No Quiet among the Shadows

by Nancy Herriman

  “She may have spoken to us, but as I have already explained, when I am in my trance I don’t attend to what occurs around me or even what the spirits speak aloud through me.”

  He needed to interview spirits, apparently. “I have to ask where you were yesterday morning.”

  “I attended a party held by one of my fellow spiritualists. I’m certain any one of them would tell you I was there.”

  “Hope you don’t mind if one of my officers decides to ask them to do just that.”

  “They are welcome to.” She abruptly got to her feet, causing her bird to flap around its cage. “I have appointments today, Detective Greaves. I feel I can’t help you any further.”

  She swept past him.

  Nick stood. Guess they were done.

  Taylor scrambled to his feet. “Is that all, sir?”

  “Looks like we’ve been dismissed, Taylor.” Nick paused at the front door, which Mrs. Loveland held open. “If you recall any other important details, Mrs. Loveland, you can reach me at the police office.”

  “If I do, I shall let you know.” She touched Nick’s sleeve. “And Detective, you can’t run forever from the memories that haunt you. Your departed loved ones are reaching out. Let them in.”

  Nick jammed his hat onto his head and marched out, leaving Taylor to deliver their thanks before chasing after him.

  “Sir, wait!” Taylor called.

  “Damnable woman,” muttered Nick.

  Chapter 7

  Celia took the Omnibus line to Geary Street. She had forty-five minutes until a patient was scheduled to arrive at her clinic. Forty-five minutes to satisfy at least some of her curiosity about Dr. Arthur Brown. Celia glanced at the watch pinned at her waist. It was almost noon. If Dr. Brown closed his surgery for lunch, she might miss the opportunity to speak with him. Hopefully luck would be with her.

  The horsecar sped around the corner, and she grabbed the edge of her seat to steady herself. Children playing jacks by the curb barely looked up from their game as the driver brought the horses to a halt.

  “Excuse me,” said Celia to the male passengers, whose sprawling legs were hastily drawn back as she made her way along the aisle.

  She exited the car and stepped down onto the uneven street cobbles. Dr. Brown had rented rooms not far from Union Square, an area where fashionable homes stood cheek by jowl and patients would be wealthier and more willing to part with their money.

  Distracted by a pair of overladen produce wagons and the blaring whistle of a nearby factory, she nearly walked past Dr. Brown’s surgery and consultation rooms. His brass placard was discreet compared to the massive sign of a neighboring real estate agency. She peered up at his office. The window curtains were pulled wide enough to observe the movements of the occupants within. Not closed for lunch yet.

  Good.

  A woman in a parti-colored gown pushed through the surgery’s front door. Her skin had a yellow pallor. Jaundice? Liver disease? Gallstones? She gingerly descended the steps and climbed into a waiting cab. Celia was curious if the doctor had chosen to treat her with ipecac or mercury. Or perhaps calomel.

  Or a seton on the neck, thought Celia.

  Celia climbed to the office door and entered the waiting area. A woman wearing a severe shade of gray and a more severe expression looked over from her spot behind a corner desk. She bounded across the room with the fervor of a terrier intercepting a rodent.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?” she asked, stretching to her full height.

  “I have an appointment with Dr. Brown,” said Celia.

  “I’m afraid you don’t. She is the last patient of the morning.” The doctor’s assistant pointed out an elderly woman seated nearby, who looked confused by the sudden attention.

  “Might I see him nonetheless?”

  “You are obviously not gravely ill or you would’ve requested the doctor visit you at home.” Her eyes—also severely gray—scanned Celia. “You can make an appointment for next week.”

  “I shall seek advice elsewhere. Thank you.”

  Celia nodded at the elderly patient and exited the surgery. She hurried across the road. Now what? Perhaps she should wait for Dr. Brown to leave for lunch and attempt to speak with him then.

  The local policeman, strolling down the opposite side of the road, tapped his club against his leg and regarded Celia. A woman standing alone on a street curb could be a woman up to no good. She spun to face the milliner’s shop at her back and pretended to be browsing the hats on display.

