Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (50 page)

“
Yes, Harold’s cousin Tony, he lives in San Francisco. He’s really Harold’s best friend, and he has been very kind the last few months, trying to help me turn Harold’s mind away from his troubles. He came by immediately yesterday when I sent word to him about what Harold had done, and he talked to him a long time, trying to get him to see how foolish he’d been.”

Annie said, “Is it possible that Harold might have told him about what happened the night his mother died? Or might he have stopped by that evening?”

Hilda looked uncertain, but she said, “I can’t believe Tony would do anything to harm Harold.”

“
Does that mean that Harold might have confided in him?

“
Tony would be the one that Harold would turn to if he was upset. In fact, I wasn’t surprised when Harold told me later that he thought he remembered seeing Tony sometime on the day his mother died, but Tony said later he’d been out of town, which is why he didn’t hear of my mother-in-law’s death for several days. He travels a lot as part of his job.”

Annie’s suspicions grew, and she asked, “What exactly does Tony do?”

Hilda said, “He is really quite famous. In fact, this morning when Mrs. Nickerson stopped by, she recognized him from this photograph of him and Harold.”

She stood up and walked over to pick up a framed picture off the mantel, handing it to Annie and pointing to a short, squat man with a wild mane of hair, straggling mustache, and broad smile. “His name is Anthony Pierce. You may have heard of him, he is a featured reporter for the
San Francisco Chronicle
.”

“
Michael Shannon, a native of Ireland, aged 38, died in the city Hospital from the effects of a knife wound, inflicted by unknown parties. No arrests have been made.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle,
1879

When Hilda Hapgood told her that Harold’s cousin Tony was the journalist Anthony Pierce, Annie felt like someone had just leaned over her shoulder to put in the last piece of a puzzle, revealing for the first time a complete picture.

Anthony Pierce! Who better to work as partner with the Framptons? As a reporter, he could move with ease among his fellow San Franciscans, both high and low, and he would know where all the skeletons were buried: who had cheated on their spouses, neglected their aged parents, had a drinking problem, skimmed a little money out of the till, or fallen asleep when they were supposed to be watching a patient. In exchange, Simon probably gave him a cut of their proceeds, alerted him to possible scandals that might be turned into stories for the
Chronicle
, and did him the favor of directing a series of spirit messages to his cousin, Harold Hapgood.

She wondered if Pierce had made his arrangement with the Framptons before he planned the murder of Harold’s mother, if it was even planned. He couldn’t have foreseen Hilda leaving on that particular day and Harold getting drunk for the first time in four years. No, if her understanding of what happened was correct, this had been an impulse killing. He may have been looking for an opportunity for years, perhaps from the moment he had discovered that he would eventually inherit the Hapgood’s fortune, if both Harold and his mother could be gotten out of the way.

Then, as fate would have it, everything was handed to him, the perfect constellation of events. Hilda gone, supposedly for good, after a fight over her mother-in-law; the servant and the nurse out of the house; Harold conveniently having imbibed to the point of blackout, probably encouraged by his dear cousin Tony. All Pierce had to do was go upstairs, suffocate the old woman with a pillow, leaving the evidence scattered about (she wondered if the trail of pearls down to the sleeping Harold had been his touch, or just an accident), and let himself out.

As a journalist with police connections, he probably thought he could nudge the police in the right direction if the doctor didn’t immediately alert them himself. But Hilda had come home, cleaned up all the evidence, and the doctor obligingly called it a heart attack, and any nudging of the police by Pierce would make him look suspicious. No, the Framptons must have simply been a fallback plan.

She wished she knew more about Pierce. What was his motive? Pure greed? Annie wondered how long Pierce would have been willing to pursue this indirect route, waiting for the spirits to drive Harold either to commit suicide or drink himself to death, before taking matters into his own hands and arranging an accident for his cousin. Perhaps he didn’t feel the need to hurry events along while his mother was still alive and he was just a contingency beneficiary. But Nate had told her that the reason Pierce hadn’t been able to meet with him at first was he was back home attending his mother’s funeral. No wonder the spirit attacks on Harold had gotten worse in the past two weeks, the inheritance was now right within his grasp if Harold could just be gotten out of the picture.

