No Comfort for the Lost (29 page)

“I have brought you flowers,” she said, resting the tulips atop the grave’s bare earth. They were a lovely mix of yellows and reds. “And a few pieces of Addie’s wonderful shortbread. It is a tradition for your people to bring offerings of food, I believe.”

She retrieved the carefully wrapped shortbread from her reticule and set it next to the flowers. “You should have come to me for the money, Li Sha.”

But perhaps the girl had sensed that Celia, knowing the futility of any attempt to flee, would have succeeded in talking her out of leaving San Francisco. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to explain to Celia why she needed to leave in the first place—because Tom, Celia’s own brother-in-law, possessed an abusive streak that Celia had never suspected.

Patrick’s brother was not a murderer, though, and she could rest content in the assurance that she’d done what she could to clear his name.

Celia smiled down at the grave. “I shall come back every year, Li Sha, as your family would do if they were here to remember you. I shall come with offerings.”

She would come because she could not visit the grave of her brother, Harry, who’d been buried thousands of miles away, outside of Sebastopol. And because she had no grave for Patrick, possibly drowned, possibly not, the weight of uncertainty a heavier burden on her than a confirmation of his death would have been.

After a farewell, she turned and noticed the man waiting at the gate.

“I didn’t want to disturb you,” said Detective Greaves when she reached him.

“Your presence would not have disturbed me,” she answered truthfully.

“Addie told me you were out here. I wanted to let you know that your brother-in-law has been released from jail.”

“I wonder what Tom will do now,” she said. “I wonder if he will leave town.”

“Probably,” he said. “For all its great size, San Francisco can be a small place. Too small to hide in.” He nodded toward Li Sha’s grave. “If the preachers are right and she can see us here on earth, ma’am, I’d guess that she’s pleased you’re honoring her.”

“That is my wish, Mr. Greaves.” Celia gazed up at the face that had become so familiar to her. “I suppose this is good-bye for us.”

“I wouldn’t say that, ma’am.”

“Then I will see you again?” she asked, the question sounding needful, which she never wanted to seem.

A strand of hair, loosened by the wind, fluttered against her cheek, and he tucked it behind her ear. The touch of his fingers made her shiver.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Davies,” he answered with a lazy smile. “To quote a blond-haired Englishwoman we both know—you’re not going to be rid of me so easily.”

He tapped fingertips to the brim of his flat-crowned hat and strode off toward his waiting horse.

Leaving her to smile after him.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

On the morning of February 12, 1867, a “disgraceful riot in San Francisco” occurred, as the headline in the
Sacramento Daily Union
blared two days later. On that day, approximately thirty Chinese workers were grading lots in the South Beach area when they were attacked by a gang of white laborers. Predominantly Irish and unemployed, the laborers blamed the Chinese for taking their jobs. When the police finally quelled the riot, dozens of Chinese workers had been severely beaten and the shacks they’d erected to live in had been burned to the ground. Justice was swift, and each rioter was fined five hundred dollars and sentenced to ninety days in jail. Rather than discouraging further hostile acts, however, the men’s punishment added fuel to the fire, and the Anti-Coolie Association sprang to life. In the coming years, the violence would swell far beyond riots.

Anti-Chinese sentiment had been riding high for years before that February day in 1867, and the Irish weren’t the only ones who resented the Chinese presence in California. The meeting that took place at the American Theater in early March, which called for the cessation of Chinese immigration, was only one of many meetings that would follow. Ordinances and laws against the Chinese culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. For the first time in United States history, a federal law prohibited immigration based upon ethnicity. Although the law was ultimately repealed in 1943, negative attitudes toward the Chinese would take far longer to subside.

My descriptions of the city and of the Chinese quarter are based on descriptions from the time; not every observer was a reliable one, however, and prejudices of the period color the accounts given. The snippets of the speech given at the American Theater were taken from a report in the
Sacramento Daily Union
. Also, for the bits of Cantonese dialogue included in the book, I have chosen to use the spellings found in John Chalmers’ 1907
English and Cantonese Dictionary
. Interpretations have changed over time. Lastly, whereas the majority of the characters in this book are fictional, Atkins Massey and Dr. Stephen Harris were real people. My characterization of these prominent citizens of San Francisco is my own creation, though.

