Scandal on Rincon Hill (34 page)

Obediently, she did as she was told. Almost instantly she fell into a violent fit of coughing, and her small hands fought to push away the tiny beaker. To be sure, the mixture of carbonate of ammonium and some sickening, too-sweet fragrance was intolerable. It was, however, an excellent—and speedy—method with which to revive those women who appear prone to light-headedness, or indeed spells of fainting. Once again, I said a private prayer of gratitude that I had never personally been obliged to resort to the nasty stuff.

In a matter of moments, Melody's delicate face had regained its usual healthy color, and she appeared to be quite restored. Throughout this brief but tense ordeal, however, David had been regarding his sister with an expression bordering on panic. For a frightened minute, I feared he, too, might be in danger of fainting away at my feet. As I started to move the vial of smelling salts to his face, however, he shook his head and gently pushed it away.

“I have no need for that, Miss Woolson,” he said with a wan smile. “My sister has a fragile constitution, and it worries me to see her fall into such a state.” He bent his head and looked into her face. “What happened to Mr. O'Hara was tragic, Melody, but we hardly knew the man. I wish you would not take it so to heart. It is not good for your health.”

“David is right, my dear,” agreed their grandfather. “You must not allow Mr. O'Hara's death, however unfortunate, to affect your well-being.”

“I know, Grandpapa,” she said, darting him an embarrassed look. “And I'm sorry to have made such a bother of myself. But it is just so dreadful to think that Mr. O'Hara's killer is still out here—somewhere in our own neighborhood. We live barely three blocks away!”

“Please believe me, my dear, you and your family are perfectly safe,” I assured her, aware that I was grossly minimizing the severity of the situation. “I'm certain that the villain responsible for poor Patrick's death is many miles from Rincon Hill by now. You need not be afraid.”

“Miss Woolson is right, Melody,” concurred the major, sending me a grateful smile. “I'm sure the police will soon catch the blackguard who committed this terrible crime.”

I nodded my agreement, although privately I feared the solution to O'Hara's murder might not be anywhere near that simple. If, as the police assumed, his death had not been the result of a failed robbery, then the killer must be someone who knew the young Irishman—or worse, somebody in the boy's own family.

A third possibility, I thought as a chill of dread rippled down my spine, was that the same person who murdered Nigel Logan and Deacon Hume had struck yet again. Whatever the answer, as Melody feared, the villain might still be right here, beneath our very noses.

A most disconcerting thought!

A
s Samuel and I drove in Eddie's carriage the few blocks from the ice cream parlor to our home, we passed several newsboys hawking evening newspapers with the disturbing headlines:
LADY LAWYER REPRESENTS CHINKS! JUDGE'S DAUGHTER DOES IT AGAIN! ANGEL DEFENDS CELESTIAL DEVILS
!

Samuel instructed Eddie to stop, then hopped out of the brougham to purchase a copy of each edition. As the carriage once again continued on its way, he scanned the papers.

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “I can't believe even Ozzie Foldger would stoop this low.”

“What is it, Samuel?” I asked. “What has he written now?”

“You're not going to like this, Sarah.”

Without replying, I took this evening's
Tattler
out of my brother's hands and scanned Foldger's article. With a cry of alarm, I clapped a hand to my mouth.

“Oh, dear God!” I gasped. I remembered how relieved I'd been that Ozzie Foldger hadn't seen me at Madam Valentine's parlor house the previous Friday morning. Now the miserable gossipmonger had caught me out after all. He must have been hiding in the shadows along Montgomery Street the night before, when Robert and I entered the brothel.

The first half of his article dealt with my defending the two “foreign monkeys” who had been arrested for Deacon Dieter Hume's murder. The last paragraph read:

Not only is the above-mentioned lady lawyer championing two heathen Chinamen, but she was seen just last night brazenly entering one of Montgomery Street's most infamous cathouses. It seems the very proper Miss Sarah Woolson—daughter of noted San Francisco Judge Horace Woolson—is intimately acquainted with a celebrated courtesan and her stable of naughty nymphs.

Allowing the newspaper to fall to the floor of the carriage, I closed my eyes and slumped back in my seat.