Annie found herself curling her hands into fists at the thought of how Pierce had manipulated Nate. Had Pierce known from the very first that she was investigating the Framptons? She knew that Nate had been careful not to mention her name, but then he had shown up at the Framptons to escort her home. That had been at the end of the same séance when she found the first threatening note. It was possible Pierce had immediately made the connection between them if he had been at the Framptons that night. He had done that series of articles on local mediums and fortunetellers, and he may have even checked Madam Sibyl out and remembered that she lived in Mrs. Annie Fuller’s boarding house.

This would explain why Simon seemed to know about Madam Sibyl but didn’t find the connection particularly worrisome. Pierce must have simply warned him that Mrs. Fuller had already had some dealings with a local rival. On the other hand, Nate’s stated purpose in investigating the Framptons and finding out if they were engaged in criminal activity would have been what concerned Pierce the most at the start. When he learned of the connection between Nate and Annie, then she would have become more dangerous.

Oh, heavens, Nate would be so upset when he discovered that Pierce’s promises to get him a job in Sacramento had probably just been a way to distract him from further investigations into the Framptons. Annie was glad Nate had already come to the conclusion he didn’t want the job, less humiliating that way. For a moment, she let herself get distracted by the sweet memory of last night when he apologized for how seriously he had misread her. Thank goodness he’d come to that conclusion when he did and left the restaurant to find her, or she might be dead!

But why try to have Annie killed? Why not Nate? Pierce must have felt pretty confident he had been successful in distracting Nate. Annie, on the other hand, had persisted in coming to the séances, despite the threatening notes and the push off the horse car. She then reminded herself that the barrel incident happened the day after she visited the Hapgood’s store and spoke to Hilda.
Oh my!
Hilda had mentioned a cousin who was bringing her husband home from the Monday séance. Annie would have to ask Hilda if she had mentioned her visit to Pierce. If so, Pierce would feel she was getting too close to guessing the truth.

This would mean the barrel incident really had been an attempt on her life, and the man that Jamie saw run away was most likely the same man who assaulted her last night. Not hard to imagine the reporter having connections with local hoodlums, any one of whom could be hired to do the actual killing. How upsetting for him when, despite the scare with the barrels on Thursday, she had showed up the next night for the séance, thereby witnessing Evie May’s performance, which was obviously the climax of the campaign against Harold and would have been successful if Hilda hadn’t checked on her husband when she did.

Thinking of Evie May, Annie felt a spurt of anxiety. Once again, she couldn’t get out of her head Eddie’s message to her from Maybelle, warning her to watch out for the ‘bad man.” If the “bad man” were Pierce, and he suspected that Evie May had been talking to Annie outside the confines of the cabinet, then he might see Evie May as a direct threat. Equally upsetting was the thought that Evie May’s mother might have come to a similar conclusion as Annie had about the connections between Pierce, the Framptons, and what had happened to Harold Hapgood.

Hilda had told her that when Mrs. Nickerson saw the photograph on her visit earlier today, she had been quite excited and said what a surprise it was to discover that Harold was related to Pierce. Hilda described her as becoming very distracted and said she left quite quickly after that conversation. What if Mrs. Nickerson had decided to confront Pierce?

Her fear that Evie May and her mother might be in immediate danger had prompted Annie’s decision to go straight to the Framptons, rather than to walk back to her boarding house so she would be on time to make her meeting with Nate. Having spent over an hour trying to explain her suspicions to Hilda, she knew it was going to be hard to convince Nate, or the police, for that matter, that Anthony Pierce was a murderer.

