No Comfort for the Lost (3 page)

“Didn’t get the exact address, however.”

“Which surprises me.”

“Don’t get any ideas about heading to Chinatown to ask questions, Mrs. Davies.” He frowned at her, a further attempt to intimidate. “My advice to you is to go straight home. It’ll be dark soon, and I’d rather not hear about you at the morning station briefing.”

“Do not tell me you are worried for me, Mr. Greaves.”

His eyes searched her face. “Mrs. Davies, I hate to say I am.”

The horsecar rolled to a halt, discharging a handful of Germans and Poles from the wharves and Irishmen from just about everywhere else. She watched them as they dispersed along the road, their accents and swagger reminding her of Patrick.

Mr. Greaves helped her board and paid the fare over her protests. “Compensation for your time,” he said.

She clung to the railing as passengers shoved past her. When she reached a seat, she lowered the window and leaned out.

Mr. Greaves tapped fingertips to the brim of his hat. “Good evening, Mrs. Davies,” he called out from the curb, “and good-bye.”

“Good-bye?” She lifted her chin. “I wouldn’t be so hopeful, Detective Greaves.”

The horsecar lurched forward before she could be sure of his response. But she thought he might have chuckled.

• • •

A
fter he’d seen Mrs. Davies off, Nick took a detour through Chinatown before heading home. Until this case, he hadn’t paid much attention to the anti-Chinese groups. He’d expected their righteous indignation would soon burn out, once they realized they weren’t getting anywhere and the Chinese were in San Francisco to stay. But if Mrs. Davies’ half-Chinese cousin was scared . . . well, there might be more heat behind their indignation than he’d thought.

A block shy of the police station, he turned west off Kearney. The Chinese lived and worked along Sacramento and Dupont, and they crowded the streets, mostly men in their silk tunics and wide pants, skullcaps over their pigtailed hair. They watched him as he strode past the tables they’d set up on the sidewalks to hawk their goods—unfamiliar vegetables and painted fans and oriental medicines and bits of just about everything. Red paper lanterns hung over doorways and red signs dangled from protruding balconies. A scrawny dog barked at him and a kid shouted in Chinese. A nearby man shushed the boy and sent him scurrying inside their shop. The man’s eyes followed Nick. Did the vendor seem apprehensive or fearful? Neither, it seemed. Maybe Mrs. Davies was wrong.

But Nick wanted to be sure. He didn’t want every Chinese person in town wondering who might be murdered next, and if he could find out who’d killed Li Sha, they might begin to feel safe. He knew that’s what Uncle Asa, one of the finest detectives—hell, one of the finest policemen—Nick had ever known, would do. Because his uncle had valued justice like Nick did. And those who needed justice the most were the ones least likely to get it.

He had almost reached Stockton when he heard a shout coming from an alley up ahead and began running toward the sound. Halfway down the passageway, a skinny Chinese laundry boy, his load of clean underclothes spilled into a dirty puddle, had been cornered in a doorway by a handful of white boys in filthy caps and torn duck pants. The kid’s lip was bleeding and there were cuts on his face.

“Hey!” Nick sprinted forward, his hat flying off. The cowards scattered like marbles after a good strike.

“Dirty China boy!” shouted one before vanishing around the farthest corner.

With a sob, the little boy dropped to the ground, and Nick changed his mind about chasing the bullies and pummeling them. He returned to the kid.

“Here,” he said, extending a hand. “Let me help you to your feet.”

The boy looked up at him with tears in his black eyes but no sign of gratitude. He was all of seven or eight and his expression conveyed only hatred.

“No!” a woman screeched, clattering down the alleyway in her high shoes. Angry Chinese words followed, some directed at the boy, some at Nick. She hauled the boy to his feet, gathered the spilled laundry, and thrust it into his arms. Grabbing the boy, she dragged him toward the road without looking back.

Nick collected his hat, brushed it off, and restored it to his head. A glance around revealed faces in doorways and windows, hastily withdrawn. Mrs. Davies was right to worry. Trouble was brewing, and if they weren’t all careful, the pot might blow its lid.

• • •

“
C
rumpets and orange marmalade this morning, ma’am?” asked Addie, leaning through the doorway into the downstairs room Celia had converted into her clinic. “With some poached eggs?”

“Addie, that sounds wonderful,” Celia answered, glancing over from her desk. “And tea. The strongest oolong you can brew.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

Celia yawned into her fist. She had been called away last night to help a young Mexican woman through childbirth. The infant, a lovely black-haired boy, was stillborn. How his mother had wept. When Celia had finally returned home and collapsed into bed, she had lain awake and thought about Li Sha, whose baby had been likewise cheated of life. Thought about the cruel brevity of man’s existence.