“Dear Lord, Samuel. What am I going to do?”

“Right now you're not going to do anything, Sarah,” he replied, grinding his teeth in suppressed fury. “Not until we come up with some sort of strategy for dealing with this.”

“Can you imagine Papa's reaction when he sees this?”

“Yes, but remember that he doesn't read the
Tattler
. With any kind of luck he may not find out about the article, at least for the next day or two.”

I shook my head; I was too old to believe in fairy tales. “One of his friends will see the article, Samuel, and someone is bound to tell him about it. By tomorrow, my visit to Madam Valentine's parlor house will be carried in other newspapers as well. The fact that I'm representing Fan Gow and Lee Yup is already a headline story. Just wait until the city reads this!”

Samuel looked solemn and his brows were knitted into a tense line. “That rotten little bast—” He darted me a sheepish look, then went on, “At least now we know why that good-for-nothing scoundrel has been following you around for the past week.”

Samuel spent the remainder of the brief ride trying to calm my shattered nerves, but without much success. My mind was too busy
imagining my parents' reaction to the story, not to mention the effect it would have on my fledgling law firm. It served me right for letting down my guard. Truth be told, I'd been so intent on my plan to confront Gerald Knight when we'd gone to see Brielle, I'd forgotten all about Ozzie Foldger. I wished now that I'd let Eddie lead Robert and me around to the back entrance of the parlor house, instead of stubbornly insisting on entering by the front door.

When Eddie reined up in front of our house, Samuel assisted me down from the coach, then followed after me.

“I'm going to have Eddie take me to see George. Hopefully, he has more information about O'Hara's murder. I also want to talk to him about that police officer who was grilling Kerry Murphy at the ice cream parlor. I don't for one minute believe Kerry had anything to do with his cousin's murder, and I hate to see him harassed like that.”

With a reassuring smile, he gave me a fierce brotherly hug. “We'll find a way to deal with this, Sarah. We spent our childhood going from one scrape to another. We managed to live through them and we'll live through this one, too. I promise.”

With that, he hopped back into the carriage. Giving me a broad smile and a jaunty tip of his cap, Eddie pulled back into traffic.

W
e had two unexpected visitors to our home that evening. Samuel had returned after dinner, accompanied by George Lewis. The three of us had just settled ourselves in Papa's library, when Robert appeared at the door, claiming he was worried about the “madman” who, according to the news spreading like wildfire throughout the city, was running amuck on Rincon Hill.

My heart did a kind of leap when Robert walked into the house. I had not seen him since the night before, and in view of our unexpected kiss I had no idea how to behave toward him.

The moment he saw me, Robert's ruddy face seemed to grow several shades lighter, and I thought I saw his Adam's apple move
rapidly up and down. He must be suffering the same discomfiture as I was. Thankfully, before either of us could think of something to say, Samuel showed our unexpected guest into the library.

After we had reestablished ourselves around the fireplace, which now included my self-conscious colleague, Edis carried in a large pot of coffee, four cups, and, naturally, a plate overflowing with cookies and cakes from Cook's kitchen. I noticed that Robert was doing his best to avoid looking at me, and I sighed inwardly. Obviously, we could not go on like this. Sooner or later we would have to discuss this new development in our relationship. But it most definitely would not be in front of my brother and a police sergeant!

I watched George and Robert for signs that they had read Ozzie Foldger's article in this evening's
Tattler
. To my relief, I could see they obviously had not. Nor had anyone in my family, so for one night at least I could breathe easy. Tomorrow, of course, would be a very different story!

When we had filled our cups with Cook's excellent brew, we turned our attention to George, hoping he could provide further enlightenment concerning this latest tragic death. Our expectations were quickly dashed, when George informed us that he knew little more about Patrick O'Hara's murder than we did.

“The department is treating the boy's death as an isolated incident,” he told us, stirring sugar and cream into his coffee. “By that I mean they've decided that his murder is in no way connected to that of Mr. Logan or Deacon Hume.”

“So they believe that my clients killed Dieter Hume, and someone else murdered Logan and O'Hara?” I asked, not bothering to mask my incredulity. “That's absurd!”

