The Spook Lights Affair (7 page)

“Virginia? No. Has something happened to her?”

“I’m afraid so.” Briefly and with a minimum of detail she told him what had happened the night before.

He reacted with shock, bewilderment, distress—all of it seemingly genuine. He leaned heavily against one of the shelves, shaking his head, his eyes moist and glistening. “My God, are you certain she couldn’t have survived the fall? If her body wasn’t found, then she might still be alive.…”

“I can’t explain the missing body, but no, it’s virtually impossible for her to have survived such a plunge.”

“But why would she do such a thing? She was so young, so full of life.…”

“You have no idea?”

“No. Absolutely none.”

“I’ve been told you and she were quite close.”

“We were keeping company, yes, until her parents refused to allow her to see me any longer.” A touch of bitterness underlay the grief in his voice. “They consider me beneath her station. ‘A lowly clerk who lives in the squalor of Carville,’ in her father’s words. I may be only a clerk and stockboy at present, but Mr. Ellerby is planning to open a second store and has promised to make me manager. And whatever Carville may be, it’s certainly not squalid.…” He broke off, scrubbed his face with his palms.

Sabina asked, “How serious was your relationship with Miss St. Ives?”

“Not as serious as it might have become had we been permitted more time together. I may one day have asked her to be my wife.”

“But it hadn’t reached that stage of intimacy yet?”

“No. If only she hadn’t listened to her father…” The hands came down and he frowned at Sabina as if just struck by a thought. “I suppose he’s the one who hired you. To make sure Virginia didn’t disobey his orders.”

“While he and his wife were away in Sacramento, yes.”

“Why were you chaperoning her last night? Did you think Virginia might try to sneak off to meet me somewhere?”

“I didn’t think anything, Mr. Whiffing. I was merely attending to my duties.”

“Not attending to them well, if you weren’t able to prevent her from hurling herself off that cliff.”

“I had no idea what she was planning to do. I truly wish I had.”

“So do I.” He sighed heavily. “Oh, God, poor Virginia,” he said then. “She was … downhearted the last time I saw her, but I thought it was because she’d been forced to end our relationship.”

“That was at your meeting at Coppa’s Restaurant last week?”

“Yes. She said she couldn’t go against her father’s wishes, that he would disown her if she did. I was more upset than she was, at least outwardly.”

At the breakup itself, Sabina wondered, or at the end of his chances of marrying into a considerable fortune?

Lucas said, “But she must have been depressed, deeply depressed about something else to do what she did. I can’t imagine that it had anything to do with me.”

“She gave no indication of what it might have been?”

“None. I would have questioned her if she had.”

“Did you have any contact with her after that day?”

“No. I kept hoping she would change her mind, try to get in touch with me, but she didn’t.”

“Do you know if she was seeing anyone else?”

He shook his head. “If she was, it was at the forceful urging of her parents. But I don’t believe she was. At least not during the time we were together.”

“And how long was that?”

“Three months.”

“How did you and she meet?”

“She came in one morning to view our new line of bicycles. Our conversation was friendly enough so that I was encouraged to invite her to a noon-hour stroll through Union Square, and she agreed. I bought her a corsage at old Giovanni’s stand—pansies, her favorites.”

“How often did you meet after that?”

“Whenever my job and her busy schedule permitted. Public places. The little tea room in Maiden Lane, restaurants where it’s permitted for young women of her station to dine alone with gentlemen. The Chutes Amusement Park on one occasion, Golden Gate Park on another.”

“Always just the two of you? Or did you share some of these outings with others of your acquaintance or hers?”

“Just the two of us. I was never introduced to anyone in her circle, but that was not because she was in any way ashamed of me.” Lucas said this defensively. “The opportunity simply never arose.”

“Did you spend an entire day, well into the evening, in her company?”

“No. Our outings lasted no more than two or three hours.”

“Were you ever alone together in private circumstances?”

“Private circumstances? No, never. Why would you ask that?”

“I’m sure you realize one possible reason for Virginia’s despondent state is that she found herself caught in a shameful situation—”

Color came into Lucas’s cheeks; he drew himself up angrily. “Are you suggesting that she might have been with child and I the father? That is an insulting and completely false notion, Mrs. Carpenter. Virginia and I were never intimate, never exchanged more than a chaste kiss.”

The truth? Or was he protesting too much? “Pregnancy by another man might still be the cause.”

