Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades

by Oakley Hall

  “She had made an appointment with Ambrose Bierce,” I said.

  Mrs. Bettis squinted at me. She seemed to have recovered herself. “That mean writing fellow?”

  “He’s my boss.”

  She squinted at the calling card I had given her, which she held cupped in her hand. “Your name’s Thomas Redmond,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I knew a Cletus Redmond once.” Her wrinkled, soft-cheeked old face took on an unmistakable coyness. “I often wonder what happened to Cletus Redmond.”

  “He married my mother,” I said.

  “For heaven’s sake! You are Cletus Redmond’s son!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And where is your dear father now?”

  “He’s in Sacramento working for the SP except when he’s run off after the latest bonanza. Where did you know him?”

  “On the Washoe.”

  I felt a little electric shock of connection. The Washoe was the Comstock, Virginia City, and I didn’t know my father had been there, though it stood to reason. He had visited Austin, Eureka and Tonopah for varying periods of time. My father’s involvements with minerals had been borrascas rather than bonanzas, but he had never given up hope of the ultimate fortune awaiting his faith and patience.

  The Gent had spent his life since coming to California in ‘49, at the age of seventeen, chasing bonanzas and women. It seemed that Mrs. Bettis had been one who had responded to that Irish charm. On the Washoe.

  Judge Hamon had been working on a memoir that would show the Railroad in general, and Senator Jennings in particular, in a bad light, revealing payoffs and corruption in the trial of the Mussel Slough farmers. Mrs. Hamon had in turn been exercised and had made an appointment with Bierce. The murderer had intercepted her before she could see him and had burned the Hamon house with Judge Hamon’s papers.

  The livery stable was Just around the corner from the Plaza, and I inquired if anyone had hired a buggy that early afternoon. A man with a big hat, for instance?

  The lame hostler spat tobacco into the dust. “Took out a rig and was back in about an hour.”

  “Did he give a name?”

  “Name of Brown.” The hostler scratched his neck, squinting into the sun. “Carried a piece. Saw it inside his coat when he climbed into my rig.”

  I took another turn around the plaza and dropped into Buchanan’s Saloon next door to the Liddell House for a beer.

  Passing through the bat-wing doors of the saloon was like coming from full day to dark of night, with a gleam of mirrors behind the bar, a moving white shirt. When my eyes were more accustomed to the dark I saw Brown hulked at the far end of the bar. He had his hat on the stool beside him, a glass of whiskey before him. There was no one else in the place but the barkeep, who approached as I selected my own stool. Brown’s pale pocked face turned toward me. I could almost feel the probe of his eyes on my face.

  In Sacramento our next-door neighbors had a red, cat-killing dog named Rufus. Our black and white cat loved to tease him, sitting on a fence post with her tail flicking just out of his range while Rufus gazed up at her. He was an old dog, with bloodshot eyes and an intensity of malevolence in his glare that was uncomfortable to watch. I could not see whether Brown’s eyes were bloodshot or not, but I felt that same intensity in his gaze.

  When he got off his stool, I retreated out the door. A boy in a vest and knickers was passing.

  “Where can I find a police officer?”

  “Sheriff,” he said. “Next corner toward the bay.”

  I persuaded a deputy that a stranger named Brown had something to do with the fire at the Hamon house and the murder of Mrs. Hamon in San Francisco. But when we got back to the saloon, Brown was gone.

  “Asked who you was, and I said I didn’t know,” the barkeep said to us, rubbing his hands together in his apron. “Used some rank language and lit out the back.”

  Brown hadn’t been found by the time I retired to my room after supper at the hotel. I didn’t think he would be found. I thought he was a professional.

  I sat at the little desk, beneath the hiss and heat of the gaslamp, making notes on hotel stationery. I was aware of no sound, but for some reason I glanced at the door. The doorknob was slowly turning. It turned half a circuit, halted, then turned the half circuit back again.