Oddly, what had finally persuaded Hilda that Pierce was behind everything was the discovery that his mother had died over two weeks earlier and that he hadn’t mentioned this to either her or her husband. Annie couldn’t count on Nate making a similar leap, and she didn’t feel she could postpone her conversation with Mrs. Nickerson. As a result, Annie was hoping to talk Evie May’s mother into to removing herself and her daughter from the Framptons’ house as soon as possible, for safety’s sake.

Annie looked at her watch and saw that it was after six o’clock. Since it was Sunday, the Framptons’ cook should have left the house by now, and everyone but Biddy should be above stairs getting ready to go out. If she went round the back to the kitchen Biddy could let her in and maybe get a message to Mrs. Nickerson without alerting the Framptons. While it was possible Simon and Arabella had no idea that they were helping a murderer, Annie had no faith that they would care. All they would be concerned about was any threat to their source of inside information about San Franciscans, or any negative publicity that might come their way. No, Annie didn’t want to run into Simon or Arabella Frampton. Maybe she should just hang around outside the house until Mrs. Nickerson and Evie May left and follow them to wherever they were going to dinner.

Getting down from the horse car, Annie began to walk up Harrison, and when she had crossed Fifth Street she halted, seeing a great deal of activity going on in front of the Framptons’ house. The sun had set about an hour earlier, and the moon hadn’t risen yet, so the street was dark between the gas lamps. She moved closer to the storefronts on her right and cautiously crept closer until she was able to stop in the darkest part of the sidewalk, equidistant between the lamps on her side of the street.

Looking across the street she could see that there was a wagon pulled by four strong dray horses and a large, four-wheel hackney, both illuminated by several lanterns hung on their sides. The wagon looked to be filled with boxes, and, while she watched, Albert came out of the house at a trot, a large trunk on his shoulder. He was followed by a woman, who Annie guessed must be his wife, Arabella’s lady’s maid. She had two smaller valises that she handed to an unknown man, probably the cab driver, who began to strap them to the back of the hackney.

The woman returned up the steps to the front porch, and Annie saw Arabella in the light of the porch lamp move out of the house to meet her. She had on a hat and coat and was carrying another small valise, which she handed over to her lady’s maid, confirming Annie’s conclusion that she was witnessing the rapid decampment of the Framptons and their servants.

What could have happened to force them to leave so precipitously? Could they have known about the attack on Annie last night? Maybe Nate had gone ahead and reported the assault to the police. He had said that he could do so without involving her. The police could even have stopped by, spooking the Framptons into making the decision to leave town before an investigation went any further. Or could this be a reaction to Harold Hapgood’s suicide? Certainly having a client try to kill himself wouldn’t be good for a medium’s reputation if it got out. But they had known about the suicide for over a day, and the activity going on in front of her looked like a very hastily organized affair.

Annie’s heart clutched. Could this be the result of something Mrs. Nickerson said or did when she returned from visiting the Hapgoods earlier today? And where were Mrs. Nickerson and Evie May? The cab in front of the house wasn’t large enough to carry six, but maybe Albert and his wife were going to ride on the wagon. Annie couldn’t imagine Simon abandoning the young medium; she was too much of a financial asset to leave behind. And Biddy? Was she in the house helping with the packing?

Annie moved out of the dark and began to cross the street, impelled by an overwhelming need to find Biddy and Evie May and make sure they were all right. As she stepped onto the sidewalk, she saw Simon come down the steps, pulling on gloves. They must have been about to leave. As she walked up to him, she saw a start of surprise on his face, then a crooked smile that didn’t quite reach those intense gray eyes of his.

He said, tipping his hat, “Mrs. Fuller, or perhaps I should call you Madam Sibyl? Why am I not surprised to find you here just in time to see us off. I am afraid that from the beginning I underestimated you, despite my lovely wife’s misgivings. Was it just professional jealousy that motivated you? Surely there are enough good people in the city willing to part with their money that you didn’t need to meddle in our affairs?”