The Cliff House Strangler (30 page)

“George, what is it?” I asked the policeman, my heart beating faster despite my brother’s reassurance.

“A man’s been killed, Miss Sarah. Fact is, he was a guard at city jail,” George said. “And I know you’ve spent a good deal of time there lately. His body was found on the waterfront this morning. He’d been beaten to death and his body was thrown into an old shed. I’m sure that’s why it took so long to find him. The coroner says he’s been dead since sometime Thursday night.”

“George,” I said, my voice tight with growing fear. “Who was it? You still haven’t told us the guard’s name.”

“It was Vere, Miss Sarah. The dead man’s name was Cecil Vere.”

I
stared at George for several long moments. This was a development I could not possibly have foreseen—one, in fact, I could hardly believe. That nice man, so in love with his Annie, so full of life. How could he be gone—just like that? I remembered Celia saying she sensed a great evil at work here. In less than two weeks, Darien Moss, Theodora Reade, and Dmitry Serkov had been killed, Madame Karpova had been attacked, and now Cecil Vere was dead. I shivered. Who could have guessed she’d come so close to the truth?

“Sarah, are you all right?” Robert asked. “You’ve gone pale as a ghost.”

I started to tell him not to be ridiculous, that I was fine, then realized that actually I wasn’t. Despite the fire crackling in the hearth, my hands were icy cold, and I was a bit light-headed. I had known Cecil Vere for only a few days, yet I’d come to like the man.

“I’m all right, Robert. There have just been too many deaths lately.” I felt another chill and folded my arms across my bosom.

Silently, Samuel rose and stoked the fire, although the room temperature had nothing to do with my discomfort. I was loath to admit it, but deep inside I was truly frightened.

“Do the police know how it happened?” I asked George. “Was Vere drinking, or in a fight?”

“Likely enough he was drinking, but it seems he was mainly on the waterfront to gamble. Must of won, too, because he was robbed and—well, you know the rest.”

“Gambling?” I repeated. “But he was planning to be married. Remember, Robert? He told us that he and his Annie were saving every penny so they could rent an apartment and settle down together.”

“No, I don’t remember,” Robert said. “But I can’t see that it makes much difference. A man may claim to be saving his money, but if he sees a chance to double his stake on a roll of the dice, he’s going to take it.” Despite these seemingly unsympathetic words, the Scot looked subdued. “Poor bugger. I admit I rather liked the fellow.”

“Yes,” I agreed softly. “George, do you know if anyone’s notified Mr. Vere’s fiancée of his death.”

The policeman shook his head, causing his hair to fall across his wide forehead, which made him look ten years younger. “We didn’t even know he had one, Miss Sarah. You say her name was Annie? I’ll speak to some of the other guards at the jail and see if anyone knows her surname.”

Samuel looked at me quizzically. “What’s wrong, Sarah? You seem pretty upset over a man you hardly knew.”

“I know, Samuel. It just strikes me as all wrong. Vere was working hard to save up for his life with Annie. It’s hard to believe he’d chance squandering his earnings so frivolously.”

“It happens all the time,” Robert put in. “There are secret, and not so secret, gamblers in the best of families. Besides, I can’t see how Vere’s death has anything to do with Dmitry Serkov or your case.”

“I wonder,” I said thoughtfully.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Robert asked, his tone daring me to find some sinister meaning behind what appeared to be a tragic, if all too common, crime.

“It’s the strange way Vere behaved after Serkov’s murder,” I explained. “He was noticeably shaken, far more than I would have expected, especially over a prisoner he openly disliked. He kept blaming himself, saying it shouldn’t have happened. I wondered at the time if perhaps he’d seen Serkov’s killer but was too afraid to say anything.”

George looked at me with interest. “Did you ask him about it?”

I nodded. “After what happened to Mrs. Reade, I felt I had to say something. But he denied seeing anyone.”

“Did you believe him?” Samuel asked.

