Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (17 page)

As Nate walked down the short flight of steps into the entrance of the Elite, a restaurant that lived up to its name with dark wood paneling, crisp white table linen, and French cuisine, he realized he didn’t have any idea what Anthony Pierce looked like. He may have run across him a few times when he stopped by the old
Chronicle
offices to see his friend Tim Newsome, and he’d certainly read a number of his articles. Pierce was known for his biting political satire, but Nate had never been introduced to him.

He was surprised Pierce had named the Elite as their meeting place, since its prices were pretty steep, and from Tim’s frequent complaints he’d understood that reporters made even less money than junior law partners. Nate only dined here when a client was paying. He supposed, since he was asking Pierce for a favor, he would have to foot the bill. But it would be worth it if he enlisted his help in exposing the Framptons. Annie would be so pleased.

When the maître d’ came up and Nate murmured that he was meeting Pierce, the man nodded and led the way to a small table tucked into the far back corner of the restaurant.
Good, this will give us some privacy
. He walked up to the table where a spectacularly ugly man was sitting. Pierce, who rose and shook his hand, was quite short, and only his powerfully muscled neck and shoulders kept his large head from appearing ridiculous. Disheveled black hair failed to hide a pair of jug ears, and his nose, which had clearly been broken at some time, reigned over a straggling mustache; yet his wide grin and fine dark brown eyes turned the disaster of his other features into a pleasing whole. Nate found himself grinning back at Pierce, attracted by his air of extreme confidence.

“
Well, well, Mr. Nate Dawson, what a pleasure. Tim speaks highly of you, which must mean he owes you, because in my experience, old Tim Newsome doesn’t throw around praise lightly. What’ya do for him? Give him a tip on the harness races? Provide an alibi for him to his wife?” Pierce laughed heartedly.

“
Why, Mr. Pierce, Mrs. Newsome would box my ears if she thought I was in cahoots with Tim,” Nate said. “No, I met him when I was a boy. He was a senior at Boys High when I was a freshman, and I am afraid he was instrumental in leading me astray. Been trying to make it up to me ever since.”

After their meals were ordered and Nate and Pierce had mined the fertile subject of local politics and what the recent election of Isaac Kalloch, the Workingmen’s Party candidate for mayor, was going to mean to the city, Pierce finally introduced the topic of the Framptons.

“
So, Nate. Don’t mind if I call you Nate, do ya? What’s your interest in Simon and Arabella Frampton? Your message was pretty cryptic.”

“
One of my clients, you understand I can’t say who, has a relative who has become a frequent participant of the Frampton séances. My client is worried that he might be getting involved in something unsavory and dishonest. Undue influence and all that. I remembered that you had written some articles about local mediums, and I thought you might be able to give me a little background on them.” Nate stopped, hoping that Pierce wouldn’t press him on the identity of the client or their relative.

“
You want to know if they’re honest?” Pierce rubbed his head vigorously, further encouraging a wayward cowlick. “Guess it depends on whether or not you believe in the ability to talk to spirits. Now, for myself, it seems like a lot of claptrap. After fighting in the Union army for four years, don’t know I would want ready access to the dead. Haunt me enough in my dreams, so I don’t have any desire to pay good money to have them chatter at me in the daytime. But, if you do believe in such things, the Framptons, as far as I could see, give good value for the fees they charge.”

“
Good value. What do you mean?”

“
You see, I attended a couple of their séances, and they put on quite a show. Lights, music, spirit voices, and a strange girl in a cabinet. Now, are you asking me if all of it was real? Don’t know. Probably not, but I didn’t see any tricks. No strings or fake hands on sticks or mediums slipping out of the circle to prance around as ghosts. And the folks sitting around the table seemed satisfied with the little talks they were having with their dearly departed. Not like some of the other mediums and fortunetellers in town.

