Maids of Misfortune (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-four:
Monday, early afternoon, August 11, 1879

Nate had been sitting on a hard wooden bench outside Chief Detective Jackson’s office for nearly an hour, and he was beginning to lose his temper. Last night, after he had dropped Annie off at her home, he had gone right to the central police headquarters to inform Jackson of Nellie’s death. But of course, Jackson had already been apprised of the discovery of a dead Cliff House waitress and was on his way to the scene. Nate had been left to sit for hours waiting for the detective’s return, but he never got to see him. Instead, Nate was eventually questioned by a Sergeant Thompson and then spent another hour writing out his statement. He didn’t get home until well after one in the morning.

After he caught a few hours sleep, he got up and spent a tedious three hours drafting wills. At lunch, he had a very unpleasant conversation with his Uncle, who couldn’t understand why he would have taken Mrs. Fuller to question a waitress at the disreputable Cliff House. Nate, himself, wondered why he'd been so foolish. Now, after being summoned by Jackson to come back to police headquarters this afternoon, he’d been left cooling his heels, like a naughty boy called to the principal’s office.

The detective’s door opened and out came Sergeant Thompson, escorting a man that Nate was startled to recognize as Nellie’s boyfriend, Jack. Today, Jack wasn’t wearing his natty checked coat or red silk cravat, nor was he sporting his jaunty attitude. The only similarity between his Saturday night finery and the sweaty work clothes he was wearing today was the red of the bandana around his neck. His eyes were swollen, his mustache drooping, and when he saw Nate he growled, “I wish I’d never seen you, you bastard. Gents like you don’t give a damn about a girl like Nell. If you didn’t kill her, you got her killed, and I’ll see you in hell.”

The sergeant, not unkindly, herded Jack down the hall while saying over his shoulder to Nate, “Chief will see you now. Go right on in.” Nate stood for a moment, watching the two men, and then he walked into the small cluttered office. Chief Detective Jackson had been in the detective division for over twenty years, and his office appeared to have files from every case he ever worked on during that time. When Nate’s Uncle Frank had first asked him to be the liaison with Jackson on the questions about Matthew Voss’s death, he had secretly been elated. He chafed under the limited scope afforded by working as the junior partner of his uncle’s firm, feeling more like a glorified clerk than a true partner, and he had nurtured hopes that a good working relationship with one of the most powerful men in the city would lead to opportunities. Jackson, while a Republican, maintained cordial ties with both the Democratic Party and the upstart Workingmen’s Party. His good opinion went far in San Francisco. As Nate stood in front of the Chief Detective, who failed to even acknowledge his presence as he wrote methodically in a small black notebook, his hopes turned to ashes. Standing there as the minutes crawled by, the feeling he’d had in the hall of being treated like a naughty schoolboy reappeared, and out of the ashes burned a fierce determination not to be patronized by this man.

“Sir, I believe
you
wished to see
me
,” said Nate. “But I can see you are busy. Perhaps I should come back at a later time when you aren’t so preoccupied?”

“Mr. Dawson, take a seat. I will be with you in a minute,” said Jackson.

Nate briefly contemplated walking out but instead pulled a chair closer to the desk and sat down.

A few moments later, Jackson put down his pen and looked up, saying, “Well, I’ve read your report, Mr. Dawson. You took it into your head to meddle in the investigation into Matthew Voss’s death, and now a young woman’s dead. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Well, he certainly isn’t pulling any punches,
Nate thought,
but I’ll be damned if he will intimidate me.
“Sir, I sincerely regret if my actions contributed to Nellie Flannigan’s death. I would never have made the effort to find and speak to her if I had thought this would put her in danger. I assume that the police had come to a similar conclusion, since you hadn’t made any effort to find her in the week following Mr. Voss’s death. It appears we both underestimated her importance and possible complicity in Voss’s murder. You do accept that Voss was murdered now, don’t you?”

“Well, that really isn’t the issue at hand, is it?” Jackson said. “We haven’t determined anything, except that Miss Nellie Flannigan was found drowned. Whether this was the result of an accident or if the unfortunate young lady took her own life or was killed by someone else, it is too soon to tell."

“You can’t think this was anything but murder!” Nate leaned forward. “She must have been involved with whoever robbed and killed Mr. Voss; whoever was her accomplice must have felt she was a danger and got rid of her. What did her boyfriend Jack have to say?”

