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Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

By M. Louisa Locke

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Mary Louisa Locke     Cover design © 2011 Michelle Huffaker

Prologue
San Francisco, 1879

Why hasn’t that good-for-nothing boy come up to get me ready for bed yet? The hall clock just chimed quarter past nine! Eighty-four years old and I can still hear everything that goes on in this house. There! Sounds like he just knocked something over, down in the parlor. Probably he’s smashed up all my pretty treasures by now. Counting on me never making it downstairs again. Hah! Well, son, you have a surprise coming to you. Next fine day, I’ll holler down to the garden for Manny and get him to come up here and use those muscles of his to carry me all round the house. See what mischief you’ve been up to. I’ll make you pay for everything you’ve damaged.

Won’t I make you pay! You and that young wife of yours, too. Haven’t seen hide nor hair of her since noon. A blessing, really. Watching her gallivanting around the place like she owns it. Makes me sick. She can’t keep house worth a damn. Lets the tradesmen and that thieving cook take advantage of her. That’s why the housekeeping money don’t last! Between the two of you, robbing me blind.

 I never should have let you move back in when your pa got so sick. That was a mistake. But he wanted his son nearby, didn’t he? Wanted to keep an eye on how you were running the company is more like it. If just one of the other boys had lived, oh things’d be different. Six sons, and the sorriest one of them all is the only one that outlasted their pa. If Zeke just hadn’t gotten killed in that brawl. Now that was a man who loved his mother. He wouldn’t have left me up here all alone. It’s time for my heart pills and I want to go to bed!

Wedged in a massive wing-backed chair facing the fireplace, the old woman fretfully moved her head from side to side. The few glowing embers in the grate left the room in near darkness, except where the glow from the gas fixture in the hallway showcased the porcelain figurines of shepherds and shepherdesses preening across the top of a mahogany dresser. Ropes of pearls cascaded down the front of the stiff satin dress that stretched over the woman’s colossal frame. Wispy white hair capped a face of concentric soft circles, from her multiple chins to the drooping round hole of her mouth. But the pale cold eyes that glittered in the faint light ruined any illusion of amiability.

She suddenly raised an elegant wooden cane and began to pound furiously on the floor, setting every piece of jewelry and china to prancing. Just as abruptly, she stopped and cocked her head, the silence filled by her ragged breathing.

There, I hear you coming up the stairs. Forgot me, didn’t you, sonny boy? Left me to freeze up here. How many times have I told you, my poor feet can’t take the cold evening air? But now you’ve let my fire go out, and it will take forever for me to warm up. It’s Nurse’s night off and good riddance to her, sneaky thieving woman, but that means you or that good-for-nothing wife of yours will just have to rub my feet for me tonight, won’cha! 

What are you waiting for? Think I can’t hear you standing out in the hallway? You know it’s past time for my pills; I can hardly breathe. Dr. Hodges told you how important it is to give them to me on time. Too scared to come in by yourself, are you? Want me to say ‘pretty please?’ I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.

That’s better, come right on in and quit trying to sneak up on me. I know that trick, always trying to frighten me to death. There you go, ran right into the end of the bed, you clumsy oaf. Now, why are you just standing there breathing down my neck? Irritating boy. You just come around in front where I can see you and I’ll rap you one with my . . . What are you doing? Stop it! No, no, get that away, I can’t brea . . .

 The pillow was carefully replaced on the bed, the clock in the hallway struck nine-thirty, the last ember snuffed out, and the Dresden figurines stared silently as hundreds of tiny pearls clattered softly to the floor.

*****

 Across town, a young girl sat in the attic in a large armchair, her face in deep shadow. A shaft of moonlight from one of the two eastern facing windows cut diagonally across her chest, revealing multiple loops of colored beads that fell down to her waist. Her feet dangled, not touching the floor. In her arms lay a china doll, whose painted frozen features exhibited more life than could be found in her own face.

A song issued tunelessly from those rigid lips.

“Hot cross buns, Hot cross buns! One ha’ penny, two ha’ penny, hot cross buns. If you have no daughters, give them to your sons. One ha’ penny, two ha’ penny,
 Hot Cross Buns! Hot Cross . . .”