“So it's true that you're representing the two Chinamen we arrested over the weekend,” George said, looking dismayed. “I was hoping the newspapers had gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick.”

“Those ‘Chinamen’ have names, George,” I informed him a bit sharply. “They are Fan Gow and Lee Yup. Neither of whom can be older than eighteen or nineteen. They speak virtually no
English, and have been in San Francisco for less than a month. What possible reason can either of those poor boys have for killing Deacon Hume? Keep in mind that he wasn't robbed, which suggests a more personal motive,
and
therefore eliminates my clients.”

“Not necessarily,” argued George. “Our eyewitnesses might have interrupted the two Johnnies before they could empty Hume's pockets.”

“Oh? And what about Nigel Logan and Patrick O'Hara?” I asked. “If you recall, neither of them were robbed, either.”

Before George could formulate a good argument, Samuel picked up several newspapers lying on a side table—none of them the
Tattler
, thank goodness, since Papa would not allow the rag sheet in our house—and waved them at us. “Have any of you read these? The public is clamoring for Fan and Lee to be strung up from the nearest trees, never mind a trial.”

“I've seen them,” said Robert, who had thus far been listening in silence. He glanced once in my direction, turned a bit red, then cleared his voice and continued. “While I have no truck with lynchings, we would do well to remember that those ‘poor boys’ were identified by eyewitnesses.”

“Who had been out on a toot, and were so liquored up they probably wouldn't have recognized their own mothers at that time of night, much less two Chinamen,” put in Samuel, before I could express much the same opinion.

“I admit that it was dark,” Robert persisted, a bit defensively. “Still, those Chinese lads appear to have no legitimate alibis for the time Deacon Hume was murdered. Put together with the witnesses' account and you have—”

“Balderdash!” I was so incensed by this ludicrous statement that all thoughts of the night before flew from my mind. “Fan and Lee told me through the interpreter that they didn't even know where the Harrison Street Bridge was, much less deliberately walk there in the middle of the night.”

“Of course that's what they'd say,” said Robert heatedly. Obviously, memories of our intimate embrace had vanished from his
thoughts, as well. “They'd hardly admit to being there at the same time a murder was being committed.”

“I don't know, Robert,” put in my brother. “I find it unlikely that two young Chinese boys would wander so far from Chinatown at night, especially when they're ignorant of the language and the city. I find it even more difficult to believe that they could be positively identified by a couple of intoxicated white men.”

I turned to face Sergeant Lewis. “Answer me truthfully, George. Do the police honestly suppose that my clients, for no apparent reason, battered to death a church deacon they just happened to pass on a dark bridge?”

George flinched, as if I had just come at him with a baseball bat. “I, ah, actually I think that's what they believe, yes, Miss Sarah.”

“Incredible!” I pronounced, throwing up my hands in disgust. I turned to Robert and Samuel. “Mind you, these are the very imbeciles whom we have entrusted to safeguard our city.”

“There is no need to take out your frustration on George,” said Samuel, coming to his friend's defense. “In all fairness, you asked him what the police thought, not for his own personal opinion.”

“You're right, of course, Samuel. I stand corrected.” I turned back to George who had begun fidgeting in his chair. “All right, then, George, what do you make of this farce?”

The poor man looked at me, stricken, then glanced at Samuel and Robert as if hoping to be rescued.

“I don't know, Miss Sarah, and that's the truth. At first the department thought maybe the rector of that church, you know, the Reverend Mayfield, might be involved. Because of all that nonsense Mr. Logan spouted about us having come from bugs, or fish, or something.”

“Charles Darwin's
Origin of Species
,” I put in.

George nodded. “Yes, that's it. Then we got an order to stop questioning the minister, and look amongst the Johnnies for the killer.”

Samuel and I exchanged a quick glance, both of us wondering, I was sure, where this sudden order had originated.

“Not long after that, we pulled in those two Chinese fellows.” George nodded to Robert. “And they were properly identified by eyewitnesses, just like Mr. Campbell said.”

I shook my head, not bothering to hide my disdain for the police department's so-called eyewitnesses.

Perhaps in an effort to play peacemaker, Robert broke the uncomfortable silence following George's unconvincing elucidation.