Jackson snorted. “He said a slimy lawyer feller named Dawson tricked him into telling him where Miss Flannigan was and then killed her! Lucky for you, the evidence is pretty clear that she died yesterday afternoon, sometime between twelve and one, when you were evidently on the way to the Cliff House. The stable where you rented your carriage says that you didn’t leave the city until just before noon, and it would have been difficult for you to get to the Cliff House much before one, which is confirmed by the waitress you talked to there. Now of course it would help if we could also have the name of the young woman who was with you for corroboration.”

“Sir, I am afraid I must refuse your request,” Nate replied stiffly. “The lady is a friend of mine, a respectable widow, and I simply can’t in good conscience drag her name into this affair. I can, however, assure you that she had nothing to do with the death of either Mr. Voss or Miss Flannigan, and there is really nothing that she could add to the details I have already given in my report.”

Jackson stared at him for a second then gave a quick laugh, saying, “Well, I suspect you are in enough trouble with the lady for dragging her out on a Sunday picnic as a cover for interviewing a servant girl and then subjecting her to a dead body, so I guess I won’t get you in any more hot water.” Jackson then poked his index finger in Nate’s direction, saying, “But believe you me, if this whole thing should ever come to trial and her testimony is needed, you will tell me her name. For now, the inquest is going to be sometime Wednesday morning, and I expect you to be there to give your testimony.”

Nate, feeling much easier now that he had made it through the dicey question of revealing Annie Fuller’s name, nodded and asked, “Do you think that there is the possibility that Miss Flannigan’s boyfriend might be involved in either death?”

“There doesn’t seem to be much chance of that. The night of Mr. Voss’s death, he and Miss Flannigan were at an all-night party at Shannon’s dance hall, with at least a hundred witnesses. The afternoon of Miss Flannigan’s death, he was down in the hold of a ship, welding, along with twenty other men. That’s not to say he doesn’t know more than he’s saying. But beyond his tale that she was getting favors from a young gentleman, like yourself or Mr. Jeremy Voss, he hasn’t been all that helpful.”

“Chief Detective, why drag Jeremy Voss into this? Seems to me that if someone killed Miss Flannigan that it would be someone outside the household. Someone who would need her help as a servant to get into the house and locate the stolen money and assets, maybe some confidence man that hooked her into his scheme. I know you’ve dealt with cases like that.”

Nate watched with irritation as Jackson leaned back in his chair and smiled and then said, “Well Mr. Dawson, I will say this for you, you do a good job of trying to protect your clients. But consider this: maybe if someone did kill Miss Flannigan, and I’m not saying we have the evidence to conclude that yet, maybe it wasn’t for what she did but for what she knew.”

Chapter Twenty-five:
Monday, late afternoon, August 11, 1879

“Wong, thank heavens, I think I am finally done.” Annie folded the last sheet and stood up straight, put her hands against the small of her back, and bent backwards slightly, groaning. Wong had tried to help her out as much as he could by assisting her in lifting the large kettles of water off the stove to pour into the tubs and then later helping her carry the tubs out to the back to drain. But he was pretty well occupied the rest of the time with preparing, serving, and cleaning up after lunch.
That settles it
, she thought. As soon as she got back home
,
Beatrice was to start looking for a good washerwoman to come in on Mondays and Tuesdays to do the laundry and ironing. Kathleen could still help out with the occasional light load of delicate clothes, but never again would Annie ask her to do a full wash by herself. That was if Driscoll didn’t succeed in taking the boarding house away from her! Pushing that defeatist idea away, Annie stretched again and thought about a more immediate problem. With every muscle in her back aching, she had no idea how she would get through serving dinner tonight.

Wouldn’t Kathleen laugh at her? A few loads of wash and Annie was feeling like a decrepit old woman. Oh, how she was homesick for that laugh. She also couldn’t help but wonder what Nate was up to, if he had met with the police again, if he had been successful in keeping her name out of their investigations. It had been less than twelve hours since she left her home, but, if it weren’t for the regular tradesmen who came to the back door making deliveries, she might well believe the rest of the outside world had disappeared. She’d never realized how isolated a servant might feel, unable to simply leave the house to take a walk or visit friends whenever she wanted.

Thinking of tradesmen reminded Annie of one strange occurrence that happened right before lunch. Cartier had come to the kitchen with some excuse about making sure that Annie took care of a stain on one of Mrs. Voss’s dressing gown cuffs, but then she had hung around for awhile, simply getting in Wong’s way as he prepared the noon meal. She didn’t seem interested in talking, but when the young boy who delivered the meat knocked at the back door, she bustled over to unlock the door to take the wrapped beef from him. This was so out of character that Annie had stopped her washing and stared at her, getting a glimpse of a folded piece of paper that Cartier slipped to the delivery boy before sending him on his way.