  The milliner’s window glass reflected the policeman’s image. He brushed a fleck of dirt from his sleeve, used the blunt end of his club to scratch at his neck, and walked on. She exhaled her relief.

  “Can I help you, mademoiselle?”

  The woman speaking had come from inside the milliner’s and stood in the shop’s doorway, her hooped skirts squeezed between the doorjambs.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Mademoiselle?”

  “Mrs. Davies,” she said. “I am hoping you can help me. I have been standing here, admiring your fine collection, trying to screw up the courage to meet with Dr. Brown.” She nodded toward his surgery. “On a most delicate medical matter, but I find myself hesitant.”

  “So you are not interested in a new bonnet.” The woman cast an assessing eye at Celia’s serviceable but far from fashionable straw hat and pursed her lips.

  “Not at the moment, though I wish I were. I fear all my thoughts are about my health and Dr. Brown,” said Celia. “Which is how you can help me. Do you know him? Is he a decent sort of person? Can I trust him with . . . my condition?”

  “You want gossip about Dr. Brown?”

  “Only as it might impact my decision to make use of his services,” she answered. “You seem an observant woman, Mrs. . . .”

  “Madame Durand,” she replied with an abruptly heavier French accent.

  “Ah, yes, Madame Durand. I would trust your opinion,” said Celia. “And since I have no one else to ask, perhaps you can tell me what you know about him.”

  The woman’s gaze moved from Celia’s hat to her face and lower. “A delicate medical matter.”

  “You understand,” said Celia, her cheeks heating.

  Madame Durand apparently made up her mind to offer Celia whatever information she held, for her demeanor changed and she leaned in to talk. She needn’t fear being overheard; the persistent clatter of wagon wheels drowned out all but the loudest conversation.

  “He has not acted himself lately,” she said. “Closing his office early. Or sometimes there has been a lamp burning late. My rooms are above the store.” She pointed upward. “I can see the surgery windows from there.”

  “Dr. Brown is a man of irregular habits, then. So I should be concerned,” she said. “Is he also, by chance, ill-tempered? Easily angered? In your estimation.”

  “I would not cross him, madame,” said Madame Durand. “He did not used to behave like this. But after that man came by, he became . . .” She tutted.

  “What man?”

  She looked around as if searching for eavesdroppers. “I heard he was an investigator.” The milliner pursed her lips again. The skin around her mouth wrinkled, suggesting the pucker was a frequent expression. “He looked like a bum to me.”

  “An investigator?” Madame Durand had to mean Mr. Smith. “Then I am right to be concerned about Dr. Brown. He sounds disreputable.”

  Something behind Celia caught the milliner’s attention. “A customer of mine is headed this way, madame. I cannot talk any longer. Perhaps you can leave a card so I may contact you further.”

  Celia searched through her reticule and found one, handing it to the woman. Madame Durand called out a greeting to the woman, who swept around Celia and into the milliner’s shop like a taffeta-ruffled ship steaming for shore, dragging Madame Durand in her wake.

  Church bells tolled twelve, and Celia looked over at the surgery. An unseen hand lowered the shade over its front door. Closing for lunch at last. If
Dr. Brown did leave his premises for a bite to eat, she hadn’t much longer to wait.

  “Shine up, sir?” cried a nearby bootblack to a man striding along the pavement.

  One of his companions was already shining a fellow’s scuffed shoe, his foot propped on a stand the bootblack had provided. The man had an open newspaper in his hands, but he wasn’t reading it. He was staring at Dr. Brown’s surgery door.

  He had been at the corner when she’d disembarked the horsecar and walked up Geary. The bright red plaid of his waistcoat was conspicuous and memorable. Celia glanced between him and the building across the way. Maybe he was simply waiting for an acquaintance to exit the real estate agency.

  Or maybe he was just as interested in Dr. Brown as she was.

  He noticed Celia watching him. “And what are you looking at?” he called out.

  Her pulse jumped. Before she could respond, he folded his paper, tucked it under his arm, and strode off.

  “Hey, mister.” The bootblack jumped to his feet and waved his rag in the direction of the rapidly departing man. “I’m not done!” His companion also shouted at the man to come back.