She wrapped her crimson shawl with its paisley border more tightly around her shoulders, the cashmere whispering against her neck. She closed her eyes and breathed in. The shawl had been her mother’s, and if she tried very hard, Celia could imagine she smelled her mother’s jasmine perfume caught up in the warp and weft. A small morsel of comfort.

Perhaps her aunt in Hertfordshire was correct, and nursing was no proper occupation for a lady. Her aunt had never forgiven Celia when she’d reasoned that the quickest way to join Harry in the Crimea was to pretend she was older than her true years and volunteer as a nurse. When she’d learned just how different mending a bird’s broken wing was from tending shrapnel-riddled bodies, she’d almost turned back from her chosen path. But she hadn’t. She had persevered, seen success, and come to love what she did.

She could not, however, restore a stillborn baby to life or save Li Sha.

“Your tea, ma’am,” announced Addie, striding into the room with a tray, bringing Celia back to the here and now.

“Is Barbara awake?” she asked.

“Aye.” Addie moved aside Celia’s ledgers and set the tray atop her desk. She poured out a cupful of steaming tea. “She was sitting on the porch for a while, catching a chill, but she’s in the parlor now. Staring out the window, poor bairn.”

After burning her tongue on a quick sip, Celia rose and wandered across the foyer that separated the two front parlors—one now Celia’s examination room, the other used as their sitting room.

Barbara had turned one of the upholstered chairs to face the window and fixed her gaze on the street beyond the glass, her damaged foot resting on a low stool. There wasn’t much of a view across the stretch of dirt road except for the top story and roof of the house across the way, its ground floor below street level.

“How are you feeling this morning, Barbara?” Celia asked from the doorway.

Barbara had taken the confirmation of Li Sha’s death very hard. When Celia had returned from her patient last night, she’d heard her cousin sobbing in her bedchamber. She should have realized that Barbara had grown attached to Li Sha, though she’d rarely shown affection for the girl. Her cousin must have longed for a friend who could comprehend the isolation she endured, halfway between her mother’s Chinese world and her father’s white one, where people whispered behind their hands and didn’t fully accept her.

“How can she be dead?” Barbara’s head drooped. “I keep thinking and thinking, but when Owen came by earlier, he said it’s just something that happens to people like him and Li Sha, people nobody wants.”

“That isn’t true,” Celia protested. “Li Sha was wanted. And Owen Cassidy is wanted, too, by those who matter.” Having been abandoned by his parents, Owen scraped by, living on the streets and doing odd jobs, just one boy among the many lost souls in this city. “But I can understand his feelings.”

Or were they more than feelings? Owen was Irish like many of the men in the anti-coolie groups. What might he know about Li Sha’s death? She would ask him the next time he came by.

“It’s just awful,” said Barbara, toying with the folded lace-edged handkerchief in her lap, running her fingertip across the looping
B
embroidered in vermilion silk.

“Are you afraid that the rioters who attacked those Chinese laborers a few weeks ago might have killed Li Sha?” asked Celia. “Because I am thinking that may be the case.”

Barbara glanced over, a tiny crease in her forehead. “The rioters . . . oh yes. Of course. Them.”

“I don’t want you to be concerned for your own safety,” said Celia. She hated to see Barbara upset like this. “I will not let anyone harm you. I promised your father on his deathbed I would take care of you, and I shall.”

Barbara chewed her lower lip. “I wish I still had piano lessons with Em so I could talk to Mr. Palmer about what happened to Li Sha. I’m sure he’d have an explanation.”

Why did she think that? Joseph Palmer and his family had met Li Sha at a charity event at the Chinese Mission earlier that year, but a casual acquaintance hardly meant Mr. Palmer would have insight into who had killed her.

“But I’m not sure that Mr. Palmer is at home,” added Barbara, the crease in her forehead deepening.

“Has he been away?”

“I think so.”

“Clearly, I don’t know Mr. Palmer’s plans,” said Celia. Barbara’s preoccupation with the man made Celia uneasy. She glanced up at Uncle Walford grinning down from his portrait. Barbara wanted a father. Was charming, handsome Joseph Palmer the substitute she’d settled upon?

“Once I’ve finished with my patients today, I shall be heading out to visit the Langes,” said Celia. “I need to pick up some supplies, and I also wish to see how they have received the news about Li Sha. Mr. Lange was fond of her. Would you like to go with me?”

Barbara’s expression darkened. “No. I’d rather not.”