“You know, I’m not entirely sure that I did.” I tried to remember my last conversation with the jailer. So much had happened since that afternoon, it actually felt like weeks had passed, rather than just a few days. And, of course, I’d been considerably upset over Serkov’s death at the time; I might well have missed a word or a nuance I might otherwise have caught.

Robert shifted on the sofa next to me. “I think it’s unlikely Vere saw anything. He was probably just feeling guilty because he was off putting his feet up when he should have been paying attention to his charges.”

“Yes, Mr. Campbell,” George said, “no doubt you’re right. Vere was questioned by Lieutenant Ahern, and even by the captain himself. He claimed it must have been the sister who did the Russian in. I know it seems like a coincidence, Miss Sarah, but I just don’t see how it could be connected to your client’s death.”

“Or Madame Karpova’s attack?” I asked, feeling myself decidedly outnumbered.

There was a murmur among the three men. None of them met my eyes, but I knew they all believed Madame Karpova had killed Serkov, then attempted suicide out of guilt. It was not difficult to read from their expressions that they thought I was grasping at straws in an effort to save my client.

A log fell in the fire, and while Samuel rose to prod it back into position, Robert went outside to tell Eddie he was free to take the
horse and carriage back to the stables. He and George had decided they would share a cab when it came time to leave, so there was no sense leaving the poor boy sitting out in the cold.

When Robert returned, Samuel resumed his seat and asked me if I’d had any luck translating Darien Moss’s notes.

Realizing that further speculation about Cecil Vere’s death would be futile, I gave a brief account of my trip to the public library.

“Mr. Ferrier thinks Moss’s notes may be written in Coptic, which is used almost exclusively now in the Coptic Church’s religious ceremonies. He promised to have the translations ready for me by Monday morning. I’ll see that you receive a copy, George.”

George thanked me, then added, “You know if that Ferrier fellow does a good job with the pages you gave him, I think I’ll ask him to try his hand at the whole diary.”

“Good,” I said, wishing the police had thought to do this sooner. Lieutenant Ahern had seemed so convinced he had the killer in custody, he didn’t bother to look beyond Serkov for possible suspects.

“Tell us about your visit to the Cliff House today,” Samuel said, looking from Robert to me. I gave my colleague the opportunity to answer, but he deferred to me, explaining that since I’d been blessed with such a fertile imagination, I’d make a better story of it.

Ignoring this not so subtle jab, I duly related our visit that evening to the Cliff House, along with what little new information we’d managed to glean from the cook.

“Since the cook didn’t see the person’s face, it probably won’t do you much good, George” I concluded. “But it does reinforce Yelena’s account of someone attacking her in her room.”

“Oh, we never doubted that, Miss Sarah,” George said. “We found blood on that wire you spotted under her bed. I’ll grant you it wasn’t much, but enough for us to be pretty certain it was the weapon used on her neck.”

“So, what’s the official police explanation for the attack?” I asked.

“The department is convinced that Serkov’s intended victim was not Miss Karpova, but Mrs. Reade,” George replied. “He must have thought she’d seen him murder Moss, and decided to silence her. Unaware that Mrs. Reade’s room had been changed with Miss Karpova’s, he hid there until the girl arrived to retire for the night. As soon as he discovered his mistake, he ran from the room. Waiting his chance, he strangled the old lady in Washington Square.”

Once again, I resisted the urge to protest this assumption of the killer’s identity, knowing it would be useless. Instead, I asked my brother if he’d learned anything new about Darien Moss, or any of the others present at the séance.

“As a matter of fact, I have,” he replied, looking pleased with himself. He pulled out his notebook and thumbed through the pages. “I’ll start with Darien Moss, or Daoud Moussa, the name he was born with. If you remember, Sarah, I told you I thought his father had been some kind of minister? Well, it turns out he was a priest in the Coptic Church. Unlike the Catholic Church, which requires its priests to be celibate, the Coptic Church strongly urges its priests to marry. It was a tradition in the Moussa family for the eldest son of each generation to join the clergy.