  Celia, hiking her skirts out of her way, rushed after the fellow. “Wait!” she called out. “Please wait!”

  He darted along the crowded pavement with the ease of someone used to evading pursuit. Celia almost collided with a telegraph pole in her attempt to keep him in sight. He picked up speed, weaving in and out of pedestrians.

  “Stop, please!” she cried.

  The man sprinted around the corner. Celia dodged a laborer stepping out of an oyster shop and turned up the alley, a narrow gap between two buildings. The passage was littered with broken bits of mugs and dishes, discarded oyster shells, and worse.

  Holding her skirts aloft, she plunged into the shadows, her half boots slipping on . . . she didn’t want to contemplate what.

  “I want to talk to you,” she called out. Blast. Where was he?

  A rat scuttled out of a debris pile, setting her heart racing again. Turn around, Celia. Turn around now.

  “Please. I want to talk—”

  Strong hands seized her from behind, yanking her off her feet.

  She screamed.

  • • •

  After leaving Mrs. Loveland’s, Nick had grabbed a bite to eat and gone to the police station. It was empty except for the booking sergeant, who leaned against his standing desk near the entrance to the jail cells. He puffed a cigar—had he helped himself to Taylor’s stash?—and listlessly scribbled in his ledger.

  The sergeant looked over at Nick. “You’ve got a visitor, Greaves.” He nodded toward the door to the detectives’ office.

  “Is that one of Taylor’s cigars?” Nick asked.

  He yanked it out of his mouth. “You accusing me of stealing from Taylor?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, I didn’t.” He tucked the cigar back into his mouth and puffed harder. Unfortunately, its smell wasn’t enough to mask the stench seeping into the room from the jail cells.

  Nick wove his way through the tangle of vacated desks and chairs. One of the officers had left part of a meal rotting on his desk since yesterday. Nick used the edge of the man’s ashtray to flick the remnants into the nearest trash can. “My visitor doesn’t happen to be a Dr. Brown, does it?” He’d be saved a trip to the man’s surgery if it was.

  “Nope, it’s some woman,” said the sergeant. “Not the blonde one who comes to see you all the time, though.”

  “Mrs. Davies does not come to see me all the time.”

  “Coulda fooled me,” he smirked in reply.

  His visitor perched in one of the chairs Nick set aside for witnesses. Or the blonde woman who regularly visited him. Her head was down, her face hidden by a yellow spoonbill bonnet trimmed with cheap artificial flowers. In her lap, she clutched a small net purse.

  “Ma’am?” he said, stepping inside the office and softly closing the door.

  She glanced up at him. She was young, and nervous.

  “It’s ‘miss,’ not ‘ma’am.’” She tugged at a rip in one of the thin gloves she wore, trying to hide the tear. Embarrassed, he’d guess, that she couldn’t afford new. “Miss Rogers.”

  He introduced himself, removed his hat, and took his chair. He set the paper-wrapped remnants of his lunch—french-fried potatoes—on the only empty spot on his desk. “What can I do for you, Miss Rogers?”

  “I saw the notice looking for information on Corrie.”

  “Corrie McHugh?” he asked. “You know her?”

  “I do. She’s my friend.” She plucked at her glove, widening the rip in the seam. “But she’s gone missing.”

  “And we want to find her, too, Miss Rogers,” he said. “Her brother came up from Los Angeles a few days ago to ask for police help. He’s also concerned that he hasn’t heard from Corrie for a while.”

  “I’m so worried about her. I just think . . . I just think . . .” She started to sob. Big, heaving gasps with plenty of tears.

  Damn.

  He felt around in his coat for a fresh handkerchief and held it out across his desk. “It’s clean, according to my landlady, and I trust her laundering skills.”

  “Thank you.” She took it and blew her nose.

  “Tell me why you’re so worried about Miss McHugh, Miss Rogers.”

  She tried to return his handkerchief. He indicated that she should keep it.

  “I think Corrie is dead,” she said, giving her nose another good blow before tucking the handkerchief inside her net purse.

  “Why?”