“Then perhaps you can visit my patient in Chinatown. I want to know how the wounds to her arm are doing. The constable should be making his rounds”—Celia checked the time on her watch—“in about two hours and should be able to accompany you. If you are uneasy about going alone, you can take Addie.”

“All right,” Barbara muttered, chewing her lower lip again, as she did when she was agitated.

Celia considered her. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Barbara?”

“No.”

Celia stepped back from the doorway. “I will have Addie bring you some tea, and a crumpet if you’d like. Some food will help you feel better.”

“I’ll be fine,” Barbara answered. “I just wish . . . she didn’t have to die.”

Lange’s business was located a few blocks south of the police station along a stretch of Pine Street that was thick with stores. Nick scanned the pedestrians, a better class of folks than Li Sha would have interacted with in Chinatown.

He reached the store, where a middle-aged woman had her nose pressed to the window glass.

“Is Mr. Lange in today?” Nick asked her.

She startled. “Why, yes. Seems they are.”

“Then maybe you should go in.”

“Oh no. No, no, no,” she said, retreating from the window. “I heard about that Chinese girl of theirs getting killed and I wouldn’t want to disturb them, you see. Though I’m not surprised, you know. Mighty strange goings-on, if you ask me. Mighty strange.”

“How so?” Nick asked.

The woman leaned forward as if she were dispensing a great secret. “Peculiar comings and goings at night, you know? Strange men. Must have had something to do with that girl, though, don’t you think? She was a prostitute once, wasn’t she?” Something behind Nick attracted her attention. “Why, look, there’s that nice man at the dry goods store. I think I’ll see how he’s doing. His rheumatism’s been bothering him. Good-bye.”

She scurried up the road before Nick could ask her any more questions.

Nick stepped inside the store, the bell overhead jingling. The air was heavy with a pungent mixture of unidentifiable scents. Each wall was lined with tins bearing the names of the compounds they contained—sassafras bark, cochineal, oxide bismuth, flaxseed, poppy leaves. Beneath the tins were rows of dark glass jars containing acids and oils, or patent medicines labeled with doctors’ names meant to assure a customer of their curative powers. But the Dr. Richardson of Dr. Richardson’s Pectoral Balsam wasn’t likely any more a trained doctor than the corner quack who hawked hair restoratives. The same went for Dr. Fak and his Worm Lozenges or the Fahnestock of Fahnestock’s Vermifuge, whatever that was.

A massive table occupied the room’s center, its surface covered with mortars and pestles, several reference books that looked to contain recipes for medicines, and a large brass weighing scale. From behind the table, a young woman straightened from a crouch, a brush and bin in her hands. The bin held the broken remains of a bottle of Dr. Chase’s Anodyne Dysentery Cordial, according to the label attached to a shard of glass.

“Can I help you?” she asked. She was plain but not unattractive, and unusually tall for a woman, with light brown hair and large brown eyes. They watched him with defiant curiosity. “Or you just here to stare?”

“I’m here to ask about a woman who worked here. Li Sha.”

“And who are you?”

“Detective Nicholas Greaves. From the San Francisco Police. And you are . . . ?”

“Tessie Lange.” Hastily, she set down the bin and brush. “You should talk to my father.”

Stepping over the pool of spilled cordial on the floor, she hurried into a back passageway that was separated from the main room by a thick gray curtain. Muffled voices came from the rear of the store, followed by footsteps. Mr. Lange, also tall, with thinning hair and narrow shoulders, pushed the curtain aside.

“Detective Greaves?” he said, giving the
r
a raspy pronunciation. French, then. He peered through the spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose. “Can I help?”

“I’m talking to anybody who knew the Chinese girl who was killed on Monday. I’ve been told she worked here.”

A look of pain crossed Lange’s face. He exchanged a glance with his daughter, who’d come into the room behind him. “
Effroyable.
We saw the news in the paper.”

Nick had read one of the accounts, an article on page two of the
Morning Call.
MURDERED CHINESE GIRL
in bold letters, with enough sordid details of the discovery of the girl’s body to shock the reader. The reporter who’d penned the column hadn’t wasted space calling on the police to find her killer, though. One less Celestial, and a former prostitute at that; exactly who would care in this town? Not many, besides Celia Davies. And him.

“So, it is true it is Miss Li?” Lange asked. “We thought, but I did not imagine . . .”

Miss Lange’s face was stony hard.

“When did you last see her?” Nick asked.

“Her last workday,” answered Lange. “Which was . . .”

“Monday, Papa,” said Miss Lange, sounding as if she often finished her father’s sentences.