  There was still no sound as I rose and stood staring at the door, which I had locked. Out the window behind me I heard carriage wheels passing in the plaza. The doorknob did not turn again. I listened for the sound of retreating footsteps but heard nothing.

  I did not sleep much that night and took the train back to San Francisco in the morning.

  7.

  LOVE, n. – A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.

  –THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY

  At The Hornet, after I had reported my adventures in Santa Cruz, Bierce handed me a letter to read:

  July 14, 188-

  Dear Mr. Bierce:

  You have wondered in your paper about spades in connection with the Morton Street slashings. Spades mean death. A spade is used to dig a grave. The Queen of Spades is well known to be the lady of death. Spades are used to dig mines as well as graves. A mine in the Washoe was named the Jack of Spades. It belongs to the Queen of Spades.

  The Jack of Spades Mine is a part of the Consolidated-Ohio that has been as productive a property as George Hearst’s Homestake or Will Sharon’s Ophir. When it was the Jack of Spades it was purchased by investors who called themselves the spades because of the miner’s implement. Two of the spades turned to hearts and bought up a trey to fleece the pigeons. That trey was to suffer from a case of clubs as a momento.

  This is just to inform you of the various meanings of spades, although who can tell what this madman Slasher of Morton Street has in his rabid mind.

  The letter was signed “A Former Spade.”

  Standing over me as I sat holding the missive, Bierce was beaming. “The bulk of the mail I receive, I consign to nullity after reading one sentence,” he said. “But this is a lovely piece! The writer is not uneducated, except for the misspelling of ‘memento.’ ”

  “Lady Caroline,” I said.

  “The Queen of Spades! Is she the target of the progression of spades? Can the murderer hope to reach that unreachable lady with his strangling fingers and his questing blade? It is unthinkable! And yet once it is mentioned, not to think of it becomes unthinkable.”

  “Are you thinking of it?”

  “I am!”

  “But Beau McNair!”

  “I certainly considered the idea of a young man driven to perversions and violence by the knowledge of his mother’s past. But this letter seems to me a strong implication of Beau’s innocence. It mentions hearts rather than diamonds, for instance! What does ‘a case of clubs’ refer to, please?”

  “Someone was bashed?”

  “Indeed!” Bierce said. He seated himself with careful tucks at the knees of his trousers. “What else can we decipher from this marvelous missive? These are all ‘moling’ creatures of the Comstock Lode. The two hearts would be Nat McNair and his missus, joined by a third to make a majority. Two spades were then forced out by the familiar method of pyramiding assessments. The spade who had made the majority was then disposed of by means of a club? Revenge? The remaining two bilked spades nurse their hatred. This writer must be one of them. Can there be a mad idea of murdering poor soiled doves and ultimately reaching the Queen of Spades‌—‌vengeance at last?”

  It was too many for me.

  “Can the fellow Brown you observed in Santa Cruz, and who may have been inclined to threaten you or worse, be the fifth spade? Was Mrs. Hamon connected to the spades? At any rate Mrs. Hamon is connected to the Railroad through her husband’s association with Senator Jennings.”

  There he was bringing it back to the Railroad again.

  As though talking to himself, noddi
ng, he muttered, “What Mrs. Hamon had to tell me did have to do with Railroad malfeasance. Her information concerned Jennings and the Railroad.”

  “Well, all that is burned up,” I said. “And the Queen of Spades is on her way.”

  “I am most anxious to meet that personage,” Bierce said and sent me off to see Sgt. Nix with information from Santa Cruz.

  I encountered Amelia Brittain in front of a ladies’ dress shop on Montgomery Street, gazing upon a bottle-green velvet gown that gleamed in the sunlight as though it contained shifting lights in its folds. Amelia wore her usual white lace. I remarked the heartbreak slimness of her waist as it dipped into the swell of her hips. I had forgotten how tall she was.

  I snatched off my hat as she turned toward me, executing a little figure with her scrolled parasol. Her eyebrows drifted up her forehead, and she smiled her bright smile.

