No Comfort for the Lost (2 page)

“The half-Chinese girl you live with is your cousin?” Detective Greaves asked, interrupting. At least she did not see in his eyes the bigotry she so typically encountered in others’.

“You have very quickly gathered information about me, Mr. Greaves.”

He gave a slight nod. “And your uncle was a gold miner.”

“That he was.” Celia smiled. Gregarious, adventurous Uncle Walford. So different from her cautious father. “Sadly, he passed away two summers ago, leaving my cousin an orphan. Her mother, a Chinese woman my uncle had met in a mining camp, had died when Barbara was a child. Barbara was left alone in that big house she’d inherited. She was too young to be on her own, and as her nearest relative, I was appointed her guardian.

“Acquaintances suggested that I send her to a boarding school, but she wouldn’t have been happy there. Attending school had never been a good experience for her.” Uncle Walford had once attempted to send Barbara to a public school in the city; when she was jeered at and tormented by the other students, she’d been hastily removed. “With her father’s encouragement, I had already established my clinic in her house. Taking up residence there, I confess, made my life a great deal easier.”

Celia paused to take a bite of the sandwich. It was good, and she was surprised by the return of her appetite. The detective used the break in conversation to scan the room.

He reached inside his coat and extracted a notebook. “When did you last see Li Sha?”

“Wednesday of last week, when she came for dinner, as she often did. She seemed her usual self that day.”

“Did you give her the dress she was wearing? You don’t usually see Chinese women in Western clothes.”

“I did. She wanted to blend in better, and she thought people might stare less if she dressed like everyone else.” Li Sha had been so pleased with Celia’s present, even though the gown was far too big. She had wanted to conceal the pregnancy for a while and had rebuffed Celia’s offers to have the dress properly altered. “I believe people stared more.”

He took additional notes, then paused to consider her. “After she left the parlor house, what did she do? A Chinese woman alone would live mighty precariously.”

“I tried to find her work, but it was difficult. People in this city might hire Chinese men, but they do not hire Chinese women,” said Celia. “I finally did find her a position with my apothecary, Hubert Lange. A good man doing a great favor for me.”

“Must have been a pretty big favor, to hire a former prostitute.”

“Some time ago, I saved him from a serious scandal. One of his customers fell ill, terribly ill, from a concoction he was selling. It nearly killed the woman, but I nursed her back to health. Mr. Lange has been grateful ever since.” And she had taken advantage of that gratitude. He had been good to Li Sha, though, and she had given him no reason to complain about her work or her conduct.

“Li Sha cleaned his shop a few evenings a week,” continued Celia. “After the shop had closed, when there were no customers to see her. Nonetheless, the situation was not easy for her. I believe people were harrying her in the streets, provoked by the audacity of a Chinese woman venturing outside the boundaries of Chinatown.”

“Any particular threats you know of?”

“None at all.”

Someone in the coffeehouse dropped a piece of cutlery, the clank jarring the hushed quiet. The proprietor was attempting to move within earshot again, wiping down tables located progressively nearer to the one where she and Mr. Greaves sat.

“Any idea who might be responsible for her death, Mrs. Davies?” the detective asked.

“A member of the Anti-Coolie Association?” she offered.

He didn’t blink at the suggestion; it was not such a foolish idea, then.

“I’d considered them myself,” he said. “Even though I can’t really see the men who rioted a few weeks back bothering with a prostitute.”

“Perhaps they were the ones who’d been harrying her, though.” Celia recalled the man on the street who’d glared at Barbara after the meeting Monday night. Would her cousin have been attacked if she’d been alone? “It has to be someone from the Anti-Coolie Association, doesn’t it? They’re whipping up so much hatred against the Chinese that even my cousin has felt it.”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” he said, “but I’ll find out.”

“Thank you.”

“I’d like to start by talking to anybody who knew Li Sha,” he said. “Anyone who might know what happened in her final days. Where was she living?”

“Sometimes she stayed at the Chinese Mission, although she did not like it there. But usually she stayed with Tom.”

“Tom?”

“The father of the child she was carrying,” Celia answered. “But Tom would never have done this.”

“I’ll determine that,” Mr. Greaves said. “What is Tom’s full name, and where can I find him?”

