Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (53 page)

Kathleen knew she wasn’t the only one who gasped in the room, but it was Mrs. O’Rourke who first spoke.

“
Mr. Dawson, what do you mean, our Annie attacked, by whom? Oh merciful heavens, why didn’t she tell me.” Mrs. O’Rourke rounded on Kathleen. “Never tell me you knew about this!”

“
No, ma’am, I didn’t. She’s been as closemouthed with me as you since the party Friday night. Mr. Dawson, please tell us.”

Mrs. Hunt, who had until this time stood silently near the back door, suddenly walked into the center of the room and spoke. “Mr. Dawson, we don’t have anymore time. The danger is increasing. We must go find Mrs. Fuller.”

“
But where? Do you think she is still at the Hapgoods?” Mr. Dawson asked.

“
I feel the spirit of the little girl, very strongly. Wherever Mrs. Fuller is, she is with Evie May. Oh, dear, the fire burns! We must go now!” she cried out and then swayed. Patrick darted over and steadied her.

Kathleen turned to Mr. Dawson and said, “Sir, what does she mean?”

Instead of answering her, he said, “McGee, you and Miss Kathleen go to the Hapgoods, see if she is still there, and if not, find out if anyone knows where she went.” He took out a wallet and handed over some money to Kathleen, saying, “If you don’t learn anything, get a cab and meet Mrs. Hunt and me, we will go straight to the Framptons’ house. We have a cab waiting out front. Now go, there’s no time to waste.”

In the dark of the attic cupola, Annie couldn’t see any smoke in the air, but the smell increased with every breath she took. She went back and pushed the trunk to the side and tried the trap door again, but it remained stubbornly shut. She returned to the front windows and tried to pull each of them up, but they seemed warped shut. She hurried over to the windows to her right and found them equally stuck, although with great effort she was able to open one of the top windows a few inches. This mitigated her sense of panic somewhat. Continuing to move clockwise, she next tried the windows that overlooked the backyard, relieved when she found that she could pull up one of the two windows about a foot. The last two windows, however, were stuck closed. She felt a tickle in her throat and suppressed the desire to cough.

Annie groped her way back to the chair where Evie May sat rocking the doll. When she couldn’t get a response from her, she simply pulled the girl to her feet and walked her to the now-open window and pushed her to a sitting position. The girl recommenced rocking and singing, and Annie noticed with a start that the tune was “hot cross buns.”
How odd.

Sitting down with her arm around Evie May, trying to believe she was getting some fresh air, Annie wondered if she should check to see if the trap door was now unlocked, but she worried that the smoke was being produced by Pierce in some fashion to force her to come out of the attic, straight into his hands. She found it intolerable to sit and do nothing, so she got up again and made her way back around to the window facing the street. She saw that Simon was still looking up at the house, with Albert and Arabella clearly remonstrating with him. She wondered if they were arguing about whether or not to go into the house to try to put out whatever fire was causing the smoke.

Could they know Evie May and I are trapped up in the cupola?
Annie turned to check on Evie May, and a flicker of light to her left caught her attention. Moving over to that window and looking across to the abandoned house next door, she was confused, thinking at first that she was seeing people wandering around the upper floors of that house with candles. Then in dismay she realized she was seeing bright flames reflected in the neighboring house’s window, flames that had to be coming from the house in which she and Evie May were effectively being held prisoner.

With a rising sense of fear, she ran back to the side of the cupola overlooking the street and started to bang frantically on the windows and shout, but she saw that no one was looking back at the house any longer. The hackney driver was up in his perch, and Albert was pulling Simon towards the open carriage door. She yelled and banged again with more force and thought that she saw Simon turn and look up at her, but then another man came walking up to him, arresting his attention.

Annie stopped banging, recognizing Pierce. Simon was gesturing upwards to the upper stories of the house. Annie saw Pierce shrug and Arabella drag Simon to the carriage. The door to the hackney hadn’t even had a chance to close behind them when the driver cracked the whip and the hackney moved smartly down the street. Annie looked over and saw Albert and his wife were now up on the seat of the wagon, which began to move more slowly forward.

Surely the neighbors would have noticed the fire by now
, she thought, but then with dismay she remembered that the house to the west was unoccupied and overgrown trees obscured the one to the east. The shops across the street were boarded up and empty, so they would be no help. Who knew how long it would take for any one further down the block to notice? Meanwhile the air was getting perceptibly smokier, and her cough worsened. Frantically, Annie looked around the attic, trying to see something she could use to break the glass. However, the easy chair and the trunk, the smallest objects she could see, were certainly too heavy for her to lift. Instead, she pulled off her coat to drape over her hands before beginning to pound on the window again.

She stopped for a moment and saw that Pierce had moved across the street and was standing underneath the gas lamp. He paused, looked back up as if he could see her standing in the cupola and he tipped his hat before walking swiftly up Fifth to Market. She then noticed a flicker of flame coming from the flat roof under the window where she was standing.

With Pierce no longer a threat, Annie moved towards the center of the room, hoping that he had unlocked the trap door before he left the house. She was finding it harder to breathe, so she started to reach into her coat for her handkerchief to put over her nose, until she remembered it was wrapped around the bloody knife. She was also having more difficulty seeing as her eyes began to sting and tear. The smoke in the room seemed to absorb the little light that came from outside.

She went down on her knees and crawled, feeling for the trap door handle. A searing pain in her right hand caused her to rear back. She had touched one of the metal hinges, which was extremely hot. Again using her coat for protection, she felt around until she found the bump of the handle through the cloth of the coat, and she pulled hard. The door didn’t budge. She tried again, but stopped when her head began to throb with her effort.

Probably just as well
,
with the hinges that hot, the floor below must be engulfed with flames, and the windows won’t help since the roof is on fire now
.

Completely blinded by the smoke, she started crawling to where she had left Evie May sitting under the partially opened window. Annie’s thought was that the access to some fresh air would help clear her head so she could think of what to do next. Her hand encountered something soft, which rolled, and she cried out, having run right into the body of Mrs. Nickerson.

Scrabbling sideways away from the body, she thought,
How could I have forgotten the murdered woman was there
? Realizing she had become so disoriented that she wasn’t even sure anymore where Evie May was sitting, she sat up and wiped her eyes, trying to see something in the impenetrable haze. She could hear the fire now, too, an ominous, crackling, popping sound.

Despair replaced the panic that had been pushing her forward. She wasn’t a fool, and, like any person who lived in a city, she’d seen how quickly fire could consume a house. Even if a neighbor had called the fire in, and the fire engines were on the way, if the origin of the fire was in the rooms directly below, the firemen would have no way to break through to the cupola.

I should have told someone I was coming here. How could I have been so stupid?
Oh, Nate, I promised I would keep myself safe, but I didn’t. And I never told you I loved you
.

Annie started to get back on all fours, when she became tangled up in her skirts and the coat she still held in her hands, tumbling flat, the floor banging painfully into her cheek. Then a flame hovered in front of her eyes. Annie screamed and struggled up, thinking that the cupola floor must have caught on fire. As she wiped her eyes, she saw a young boy now standing next to her, holding a candle aloft.

Not just any young boy, but Eddie. Somehow, Evie May had replaced her dress with a jersey and pair of knickers. She was also wearing a pair of boy’s high-buttoned shoes and a large cap, into which she had pushed her hair.

“
Lady, we’ve got to get out of here. Take my hand. Mind the body. Shame that, but she was such a dunce about men. Thought that Simon was gonna marry her. So stupid, thinking she could use what she learned about that ugly bastard as leverage. Bastard killed her. Maybelle shouldn’t of had to see that, poor mite.”

Annie stood up, feeling dizzy from the smoke, and said, “Eddie, the trap door’s locked, and while you might be able to slip through the crack in that window, I think the roof may be on fire. Besides, how would we get down off the roof?”