  “Mr. Redmond!”

  She took my arm and we walked along together, passing gents who tipped their hats or saluted with their canes. A Chinaman in his black pajamas hawked cigars that looked like a pack of neat brown torpedoes. Brick buildings we passed had black iron shutters closed over their windows. There was heavy traffic, very noisy. I was glad I was decently dressed as Bierce’s assistant and not Dutch John the printer’s, in a black suit, high collar and derby hat. In Union Square and Montgomery Street, and along the north side of Market Street, the gentry dressed for each other’s eyes.

  “How pleasant to be strolling in this carefree manner, rather than the fearful circumstance of our first expedition,” Amelia said. She frowned at the Examiner’s headline on a newsstand: POLICE PARALYZED IN SLASHINGS.

  “So they have not arrested this lunatic,” she said.

  “No.”

  We strolled on. “I had some discussion with Mr. McNair about his frequenting those places I asked to see,” Amelia said.

  I blew out my breath at her frankness. It was as though we were old friends exchanging confidences.

  “He doesn’t frequent those on Morton Street, surely,” I said.

  “He spoke of premises on Union Square. Do you yourself visit such establishments, Mr. Redmond?”

  “Not I,” I lied.

  “Mr. McNair has explained to me their necessity. He tells me that men of strong gender would become quite uncontrollable if they did not have recourse to these women. Is that true, Mr. Redmond?”

  I said I had heard that theory. Thinking of Beau McNair frequenting whores made my skin crawl.

  “He tells me that the favors of red-haired Jewesses are the most sought after. Is that true?”

  I blew out my breath again. “I have heard that also.”

  “Why would that be, I wonder?”

  “Such women are thought to be very lively,” I said.

  “He calls these jauntings his researches. I caught a glimpse of him once in his sweater and workingman’s jacket. He thought he was invisible in his disguise.”

  We walked on in silence, Amelia in thought. I was very pleased to be accompanying her along Montgomery Street with her hand on my arm, even though we were headed in the wrong direction for my business with Sgt. Nix.

  “So Mr. McNair’s mother is en route from England,” I said.

  “She should arrive in ten days’ time.”

  I hoped it was safe to say, “Does this have to do with wedding plans, Miss Brittain? If you will pardon me for asking.”

  She laughed lightly. “Oh, no! That is finished! I have become quite unattached.” She displayed her gloved hand, as though I could make out the absence of her engagement ring through the fine leather.

  We turned into the English Tearoom, where we sat with cups of tea at a marble-topped table. I watched her ungloved, unringed hand lift her cup to her lips.

  I wanted to know why she had become unattached, and I said, “I suppose young English gents like that are brought up to think they are better than other people.”

  She frowned at me, so I assumed it was improper to criticize Beau McNair.

  “He is very spirited, if that is what you mean,” she said. “He does get into difficulties by it. He is afraid his mother is coming to reprimand him for the trouble he has been in through only the slightest fault of his own‌—‌which we mentioned. His sister is engaged to be married to the son of the duke of Beltravers, and Lady Caroline is anxious that no scandal disrupt that proceeding.”

  Interesting information for Bierce.

  I said I had passed by the McNair mansion on Nob Hill. “It is very impressive.”

  “It is very large! Beau tells me he has never been in all the rooms. You know, there is a ghost. Isn’t that European! The servants say it looks very like Beau. Of course it is old Mr. McNair when he was young, before he became such an abominable old reprobate. My father says he was terribly dishonest!

  “And one evening I was there for supper when there was such a commotion! One of the maids had encountered the ghost in the solarium.”

  I said carefully that it seemed probable that there were similar ghosts in other Nob Hill mansions, the manifestations of other dishonest old reprobates when young.

  “The simply mad thing is that sometimes the McNair ghost makes off with the cut flowers!

  “And is there anything new on those horrible murders?” she asked, switching subjects.

  “You must know there has been another. Not, however, one of the women of Morton Street. The widow of a respected judge. A woman from Santa Cruz, whose house was then burned no doubt to destroy some papers that would have created a scandal.”