The pencil hovered over Nicholas Greaves’ notebook. Celia felt a chill, one that no amount of gripping her coffee cup would warm. “His full name is Tom Davies.” She paused. “He is my brother-in-law.”

• • •

N
ick set down his pencil. “You could’ve told me earlier that Li Sha had been living with a member of your family, Mrs. Davies.”

Her eyes had taken on a definite coolness. “He is a member of my husband’s family.”

Not her family, but her husband’s. A distinction that suggested just how well she and Tom Davies got along.

“You’ve got to admit it looks suspicious that you’ve been keeping his name from me.” He peered at her. Off to their left, the man who owned the coffeehouse was inching close again. “Care to come up with a different answer to who you think might have killed Li Sha?”

Mrs. Davies’ cup clinked against the saucer as she set it down. “Just because we are not fast friends does not make Tom a killer. He cared for Li Sha. That much I know about him. He wouldn’t hurt her or their child.”

“So he wasn’t the abusive customer who injured her last summer? Or the man who caused those recent bruises on her face?”

“In the few months they have been together, I have never known him to hit Li Sha.”

“Somebody did,” Nick said, “and not all that long ago.”

Her gaze flickered; apparently she hadn’t pondered who’d given the girl the bruises before now. Willful ignorance, maybe.

“I’ll have to question him,” Nick added.

“Please don’t interview Tom without me there,” she said. “I owe it to my husband to support his brother as best I can. And I expect Tom will be devastated to hear Li Sha has died. He intended to marry her.”

“Men may use these women, Mrs. Davies. They may even believe that they’re in love with them. But they never marry them.”

“That is not always true.”

She had to be thinking of her uncle and the Chinese woman who’d given him a daughter. So they’d married, then. Would’ve had to, in order for the girl to have inherited the house. But a personal example hardly meant that vague promises by her brother-in-law could be trusted.

“Nonetheless,” Nick said, “love can easily turn to jealousy, and jealousy is a powerful—and sometimes violent—emotion.”

“What or whom would Tom possibly be jealous of?”

“Perhaps she’d found another man or had threatened to take the baby away. Whatever the reason, I’ll find that out, too.” Standing, he retrieved coins from a vest pocket and dropped them onto the table. “That ought to cover my part of the bill.” He hadn’t even touched his coffee.

“Are you going to Tom’s right now?”

“I have an investigation to conduct, Mrs. Davies,” he said, restoring the notebook to his pocket.

She scrambled to her feet. “You are not going to be rid of me so easily, Mr. Greaves. I intend to be with you when you talk to my brother-in-law, because I will not let you coerce him into some sort of confused confession.”

He clenched his jaw. She was too stubborn for her own good. “I’m not giving in this time.”

“You cannot stop me from following you. I have made Tom a suspect, and I feel answerable to what might happen as a result.”

“And I’ll have Taylor arrest you for interfering with an investigation.”

“Be practical. Tom will more readily speak to me than to you, as will anyone else who knew Li Sha. Especially if you are considering questioning any of her Chinese acquaintances. I truly did mean what I said about wanting to see justice served, proper justice, and for that to occur I’m convinced you need my help.”

He stared at her long and hard. She didn’t budge.

“Have I told you yet that you remind me of my little sister?” he said.

“I am trying to imagine you with a younger sister, Mr. Greaves. You must be very protective of her.”

“I was,” he answered, all the pain of Meg’s death as fresh as if he’d received the news yesterday rather than almost three years ago. “Once.”

“I am so sorry. I did not realize . . . ,” she stammered.

He stepped around her, bound for the door. When she did not immediately make a move to follow, he glanced over his shoulder. “I thought you were coming.”

She rummaged through her reticule, left money on the table, and hastened to his side. “You will not be sorry.”

“I sure hope not, Mrs. Davies,” he said, frowning. “I sure hope not.”

“I’ll not be believin’ she’s dead.” Tom Davies was defiant. “You’re wrong.”

Mrs. Davies, seated on a chair across the table from her brother-in-law, slid Nick an uneasy glance. If she suspected he already disliked the man, she was right; Tom Davies was a hotheaded Irishman.