“That is, until Daoud Moussa came along. It seems he dutifully entered the seminary—which is where he must have become so proficient in the Coptic language—but left barely two years later. After working at one or two newspapers, he moved to California and changed his name to Darien Moss. You pretty much know the rest. He became a reporter for the first
Morning Chronicle
in 1868, then was hired by the
Informer
in 1873, where he commenced a lucrative career terrorizing businessmen, politicians, and, of course, the cream of San Francisco society. The slightest whiff of a scandal, and he was on it like a flea on a dog.”

Samuel went on to report that the Aherns were second-generation Americans, and that over the past twenty years Frank Ahern had earned a commendable reputation with the police department. Despite, he added with a wink in my direction, the
lieutenant’s habit of leaving the more physical assignments to his minions.

He’d found little that was new on Senator Percival Gaylord, who had started as an attorney at the Thompson and Fox law firm here in the city and was currently serving his fourth term in the state senate. It was widely known that he’d set his cap on becoming the next California governor, and that his chances of achieving this goal were excellent.

According to Samuel, Philippa Bramwell was pretty much what she appeared to be, the vain, ambitious, domineering wife of Edgar Bramwell, owner of Bramwell and Sons Construction Company. She was mother to Lyle Bramwell, who worked in the family business, and his younger brother, Nicholas, who had recently passed his bar exam.

“Here’s an interesting, if irrelevant, bit of minutiae,” he went on with a chuckle. “It seems Philippa Bramwell was born Lotty Chance on a corn farm in Kansas City, Missouri, the eldest girl in a family of twelve children. As a respected member of San Francisco society, she undoubtedly prefers not to advertise her humble lineage. But I doubt she’d go so far as to commit murder in order to keep it quiet.”

Even I had to smile at the notion of the haughty Philippa Bramwell growing up on a Missouri corn farm. But I agreed with my brother that this was an unlikely motive for murder.

“After you told me Olga Karpova’s story,” Samuel went on, breaking into my thoughts, “I was able to trace some of Serkov’s criminal history in Russia. According to my sources, he was one very nasty character.” He checked his notes. “Ah, yes, it seems that Madame Karpova did spend four or five years in London, honing her psychic abilities with Madame Blavatsky.”

We spent the next hour going over more or less the same territory, including everyone’s whereabouts during the time Mrs. Reade had been killed. Since my companions remained convinced that Serkov was the villain, this discussion, predictably, went nowhere.

By the time everyone left, I felt, and undoubtedly looked, exhausted, a statement my dear brother did not hesitate to confirm. It had been a long, trying day, and I feared the following week would be equally taxing—but one, I fervently prayed, that would include no new murders!

Monday morning, I would pick up Mr. Ferrier’s translations of Moss’s diary notes, after which I hoped to speak to my brother Frederick about what he had been doing at the jail when Dmitry Serkov was killed.

As soon as George could locate Cecil Vere’s fiancée, Annie, I would call upon the poor woman to offer my condolences and to see if she could shed any light on Vere’s tragic death. Then, of course, I would have to prepare for Madame Karpova’s arraignment, scheduled for Tuesday morning. And in less than a week, the Sechrest divorce hearing would begin.

Wearily, I climbed the stairs to my room, changed into my nightdress, and crawled gratefully beneath my bedclothes. I had time to say a brief prayer for the repose of Cecil Vere’s soul before falling into a deep sleep.

A
s planned, first thing Monday morning, I visited the public library, where I discovered, to my delight, that Mr. Ferrier had indeed finished translating Moss’s diary notes.

“I had a bit of trouble identifying the exact interpretation for one or two of the words,” he said apologetically. “But I’m confident I have the nouns correct, and the general meaning of each sentence has been preserved to the best of my ability.”

After thanking the librarian for all of his time and effort, I took a horsecar to the Central station, where George Lewis and I poured over Ferrier’s notes.

Below the Coptic sentences I’d copied from Moss’s diary were the recently completed translations. The first page read: