The Bughouse Affair: A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery (8 page)

Sabina gave her name and explained her mission. The woman made no move to take the card she extended.

“May I speak with your husband?” Sabina asked.

“My husband is dead.”

“My condolences. May I ask when he passed on?”

“Ten days ago.”

That would have been less than a week after he was robbed of his billfold at the Chutes. He had been one of the pickpocket’s first victims.

“May I come in, Mrs. Holbrooke?”

“I’d rather you didn’t. I’ve been … tearful. I don’t wish for anyone to see me after I’ve been grieving.”

“I understand. But could you tell me the cause of your husband’s death?”

Mrs. Holbrooke hesitated before answering. Then, with a sigh, “An internal infection.”

“Had he been ill long?”

“He had never been ill. Not a day in his life.”

“What was the cause of the infection?”

“The doctor didn’t know. He really wasn’t a very good physician, but we couldn’t afford a better one after the two hundred dollars was stolen. My husband died here, in my arms. I was forced to sell my jewelry—what little I had left—so he could have a decent burial.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sabina said sincerely. “May I ask why he carried so much money on an outing at the amusement park?”

“My husband never went anywhere without our cash reserves in that old beaded leather billfold of his. He was afraid to leave the money at home—this neighborhood is not what it once was. And he distrusted banks.”

Sabina was in sympathy with the former reason but not the latter. Henry Holbrooke would still be alive if he had kept their funds in a bank.

The older woman leaned heavily on the doorjamb; like Jessie Street, she gave the impression of slow disintegration. “If you apprehend the thief, is there any chance you’ll recover the money?”

Most likely it had already been spent, but Sabina said, “I’ll make every effort to do so.”

“If you do recover any of it, will you please return it to me? I ask not so much for myself, but for Henry’s memory. It pains me that I’m not able to purchase a decent marker for his grave.”

“Of course.”

Sabina took her leave. It would have been cruel to share her grim thoughts with Henry Holbrooke’s widow, but it seemed probable that the infection her husband had died from had been caused by the deep jab of a sharp and unclean hatpin. In which case the woman responsible was not only a pickpocket but a murderess.

*   *   *

 

It was just one o’clock when Sabina dismissed the hansom driver near the gates to the Chutes Amusement Park. The place was not quite as crowded as the day before, she found, either because word of the thefts had spread or because the afternoon was cloudy and there was a chill breeze swirling in from the ocean. If the hatpin dip appeared again today, she ought to be relatively easy to spot.

But she didn’t appear. At least Sabina saw no one who employed the woman’s methods of picking her marks. She may have come early and left early, or come briefly and found no potential victim to her liking during the three hours Sabina roamed the grounds. Or stayed away entirely because of the weather. In any event there was no report of a robbery at the Chutes that day. A brief conversation with Lester Sweeney in his office confirmed it.

Shortly past four by the small gold watch she kept pinned to the bodice of her shirtwaist, Sabina left the Chutes and hired another hansom to take her downtown. She was tired, and stuffed uncomfortably full of sausage, ice cream, and cotton candy, having overindulged out of frustration during her wanderings. She didn’t relish another long walk along the Cocktail Route, but since the pickpocket had successfully preyed there last night, it seemed likely to be one of her regular haunts.

Perhaps so, but Sabina saw no sign of the woman anywhere between Sutter Street and the Palace Hotel, or on the crowded Ambrosial Path where last night’s robbery had taken place. There were far more men abroad, and the women among them were noticable, but the pickpocket was adept at costume disguise. Sabina might easily have missed her in the streams of businessmen, gay blades,
nymphes du pavé,
and adventuresome young ladies who packed the sidewalks.

At six o’clock, as weary and chilled as she was, Sabina considered going home to Russian Hill. But Stephen had instilled tenacity of purpose in her during her time with the Pinkertons, and the fact that she was after a murderess as well as a pickpocket was an added incentive to continue her search awhile longer. Her quarry, for reasons of her own, might have decided against prowling anywhere today or tonight. But she might also have decided to ply her trade in yet another place that afforded profitable pickings, such as the nightly bazaar on Market Street opposite the Palace Hotel—a place worth investigating.