Standing in the shadowed corner of the man’s rented room, Nick shifted his weight to the other foot and waited. Davies would eventually calm down enough to be interviewed. Until then, he’d let Mrs. Davies offer condolences, because Nick never did anymore. The consequences from the one time he’d assumed a suspect’s innocence when he was a green police officer had eliminated any temptation to make the same mistake twice.

“The detective is not wrong, Tom. I’m sorry.”

Davies scowled. He was good-looking in a rough-around-the-edges sort of way, well muscled for a clerk with a desk job. Though it was probably good-paying work, Davies couldn’t claim to own many furnishings—just a table, a few chairs, and an oil stove in the opposite corner, a small chest of drawers, a trunk. A folding partition screened off the farthest corner. Dust covered every surface, and a slick of grime blackened the baseboards. If Li Sha had lived here, she hadn’t been cleaning Davies’ room or leaving feminine touches behind.

The room’s two dirty windows were closed tight. Tom Davies lived south of Market, near Tar Flat, which meant breathing the stench from the Donahues’ gasworks. Distilling coal into gas produced sludge, and the sludge was piling up thick to the east of the works, exuding stink into the air. Some folks thought the fumes cured lung ailments. Nick was pretty sure the fumes would eventually kill a body.

He shifted his weight again and noticed a stain on the tattered rag rug. It might be from spilled coffee or something else. However, Davies’ lodgings were more than a mile from the wharf where Li Sha had been found. If she’d been killed here, that was a long way to haul a body without any means of transportation.

“But I know you’re wrong about it bein’ her,” Davies insisted, and stood. “So thanks for finally comin’ to visit, Celia, but you can leave now.”

“Sit down, Mr. Davies,” said Nick. To his surprise, the man complied. “Mrs. Davies, tell him once more.”

“Tom, the Chinese girl who was found in the bay is indeed Li Sha. I saw her body only a couple of hours ago.”

Davies’ shoulders sagged. “You’re wrong,” he repeated, but the fight had gone out of him.

Nick stepped farther into the room. He’d commit Davies’ responses to memory. With a suspect this jumpy, pulling out his notebook might make the man less willing to talk. “Were you with Li Sha two nights ago?” he asked.

“I wasn’t.” Davies’ gaze leaped between them. “Wait. Why are you askin’ me that? You think I’d kill her?”

“No,” Mrs. Davies denied it, stretching fingers across the scarred wood surface to touch his hand. “Of course not.”

“But
he
does!” Davies accused, pointing at Nick. The man’s biceps tensed within his white shirtsleeves. When they’d arrived at the boardinghouse, Davies had just come home from his clerking job and was down to his vest, black neckcloth untied, dark jacket hung on a hook by the door. There was an ink stain on his left cuff, but no old blood that Nick could see. Davies might have two or three shirts, though. “And you think it, too. Don’t you, Celia?”

She withdrew her hand. “Tom, please simply answer the detective’s questions, so that he can discover who did hurt Li Sha.”

Davies slumped into his chair.

Nick asked, “When was the last time you saw Li Sha?”

“A few days past. A week, maybe.” He shrugged. “I don’t recall.”

“I thought she lived here. That the two of you were . . . close.” His intentional pause was loaded with meaning.

Davies’ eyes narrowed. “I loved her. Maybe that’s hard for you to understand.”

It wasn’t hard at all; he’d once loved where he shouldn’t have. “Where was she staying, then, if she hadn’t been here? At the Chinese Mission?”

“I don’t know where she’d gone to.”

To the person who’d killed her?

“Tom, when you did see her last, did Li Sha seem all right?” asked Mrs. Davies.

Nick sighed. “Mrs. Davies, can you let me ask the questions? It is my job.” He’d allowed clear, pale eyes and hair that shone like gold in the sunlight to make him foolhardy. He should’ve sent her home and had Taylor stand guard to keep her out of here, in case she got the idea to show up anyway.

“My apologies, Mr. Greaves.”

Her brother-in-law answered her question. “Li Sha was fine when I saw her last.”

“Where were you Monday evening?” Nick asked.

“I was at Mitchell’s place that night,” he answered. “The saloon around the corner.”

Mrs. Davies cast Nick another uneasy glance, but she didn’t need to worry about Davies’ admission. If Nick came to suspect every man who spent his evenings drinking in saloons, he would have to arrest half the town.