  “She wouldn’t have just up and disappeared, Detective Greaves. Not without telling me where she was going,” she said. “I was her good friend. Her only friend ever since she moved into the room next to mine in the beginning of April. She was awful private and never wanted to talk to anybody else. By late May, though, she’d moved on.”

  Nick took a notebook from his desk drawer and flipped it open to jot down her comments. “Why didn’t you come to the police earlier?”

  She dropped her gaze. “Corrie wouldn’t have liked me to do that. She had a reason to leave, and I wanted to respect that.”

  “But you’re here now.”

  “I kept hoping to hear from her. You know, get a letter or something telling me where she’d gone and that she was all right,” she replied. “But after the weeks went by and I saw that piece in the paper this morning, asking after her . . . she’s dead, isn’t she? He’s killed her.”

  A shadow appeared at the other side of the office door, wavy and distorted by the glass. Taylor opened the door without knocking. “The sergeant said you might need me?”

  “Taylor, this is Miss Rogers. Miss Rogers, my assistant.” Nick shoved his notebook across the desk. “Here. You take notes. You’re better at it.”

  Taylor tipped his hat at Miss Rogers, grabbed up the notebook, and took a seat out of her line of sight.

  “Taylor, Miss Rogers was just telling me she thinks her friend, Corrie McHugh, has been murdered.”

  “That’s the woman you were supposed to find, right, sir?” asked Taylor.

  “She is.” Nick turned back to Miss Rogers. “Tell me who you think harmed Miss McHugh.”

  “Her fellah.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Corrie never told me. Just said she was trying to get away from him,” she answered. “I got the impression he used to beat her, Detective. Our landlady had a soft spot for Corrie. Said we women had to stick together . . .”

  “Ah,” said Nick.

  “Then one day, like I said, Corrie cleared out. She owed two weeks’ rent,” said Miss Rogers. “I got scared he might’ve caught up with her . . . and now she’s missing and nobody’s heard a word.” She stared at Nick with a desperation he’d seen too many times in too many folks’ eyes. “You’ve gotta find her, Detective Greaves. I’ve gotta know what’s happened to her. Or if she’s in trouble and I can help.”

  “But you have no
idea where she might be, or how we might find her.”

  “No. None.” She squeezed her net purse. “I’m sorry.”

  So was he. “Thank you, Miss Rogers,” he said. “If you recall anything else or happen to hear from Miss McHugh, please let us know. Taylor, escort her home, if you will.”

  “No!” She looked over at Taylor, who’d gotten up from his chair. “It’s not safe. I don’t want anybody knowing I’ve come to talk to the police. Just in case. Just in case her fellah hears. If he’s killed Corrie, he’ll kill me, too.” She reached across the desk. “Please don’t tell anybody I’ve been here. I don’t want him knowing.”

  The cheap flowers pinned to her hat quivered from her panic. Nick reached up to rub the ache in his arm and said to her what he’d said to other women. Women who’d sometimes ended up dead despite his best efforts to keep them alive.

  “You’ll be safe, Miss Rogers,” he said. “We’ll make sure of that.”

  • • •

  “And what is it you think you’re up to?” The man holding Celia spun her to face him.

  Gad. The policeman. But at least it was not . . . thank God.

  “You have to chase that fellow. He is a highly suspicious individual,” she said, twisting in his grasp to look in the direction the red-waistcoated fellow had gone.

  “Oh, I don’t think I’ll be letting you go.”

  “I am not what you think I am, Officer,” she said. “I am a nurse who intended to visit Dr. Brown, but I changed my mind. And then I noticed that fellow . . . he is who you need to accost. Not me.”

  Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the passage, and she could see the hard edges of his broad face. “Well, this is a story I haven’t heard before.”

  “It is a true story.” She stared down at his thick-knuckled fist gripping her elbow. “I shall not run off. I promise. You may let go of my arm.”

  “Excuse me for not believin’ you,” he answered, pulling her back toward the street. “You’re going to the station house. Hope you don’t mind the accommodation.”

  Bloody . . . “I am accompanying you willingly, Officer,” she said. “You need not drag me.”