The girl straightened and pointed, her index finger contorted in a grotesque fashion. “You stop it right now.” Her voice, despite a quaver, was sharp and strong, and its force twisted her face into a mask of fury. “I see what you did. I see everything. You can never hide from me . . . stop . . .” The girl clutched at her chest, and the beads broke, cascading to the floor. The girl slumped, again immobile, humming.

“Hot cross buns, hot cross buns, one ha’penny . . .”

Chapter One
Saturday Morning, October 11, 1879

Madam Sibyl, Clairvoyant, specializing in business and domestic advice. 436 O’ Farrell Street. Consultations by appointment only, fee $2.
—San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

Annie Fuller leaned across to stare at the woman’s hands resting palms up on the dark green velvet tablecloth in front of her. She picked up the right hand and slowly traced the client’s heart, head, and life lines, struggling to find some words of comfort to extract from these faint creases that crisscrossed Mrs. Crenshaw’s plump palms. Stalling, she picked up the left hand. She turned the hand over, noting that the gold wedding band and modest diamond engagement ring were becoming embedded in the flesh of the ring finger and that the hand was cold and dry.

“You are still having trouble breathing, aren’t you, Mrs. Crenshaw? Did you try the extra pillows, as I suggested last week?” asked Annie.

“Oh, yes, Madam Sibyl, I did, and, just as you foretold, I have slept so much easier,” Mrs. Crenshaw replied.

Annie glanced up, sudden suspicion sharpening her voice. “You did return to see Dr. Hammersmith, didn’t you? Remember what I told you; the science of palmistry is not incompatible with the science of human physiology. What I learn from reading your palms and what Dr. Hammersmith learns from listening to your heart with his stethoscope can both be of use to you.”

Mrs. Silas Crenshaw, a fashionably dressed woman in her late sixties, turned her head away for a moment. She then sighed and said, “I saw him, but he doesn’t do me any good. He just tells me to be patient. He says a woman my age shouldn’t expect to come back quickly from a bout of pneumonia. What he won’t tell me is when I can travel to Iowa to meet my new grandbaby. You know how I long to see my daughter and that precious child. He will be six months old in December. My husband is quite determined we should wait until my cough is entirely gone, and Dr. Hammersmith refuses to advise him that I am well enough to travel. So I need you to tell me what is going to happen. There are arrangements to be made; Mr. Crenshaw can’t just leave for a month at a moment’s notice. Please, when will I be well enough to visit my daughter?”

Annie turned Mrs. Crenshaw’s hand back over to trace her Mercury line, which if she really did believe in palmistry would reveal information about Mrs. Crenshaw’s future health. Annie, however, didn’t believe in palmistry, and it didn’t take clairvoyance to tell her that the woman in front of her was unlikely to get well enough to spend Christmas in Iowa with her new grandson. But clairvoyance is what Madam Sibyl promised in her newspaper advertisement, and clairvoyance is what Mrs. Crenshaw expected for her $2 fee. This was a problem, since Annie Fuller, in addition to being a respectable widow and boarding house owner, was also Madam Sibyl.

After her husband John’s death, she had spent five wretched years being shunted between various branches of his family back east, finally coming west to settle in San Francisco, where she had inherited a house from her only remaining blood relative, her Aunt Agatha. Despite turning this grand old home into a boarding house, she found she still wasn’t financially independent, and Annie had turned to the only other way of making a living she knew, giving business advice. Although she had been trained by her father, one of the most successful stock brokers in New York or San Francisco history, Annie had discovered the only way a twenty-six year old female was going to get paid for her knowledge and expertise was if she pretended she got her information from reading her clients’ palms or casting their horoscopes.

Hence the invention of her alter ego, Madam Sibyl. She had added domestic advice to Madam Sibyl’s offerings, hoping she would also attract female clients. For the last year she had been gratifyingly successful in not only helping a number of local businessmen begin to recoup their losses from the panic and depression of the seventies, but also helping a number of women better manage their household finances, their domineering mothers-in-law, and their neglectful husbands. Mrs. Crenshaw, however, was different, and with each visit Annie felt increasingly uncomfortable with the charade she was playing.

The wig of intricate black curls she wore as part of her Madam Sibyl disguise felt unbearably tight and hot. Normally the small parlor in which she and Mrs. Crenshaw sat, with its velvet curtains and dim lighting, provided an inviting haven of coolness, but not today. As it was nearly noon, the fog had burned off, and, although it was the middle of October, the unusual heat of early fall persisted. The incipient headache that had hovered all morning finally attacked as Annie anxiously searched for an appropriate answer to Mrs. Crenshaw’s question.