I could not have written this book without the help and encouragement of many people. First off, I must thank the amazing editorial staff at New American Library, especially Ellen Edwards, who worked tirelessly to whip my manuscript into shape. Your insight made all the difference. Also, I have to thank my agent, Natasha Kern, who has weathered many a storm with me. You have my eternal gratitude for your sage advice and endless support. To my author sisters at Serious Writers—Donna, Jane, Pat, and Robin. Monthly desserts, laughter, and writing talk; what else could a girl ask for? Also, I extend my appreciation to Peter Leavell, historian and author, who cheerfully answered even my stupidest questions about the Civil War. I’m fortunate to call you a friend. And to Sarah Log, who aided my research of the Cantonese language. Any errors are mine and mine alone. Furthermore, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my critique partner, the fabulous author and former ER nurse whose medical expertise has saved my butt numerous times, Candace Calvert. You have been with me since the beginning and have kept me from quitting more times than I can count. I give thanks for you every day. Lastly, to my family—thank you for understanding why we’re ordering takeout for dinner again. Love you all.

The grisly discovery of a decaying body in a cellar places Celia Davies’ young friend Owen in danger and draws Celia and police detective Nicholas Greaves into a complex murder investigation in the next intriging Mystery of Old San Francisco from Nancy Herriman, NO PITY FOR THE DEAD

Available in print and e-book in August 2016.

Read on for a brief excerpt . . .

San Francisco, June 1867

I’m in for it for sure. Dan and his buried treasure. Dang it all.

Owen Cassidy glanced over at Dan as the lantern sent the man’s shadow dancing over the cellar wall. He didn’t know how long they’d been digging, but they were both down to their sweat-soaked shirtsleeves, and Dan had been cursing under his breath for at least the past quarter hour.

Dan Matthews swore again as another hole revealed only sand and rocks and bits of broken construction rubble used to level the building lot. “Anything there yet, Cassidy?”

“Nope,” Owen said.

Soon. Dan would give up soon, and they could stop and pretend they’d never been looking for gold. It
had
to be soon. Owen was tired of breathing in the dust they’d stirred up, most of it from the coal heaped in the corner, and his left palm had an ugly blister that was sure to burst. Plus, he was scared that Mr. Martin would discover that two of the workers he’d hired to refurbish his offices had been down in the cellar poking around. They’d lose their jobs for sure.

Worse still, if Mrs. Davies found out what he was doing, she’d scold the skin plumb off him. And Owen never wanted her mad at him. She was as close to a parent as he had left.

“You sure Mr. Martin would bury gold down here?” Owen asked. “I mean, beneath his offices and all?”

“Where better? His house, where some nosy maid might find it?” Dan replied. “Who’d ever come looking down here? And why do you think he’s in an all-fired hurry to have this cellar bricked over, when it’s been fine as it is for so long, huh? ’Cause he wants his money covered over for safekeeping and none the wiser, that’s why.”

Dan sealed his commentary with a nod. It did make sense. Sort of.

And then it happened. If only Owen hadn’t shifted to his right and begun a new hole.

The sound his shovel made was suddenly very different from the clang of metal on stone. “Dan?”

Dan almost fell in his haste to reach Owen’s side. “You’ve found it!” he crowed. “It’s old Jasper Martin’s bag of gold!”

He dropped to his hands and knees and started clawing at the ground, forgetting about his own shovel in his haste to reach the wealth he was certain they’d found.

“What the . . .” Dan drew back, his face going as white as a lady’s fine handkerchief. “Shit!” he shouted, jumping to his feet. “Why won’t he leave me be?”

“Who, Dan? What?” Owen asked, trying to get a look past the man’s broad shoulders. He couldn’t believe what he saw peeking around the peeled-back edge of a length of oilcloth.

Owen felt his stomach churn, and he clapped a hand to his mouth. Because what he saw sure did look like a blackened, rotting arm.

“Shit!” Dan shouted for good measure before bolting for the steps, Owen hard on his heels.

• • •

“
M
rs. Kelly, you must stay off your feet if you do not want this baby to come too soon.”

Celia Davies sat back, the cane-seated chair creaking beneath her, and clasped the hand of the woman grimacing on the bed. Maryanne Kelly’s skin was clammy and her pulse rapid. In the adjacent room, the Kellys’ infant bawled, adding to the tension. Twelve months since that child had been born and already another was on the way, and more quickly than it should have been.

“But I’ve nobody to help, Mrs. Davies.” Maryanne pressed her lips together as beads of sweat popped on her upper lip. She’d been experiencing night pains off and on for the past week, and Celia worried for her and the baby. From what Celia’s examinations had revealed, the fetus was small and not particularly energetic; an early birth might threaten the child’s survival.

