Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (6 page)

Damn, she is more beautiful than I remembered
, Nate thought, as Annie entered the parlor. The whole time he’d been away he’d tried to picture the exact shade of brown of her eyes, and now he remembered that they changed, depending on her mood. In the lamplight, against her skin, which was as pale as old ivory, her eyes looked coal black, and angry.

Bowing, Nate took a deep breath and said, “Mrs. Fuller, Annie, I am so sorry to call this late. I arrived back in town night before last, and I hoped to come yesterday, but my Uncle Frank has kept me completely tied up with business . . . never mind my excuses, I just hope you don’t mind the late hour.”

Annie gave him a chilly smile and said, “Mr. Dawson, please don’t apologize. If your uncle needed your expert legal advice, I have no doubt it was over a serious matter.”

Nate’s stomach clenched. She clearly hadn’t forgiven him for suggesting his work was more important than hers. He fell back on the polite formula of strangers, saying, “I hope you have been in good health, and Mrs. O’Rourke? I almost came to your place right from the train station on Saturday, thinking about those wonderful oat cookies she made for me last time I visited.”

“
Mrs. O’Rourke is well, although I am afraid that she is finding the long hours standing in the kitchen more and more difficult. She won’t admit it, but I can see she hurts at the end of the day. I wouldn’t be surprised if she is downstairs right now, making up a batch of those cookies for you,” Annie said in a slight tone of disgust. “
She
has missed having you to cook for.”

“
And Miss Kathleen, is she still being courted by both the butcher’s boy and Patrick McGee?” asked Nate, feeling as if he were leaping from one conversational stone to another, hoping not to fall.

“
Oh, yes, although I would say that the butcher’s boy is a very distant second at this point. I think she strings him along just to make Mr. McGee jealous. Shall we sit by the fire? The night has grown rather chilly,” Annie remarked, nodding to the two chairs next to the fireplace.

“
If you wish,” Nate replied, relieved at this sign that she expected their conversation to be of some duration. After having sat down, he searched for something else neutral to say. Finally returning to that old standby, the weather, he said, “Such a change from yesterday, when we were having a touch of Indian summer. My uncle tells me that the fall has been unusually mild.”

“
Yes, yesterday I took the new Sutter Street line out to Laurel Hill, to visit Matthew’s grave, and the grounds were awash with people picnicking.” Annie looked up at him and said, “But then you haven’t been in town, have you? So how was the weather down the peninsula? And your parents have been well, I hope? They seem to have kept you very busy this fall.”

Nate knew it was now or never if he hoped to explain his failure to write.

He leaned forward. “Please, Annie. I know I should have written. And yes, I was busy, but that is no excuse. You have every right to be angry with me. I just felt like such a fool after the last time I saw you, I . . . nothing I wrote down seemed adequate.”

“
Nate Dawson, don’t be ridiculous. You are a lawyer, you make your living communicating. Don’t tell me you couldn’t write and at least tell me how you were doing?” Annie said, glaring at him.

“
That’s just it. I didn’t feel I could write to you about the weather, or the number of new calves; I had to try to explain why I acted so childishly that last night. But everything sounded like a legal brief.”

“
Well, you
were
behaving like a child.”

“
I know. It was unfair of me to be angry with you because you were working, after I had had to cancel because of work myself. I was angry with my uncle for ruining our plans earlier in the week and disappointed, so I took it out on you.”

There was a pause, and Nate looked at Annie, hoping to see some sign of softening. She was staring down at her hands, frowning.

She glanced up at him and said, “And the Miss Moffets! You were so rude to those dear souls.”

Nate, frustrated, blurted out, “Hang the Miss Moffets; I was rude to you, and for that I apologize.” He pressed his lips together and looked away, upset that he had let Annie goad him into losing his temper.

There was a very long silence, and then he heard Annie say, “My goodness, Mr. Dawson. Your language, sir. I am
shocked!
”

Startled at this display of outraged femininity, he looked up and caught sight of dimples peeping out from either side of her mouth, as Annie appeared to be trying, unsuccessfully, to stifle her laughter. In that moment, the iron band that had been constricting Nate’s heart simply vanished.