“Yes, Monday. Thank you, Thérèse. Monday. The day she . . .” Lange struggled for words. “She does not work on Tuesdays, but she was to come yesterday. Now we know why she did not.”

“On Monday did she seem worried? Scared of somebody, maybe? Did she have plans to meet anybody later that night?”

“She said nothing to us.”

“She never said much, Detective,” explained Tessie Lange. “Came to work. Swept. Tidied. Went home.”

“She didn’t come here looking for a place to stay sometime last week?” Nick asked, remembering that Li Sha had moved out of Tom Davies’ room.

Miss Lange’s gaze narrowed. “No,” she answered.

“Do you know who killed Miss Li, Detective Greaves?” asked her father.

“We’re following some leads. You?”

“Me?” he asked, eyes widening. “Oh! You wonder who I think . . . this I cannot say. I have the customers who learned of her work. They make the complaints, but I do not think they would be so angry as to hurt her. If I had hired a Chinese boy, they might understand. The boys, they are everyplace in the city, no? I have heard of the ladies who prefer them to the Irish girls.”

He wiped his hands down his apron and recollected Nick’s question. “None would want to hurt her. Miss Li, she was a fine young woman. It is difficult to comprehend how she was ever in that life. Just ask Madame Davies. She will tell you. Miss Li had left the past behind and was now a fine young woman.”

Based on the frown on Miss Lange’s face, Nick expected she didn’t share her father’s high opinion.

“I have already spoken to Mrs. Davies,” he said. “What about that man she’d been with? The father of her child . . . Tom Davies. Had they fought recently?”

“Child?” Lange seemed startled by the news.

Tessie Lange’s brow crinkled for a second, but she didn’t seem as shocked as her father was. But then, women had a way of knowing such things.

“She was going to have a child. Didn’t you know?” asked Nick. The girl must have been keeping the pregnancy from Lange, hoping to keep her job; no doubt she’d have been let go if Lange had found out.

Lange shook his head. “
Ma foi
, no. No.”

“You’re not thinking Tom’s guilty of killing her, are you?” interrupted Miss Lange.

“Do you know Tom Davies?”

A peculiar expression crossed her face. “He works down the street. We were acquainted. He doesn’t seem the type, though.”

“Murderers come in all types, miss.”

“Tom Davies would not murder anyone, Detective,” said Lange firmly. “He has the temper,
c’est vrai
, but is a good boy. He is the brother of Madame Davies’ missing husband. She will tell you he would not hurt Miss Li.”

“She’s said that, too.”

“You know, Papa,” said Miss Lange, “maybe Li Sha was acting fidgety lately. I think she was afraid of somebody. Folks are pretty upset with the Chinese these days. Maybe she was having trouble, too.”

“She never said this to me, Thérèse,” said her father.

“Although it could’ve been one of her former customers bothering her, I guess,” continued Miss Lange.

Nick went on, “One of your neighbors mentioned there have been men hanging around, men who possibly wanted to speak to Li Sha. Have either of you noticed them?”

Tessie Lange slid her father a look, then answered for both of them. “Can’t say that we have. None besides Tom.”

“This is terrible,” said Lange. “It must be those horrible people who hate the Chinese. They make such trouble. Our poor Miss Li.”

Mr. Lange shoved his spectacles up the bridge of his nose, though Nick wasn’t sure they’d slipped down. The man’s hand was trembling. The last time he’d seen somebody so shivery, the fellow had been ready to confess to murder.

Nick started to count how many blocks it was to the wharf where Li Sha had been found—nine—and pondered ways Lange or his tall daughter could have hauled her there, or lured her there.

“Where you were on Monday night, Mr. Lange?” he asked.

Lange blinked at him, the motion magnified by his spectacles. “I was here.”

“With your daughter?” asked Nick, nodding toward her. Tessie Lange could’ve been carved out of marble.

“Yes,” he replied quickly. “Yes.”

“Is it okay if I look around?” asked Nick.

“Mais oui,”
said Lange.

Nick guessed that meant yes.

Down the passageway behind the curtain was a large storage room. The kitchen, two bedrooms, and a parlor were located upstairs. No evidence he could see that a young Chinese woman had been murdered on the premises.

He returned to the shop front, where Lange and his daughter were whispering together. They stopped when they heard Nick slide the curtain over.

“Thanks. If either of you thinks of anything further, you can contact me at the main police station,” Nick said, and turned to leave. Outside on the street, a man with his sleeves rolled up and carrying a broom peered through the window at them. Next to the shopkeeper stood the gossip whom he’d encountered earlier, still straining for a glimpse inside. They caught sight of Nick frowning at them and bolted like a pair of guilty kids.