She touched the barely visible horizontal lines along the outer edge of Mrs. Crenshaw’s palm that detailed a person’s travels and said, “Mrs. Crenshaw, I believe the difficulty I am having in reading the answer to your question is that it is really two questions. First, you want to know when you will regain your health. You also want to know when you will get to see your daughter and grandson.”

This is ridiculous, Annie thought. How can she come week after week, asking the same questions, getting the same vague answers from me? That damned doctor should have told her the truth; she isn’t getting better, she is getting worse.

Mrs. Crenshaw’s hand trembled, and Annie could hear the soft liquidity of her shallow breaths as the older woman said, “Please, Madam Sibyl. I need to know. I’ve told you about how Mr. Crenshaw and I had become resigned to never having children when we were blessed with our lovely prairie rose, Sharon. Such a miracle and delight, though she worried us when she was young, seemed each winter she was so poorly. I hated it when Silas decided we needed to move out here, leave the farm to Sharon and her new husband, but he promised we could visit whenever I wanted. And now with the new baby … I just need to be there!”

Mrs. Crenshaw had first come to see Madam Sibyl last June, right after she got the letter from her daughter announcing she was nearly eight months pregnant. If Mrs. Crenshaw had had her way, she would have gotten right on a train to be with her daughter during the last month of her confinement. Yet her husband had told her that she shouldn’t risk infecting her daughter or the new baby with one of her persistent colds. Mrs. Crenshaw had sought out Madam Sibyl, hoping she could foretell if her daughter would have a successful delivery without her.

At the time Annie had wondered if her daughter’s delay in notifying her mother about the pregnancy and her husband’s reluctance to let her travel reflected their belief that Mrs. Crenshaw’s anxious personality would make her more of a burden than a help during this delicate time. Now she believed the real reason was the family’s concern about Mrs. Crenshaw’s health because Annie was convinced it was a dying woman who sat before her, a woman whose heart had probably been failing for a good many years.

“Madam Sibyl, what do you see when you look at my palm? Why aren’t you telling me what you see? I deserve the truth,” Mrs. Crenshaw said, pulling her hand from Annie in order to scrabble for a handkerchief to press against the coming cough.

Annie watched helplessly as the older woman struggled to regain her breath. She thought about the distressing number of dying women she had attended in her peripatetic shuffling from one in-law to another after her husband John’s death: the ninety-year-old grandmother whose last days were a peaceful shutting down of each organ, the twenty-two-year-old new mother whose body burned itself out from a puerperal fever, the aunt of enormous appetites whose life had seeped away through her gangrenous extremities.

However, Mrs. Crenshaw’s blue-tinged lips, the swollen hands that contradicted her loss of weight, and the labored cough . . . these she had observed only once before, when she was twelve and her own mother lay dying. No one had been willing to tell her the truth fourteen years ago, and so Annie had agreed to leave her mother and travel up north to San Francisco to visit her Aunt Agatha. Her mother had died and been buried in the hot dry Los Angeles winds before she had been able to make it back home.

With searing clarity, Annie knew she couldn’t lie anymore to this woman. She rose and went over to the small sideboard, where she poured Mrs. Crenshaw a cup of tea, putting in the three lumps of sugar the older woman liked. After Mrs. Crenshaw had sipped her tea and gotten her breathing under control, Annie again leaned over and picked up the left hand, beginning to speak in the low, singsong tones Madam Sibyl often used when “giving a reading.”

“Mrs. Crenshaw, the truth I see written in your hand is one I believe you already know. Your Mercury line confirms what your life line foretells: that your heart is wearing out, and death, as is true for us all, is your fate. As with any glimpse we are given into the future, the timing is not precise. Yet you have been given the gift of foreknowledge, and your character is such that I know that you will embrace this truth to shape your own destiny.”

Mrs. Crenshaw’s hand clenched hers, and Annie’s words faltered. She squeezed the hand she had been holding, placed it gently down on the table, and took up the right hand, finding the light horizontal lines that intersected with the vertical Mercury line.