Pierce again indulged in one of his full-throated laughs and then said, “Lord almighty, there was one woman who promised if you would let her connect you up to a battery then the electric current would rearrange your magnetic fluids and reacquaint you with your past lives! I tell you, after the hours I spent sitting in dark rooms, having some old gypsy fondle my hands and give me bad advice, or peering at the indecipherable scribbling on slates by so-called professors, the Framptons’ séances were a treat. And that Arabella, have you met her? Easy on the eyes, I’ve got to tell you. I didn’t mind letting her hold my hand at all!”

Nate smiled, as he knew he was supposed to, but he didn’t like the coarse sort of humor at which Pierce obviously excelled, particularly when it was directed at women. He remembered that he’d heard rumors that Pierce had expensive tastes in the female sex, not just restaurants. He’d also had a sudden shock when Pierce had mentioned a gypsy fortuneteller, and he wondered if Pierce had been to see Madam Sibyl when he did his investigation for his article. Surely Annie would have mentioned this to him if it were true.

Nate decided he’d better get right to the point. He didn’t want any more reminiscences about fortunetellers, so he said, “I can see you were impressed by the Framptons, but I do have to gather as much background information as I can, if only to reassure my client. If you could let me know if there was any information you learned about them that you didn’t put in your article. For example, what kind of training did Mrs. Frampton have before she became a medium, and what exactly does it mean that Simon Frampton was a mesmerist?” Nate took out a small notebook and pen that he carried around in his coat pocket, to signal he was ready for more serious business.

Anthony Pierce smiled at him, took a sip of his coffee, leaned back, and began to spell out in detail the background story he had gotten on the Framptons. As Nate wrote down the spew of facts, he recognized with increased admiration that Pierce was one of those men whose mind was like a steel-trap. It caught and held every bit of minutia that came his way. According to Pierce, Simon Frampton was born in England in 1834, the younger son of a wealthy Southampton wine merchant. He was expelled from a good public school, and, in defiance of his family, he apprenticed at age eighteen with a touring magician. By the age of twenty-three he had his own show, and he took on Arabella, whose family had a tumbling act, as his assistant when she was only fourteen. In 1860, when she was sixteen and he was twenty-six, they married, and at some point in the next ten years he added mesmerism to his magic act.

“
Simon showed me a bunch of clippings; he was billed as ‘Simon the Seer,’ and evidently this part of the act was such a hit that for several years they even toured the cities of Europe,” Pierce said.

“
What role did his wife play with his mesmerism act?”

“
Now, that wasn’t clear to me. I suspect by that time, she’d have been in her twenties, contorting herself so she could ‘disappear’ into various trunks and boxes wasn’t as easy. She may still be small, but her endowments are, let’s say, substantial. I can imagine just by standing on stage and striking pretty poses that Arabella would have been an asset to any act.”

Pierce went on to tell Nate that sometime in the early seventies the couple settled down in London, and Arabella began her career as a medium, with Simon acting as her business manager. “I don’t know why they decided to come to the States when they did. Simon said they’d heard good things about the support of Spiritualism over here. I suspect it might have had something to do with the big scandal that year in England, when some famous British medium was caught running around in the dark wearing white sheets. Simon probably thought it was a good time to get out of town.”

Nate looked up from his notebook and said, “Did you hear of any scandal associated with the Framptons themselves?”

“
No, not a whiff. I even wrote a friend of mine in New York to see if maybe they came to the west coast because of some difficulty with the good citizens of that fair city. He wrote back that the good citizens were sorry to see them go, especially the lovely Arabella!”

Nate confessed to himself he was beginning to develop a strong curiosity about Mrs. Frampton. But it didn’t look like he had dug up anything useful for Annie. He thought he would take one more stab at it, saying to Pierce, “I was wondering if you might be interested in doing a follow-up article on the Framptons, if I did find out anything new. For example, if I found out how the ‘show,’ as you called it, was carried off, or, maybe, evidence that the people attending the séances are being unduly influenced. You know, like the rumors about how Mrs. Lincoln was being manipulated by those mediums she invited into the White House to contact her son Willie during the war.”