“
Spiritualism—Mrs. Eggert Aiken, trance and test medium, 313 Geary Street, Sittings daily from 9A.M. to 9 P.M. Séances Sunday, Tuesday, Friday at 8 P.M.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle
, 1879

“
Ma’am, I’m terribly glad you asked me to come with you to see these Framptons. I can’t but think that with such shady characters, having a respectable maid with you will make sure they mind their manners.”

Annie smiled down at her maid, Kathleen Hennessey, who walked beside her. The young woman was nearly eighteen, but so petite you could mistake her for a child. Annie knew those looks were deceptive. In fact, from what she knew of her history, Kathleen had never had the luxury of being a child and the slight frame contained a tough, tireless dynamo who kept Annie’s home spotless and her boarders very satisfied.

The two of them had taken a Central Rail horse car, getting on at Taylor, just a half a block from the boarding house on O’Farrell Street. The car crossed Market and went down Sixth. They got off at Harrison, the street where Simon and Arabella Frampton lived. She could understand why the couple might have chosen to live in the Rincon Hill district, which was now a far cry from the fashionable district it once was, before the Second Street cut had decimated the neighborhood and sent all the nabobs north to the heights. Some of the streets still clung to their old glory, and it was well serviced by both the Central line they were on and the South Park line that went down Third, making it easy for clients from practically anywhere in the city to get to them.

Kathleen said, “Ma’am, while I’m glad to accompany you, I’m just not sure what you expect of me.”

“
What I am hoping is that someone in the household will try to pump you for information while I am having my interview with Simon Frampton, who seems to be the business manager of the operation. What I want you to do, if that happens, is make it clear I have money, that I am gullible, and that some of my boarders might be good pigeons for the plucking as well.”

“
Oh, ma’am, to be sure they won’t have any trouble believing you’re a woman of wealth, your new navy polonaise is that elegant. The Miss Moffets did a fine job. But what if they ask me personal information, I dunno, maybe about your past? What should I say?” said Kathleen, tilting her head to the side.

“
You can tell them I’m a widow, that you believe my mother died when I was young, and that my father also passed fairly recently. That’s no more than I will be telling them myself. But remember, if you get a chance, I want you to hint that I had a child who died young. All the other information is true, of course, and I suspect that Simon Frampton and his wife Arabella have already spent the day finding out as much as they can about me, and my father, Edward Stewart. My father’s reputation in this town is still pretty well known, and I made sure to mention his name in the letter I wrote asking for an appointment. However, it is with this fictional dead child I hope to trap them. If I can get them to produce the spirit of a child, when none existed, maybe I can use that to convince Miss Pinehurst’s sister that they are frauds.”

“
Yes,” Kathleen nodded earnestly. “I will try to tell someone you had a little boy that died, just like Miss Lucy’s nephew.”

Annie thought about Kathleen’s questions and hoped that she was not depending too much on the young woman. She was nervous enough about her own coming interview with Simon Frampton. She had written a fairly long letter, begging him to accommodate her attendance at his Friday night séance. She needed to avoid attending the same evenings as Sukie Vetch, who attended both Tuesday and Thursday evening séances, since she might realize that Mrs. Fuller and her sister’s boardinghouse owner were one and the same. Annie currently only had one regular client scheduled for Friday nights, at six, so she wouldn’t have difficulty attending the evening “circle,” as Frampton called it, at eight.

Simon Frampton had written back immediately saying that there was an opening Friday, but that he would need to meet with her Wednesday afternoon to see if her “essence” would be compatible with those of the other members of the circle. According to the newspaper article she had read, Simon and Arabella Frampton hadn’t arrived in the States until 1876, three years after her husband John had wiped out her fortune and killed himself. Her father-in-law had been pretty successful in keeping that information out of the press, so she was hoping they wouldn’t suspect she wasn’t a well-to-do heiress, prime for the plucking.