“I do not see any more travel in your future, but I do see visitors. I see your daughter sitting beside you in your parlor, which is all decorated for Christmas. I see you holding your adorable grandson, all wrapped up in that lovely blue blanket you have been knitting for him. Finally, I see your bravery in accepting your illness, thereby permitting your family to come together to celebrate every moment you have left in your life.”

Annie found both of her hands clasped spasmodically between Mrs. Crenshaw’s own as the woman’s soft sobs filled the room.

What have I done? Annie shifted nervously in her seat. Poor woman, I’m not a doctor and I am certainly not clairvoyant. I have to tell her I am a sham; I can’t possibly know what the future holds for her.

She forced herself to look up, but Mrs. Crenshaw’s face stunned her. The older woman was certainly crying, but there was a watery smile emerging as her sobs stilled, and the pinched frown that usually marred the genuine sweetness of her expression had disappeared.

Mrs. Crenshaw pulled her hands from Annie’s, blew her nose, and began to talk excitedly. “Madam Sibyl, thank you. Of course I know I am dying, that is why I so wanted to make this trip. It might be the last time I can see my daughter. But I was afraid to tell Silas this. I have found men don’t deal well with bad news; I am sure in your business you have found this so. I just don’t know why I never thought of asking my daughter to come here! But of course she will be able to come; it will be good for her and the child to be out of Iowa during the worst winter months. Her husband, Stephen, such a good man, will not begrudge me this visit. Perhaps he can get someone to take over the farm for a month so he can be here for Christmas, too. Oh, dear, there are so many plans to be made. Silas will grumble at the expense, but how can he say no to his dying wife? I must get home. I swear, this has given me a new lease on life!”

Later, after the boarding house’s cheerful young Irish maid, Kathleen, had ushered a still animated Mrs. Crenshaw out of the parlor, Annie stood at the small washstand in the back room and jerked the wig off of her head, hoping to release the pressure that had built to an intolerable level. She poured water into a plain white enamel basin and, dipping a washcloth into the water, began to pat at her face. She longed to plunge her whole face into the water, but she couldn’t afford to let the precious elderberry paste she had used to darken her eyelashes and eyebrows be washed away. She tugged down the bodice of her severely cut black silk and tried to ease the restrictive tightness of her corset. She had two hours to rest, but then she had three more clients to meet today.

Annie stared at her reflection in the mirror, poking ineffectually at the mess she had made of her braided hair by pulling off the wig so precipitously. How pale I look, she thought, as she tucked a reddish blond curl back into place. You would think I was the one who was at death’s door. What if Silas Crenshaw comes here demanding to know how I could tell his wife she is dying? What do I say? I don’t even have the excuse that I believe in any of the rigmarole I spout. How much longer can I keep all this up? I’m just not sure what I am doing anymore, and I am so tired.

Chapter Two
Saturday evening, October 11, 1879

“A. J. WELSH, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW, 434 California street–Divorces, insolvency, probate cases, etc.; prompt action and low charges, no charge for advice.”
—San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

 The clatter of wooden planks as the train traversed the Mission Creek Bridge alerted Nate Dawson to the fact he was almost within the city limits and the train would reach the Townsend Street depot in just a few minutes. He put away the copy of the Chronicle he had been reading, in preparation for arrival. After hours of seeing nothing but sun-seared brown hills, he welcomed the glimpses of the narrow, rectangular houses silhouetted in the evening twilight. He was home.

Odd, he’d never thought of San Francisco as home before. Not in the four years he had boarded in town while attending Boys High, nor the last six years he had spent working in the city in his Uncle Frank’s law firm. Home had always been his family’s ranch, nestled among tall oak trees in the hills due west of Santa Clara. That’s where he’d been for over a month, helping with the fall round-up, something he’d done almost every year since his family had moved west when he was fourteen. Even the years when he’d been back east at college and law school, he’d still thought of the ranch as home and longed to be in the saddle gathering up the stock every September. But this year had been different.

This year he had become increasingly restless, anxious to come back, come home to San Francisco, and he knew the reason was Mrs. Annie Fuller. He wished he had the nerve to go straight to her home tonight, but his Uncle Frank was expecting him. Nate knew there would be, as usual, a hundred and one tasks that needed to be completed immediately, but tomorrow was Sunday, and maybe he would be able to break free and go see her. For a brief instant, he could see Annie’s laughing face, the light sprinkle of freckles across her nose, the soft curve of her mouth.