Maryanne exhaled as the current pain passed. “John leaves early and gets home so late from supervising that crew at Martin and Company,” she said. “He can’t help with the baby. And he can’t help with the cooking and the cleaning, either.”

If Celia had a penny for how many times she’d heard the like from her other patients, she would have been as rich as Croesus by now.

“And don’t tell me to hire a nurse,” Maryanne added. “You know we’ve little money.”

A situation that was easily observed by a quick scan of the cramped and gloomy bedroom where Maryanne lay. The meager contents consisted of a rope-strung bed topped by a straw mattress, the chair Celia occupied, and one chest of drawers that looked as though it had been rescued from a rubbish pile. The linens were clean, however, and the damp air coming through the window was fresh and smelled of the ocean. Celia had seen worse lodgings. Far worse.

“Yes, I know.” Celia released Maryanne’s hand and stood. She folded away her stethoscope, returning it to the black portmanteau that served as her medical bag. “But you must spend more time resting. Ask a neighbor to help. Surely there is someone nearby who can stop in for an hour or two.”

“To help a Mick and his wife?” Maryanne asked, cynicism in her light brown eyes. “We should’ve moved to the South Beach area among our own kind rather than live near the Italians and the Spanish and their endless guitar playing. But no, John had to move up here.”

Her infant daughter’s bawling increased in pitch and volume, and Maryanne looked toward the door. “And that one with the colic. What am I to do? Some days I think you’re a lucky one with no children, ma’am.”

Celia would not call it luck. And she expected she never would have children, especially given her singular lack of a living husband.

“You will feel more cheerful after the baby is born, Mrs. Kelly.”

“That’s what John says, too.” Maryanne managed a smile, and Celia helped her sit.

“Take some sage tea to ease your pains or a teaspoon of paregoric if the tea does not work.” Celia snapped shut the portmanteau and gathered up her wrap. “For your daughter’s colic, you can try some ginger tea, if she’ll have it. Otherwise, a warm compress on her belly might help.”

“Thank you,” the other woman said. “I just wish John could be here more often. I’m worried he won’t be with me when the baby finally does come. But I wouldn’t want him to lose his job because he’s tending to me. Not when he’s had such poor luck at the other work he had before we came to San Francisco. He won’t go back to being a ranch hand or a miner.”

“Do ask a neighbor for help, Mrs. Kelly. You might be surprised who is willing to assist a woman in labor.” It was a common enough condition among the women who lived in the lodgings that spilled down the hills toward the Golden Gate, and many would be sympathetic.

“I
would
be surprised,” said Maryanne, hauling herself to her feet, a hand on her protruding belly.

“There’s no need to show me out,” said Celia. “Good night.”

“Do you need a candle to light your way home? The fog’s come in thick tonight.”

“I’ve only a few blocks to walk, Mrs. Kelly.” Celia fastened her navy wool wrap atop her crimson garibaldi and grabbed her bag. “I will be fine.”

“You’ve more courage than I do to walk these streets alone at night, ma’am.”

“They are not so bad.” Which was what she always told her housekeeper as well. Addie Ferguson tended not to believe Celia either.

Mrs. Kelly thanked her, and Celia let herself out the front door. The fog was indeed thick, the corner gaslight a fuzzy spot of yellow. The mist swirled around a horse and rider passing on the intersecting street, a shadow moving through the blanketing white like a specter. After an anxious inhalation of breath, Celia descended to the street, clutching her portmanteau close.

It was only a few blocks to reach home, she reminded herself. She was well-known in the area and would be perfectly safe. Better still, she was a very fast walker.

• • •

A
side from a momentary fright caused by a cat darting across her path, Celia arrived home without incident. Next door, their neighbor was scolding one of her children in a burst of Italian, and the dog across the street found something to bark at. Life was normal, safe and sound.

Rolling her tense shoulders, Celia climbed the steps to her comfortable two-story brick home. She had just reached the porch when the front door swung open.

“You’ve missed dinner, ma’am,” said Addie, her hands fisting on her hips.

“I trust you have a bowl of mulligatawny at the ready for me.” Celia stepped past her housekeeper into the warmth of the entry hall.

“I ought to let you starve, if you canna keep normal hours like other doctors.”

An idle threat, coming from a woman who enjoyed mothering Celia, even though she was three years younger and, moreover, a servant. “I am not a doctor, Addie—only a nurse, as you well know. And as my patients do not keep normal hours, neither can I.”

