Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (5 page)

Miss Pinehurst turned and looked straight into Annie’s eyes and said, “I don’t know what your beliefs are about the afterlife, and I know that the fact that I believe that Sukie’s actions are threatening the possibility of her salvation may not concern you. But let me assure you, Sukie’s delusion that she is speaking to her son has become dangerous to her health and her sanity.”

“
In what ways?” Annie asked.

“
Her whole world now revolves around visiting the Framptons. She insists on attending séances twice a week, and then meets for private sittings another two afternoons. I think she would go everyday if she could find the money. Mr. Vetch may have a very responsible position at the Gold and Trust Bank, but his salary isn’t enough to support this kind of constant drain on their finances.

When he refused to keep giving her money to attend the séances, she simply spent the household funds, so that within two weeks there was no food in the larder and their servant had quit because she wasn’t being paid. Mr. Vetch then stopped giving her money for the household expenses, but he found that she had started to pawn her jewelry and even her clothing, so he was forced to relent.”

“
Besides the obvious problem of finances, has attending the séances brought her peace of mind?” Annie asked.

“
If only that were true, Mrs. Fuller, I might find it in my heart to be able to be reconciled with her behavior. But the complete opposite has occurred. She can’t be bothered to eat or sleep, and she paces frantically around the house, oblivious to the complete disarray around her. When either her husband or I try to reason with her, she lashes out at us, saying we are just jealous because Charlie has chosen to speak to her. The next minute she will begin to cry hysterically, saying that Charlie can’t understand why we won’t visit him, and that we are making him so sad. I don’t know how much longer she can go on this way. She is the only family I have left, and I can’t stand by, knowing she is putting her life and her soul in mortal danger. Please, you must help me.”

Annie shivered, haunted by memories of a time when her own losses had caused a similar kind of dangerous derangement. For a moment she smelled the curdled milk and rotting meat in the servantless kitchen, felt the clammy sheets that entangled her sleepless body, heard the low humming that filled her mouth, as she had worked to suppress the wails of grief that constantly threatened to overwhelm her. Annie shook her head as if to shake the memories away and thought,
I gradually came to my senses, but then I wasn’t the target of some unscrupulous mediums playing on my grief
.
Poor Sukie Vetch
.

Startled by the sound of a flock of black birds swirling up from the grove of oaks, Annie noticed the wisps of fog sliding through the trees. She realized that it was soon going to be hard to see their way to the cemetery entrance. Annie shivered again. She most definitely didn’t want to be in this place in the dark with the ghosts of her past so fresh to mind.

Turning to Miss Pinehurst, intending to request that they depart, she was struck by the tired lines etched around the older woman’s mouth, the dark shadows under her eyes, and the slump of defeat in her shoulders. She found herself wondering just who was taking care of Lucy Pinehurst, who had lost a child who was clearly as precious to her as if he were her own?

With a sudden sense of conviction, she said to Miss Pinehurst, a woman she didn’t know very well and didn’t particularly like, “I’m not exactly sure what I can do to free your sister from her delusions, but I give you my word, I will do everything in my power to help you save her.”

*****

The girl stood looking at the smudged window, and frowned. She looked around the room until she found the basket of old rags, which she sorted carefully through until finding a soft square of flannel. She then went back to the window and began vigorously cleaning off the accumulated dust and spider webs from each pane. When one window was done, she moved to the next, slowly making her way around the room until all four sets of windows were clean of debris. She stood at the last window for a long time, staring out at the setting sun. Suddenly, she noticed the now filthy rag in her hand and dropped it as if it were on fire. Sinking down until she was sitting on the floor, she silently began to sob.

“
ROOMS TO LET: 423 O’Farrell--HANDSOMELY FURNISHED sunny rooms, suite or single, with or without board.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle
, 1879

“
Annie, my dear, I can hardly believe that Miss Pinehurst, our own Miss Lucy, asked if you believed in ghosts. Then she wanted you to help her, to do what?” said Beatrice, a frown narrowing her clear blue eyes as she dried her hands on the white apron that went round her ample waist.