“Will anybody remember seeing you at Mitchell’s that evening?”

“See? He is thinkin’ I killed her. That’s why you brought him here, ain’t it, Celia? Patrick was right about you. You’re a hard woman.”

She flushed and dropped her gaze.

“Tell me about that evening, Mr. Davies,” said Nick.

Davies looked at him. “I’m not goin’ to Mitchell’s often. Just an occasional night here or there, you see? A lot of the fellows were drunker than me. One of them bought me a whiskey. Felt sorry for me. But I’m not recallin’ who, exactly.”

“Why’d he feel sorry for you?”

Davies didn’t answer, glancing over at his sister-in-law, whose lips were pressed into a thin, pink line.

Nick made a stab at a probable reason. “Did you think Li Sha had left you and that was why you hadn’t seen her for days?”

“I don’t know!”

He’d guessed correctly, then. “And you were jealous and angry and went looking for her. Things got out of hand—”

“That’s not what happened at all!” A quiver rippled through Davies’ body, and he clenched his fists. Nick tried to imagine them clutching a knife in anger. It wouldn’t take much for a man of Davies’ size to kill a tiny woman. “I loved her, and I wanted her here with me. She was gonna have our baby. I wanted to raise it right.”

“You sure the baby was yours?” Nick asked, ignoring the disapproval that flashed across Celia Davies’ face.

“Did you tell him it wasn’t, Celia?”

“No, Tom.” She turned to Nick. “Haven’t you learned enough, Mr. Greaves? I will vouch for my brother-in-law’s character, if that is what is required.”

She intended to vouch for the character of a man she rarely saw. A man who didn’t seem to like her.

“So you believed Li Sha’s claim that you were the father?” he asked Davies. “You’re telling me you don’t think she’d been with another man. A man who might have killed her.”

“It was
my
baby.” He swallowed. “If it was a girl, we were gonna name her Katie. After me ma. She woulda been mine. Me little girl . . .” His voice broke, and he began to sob.

Nick felt pity despite his wish not to. What a god-awful business he’d chosen to be in, following in Uncle Asa’s footsteps. His uncle never would’ve felt pity for a suspect. “What about the bruises on her face? Did you give her those?”

“Must you, Mr. Greaves?” Mrs. Davies accused. “Can you not cease the questions? Tom is too upset to go on, and clearly not responsible for her death.”

The world was not that black or white to him, and nothing about this case was clear. Yet. “I thought you wanted justice for Li Sha. That’s all I’m aiming to achieve.”

“Of course I want justice.” She stood and rested a protective hand on Tom Davies’ shoulder. “I also want a measure of compassion.”

“I can’t afford compassion during a murder investigation, Mrs. Davies,” Nick replied, and turned back to Davies. “I need an answer. Did you give Li Sha the bruises on her face?”

“Honestly,” Mrs. Davies protested.

“I didn’t.” The man dragged a hand over his pasty face and looked up. “I would never kill her. I loved her.”

As though professed love kept men from killing their women. “So, you were drinking at Mitchell’s all evening. What did you do afterward?”

“Came home. Fell asleep. Woke up late for work the next mornin’.”

And no one could confirm or deny his whereabouts. “Can I look around a little before we leave?”

“You’ll be doin’ it whether I say yes or no,” answered Davies.

Behind the partition was a narrow bed covered by a patchwork quilt, a washbasin and mirror with a crack in the glass, a lidded chamber pot painted with roses, and a narrow chest of drawers, a pair of muddy boots tucked beside it. A second white shirt, the left cuff also smudged with ink, hung on the wall. Another rag rug much like the one by the table lay next to the bed. Nick pushed it aside with his toe to see if the rug hid any bloodstains. It did not.

When he rejoined them, he noted that Mrs. Davies had moved apart from her brother-in-law and a tense silence filled the room.

“Let’s go,” he said to her. He’d seen enough.

He grabbed his hat from atop the chest where he’d left it and strode through the door, out into the hallway. Within seconds, he heard Mrs. Davies say good-bye to Tom followed by the rapid tap of her boot heels behind him.

• • •

“
T
hank you for not arresting him.” Celia jogged to keep pace with the detective’s long strides.