The squeal of brakes emerging through the hissing steam and the simultaneous slowing of the car wrenched Nate’s attention back to the train’s arrival at the depot. He stood up and pivoted into the aisle, keeping his right hand firmly on the seat back in front of him, waiting for the inevitable jerk forward and back as the train stopped. He then swung down his leather valise, feeling the contents slide to one end. He never brought much with him to the ranch, since he left his comfortable work clothes there, along with all his saddles and tack. Instead, he had brought the bound copy of the new state constitution, all twenty-two articles of it, as well as a number of law journals. He couldn’t say he had spent as much time reading as he had hoped. He always forgot how physically exhausting ranch work was, and this year the demands were even greater, because, hard as it was to admit, his father was slowing down. His younger brother, Billy, had been his father’s right hand since the age of twelve, and everyone knew that in time he would inherit the ranch. But this fall Nate could see that something had shifted. Billy, not his father, had been in charge.

Nate opened up the latch on the valise and stuffed the newspaper in, meanwhile thinking about why this had bothered him so. He had never envied Billy’s position on the ranch, never wanted to take his place. But taking orders from his father was one thing, taking orders from his younger brother was quite another. It had irritated the heck out of him. Yet his father had seemed fine with the shift.

Nate had even tried to talk to his mother about the situation, but he never seemed to find a time when they were alone together. That was another reason this visit had been a cause of dissatisfaction. Billy’s new wife, Violet, had clung to his mother’s side the whole visit. She was very obviously in a “delicate” condition, which was embarrassing enough, but he didn’t understand why this meant she had to follow his mother around like a shadow, trying to help when it was clear she should be sitting down and resting. She must be carrying twins, to be that huge. Won’t Billy be insufferable then! Nate thought as he began the slow crawl down the aisle towards the back door of the car.

He stepped down to the platform and hurried through the crowd to snag one of the hansom cabs waiting on Townsend. He was sorely tempted to give the driver Annie’s O’Farrell Street address, but squashed the impulse and directed the driver to his boarding house on Vallejo instead. Truth be told, he wasn’t entirely sure if he would be welcome at her home, even if it weren’t this late. Annie was one of the topics he had wanted to discuss with his mother. If I’d gotten a second alone with her, he fumed.

He’d naturally told the whole family about the part he’d played this summer in solving the mystery surrounding the death of his client, Matthew Voss, but when he had tried to explain to them about Annie, and what she’d done . . . well, that had been a fiasco. Violet had expressed shock, Billy teased him about getting mixed up with a “female detective,” and even his mother had frowned. His little sister, Laura, would have understood. But she was up near the Santa Cruz Mountains in her first teaching job, another reason the ranch hadn’t felt quite like home. He might have even been able to tell Laura about Annie’s work as Madam Sibyl. Laura was a strong champion of women’s rights, and she would have sympathized with Annie’s decision to use her business skills to support herself. But he couldn’t have told his parents or Billy about this. They just wouldn’t have understood. He was uncomfortable enough about her work as a clairvoyant, and, if he had his way, she would get out of that business before they got married and his family ever found out.

When they were married—that was the problem. How could he even think about marriage, when he could barely support himself on what his Uncle Frank paid him? He says I’m a partner, but I don’t make much more than a clerk!

His mother had been telling him for years that her brother planned to retire soon, and then Nate’s income would increase. But he was nearly thirty, and, even if his income went up, it could take years of saving to be able to afford a home and servants, everything a woman like Annie Fuller deserved. He just knew if he had been able to explain to his mother how important Annie had become to him, what his plans for the future were, she would know how to approach his uncle. But that hadn’t happened, and now he was back in San Francisco, in the same limbo he was in when he left a month and a half ago.