Annie chuckled affectionately, feeling, as always, the sense of well-being she got from sitting in her own kitchen, speaking to her dearest friend. Beatrice O’Rourke had never quite lost the lilt of her birthplace in County Cork, even though she had arrived in America at age eighteen and immediately started working for Annie’s aunt and uncle as a maid-of-all-work. She later accompanied them in ’51 when they made the long, dangerous voyage around Cape Horn to get to San Francisco.

Beatrice once told Annie of her decision to come west. “None of the other girls would go. But I wasn’t afraid. Besides, I was that set on finding Mr. O’Rourke, who’d gone overland to the gold fields the year before. The fool said he would send for me when ‘he made his pile,’ but I wasn’t willing to wait. He might’ve died out here. Plenty did those first years. Mercy, I might never have known what happened to him. Your aunt, she was so kind. The whole trip she kept saying he’d be here waiting for me. Wouldn’t you know, second day we were in town I stopped a constable to ask the way to a dry goods store, and it turned out to be my Peter’s older brother, Andrew. Such a scamp, but bless him, he was the one who convinced Peter to join the police. I still says, no matter what happened, he was safer as an officer of the law than if he’d stayed in those mine fields.”

Annie admired Beatrice’s lack of bitterness over the death of her husband ten years ago, when Peter O’Rourke had been killed in a gun battle with a local Barbary Coast gang. Widowed after fifteen years of marriage, she had returned to work for Annie’s aunt and uncle as cook and general housekeeper. When Annie came to San Francisco to take possession of the house when her aunt died, Beatrice had taken her under her wing, helping her set up and run the boardinghouse. Though over sixty, Beatrice managed to do all the cooking for nine boarders, supervise the one servant, Kathleen, and be a friend to Annie, all with unfailing good sense and humor.

“
So, dearie, are you going to tell me what Miss Lucy wanted with you, or are you going to just sit laughing at me?” Beatrice said, as she sat down at the kitchen table, groaning a bit from the hours of being on her feet.

“
Oh, Bea, it isn’t really a laughing matter,” Annie replied. “I know you remember when her nephew, Charlie, died this summer.”

“
Yes, it happened the first week in June,” Beatrice nodded. “Miss Lucy had just come to the kitchen for a cup of coffee when Kathleen brought down the message. She’d been staying nights at her sister’s to help nurse the boy, then coming home to change for work. Such a shame, she had just left his bedside when he must’ve died. She didn’t cry out when she read the note. More like turned to stone. It was terrible to see. She surely loved that boy as much as if he were her own.”

Looking over at the older woman, who was busy paring apples for tomorrow’s fruit compote, Annie knew her friend had a personal reason for understanding how important Charlie had been to Miss Pinehurst. Beatrice and her husband hadn’t had any children of their own. However, with four brothers and three sisters between them, Beatrice now had enough nieces and nephews to fill a quarter of the pews in St. Mary’s, and she mothered every one of them.

Annie continued, “It appears that, in her grief, Miss Pinehurst’s sister started going to a trance medium who claimed to have contacted Charlie,” going on to repeat the details Miss Pinehurst had poured out to her the day before.

“
Heavens be, who are these Framptons?” asked Beatrice, scowling as if the name referred to some dockside gang.

“
Simon and Arabella Frampton are a married couple who are originally from England. They arrived in San Francisco last April and have taken up permanent residence here. They seem to have been quite successful since, like Madam Sibyl, they don’t take walk-in business. All day today, between clients, I have been looking through back newspaper issues and my clippings. The
Chronicle
did a long article on them in May, part of a series one of their reporters wrote on Spiritualism in San Francisco. I’d remembered reading the series because he’d not been very complimentary about clairvoyants and fortunetellers. Thank goodness he didn’t mention Madam Sibyl. The Framptons, on the other hand, came off pretty favorably in the story he did on them. The reporter, Anthony Pierce, wrote that Simon Frampton was a ‘world-renowned mesmerist’ and his ‘lovely wife, Arabella,’ was an ‘unusually skilled test medium.’”