“And tell your neighbors to contact me or my assistant, Officer Taylor, if they have any information for us.”

“Of course,” said Lange, nodding, his daughter at his side still as emotionless as a statue.

• • •

O
ut on the porch, Celia waved good-bye to her final patient of the day. The young woman, an actress from the Metropolitan, had come to collect medicines for her monthly pains—an infusion Celia purchased from Mr. Lange composed of gum guaiac, pokeroot, and black cohosh—and was hurrying back to rehearsals. The feathers on the woman’s hat bobbed as she sped along the road, her carrot-colored jacket and skirt a bold slash of color.

“She actually paid me, Addie. A dollar.” Celia held up the coin as proof.

Addie slapped the entry hall rug against the porch railing, sending dust flying. “Perhaps I’ll buy us a treat at Ghirardelli’s with that.”

Celia smiled and pocketed the coin with a sigh. She was tired, but she still needed to go to the Langes’, and after that, she had accounts to review. Her busy day was far from finished. However, she lingered on the porch, savoring the cool breeze against her cheek, the spicy aromas emanating from a neighbor’s kitchen, and the azure of the sky overhead. She missed England but she loved this city more.

“Hullo, Miss Ferguson!” Across the street, a deliveryman from a Washington Market butcher stall had finished dropping off meat and noticed Addie on the porch. Tipping his wool cap, he grinned. “Swell day, ain’t it? You’re looking just swell, too.”

Celia glanced over at Addie, whose face had gone as red as pomegranate seeds. “Whisht, go on with you.”

“Any Sunday you’d like to go to the Willows with me, you just holler,” he shouted.

“You’ll be waiting a long time for me to
holler
, you will!”

Laughing, he hopped up onto the delivery wagon seat and drove off, but not without a final grin for Addie.

“The Willows, Addie?” Celia asked. “I’ve heard it is very lovely there.”

“He’s a forward one, he is,” she replied, busying herself with folding the rug over her arm. “Thinking I’ll go on some picnic with the likes of him.”

“He is not bad looking, though,” Celia said, biting back a smile.

“Och, ma’am! Now you’re wanting to see me go!”

“I would never want to see you go, Addie,” Celia insisted. “But if you are serious about finding a husband, he seems a promising place to start.”

“That one?” She peered at the delivery wagon wheeling down the road. “Canna trust a man who grins so much— Miss Barbara!”

Celia looked to where Addie was staring. Barbara, visibly upset, was rushing up Vallejo as fast as her bad foot allowed.

“Barbara!” Celia hurried down the front steps.

Her cousin stumbled to a halt, and Celia reached out to help her rise.

Barbara shook off her hand. “Don’t make me go to Chinatown alone ever again.”

“I told you to take Addie with you.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said Addie. “But when Miss Barbara wanted to go, I was busy cleaning the kitchen floor and couldna leave right then. I said I would go later.”

“So, Barbara—”

“I know, I know, Cousin Celia. It’s my fault.” Barbara grabbed the stair railing and hauled herself up the last steps to the porch. “They didn’t even let me see your patient. That old woman turned me away. So it was a waste of my time. And then . . .” Tears gathered in her eyes.

“What is it?” asked Celia. “What happened? Are you all right?” She started searching for any sign that her cousin had been injured, but she seemed fine aside from her pallid face.

“They said awful things to me. It was horrible.”

“Who?” asked Celia. “Who said awful things?”

“It was a bunch of boys. They shouted obscene words at me.” Barbara pressed her hands to her face and sobbed. “It’s the middle of the day, but nobody stopped them. They frightened me.”

“I must tell Mr. Greaves,” said Celia. But what could he do without the names of the bullies?

“Maybe Li Sha
was
killed by a nasty group of dirty white men who hate Chinese people. Just like those disgusting boys.”

“Oh, Barbara.” Celia buffed her hands down her cousin’s trembling arms. The hatred was coming too close to home.

“I wonder if Owen knows them,” said Barbara. “He knows everybody on the streets. I should’ve asked him when I saw him a bit ago. He was just around the corner. But I wanted to come home . . .” Barbara sniffled and wiped a hand beneath her nose. “I bet he knows who killed Li Sha. Maybe it’s one of them. Maybe it’s not . . . It’s just about gotta be.”

“I’ll find Owen and talk to him.” Celia looked up the road in search of the boy. “Addie, take Barbara up to her room and see she has something warm to drink.”