Even worse, what if Annie didn’t want to see him? Their last meeting hadn’t gone at all well. He knew he had been at fault. He’d stopped by, unannounced, and had had to wait while she finished up with one of “Madam Sibyl’s” clients. By the time she entered the formal parlor, two of her boarders, the ancient seamstresses Millie and Minnie Moffet, were staunchly entrenched on the settee, sewing on an elaborate pile of lace. Annie and he had had to sit across from each other in the two stiff wing-backed chairs, with no privacy. The evening had been insufferably hot and Annie had looked so tired, but all he’d done was sulk because they weren’t alone. He’d hoped to recapture the precious bond they’d developed during those weeks in August as they worked together, but events had seemed to conspire against them. First, there was the buggy ride he had planned, which was ruined by a freak late-summer storm. Then Annie had canceled because one of her clients had requested a last-minute emergency consultation. And of course he’d had to say something asinine like—“casting someone’s horoscope couldn’t possibly be any kind of emergency.”

Then, as if fate was determined to pay him back for demeaning her work, he’d had to cancel their next assignation. Annie had agreed to an evening at the theater with him, but at the last minute his Uncle Frank had ordered him to write up a complicated will that he wanted to review that night. He’d sent word that he wouldn’t be able to come, and she had sent a note back that she understood that “of course his work had to come first,” but he had no doubt she was being sarcastic.

What he should have done that last time they met was take her in his arms and tell her how much he’d missed her. Hang the old ladies and their lace! What he had done instead was grumble about being kept waiting, complain about how overworked he was, and make snide remarks about Madam Sibyl. Annie’s responses, in turn, had gotten more and more terse. If only she had lost her temper, ripped into him the way she had several times when they first met! Then they could have had a glorious fight and cleared the air. Maybe she didn’t think he was worth losing her temper over anymore. Maybe she never had cared as much as he did. That was what he feared.

No, he refused to believe that he had misread her—the warmth of the few precious kisses, the way she had burrowed her face into his shoulder, smiled at him. She’d just been angry about how he had acted. Then, to make matters worse, the next day he had gotten the telegram asking him to come a week early to the ranch, and all he had been able to do was send around a short note informing Annie that he would be gone for the next six weeks. He’d every intention of writing a long letter once he had gotten to the ranch, begging her forgiveness for his rude behavior. In fact he’d written a letter, several to be exact, but never sent one. He couldn’t get the tone right. With each passing week, it became harder, until he had finally decided it would be better to ask her forgiveness in person.

But what if she won’t see me? Nate thought, as the cab pulled up in front of his boarding house. What if I have ruined everything?

 **********

 The girl, wearing a long white nightgown, went to the door to the hallway and listened. She then pulled out the long cord that hung down her chest, revealing a key. She crept over to another door, used the key to unlock it, and began the long climb up the narrow set of stairs. With difficulty, she opened the trap door when she reached the top and emerged into a room, dark, airless, with only one shaft of moonlight that revealed the large armchair. She moved confidently to the chair, picked up the china doll that lay there, which she began to rock. After several minutes passed, she began to sing.

 “Hot cross buns, Hot cross buns! One ha’ penny, two ha’ penny, hot cross buns. If you have no daughters, give them to your sons.”

She stopped singing and whispered, “Mama, where are you? You need to save me from the bad man, ’cause I’m the baby, and I sleep with the angels.”

Chapter Three
Sunday, late afternoon, October 12, 1879

“The last section of the Sutter Street Road, terminating at Central avenue…has been completed and is in running order.”
—San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

 Sunlight fled before the shadows sliding up the hill to where Annie Fuller stared down at the avenue of graves. The wind, fresh from the Pacific, freed a strand of her hair and wove it through the three small feathers that jutted from her navy straw hat.

“Why Mrs. Fuller, whatever are you doing here!”

Annie started, turned, and for a moment couldn’t place the tall, neatly dressed, middle-aged brunette standing on the path beside her.

“Excuse me, I’m afraid… Oh, my word, Miss Pinehurst! I didn’t…I mean, how nice to see you!” Annie gathered her scattered wits and smiled, embarrassed that she hadn’t immediately recognized a woman who lived in the room next to her.

Although Miss Lucy Pinehurst had moved into Annie’s boarding house over a year ago, she remained a bit of a mystery. She had moved into the O’Farrell Street house because it was so close to Market Street and the restaurant where she worked. Nevertheless, her job as head cashier and bookkeeper for Montaigne’s Steak House, which billed itself the “Delmonico’s of the Pacific Coast,” meant Miss Pinehurst left the house a little before noon, when Annie was usually busy at work as Madam Sibyl, often returning well after midnight, when Annie had already retired for the night. Consequently, there were few opportunities for Annie to converse with her. In their brief encounters in the hallways, Miss Pinehurst had been polite, but Annie always imagined she left a faint chill of disapproval in her wake. She was surprised her boarder had decided to approach her this afternoon at Laurel Hill Cemetery. Miss Pinehurst appeared to be almost as surprised as Annie by her behavior.