Eddie pointed to a coil of rope he had looped over his shoulder and said, “I’ve got that covered. You bring that coat of yours, that might help protect our feet a bit.”

He then pulled her gently around Mrs. Nickerson’s body to the back window. While she was estimating whether there was any way she would be able to crawl through the opening, given her voluminous skirts, Eddie pushed the window down, and shouted for her to step back, giving her a shove. Then he picked up what looked like an iron bar and swung it at the window, which shattered, glass falling outwards.

A rush of hot wind went past her face and the sound of the fire seemed to increase. Eddie then swept the bar around the window frame, knocking the remaining jagged pieces out.

“
Here, hand over the coat,” he said, reaching for it and laying it over the edge of window frame. “I’ll go out first, see if it’s safe for you,” he said, disappearing into the night.

Annie moved over to the window and gulped a lung-f of fresh air, causing her to cough again. Eddie had been gone what felt like an interminable amount of time when he reappeared and said, “Gotta move now, use my shoulder, and mind the frame at the top.”

As instructed, she put one hand on his shoulder to steady herself. Then, picking up her skirts with the other, she put her right foot up on the window edge and went up and over, keeping her back curled as she went through. She would have stumbled to her knees if she hadn’t been holding onto his shoulder. He then pulled the coat off the windowsill and put it on the roof, instructing her to stand on it. She realized her feet had already begun to feel the heat because there was immediate relief when she stepped on the coat.

The boy said, “I had a hook I used to tie the rope to when I scaled down the side of the house, but the roof on that side’s already burnt through, looks like going down the back is the only chance. If you can get to the edge of the roof, I’ll brace up against the gutter and lower you down. I think I can jump down behind you.”

Annie nodded and, grabbing the coat, ran beside him, sending out a prayer that the roof wouldn’t collapse under them. When she got to the edge, she threw down the coat, and the two of them hopped onto it. Eddie handed the looped end of the rope to her and sat down on the coat at her feet, putting his legs up against the foot high wood cornice. She stared down at him for a moment, then her mind suddenly cleared, and she thought,
Eddie may think he’s strong enough to lower me down, but after all, the body he’s inhabiting is that of thirteen year old Evie May, and there’s no way she’s strong enough to handle my weight.

“
Eddie, this isn’t going to work. I’ll hold on to the rope. When you get down to the overhang over the first floor, maybe you can get to the woodpile and jump down. If you make it to the ground, run to the front, which is where the fire engines will show up, and get them to bring a ladder back here. Now, do as I say.”

Annie pulled him up, handed him the looped end of the rope, took the coil from him, sat down on the coat, and braced her feet. He nodded to her once and then climbed over the cornice, and she felt a strong tug on the rope that she tried to counter by pulling sharply backwards. In an instant the tension of the rope evaporated, and she gasped, going to her knees to look over the edge. He stood firmly on the two-foot overhang, waving cheekily, so she let go of the rope, which slid down to his feet. He moved sideways and was soon out of her sight.

Annie cocked her head, finally hearing the clanging of bells she’d been waiting for.
Thank goodness help is on the way
. Standing there, listening to the bells come closer, she looked out at the old carriage house at the back of the yard and felt a moment of hope, until she realized that she was able to see that structure so clearly because it was illuminated by the fire at her back. She turned and saw through the open window the cupola up in flames.
Oh god, Mrs. Nickerson’s body!

The sound of an explosion filled the air, and the roof under her feet shuddered. Looking down, she saw that smoke was rising from the coat beneath her feet and a red line of flames were spreading along the cornices to the left and right of her. Mesmerized, she saw the flames turn the two corners of the roof and begin to move at a steady pace toward where she was standing. She closed her eyes and pictured the two lines meeting and her life being snuffed out. If only she were Flora Hunt and could believe that this would simply be a step into another existence. She would even like to believe in protective angels who would sweep her up to safety. But the only protective angel she knew was Eddie, and he was gone.