God somebody does.

  “Put a notice in the newspapers saying we want to contact her, Taylor.” Would theirs succeed? She’d ignored her brother’s.

  “All right, sir . . . Mr. Greaves. Sir.”

  Nick eyed his assistant’s clothes. New shoes to go with a fresh shave. “You have plans tonight, Taylor? With Miss Addie Ferguson, maybe?”

  His face reddened. His assistant blushed easily. “Um . . . she’s been helping Mrs. Davies with her Irish kid. He’s come down sick with the mumps.”

  “I heard.”

  “Guess you would, I suppose,” said Taylor, grinning. “Has Mrs. Davies canceled, too?”

  “She has,” said Nick, taking off toward home. Taylor fell into step at his side.

  Maybe he was grateful she’d canceled. Buried in the depths of the police office, he might avoid hearing the boom of the fireworks. When they’d made plans to watch the pyrotechnics display, he’d agreed even though he knew attending would be painful. The cannon fire that morning had been as much as he could tolerate, given that there were times he heard the thunder of artillery in his sleep.

  “You can stop staring at me like that right now, Taylor.”

  “Just checking how you’re doing, sir.” Taylor’s grin dropped from his face. “I’m done, Mr. Greaves, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  Loud piano music jangled from the depths of a nearby saloon. Based on the bits Nick could hear, the person mauling the keys was as drunk as the fellow locked in the jail. A tilbury decked out with flags trundled south, maybe headed for the site of the evening’s fireworks, its occupants eager to get a good viewing spot. One of the passengers, a young woman clinging to the arm rail, caught Nick’s eye and smiled.

  “Maybe you should schedule for another time,” said Taylor, not finished with the subject of Nick and Celia Davies. “Like Sunday. Her clinic’s not open then. Not usually. Take her to the Willows. Add— ahem, I’ve heard ladies like picnicking there.”

  “Ladies like Miss Ferguson?”

  “Uh . . .”

  Enough of an answer for Nick. Clearly Taylor wasn’t afraid of risking his heart. Maybe he’d been luckier in love. “If you’re not out with Miss Ferguson tonight, what are you doing?”

  “Me and a few of the fellows are going to watch the fireworks. Do you want to come along with us? Seeing as your plans have changed.”

  “No, but thanks.”

  “The boys will be disappointed.”

  “Oh, I bet they will.” Detective Greaves. The life of the party.

  Taylor felt around his coat pockets in search of a cigar and came up empty-handed. “You know, looks like you didn’t have any reason to be worried about a lot of trouble, sir . . . Mr. Greaves. Sir. It’s been pretty quiet. For a day like today.”

  “Thank goodne . . . damn.” A cop scurrying about like a rabbit caught Nick’s attention. They’d only walked a dozen or so steps from the station and already it looked like Taylor might have spoken too soon.

  “What’s going on now?” asked Taylor.

  “Nothing good, I’d wager.”

  They jogged down Commercial to where a crowd hunched in a circle.

  Nick pushed through the spectators. “What is it?” he asked, showing the officer his badge. “Detective Greaves.”

  “Glad you’re here, Detective,” the officer replied and forged a path back the way he’d come, raising a swarm of protests as he attempted to move onlookers out of the way. “Hey! Move aside! Got a detective coming.”

  The announcement didn’t encourage anybody to yield, but several heads swiveled to take in the new arrivals.

  “Folks, I need you to stand back so I can see what the problem is,” said Nick. A handful reluctantly obliged. A crumpled body, half on, half off the sidewalk, lay in their midst.

  “It’s pretty awful, sir,” said Taylor, taking a quick glance before looking away. He never did have a stomach for dead bodies.

  “I see that.” Nick stood over the man. Short in stature, his head was turned at an awkward angle, his eyes wide open in shock. Blood oozed along the rough cobbles beneath his balding head and seeped from his mouth. The side of his head that had met jagged stone had caved from the impact. Nick scanned the building he’d come to rest in front of. A five-story rooming house. The fellow must have fallen from one of the upper floors—in fact, the window of one of the rooms on the top floor was wide open, its curtain streaming in the wind—and had an unfortunate landing.

  A piece of something bright was clutched in the man’s fist. Nick squatted next to the dead man and peeled open his fingers. A torn piece of checked cotton. Nick glanced up at the window again and stood.