“I am so sorry, Mrs. Fuller, I shouldn’t have disturbed you. It’s just I didn’t expect to see you here. I suppose you must have family, I just … I mean, I often come here on Sundays and I never encountered …” Miss Pinehurst stopped short and began to back away. “Please excuse me, Mrs. Fuller, I didn’t mean to intrude, I will just be on my way.”

“Oh, no, there is no need to apologize,” Annie said. “My aunt and uncle are buried over at the Masonic Cemetery, so I don’t come to Laurel Hill very often. Today I came to visit an old friend.” As she pointed down the hill, Annie realized she was still holding the small bouquet of chrysanthemums she had brought with her to put on Matthew’s grave. “But, before it grows too late, I need to finish paying my respects.” As if to punctuate this comment, the light suddenly dimmed, the sun sinking behind the bank of clouds piling up over the western horizon.

Miss Pinehurst nodded, then thrust out her hand as if to stop Annie, saying, “Mrs. Fuller, I don’t mean to keep you, but I was wondering, when you were done, if you would take a walk with me. I have something I would particularly like to speak to you about.”

Startled by the intensity in her boarder’s voice, Annie paused and then said, “Certainly, Miss Pinehurst, I won’t be but a moment. If you would wait for me here.”

Taking the other woman’s slight nod as a sign of acquiescence, Annie gathered up her skirts and walked quickly down the hill to stand in front of a grave’s white marble headstone, whose crisply chiseled message showed little passage of time.

Matthew Voss 1811-1879
Beloved husband, father, brother
“And He has filled him with the spirit of God,
in wisdom, in understanding and in knowledge
and in all manner of workmanship”—Exodus 35:31

For a moment she was swept up in memories of the past summer, when her attempts to find out the truth behind the death of the man buried here had catapulted her into a few hectic weeks of intrigue that had almost cost Annie her own life. As she leaned over to place the bouquet on the grave, she whispered, “Oh, Matthew, I miss you so.”

She smiled, remembering the picture Matthew’s sister had displayed in her room. Matthew Voss proudly holding the woodworking tools he had used to build a successful furniture business; Miss Nancy holding the large account ledgers that represented her contribution to the company as its bookkeeper.

A bookkeeper, just like Miss Pinehurst, who was probably waiting impatiently for her up at the top of the hill. She gathered her wool shawl more tightly around her shoulders and made her way up the path, surprised again at how little she knew about her boarder, beyond where she worked and that she had a sister and brother-in-law living in town, with whom she usually spent Sundays. This was another reason she hadn’t gotten to know Miss Pinehurst, since Sunday dinner was the one meal Annie usually ate with all of her boarders. This would be a good chance to further her acquaintance with Miss Pinehurst, and she wondered what her boarder could possibly wish to speak to her about.

When she regained the top of the hill, she smiled and said, “Miss Pinehurst, thank you for waiting. It has been such a lovely afternoon, and I do believe we have at least another hour of daylight.”

Having apparently regained her composure, Miss Pinehurst replied, “I should think we have sufficient time. Perhaps we shall miss the press of people who will be trying to catch the five o’clock car to town. I have never seen Laurel Hill quite as crowded as it was today.” She then turned and began to walk briskly down a path that led away from the entrance, deeper into the cemetery.

As Annie caught up with her companion, she remarked, “You are quite right. I was obviously not the only person who read in yesterday’s Evening Bulletin that the Sutter Street line had finished its cable all the way west to Central. I don’t know that the investors will be happy with the paper calling it the ‘cemetery run,’ but it certainly does make it easier to visit Laurel Hill, and the other Lone Mountain cemeteries as well.”

As they came out from the trees and looked down at a little clearing, Annie paused to observe the view. She could still make out the bulk of Mt. Tamalpais across the Golden Gate and could see the tip of Angel Island across the entrance to the San Francisco Bay. A faint tang of salt water teased the air. At this height, the wind from the Pacific tossed the tops of the oaks on either side of them, causing small reddish oval acorns to plummet downward, some rolling to land at their feet. Annie leaned over and picked one up, saying “You mentioned you come to Laurel Hill often. Are your parents buried here?”