 

 

9

 

SABINA

 

The open field at dusk was brightly lit by lanterns and torchlights, and packed with gaily colored wagons presided over by an array of pitchmen; phrenology and palmistry booths; the usual hodgepodge of temperance speakers, organ grinders, balloon and pencil sellers, beggars, and ad carriers passing out saloon handbills for free lunches; and a constant flow of gawkers and curiosity seekers, which Sabina joined. Music filled the air from many sources, each competing with the other. The loudest was the Salvation Army band pouring forth its solemn repentance message.

From the wagons men hawked both well-known and obscure patent remedies: Tiger Balm, Miracle Wort, Burdock’s Blood Bitters, Turkish Pile Ointment, Dr. Sage’s Catarrh Remedy, Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound for Ladies. Others offered services on the spot: matrimonial advice, spinal realignment, head massages. Sabina, who had attended the bazaar with John after moving to San Francisco—a must, he’d said, for new residents—recognized several of the participants: the Great Ferndon, Herman the Healer, Rodney Strongheart.

The din rose as a shill for Dr. Wallmann’s Nerve and Brain Tonic stood in his red-and-yellow coach to extol the alleged virtues of the product. “This miracle tonic,” he intoned, “cures all bilious derangements, including but not limited to dyspepsia, costiveness, erysipelas, palpitations of the heart, and persistent and obstinate constipation, and drives out the foul corruption that contaminates the blood and causes decay. It stimulates and enlivens the vital functions, being as it is a pure vegetable compound and free from all mineral poisons. It promotes energy and strength, restores and preserves health, and infuses new life and vigor throughout the entire system.”

Sabina smiled ironically as she passed by. The only thing Dr. Wallmann’s tonic promoted was drunkenness, since its central ingredient, as was that of most such patent medicines, was alcohol.

The crowd of onlookers was largely composed of men; the women among them were for the most part prostitutes strolling in pairs and wearing flirtatious smiles, or the wives and lady friends of men too poor to afford the luxuries of the Cocktail Route. There were relatively few unescorted women, and those Sabina encountered were the wrong age or size or facial structure, or not outfitted in the sort of concealing hat and dress the pickpocket favored.

On a platform at the back of one of the wagons, a dancer draped in filmy veils was peforming. Unfortunately for her, during an awkward pirouette, the veils slipped and fell open to reveal her scarlet long johns—an accident that elicited howls of laughter from the watchers. At another wagon nearby, a salesman began expounding upon the virtues of Sydney’s Celebrated Cough Killer, only to fall into a fit of coughing, which resulted in more derisive laughter. In the group that stood watching him was a lone woman in a rather large hat. Sabina moved close enough to determine that the face under the hat’s brim was elderly, with age-fissured cheeks and gray hair. She moved on.

Wide-brimmed hat with bedraggled ostrich feathers: a badly scarred young woman whose affliction made Sabina flinch. Toque draped in fading tulle: red hair and freckles. Another feather-bedecked chapeau: porcine, with a double chin and heavily rouged cheeks

The proprietor of a small, tawdry freak exhibit urged Sabina to surrender five cents for the privilege of viewing a deformed infant preserved in formaldehyde. She declined—not at all pleasantly.

Extravagant hat with many layers of feathers and a stuffed bird’s head protruding at the front: long blond hair and an unblemished chin.

A pair of temperance speakers warning of the evils of drink and painful death from diseased kidneys and handing out tracts to support their claims. No, thank you.

Yet another bird-themed hat. What
was
the fascination with wearing dead avian creatures on one’s head? The woman beneath the brim looked not much healthier than the bird that had died to grace her headpiece.

Another pitchman tried to entice Sabina to buy a bottle of something called the Kickapoo Indians Tape-Worm Secret. An emphatic no to that, also.

In front of the next wagon, a single woman wearing rather baggy clothes and a green hat with a wide brim drawn down low on her forehead caught Sabina’s eye. The woman seemed less interested in the miraculous electrified belt filled with cayenne pepper whose purveyor was claiming would cure any debilitation, than in the faces of the men grouped around her. Sabina’s blood quickened. She moved closer—close enough to recognize the large blue glass Horner hatpin overlaid with gold that decorated the green hat.