Mr. Greaves shot her a look. If she could see the expression in his eyes, shaded by the brim of his hat, she might better understand him. Though on second thought, learning to read this man might prove a dangerous occupation.

“I don’t have enough evidence,” he said. “But I will check his alibi, even if you are willing to vouch for the character of a man who calls you a hard woman.”

“As I have said, we are not close.”

“How did Tom and Li Sha meet? You haven’t explained.”

“It’s my understanding that Tom met her at Mr. Lange’s,” she answered, skirting a grocer hauling crates of gin into his shop. “Tom’s office is only a few doors down the road from the apothecary shop. He knew Mr. Lange’s daughter, Tessie, and met Li Sha during one of his visits, I presume, and fell in love with her. Their courtship proceeded rapidly. Before I knew it, Li Sha was carrying Tom’s child and sharing his room.”

When Li Sha had further informed Celia that Tom had offered to marry her, she had been astonished. Perhaps all the Davies men were impulsive when it came to matters of the heart.

“And somewhere along the way, their relationship turned sour,” said Mr. Greaves.

“Given that she had moved out, that must be the case.”

Likely thinking that was the last to be said on the matter, he removed his notebook from within his coat, along with a pencil, and started scribbling notes, looking up only to avoid colliding with telegraph poles and gaslight posts.

“Do please slow down, Mr. Greaves.”

He did not.

“Since you’ve dismissed the anti-Chinese groups as being responsible for killing Li Sha, whom else do you consider a suspect?” Celia asked as she trotted after the detective. “Because I cannot fathom who would harm her. She really was a gentle, quiet creature.”

“I didn’t say I’ve dismissed the anti-Chinese groups, Mrs. Davies.”

“Are they your main suspect, or is Tom still the primary one? Or someone else?”

He exhaled loudly; she surmised she was annoying him. “Most times the killer is an acquaintance of the victim, ma’am. An acquaintance has motive and opportunity,” he said without taking his gaze off his notebook.

“Which means I might know the killer as well.” What a horrible notion.

“It’s possible.”

“What shall I say to Barbara and my housekeeper about Li Sha?” she asked.

“Whatever you do, don’t describe the body. It’ll be better that way. Easier for them.”

But not so easy for me.
“If they have any information or suspicions, I will let you know. And I will try to discover where Li Sha might have been living since leaving Tom.”

“Thank you.”

The notebook at last returned to its pocket, Nicholas Greaves paused on the corner in the lee of a bank building, its iron door and shutters locked tight. A party of horsemen and horsewomen galloped down Market Street, laughing and shouting, blocking the road. Based on their accents, they were fellow Englishmen and well-off, their costumes the finest Oxford Street in London could provide. Mr. Greaves watched them pass, appearing unimpressed with their self-satisfied high spirits.

Celia contemplated Nicholas Greaves. His suit of clothes was not of the highest quality, although serviceable and adequately tailored, and his footwear needed a polish. He seemed to be a man who might have pulled himself up by his bootstraps, another saying of the Americans. What might he think of her, though, if he learned she was once as privileged and careless as those riders?

He looked down and caught her staring. Her cheeks warmed and she glanced away. They started across the road.

“Would you like me to speak to Li Sha’s former associates in Chinatown?” she asked. “I can take my cousin with me. She speaks their language. And a guard, of course. The local constables help me—”

“This is my job, Mrs. Davies,” he interrupted.

“They will not speak to a policeman.”

“They won’t speak to you, either. Who might they think killed Li Sha? They’ll most likely think it was one of their own people. Or a customer. And if they suspect a Caucasian customer, they can’t testify,” he pointed out unnecessarily, since she was already familiar with the unfair law that prohibited the Chinese from bearing witness against whites.

“Yes, Mr. Greaves, but—”

“Either way,” he continued, “the women of Chinatown are in no position to voice their opinions or offer names. They would be risking their necks.”

“I cannot do nothing.”

“You’ve given me a direction for my inquiries and provided plenty of information. That’s more than enough, ma’am.” He looked down the street and halted his steps. “You can take the omnibus from here to where you live.”

“You uncovered where I live while you were fact gathering on me?” What else did he know about her?