“Yes, Mrs. Fuller, both of my parents,” Miss Pinehurst replied. “My family came to San Francisco overland in ’57, and my mother died just three years later. She had a hard time on the crossing, never really recovered. My father died in 1865. That left my little sister, Sukie, and myself. Sukie was only seven when mother died, so you could say I raised her.”

Even younger than I was when mother died, Annie thought. Why have I never even considered going back down to Los Angeles to visit mother’s grave since I’ve been back? She didn’t know if she could even find her mother’s grave. And then there was her father, dying up in that small Maine town while on business, and John burying him there without her permission. Would it have brought her any peace of mind to see his resting place? Made his death any more real? She realized she just didn’t feel any connection to where their bodies were buried. Yet being able to visit Matthew’s grave today had been comforting.

Miss Pinehurst interrupted her reverie saying, “You mentioned you were visiting a friend. I am sorry if this is a recent loss.”

“Why, thank you, yes, very recent. I don’t know if you heard, but one of my clients, well, one of Madam Sibyl’s clients, Mr. Matthew Voss, died this summer. He was a dear friend.”

At her mention of Madam Sibyl, Annie felt rather than saw Miss Pinehurst stiffen. She had explained to her, as she felt she had to do with everyone who chose to live in her boarding house, that the small downstairs parlor was devoted to the business of Madam Sibyl. She had also explained that she, Mrs. John Fuller, was Madam Sibyl, and this was a kind of business alias she used to keep her professional and personal lives separate. She assured her potential boarders that her work was respectable and very discreet. Some of the residents, like the two elderly seamstresses, Minnie and Millie Moffet, really didn’t seem to grasp what she was saying, but also didn’t seem to care. Others, like Mr. Chapman, one of the two clerks who shared the small room at the back of the second floor, seemed to think it was a good joke.

Miss Pinehurst, on the other hand, had made it crystal clear that she found the whole idea distasteful, and that only the strong recommendations from the wealthy and socially prominent Mr. and Mrs. Stein had convinced her that residing in Annie’s boarding house wouldn’t ruin her reputation. Herman and Esther Stein occupied the two-room suite across from Annie, and it had actually been Mr. Stein’s suggestion that Annie start her clairvoyant business as Madam Sibyl.

Annie, squashing her inclination to say something in defense of her occupation, returned to the apparently safe subject of families and said, “You mentioned raising your sister; I believe I heard her husband is a clerk in a bank, such a promising occupation. And that she has a little . . .”

Annie gasped as she realized the enormous mistake she had just made. “Oh, Miss Pinehurst, I am so sorry, your little nephew, I had forgotten. Mrs. Stein told me he died suddenly this summer. Such a tragedy. I would not have distressed you for the world.”

The older woman gave the tiniest of shrugs and stared down at the graves below. In the waning daylight, her normally pale skin looked ghostly white, and Annie could see that she clenched her hands to her breast as if she was in pain.

Heavens above, how could I have forgotten, Annie thought. And from what Esther said, she simply doted on the boy. Of course that’s why she is here, to visit the boy’s grave.

Miss Pinehurst turned abruptly towards her and said, “Mrs. Fuller, do you believe in spirits? I have looked at the advertisement you have in the Chronicle, and it doesn’t say anything about Spiritualism, or mediums, like most of them. I wondered . . .” She stopped speaking, as if she didn’t know what to say next.

After a long pause, Annie replied stiffly. “You are correct that as Madam Sibyl I don’t claim any ability to communicate with the spirit world. What I offer people is advice. This advice is actually based on my experience and skills in the world of business and finance, as well as a modest understanding of the human condition. Unfortunately, I found I was taken more seriously if I said I was aided in obtaining that advice from palmistry or astrology. May I ask why you want to know if I believe in spirits?”

Miss Pinehurst reached out to Annie, grabbing her arm. “My sister does. Sukie believes she talks to the spirit of our dear Charlie, as if he would come to her while she sits in a dark room with a group of complete strangers. I went with her once. It made me ill. If she is conversing with anyone, it is the devil himself. Mrs. Fuller, do you think you could help me? I am at my wits end. I fear so for her sanity, for her very soul.”