Pierce sat up straighter and leaned towards Nate, who felt that for once he had fully engaged the journalist’s attention.

“
Well, Nate,” he said, “I can’t say my editors would feel another article revealing the secrets of the séance would have much to offer our readers. They weren’t all that pleased with the last set of pieces I wrote. Didn’t feel the subject was worthy of my ‘keen political mind,’ I think is how Charles de Young put it. That was before he went off and shot old Kalloch, which wasn’t particularly worthy of his keen political mind, was it? But if there was some real scandal, maybe some wealthy businessman was . . . say, this doesn’t have anything to do with that whole Voss affair this summer? I believe Newsome said you were mixed up in that somehow.”

“
No, not at all. My uncle’s firm does represent the Voss family, but this is an entirely different matter.”
And Annie certainly wouldn’t thank me if I somehow got you interested in opening up that whole mess
. Nate thought to himself.

“
Right, then,” said Pierce. “Let me tell you what I will do. You just sit tight; last thing you want to do is put a scare into the Framptons by nosing around. I will shake the trees a little, see if anything falls out, and if I think there’s something worth writing about, I will try to sell my editors on it. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, but since I’ve been out of town, I am behind on a number of stories. You tell that client of yours to hold their horses. Some good people in this city support Spiritualism and might get their noses out of joint if you aren’t careful. Now me, I make my living upsetting people, but I expect with a respectable firm like yours, a low profile is what sells.”

“
You sound like my uncle,” Nate replied. “Truth is, I’m getting a little tired of being respectable and maintaining a low profile.”

“
God, don’t I know what you mean,” exclaimed Pierce. “I had an uncle who actually refused to ever have anything to do with my ma because she married a man he didn’t think was respectable enough. What an ass. His wife was even worse, treated my mother like dirt.”

Pierce frowned and thought for a moment. “You know what, Nate my boy, when Kalloch takes office in December there’s going to be some real shake-ups happening in town, Republicans thrown out, Workingmen’s Party and Democrats coming in. You wouldn’t happen to be a registered Democrat would you?”

Nate shook his head. “Actually I’m not officially affiliated with any party. Uncle Frank likes the firm to be seen as independent, although I’m a staunch supporter of the national Republicans.”

“
Of course you are. Let me think on it. City attorney’s office could use a good man like you. Then there’s the state level. We may have lost the city, but danged if the Workingmen’s Party didn’t siphon off enough Democratic votes to give the governorship to a Republican. Going to be even bigger changes in Sacramento.”

Standing up abruptly, Pierce crammed on his hat and shot out his hand to give Nate a hearty shake. “Got to run, deadline and all. Thanks for the fine meal and some mighty fine conversation. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, but you stay away from the Framptons until I do.”

“
Mrs. Upham Kendee. Electrician and medium. 207 Kearny St. Sittings daily. Circles Tuesday and Friday evenings
.—
San Francisco Chronicle
, 1879

Annie hadn’t really understood how nervous she was about being called to sit in the cabinet again with the disturbing Evie May, until the point in the séance on Monday night when the lights behind her brightened and she heard the words “Father, come to me” issue forth from the young medium. Relief washed over her as she watched Judge Babcock push away from the table. This time, at least, she was safe.
But safe from what? Safe from Maybelle? Just one more of Evie May’s inventions. What harm can she do me?

Annie still hadn’t mentioned the disturbing encounter with Maybelle to anyone, telling herself that this would just bring up unnecessary questions and emotions about a past she wanted to stay buried. Yet she knew she would need to enter that cabinet again if she had any hope of the Framptons producing the fictional Johnny, still her best plan for convincing Sukie Vetch of the Framptons’ perfidy. And that meant risking another meeting with Maybelle. Hearing the agitated voice of the Judge behind her, apparently unhappy with what the spirit of his precious daughter was telling him, Annie thought again about what Nate had said. If he was right and the Judge was invested in his belief that Evie May was his daughter, nothing would persuade him she wasn’t. Was there any reason to believe Sukie would be any different?