  Amelia’s eyebrows rose. “What fascinating work you are engaged in as a journalist, Mr. Redmond!”

  I felt I had dishonestly elicited her esteem.

  “Well, it is certain that Mr. McNair has been no part of any of this,” she said. “And I am very grateful for anything you may have done to establish his innocence.”

  I had no response for that.

  I accompanied her to the City of Paris, where she halted before store windows that presented laces and shimmering silks. Bedecked mannequins extended gloved hands.

  “I will leave you here, Mr. Redmond. Thank you for the tea, and the interesting conversation!” With her light laugh and her parasol tapping, she strode inside.

  I continued on toward Old City Hall and once jumped to kick my heels together. The fact that Amelia Brittain was no longer engaged to Beau McNair had raised my spirits.

  That evening in the cellar of the Barnacles’ house I took off my jacket and shirt and pummeled the buggy seat, shooting out rights and lefts, sweating in the dim cool, breathing dust from my target. I was aware that Belinda was watching me, seated on the top cellar step with her knees and feet together and her hands clasped in her lap. I banged away, flinging my fists wide open one moment, and the next pulled together defensively with my chin in my shoulder and sweat tickling on my sides.

  When I stopped, panting, and draped a towel around my neck, preparatory to a visit to the baths, Belinda said, “You act like you’re mad at somebody, Tom.”

  “Just the opposite,” I told her.

  8.

  FIDELITY, n. – A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

  –THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY

  In Sacramento, en route by train to Virginia City, in a delay announced as not less than two hours, I walked the four blocks from the station to my parents’ house, a peeling white-painted bungalow set back from the street, with a narrow porch and two dormer windows on the second story. At least three times during my youth, in the floods of the Sacramento River, the water had come up into the house and warped the boards of the hallway so there was always a reminding faint stink of river mud.

  In the upstairs rooms my two brothers and my sister and I had listened to our father and mother fight downstairs, and celebrate in their bedroom their spells of concord as noisily as they fought. My brothers and sister were older than I, and they all cleared out of the house as soon as they could find the means, but I hung on to t
ake my diploma from the Christian Brothers and then, with a twenty-dollar gold piece sewn into my pocket, rode the deck of the steamer down the river to the City.

  In the dark central hallway I called my mother’s name. A familiar oppression sat on my shoulders with the redolence of old mud and the waft of boiled onions and dishwater from the kitchen. My mother stood at the stove in her shoes with the sides cut out to favor her bunions. She swung toward me with her sweet, toothless smile, her blue eyes aproned with dark flesh like a raccoon’s eyes.

  “Tommy!”

  She let herself fall into my arms with a dramatic motion. “What are you doing here, for anyway’s sake?”

  “Riding the cars to Virginia City.”

  She pursed her lips at me. “Aren’t you the fine gentleman!”

  I grinned back at her and said I was getting finer day by day.

  “Let me get my teeth in and make some lemonade. I’ll send the boy next door for the Gent.”

  “I’ve got an hour.”

  I sat on the porch in one of the ragged wicker chairs with my feet up on the rail gazing out on the dusty street where a ginger mutt barked at a passing Chinaman. The yelps reverberated hollowly in the heat. I remembered chasing Chinamen with the other Catholic boys. We were all dead set against pigtails, for reasons I could no longer remember.

  My mother brought me the lemonade and sat down beside me. She had put in her teeth, changed her dress and combed her hair into a gray-streaked bun on top of her head.

  “Have you been saying your prayers, Tommy?” she asked.

  “Not as often as I should, Ma.”

  “The Good Lord will forgive you anything, Son. But you must ask for His forgiveness.”

  “Yes, Ma.”

  But I had come to Bierce’s way of thinking, that prayer was “to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.” I myself would be ashamed to pray to the Good Lord for the gift of a Nob Hill young lady, and I had too much pride to confess impure thoughts of her as well.