“
What in the world does that mean? She tests what?” Beatrice asked Annie.

Annie laughed. “A person tests the medium, not the other way round. A test medium is supposed to be able to give answers to questions that only the departed could know, proving they are indeed in communication with the spirit world.”

She continued in a more serious tone. “From what Miss Pinehurst told me, this is how the Framptons convinced Sukie Vetch that Arabella was communicating with her son since the spirit knew the pet names she had used for her Charlie, as well as his favorite toy.”

Beatrice put down her paring knife and tilted her head. “Gracious me. No wonder the poor dear believed them.”

“
Now, it isn’t as strange as you might think,” Annie said. “The nurse who brought Sukie to the Framptons was probably working with them, getting a small ‘gift’ for every new client she brought to them. She could have given the Framptons all sorts of information about Charlie, which would convince Sukie that she was really communicating with her son.”

“
That’s terrible! The nurse, you say? I hope you told Miss Lucy to have her brother-in-law fire that wicked woman this instant! Now I understand why Miss Lucy told you about all this. How clever of her to realize you would know what to do. They need to get rid of the nurse. But, first they need to get her to admit to the shenanigans she has been up to, threaten to tell the police. I can tell you, they don’t take kindly to this sort of swindle,” Beatrice said, taking up her knife again and slicing each quarter of an apple with ferocious intensity.

“
I wish it were that simple. Mr. Vetch did fire Mrs. Hoskins as soon as he realized the role she had played, but that was over two months ago, and his wife refuses even to consider that the Framptons are frauds. Miss Pinehurst said they have tried everything.”

Annie stopped speaking, interrupted by the bell that signaled that there was someone at the front door. She looked over at the clock on the wall and said, “It’s past eight. Who could that be at this hour? Mr. Harvey probably forgot his key again. Isn’t this about the time he comes home? Well, Kathleen will get it.”

Beatrice stood up and took the apple parings over to dump them in the waste-bucket, saying over her shoulder, “If it is Mr. Harvey, Kathleen will give him what for. Last Monday he forgot his key, and she was elbow deep in soapy water when he rang the bell. Poor man, I swear he works the longest hours. I heard him go out before seven this morning. He can’t be making all that much clerking in a dry goods store.”

Annie nodded. “He told me he hopes that old Mr. Johnson will eventually take him in as partner, then he could afford to bring his wife and children down to San Francisco to live with him. I understand his wife suffers from some sort of lung problem, and she and the two boys live with her folks in Sacramento. Such a shame. Mr. Harvey must miss those two boys terribly.” That melancholy reflection turned Annie’s thoughts back to Miss Pinehurst and her sister and brother-in-law, and how much they all must be missing Charlie.

She sighed and said, “Beatrice, I wish I knew for sure I could help Miss Pinehurst.”

“
But Annie, dear, I still don’t understand what more she figures you can do. You’ll not be telling me she thinks that you would have any truck with one of those charlatans? ‘A penny to shake hands with your sainted mother.’ Such foolishness.”

“
Oh, Bea! That is exactly what Miss Pinehurst thinks. She feels my experience as Madam Sibyl makes me particularly suited to prove to her sister that the Framptons are frauds. Miss Pinehurst seems to believe in the old adage that ‘It takes a thief to catch a thief.’”

“
Well, I never! It is certainly a shame if her sister’s being made a fool of, but that don’t mean Miss Pinehurst has the right to go insulting you.”

Annie smiled at the picture of outrage Beatrice made, her arms all akimbo, her blue eyes snapping. Then Kathleen, Annie’s maid-of-all-work, burst into the kitchen, dancing in excitement.

She sketched a brief curtsy, shoved back some of her dark brown curls, which had escaped from her cap during her precipitous rush down the stairs, and said, “Ma’am, you’ll never guess who’s come to visit. I put him in the front parlor, thinking you would want some privacy. Mrs. Fuller, it’s Mr. Dawson come to call!”