In any case, Annie felt sure her “essence” would be found very much acceptable once she dropped the name of her “good friends the Steins,” who were certainly wealthy enough to impress someone who was looking for a new group of people to fleece. She had said in her letter that she hoped to contact her parents, which seemed safe enough. However, at the interview she planned on playing up her status as both an orphan and grieving widow.
First time John has actually been of use to me,
she thought with some surprise.

Annie calculated that two dead parents and a dead husband should give the Framptons enough to work with. She hoped they wouldn’t feel the need to investigate her further. The last thing she wanted was to have them sniffing around her neighbors or boarders for information, on the off chance that they would discover that Annie Fuller and Madam Sibyl were the same person.

The late afternoon sun, which was dipping down towards the Twin Peaks, felt good on her back as she and Kathleen made their way east down Harrison. The south side of the street was a hodgepodge of small, well-maintained businesses, offering a miscellany of services. In this one block you could get your shoes shod, your watch repaired, your chairs caned, your teeth removed, and your thirst quenched. Across the street a wall of tall hedges obscured all but the top floors of what were clearly a series of stately mansions left over from Rincon Hill’s heyday.

Coming to Fifth Street, Annie noticed a small puddle next to the curb, left over from yesterday’s shower, and she raised her skirts to nimbly skip over it, uttering, “Be careful” to Kathleen, who grinned and jumped over it as well.

“
That would have been a shame, ma’am,” Kathleen laughed.

“
I don’t know if Miss Millie would have forgiven me if I had splashed mud on this new dress the first time I wore it. She worked so hard getting the flounce at the bottom right. I wish fashion permitted day dresses to be a little shorter. It’s one thing to be able to sweep the floor with a long train if you are going to a ball, but city streets are another thing completely.”

“
Seems to me I remember that you were quite happy with short skirts at St Jo’s Ball when you were dancing with Mr. Nate Dawson,” Kathleen teased.

“
Now, Kathleen, you promised not to bring him up. And if I remember, Mr. Dawson did not at all approve of the length of my skirt that night.”

Annie looked over and saw Kathleen biting her lower lip and continued, “That’s right, not a word. I know you and Mrs. O’Rourke don’t think I should have sent him off so quickly Monday evening. But really, the nerve of the man! He acted like a rude schoolboy the last time I saw him, then ran off down the peninsula. Not a word for nearly two months, and then he drops in, unannounced!”

“
But ma’am, he was visiting his parents,” Kathleen blurted out, and then put her hand over her mouth.

“
Whose ranch is in Santa Clara County, not Timbuktu. He could have written! He could have even taken the train back to the city and visited for a day if he wanted to see me badly enough. No. He should be happy I agreed to see him at all.”

Monday night, when Kathleen had told her Nate was in the front parlor, all she had been able to think of was the last time they had met, in that very parlor, and how angry she had been then. She should have been angry Monday as well, but, to her surprise, her dominant emotion had been relief, and she’d been forced to admit how afraid she’d been that she would never see him again.

When she’d entered the parlor and saw him standing there, his top hat and long overcoat accentuating his height, his deeply tanned skin, hawk nose and prominent cheekbones lending him a slightly dangerous quality, and his warm brown eyes pleading with her for forgiveness, she’d had to work hard not to run into his arms. But it seemed wrong not to make it clear to him that his behavior had hurt her. So, instead, she’d pretended to be angry and gotten no little satisfaction from watching his efforts at an apology.

Then he’d made her laugh, and she knew she had better end his visit soon before she lost any of the high ground she had obtained. Consequently, she told him briefly about Miss Pinehurst’s request for help, asked if he could look into the Framptons on her behalf, pled tiredness, which was true, and then requested that they meet again on Saturday. She did hope he could help her with her investigations, but she also wanted more time to consider exactly how she felt about resuming her friendship with him. And she had refused to discuss those feelings with either Beatrice or Kathleen, who she knew would argue on his behalf.