Who would have imagined it,
she thought.
The refined Miss Cartier engaged in some sort of secret correspondence with a delivery boy. What a come down.
Then her amusement had been swept away by the thought that maybe this event was more sinister; if Cartier had been involved with Matthew’s murder, maybe she was communicating with an accomplice, someone she had let into the house to steal Matthew’s money and kill him. If this were true, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine Nellie finding out, and maybe that was why she had to die.

As she picked up the basket of clean clothes and moved to put it at the base of the back stairs, she stopped to listen for a minute, struck by the oppressive stillness of the house’s upper floors. It was as if the kitchen, filled with the hiss of fat dripping off the roast in the oven, the gentle bubbling of soup stock, the steady click, click, click of Wong's vegetable knife, contained the only sounds of life in the place. Jeremy had left the house with Malcolm Samuels before lunch and was probably now well on his way towards another night of depressed debauchery with his friends, so his quarters would be dark and silent. All three of the women in the house had retired to their respective rooms before dinner. Annie imagined Cartier, holed up in her room, writing to her unknown correspondent. As for Miss Nancy, Annie pictured her crouched and muttering over that massive Bible. Mrs. Voss would be sitting quietly in her lovely sitting room, her chatter temporarily stilled. Annie imagined her embroidering fantastic scenes of medieval chivalry and hiding her fears behind her unreadable, beautiful eyes.

The door chime interrupted these thoughts, and Annie looked over at Wong, who was sitting at the kitchen table while he chopped. He looked up, then said, “Miss Lizzie, I will answer the door if you would but please sit and finish dicing these carrots.”

“Oh, Wong, would you? I will gladly chop up every vegetable we have in the house if it would mean I could sit down for a while.”

Glancing at the kitchen clock, Annie was surprised that it was already near six o’clock, a very odd time for callers and a very inconvenient time for Wong. He seemed to have planned a more elaborate menu than usual this evening, and Annie assumed this was in honor of Mrs. Voss, who was finally eating her dinner downstairs. He was going to start with an asparagus soup, then a fish course of marinated salmon followed by fricasseed quail, and finally the roast beef. For dessert, he had made an orange cake. Annie's job was to assemble a fresh salad of greens and steam the carrots and peas. The smell from the simmering quail sauce permeated the kitchen, effectively eliminating the smell of bluing that had dominated the room for most of the day and making Annie’s stomach rumble.
I must remember to get the recipe from Wong
, Annie thought to herself.
Whoever the visitor is, when he smells dinner, he'll wish he’d been invited.

Hearing the slight whisper of Wong’s cotton slippers on the stairs, Annie, without looking up, said, “So, Wong, what lovely offering has one of the neighbors delivered to us this time?”

“Miss Lizzie, Mrs. Voss has requested that we delay the dinner preparations and has asked that Miss Cartier, that she…”

Startled by the odd tone in his voice, Annie looked up from her cutting board to see Wong standing at the bottom of the back stairs, apparently staring into space, one of his long graceful hands touching the base of his throat just where the two sides of his mandarin collar met, and he seemed to have lost the rest of his sentence.

“Wong, what ever is wrong? I am sure that dinner will be fine; we have barely started. Who was at the door? Was it someone for Cartier? How odd!”

“Miss, I am sorry, I did not make myself clear. It was a Chief Detective Jackson and his sergeant. They came to inform Mrs. Voss that Miss Nellie has died. I find myself very distressed by the news. I am to prepare tea, and you are to go to Cartier’s room and ask her to come down to speak with the Detective. They wish to talk briefly with everyone in the household who knew Miss Nellie. I can only assume that there is something out of the ordinary about her death.”

With that statement, Wong moved over to the stove, where he began to fill the kettle from the hot water reservoir. Annie rose and started to go over to him, but something about the stiffness of his back stopped her in her tracks.
What could I say? He worked beside Nellie for over two years. Coming on top of the loss of a master that he had served for goodness knows how long, what must he be feeling?

She realized that most of the day she had been able to push thoughts of Nellie’s death away, as if it hadn’t happened as long as the people around her didn’t know it had happened. But here it was, all the pain and sadness and guilt she had been feeling just twenty-four hours ago. The tragedy of a young woman’s death, made real by the evident pain of an old Chinese servant. How she wished she could tell him the truth, confess her guilt over the maid’s death, promise him that Nellie’s murderer would not go unpunished.

Wiping the tears that had come unbidden to her eyes, Annie cleared her throat and said, “I am so sorry, Wong. I will get Cartier. But please let me serve the tea when it is ready. Then you can do what is needed for dinner.”
And I can at least give you some time to grieve in peace
, she thought.