The woman evidently found none of the men around her suitable prey. She moved on at a leisurely pace, her gaze roaming all the while. Sabina followed a few paces behind.

The pickpocket stopped to listen to the Salvation Army band. Paused again in front of a shill exalting the virtue of White’s Female Complaint Cure. Accepted a flyer from a man hawking the Single Tax doctrine and pretended to read it by the light of a flickering torch. All the while her head and her eyes continued their restless search.

An elderly chap leaning on a cane, walking haltingly nearly ten yards away, struck Sabina as a likely candidate. But no, the dip passed him by. A well-attired man carrying a malaca walking stick. No. A tall blond gent dressed in a broadloom suit and gaudy vest. No.

More wandering. More pretended interest in the shows and wares. Sabina was careful to maintain a measured distance, with her small body shielded from the woman’s view by those of the larger men.

In front of the bright red-and-yellow coach belonging to the purveyor of Dr. Wallmann’s Nerve and Brain Tonic, the woman stopped again. Stood watching as a fat, middle-aged man wearing a plug hat and sporting a gold watch chain questioned the pitchman, then examined one of the brown bottles as if he were having difficulty making up his mind whether or not to buy it. Sabina sensed he was the dip’s choice even before the woman sidled up next to him, stretching an arm up as she did so to snatch the Horner pin free from her hat.

Sabina elbowed in behind her, calling out a warning that was lost in the sudden shrieking of an organ grinder’s monkey. The fat man suddenly twisted, clutching at his corporation, and the dip had his purse. She was turning away when Sabina reached her and caught hold of her right arm, bending it so that she dropped the purse, then pinning the arm behind her back. The pickpocket emitted a cry of pain, then a curse, and began struggling and trying to stab her captor with the hatpin she held in her other hand. Sabina pulled the arm higher, making her cry out again, while she clutched at the dangerously flailing wrist.

Men surged in around them, voices raised in alarmed query. Sabina cried, “Help me, she’s a pickpocket!” to the man nearest her—a mistake, as it turned out. The man made a clumsy effort to assist, which earned him a puncture wound from the slashing pin. He yelled in pain and reeled into the two women, throwing Sabina off balance and allowing the dip to squirm out of her grasp. A hatpin thrust grazed Sabina’s arm, then she felt a painful blow to her ribs—and the woman lunged away past the medicine pitchman’s wagon, bowling him over when he tried to stop her.

Sabina gave chase, but to no avail. Once again her quarry managed to escape into the milling crowd.

As galling as this was, there was some small comfort in the fact that she now knew who she was after. She had had a clear look at the woman’s face during their struggle, and was certain of her identity: Clara Wilds, who had evidently forsaken the extortion racket for the equally lucrative trade of cutpurse.

What made the identification even more provocative was the fact that Clara Wilds’s last-known consort was Dodger Brown, the slippery yegg John suspected of being responsible for the recent string of home burglaries.

 

 

10

 

QUINCANNON

 

He was late reaching the agency on Thursday morning, through no fault of his own. The cable car he regularly rode to Market Street from his apartment building on Leavenworth failed to come by—some sort of mechanical problem, probably, as all too often happened with the cable and trolley lines. The distance was too far to walk; he hired a cab instead, with every intention of adding the cost to the Great Western expense account.

Sabina was present when he arrived, but about to depart. She was in the process of putting on her long coat over her shirtwaist and bell-bottomed skirt—a slender vision in no need of the tight corsetting most women favored. He held his scrutiny to a minimum; the tight set of her mouth plainly indicated that she was in no mood today for bandinage.

He shifted his gaze to his desktop, which was conspicuously bare. “No word yet from Ezra Bluefield,” he said. Messages from the Scarlet Lady’s owner sometimes came at night or in the early morning hours, in the form of an envelope slipped under the door. “Dodger Brown’s hideout must be well concealed. Either that, or he’s riding the rods for parts unknown.”

“If he is still in the area,” Sabina said, “I hope it’s in the company of Clara Wilds.”

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