Piano music drifted through the closed doors to the parlor off to her left, followed by peals of girlish laughter. Barbara was entertaining a friend that evening, something Celia had sometimes feared would never happen for her half-Chinese cousin.

“Have the girls eaten?” she asked, dropping onto a chair to remove her boots and slip into the soft leather mules she kept in the entry hall.

“Two hours ago, ma’am,” said Addie. “And that Grace Hutchinson, for all she’s as skinny as a reed, has a healthy appetite. Maybe they dinna feed her at that fancy house of theirs.”

“I am certain her mother feeds her, Addie,” Celia replied, smiling as she thought of Jane Hutchinson, the woman who’d become as dear of a friend to her as Grace was to Barbara. Though Grace was only her stepdaughter, Jane doted on the girl. “But who else makes a mulligatawny like you do?” Celia added.

Another burst of giggling erupted in the parlor.

“Och, those two! They’re like as not still laughing over their little joke about Mr. Knowles from the butcher shop.” Addie snatched up Celia’s boots and collected her wrap. “Asking me if we’re to get our meat delivered for free if I marry him.”

“It is a reasonable question. I hope we do,” teased Celia.

“Me, marry that galoot? Och, ma’am. What a thought.”

With a harrumph, Addie hung the wrap on a wall peg and marched with the boots into the kitchen at the end of the hallway. Smiling, Celia slid open the parlor doors and went through to where the two girls, both seated at the rented piano, had their heads bent close together.

Barbara sat bolt upright at Celia’s arrival. “Cousin, you’re finally back.”

Grace Hutchinson rose to her feet. “How is your patient, Mrs. Davies?”

Barbara followed her friend’s example and stood, too, wavering on her disfigured left foot before she regained her balance. The girls could not be more different—Barbara, black-haired and dark-eyed, her features an echo of her deceased mother’s Chinese heritage; and Grace, her hair a paler blond than Celia’s, with eyes a snapping hazel, willowy and already taller than Barbara although she was a year younger. Grace was a polite, cheerful girl, and anyone who could make Barbara laugh was welcome in their house.

“Well enough. Thank you for asking, Grace.” Celia consulted the Ellery watch pinned at the waist of her brown holland skirt. Nearly nine. How had it gotten to be so late? “I did not expect to see you two still up at this hour, however.”

“We were both hoping to sit with you by the fire and read before we retired,” said Barbara, and Grace nodded in agreement. Grace was staying the night; Celia expected there would be more giggling and whispering before they finally fell asleep.

“If you are exhausted tomorrow, Grace, your mother will not be happy with me.”

“My mother would never be unhappy with you, Mrs. Davies. She thinks you’re so strong and brave, and I can’t tell you how much she admires you,” Grace insisted. “I mean, who else would’ve been so daring as to go out and discover her friend’s killer?”

Celia heard Addie, setting the bowl of stew on the table in the adjoining dining room, clear her throat in disapproval. The story had been in every newspaper in the city, as the reporters in San Francisco loved to write about the sensational or the merely strange. A nurse finding the killer of a Chinese prostitute had apparently fit both categories.

“Yes, that,” said Celia sternly, dissuading any further conversation on the topic. It was best left buried in the past.

“So, can we stay up for a little while longer?” pleaded Barbara.

“I suppose so,” Celia replied.

“Should I bring in some milk and shortbread?” Addie asked.

The girls grinned.

“Yes, Addie, please do,” answered Celia, and went to sit at the dining room table.

Barbara and Grace ran back to the piano and plopped onto the bench, and Grace began singing to Barbara’s tentative accompaniment. Celia smiled.
Two friends, two bodies with one soul inspired.

“Indeed so, Mr. Pope,” she murmured to herself.

She’d taken only a bite of the mulligatawny when someone pounded on the front door.

“Och, not another patient at this hour!” Addie called out from the kitchen. She leaned through the dining room doorway on her way to the foyer. “I’m turning them away, ma’am. You’re closed.”

She bustled off. Celia heard Addie release the front door lock, then give out a screech. Celia jumped up and hurried through the parlor.

“Stay there, girls,” she told Barbara and Grace, shutting the doors on their startled expressions.

Owen Cassidy stumbled across the threshold, gasping for breath. He was covered in coal dust and dirt from head to toe; the only pale part of him were the whites of his wide green eyes.

“Och, lad,” chastised Addie. “Dinna even think of coming inside—”

“Ma’am! He’s dead!” he cried, gaping at Celia. “He’s dead!”

“What nonsense are you blathering?” asked Addie.

“The fellow in the cellar! He’s dead!”