  “Anybody here know who this man is?” he asked, tucking the scrap into his inside coat pocket.

  “I do,” a familiar voice answered. One that belonged to a British woman with honey-colored hair who had a knack for showing up at the wrong places at the wrong times.

  “Mrs. Davies, what are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you were busy with Cassidy.”

  Her pale eyes offered no apology. Not that he expected they would. “Addie is with him at the moment,” she said. “I was nearby and heard the commotion, Mr. Greaves.”

  “And you thought you’d come looking.”

  “Should I have ignored the disturbance?” she retorted. “But as I said, I know this man. He is Mr. Smith, an investigator.” She considered the broken mess named Mr. Smith, her brow furrowing. “But I cannot believe he . . . it is simply impossible.”

  • • •

  “Forgive the stink, ma’am. You know how bad it is down here,” said Nicholas Greaves, raising the sash of his office window. A gust of wind scattered dust from the street onto the floor, joining the sand and dirt already coating it. Out on the road, hackneys and horses clattered past, and someone set off a firecracker. The noise was startling, and the detective flinched. “Just because it’s July Fourth and the station is mostly empty doesn’t mean it will smell prettier.”

  Celia took one of the two chairs that faced his desk. The stench wafting in from the jail cells beyond the main room was nauseating. Although the sensation had more to do with what she’d just witnessed than the sour stink.

  “I can manage,” she replied.

  He turned away from the window, removed his hat, and tossed it onto his desk. “I wish I could.”

  She smiled, despite the disquiet in her stomach and in her mind. How easy it was to be around him. How unlike the life she’d had with Patrick.

  “I would like to apologize for canceling our plans for this evening, Mr. Greaves.” She watched his expression; she’d never found him easy to read, though.

  His eyes searched her face. “Um, would you like to go . . .”

  Her heart lifted. If Patrick is alive, I have to crush this feeling. She simply had to.

  “Never mind,” he said, erasing the need for her to respond to what he’d begun to ask. “Apology accepted, of course. It’s important that Cassidy gets better. Hope he’s doing all right.”

  “Owen is doing as well as can be expected,” she said, settling into the mundane, the sensation in her chest fading. Discovering the cause of Mr. Smith’s death was their primary goal now.

  “He’s a tough kid.” He settled onto the chair behind his desk. “My sympathies on Mr. S
mith’s sudden death, by the way.”

  “As I explained on our way here, we were not close acquaintances. I am shocked but not grieving,” she said. “I was his employer, nothing more.”

  “How did you come to be associated with Mr. Smith?” he asked, staring at her across the desk’s piles of papers. When she had first met him, she’d found his stares intimidating.

  “He was recommended to me when I needed someone to discover what had happened to my husband. In Mexico,” she replied. “He was also the man I hired to search for Owen’s parents.”

  “You’re pretty attached to that kid, ma’am.”

  “I am attached to many people, Mr. Greaves. People who need me.”

  A flash of an unrecognizable emotion showed on his face. There and rapidly gone. Just as well.

  “You must have met with Mr. Smith fairly often, though, to have formed an opinion on the cause of his death,” he said.

  Celia exhaled slowly. She’d realized immediately that she should not have permitted the thought uppermost in her mind—that Patrick was somehow, remarkably, impossibly responsible for Mr. Smith’s demise—to very nearly slip out. Seeing him dead upon the ground, his blood seeping onto the dirty cobbles and his neck twisted, had been startling, though.

  He’d sent a note asking me to come to his office because he had news . . . and now he is dead.

  “I was merely surprised Mr. Smith died by falling from a window,” she said. “The impression I’d formed was of a man who prided himself in conquering difficulties. Not the sort who would choose suicide. But I suppose I was mistaken about him.”

  “Suicide,” he said, an odd hitch in his voice. “You suspect Smith killed himself?”

  Her fingers contracted around the embroidered reticule she held in her lap. The note inside crackled. She could not admit that she’d seen a ghost and had concluded that the ghost had murdered the investigator who’d obtained proof of his demise. Nicholas Greaves would think her quite . . . what was the American word? Looney?

  “Mrs. Davies, I see your mind working,” said Nicholas Greaves. “Why not tell me what you’re mulling over, since I’m not all that good at reading thoughts.”