“I refuse to believe that. Virginia could be gay and impulsive at times, but underneath she was an extremely virtuous young lady. I don’t care how many beaux she had, she would have remained pure until her wedding night.”

Sabina wasn’t so sure, but she saw no reason to argue the point. It would not have done her any good to try; Lucas ended the interview abruptly, saying that he didn’t feel well and needed a breath of air, and leaving her to find her own way out through the front of the store.

A curious young man, Lucas Whiffing. His answers to her questions had seemed honest enough, and yet Sabina was left with the feeling that he hadn’t been completely straightforward with her. Either he was an habitual liar, or he knew and was hiding something for reasons of his own. Or both.

*   *   *

Virginia St. Ives had many friends her age, but evidently only one close enough to have been a confidante—Grace DeBrett, the girl whom Sabina had met at the St. Ives home and who had been at the mayor’s party last night. Miss DeBrett lived with her family in a Nob Hill mansion, Sabina’s destination by hansom cab after leaving F. W. Ellerby’s.

Grace was home, and the maid who answered the door took Sabina’s card in to her. And brought it back in less than two minutes. “Miss DeBrett does not wish to see you and requests that you do not call here again,” she said, and closed the door firmly in Sabina’s face.

7

QUINCANNON

Quincannon’s humor was black and smoldering when he left his rooms Saturday morning. In addition to the indignities he had suffered the night before—a mushy and painful wound on his temple where Bob Cantwell had clubbed him, a knot on his forehead from his collision with the fence, torn and beer-drenched clothing, and despite a bath, the faint lingering scent of a derelict—he had spent a mostly sleepless night. Cantwell would pay and pay dear when he got his hands on the little weasel. A $3,500 reward for professional services rendered was all well and good, but there were also satisfactions to be had in repaying thumps and lumps in kind.

Hammond Realtors, Battery Street, was not open for business—a slipshod operation, in Quincannon’s opinion, if its doors remained closed on Saturdays. From there he went to Drake’s Rest, but Cantwell had not returned to the lodging house even long enough to gather up his belongings. Yet another silver dollar bribe to the harridan owner bought Quincannon entry to Cantwell’s room, which he searched quickly and fruitlessly. There was nothing there to suggest where the young fool might have fled to, or to further link him to the Wells, Fargo Express robbery and the whereabouts of the man named Zeke and the missing money.

His next stop was the Western Union office, where he sent a wire to Clem Holloway at the Holloway Detective Agency in Los Angeles requesting information on Jack Travers—current address, criminal record, any known alliances in San Francisco. He and Holloway had exchanged business favors in the past; Clem knew almost as much about the Southern California underworld as Quincannon did about Northern California’s, and would respond with all possible dispatch.

Quincannon’s mood continued to darken as the morning progressed. A visit to Ezra Bluefield at the Scarlet Lady proved futile; the deadfall owner could tell him nothing about Cantwell or Jack Travers, or who the Kid or Zeke might be, the monikers being not uncommon among Barbary Coast and other underworld denizens. Bluefield promised to put the word out on Cantwell, but without his usual enthusiasm. Favors as repayment for the debts he owed only went so far for a man of his hard-bitten temperament—even more hardbitten since his unsuccessful bid to purchase a more respectable saloon in the Uptown Tenderloin—and it was plain that he was beginning to feel put upon. Quincannon warned himself to be careful not to ask too much too often in the future.

During his years with the U.S. Secret Service and then as a private investigator, he had made the acquaintance of a long list of minor criminals, both in and out of the Barbary Coast, who were willing to peddle information for cash. But he had no more luck with any of these he managed to locate. Not even the most reliable, the bunco steerer known as Breezy Ned and the “blind” newspaper vendor called Slewfoot, had any information for him. Nor did Charles Riley at the House of Chance. Riley had not seen Cantwell since the clerk’s abortive attempt to sell him information about the Wells, Fargo robbery in exchange for gambling credit; wherever Cantwell had gone to roll the bones the night before, it had not been to the Tenderloin.

Quincannon had his lunch, as he often did, at Hoolihan’s Saloon on Second Street. Hoolihan’s had been his favorite watering hole during his drinking days and he continued to patronize it because it was an honest place, both staff and regular customers friendly, a challenging game of pool or billiards could always be had, and the free lunch was of a higher standard than many. Usually his appetite was prodigious; in his present gloomy state, he managed to down only two corned beef-and-cheese sandwiches and three briny pickles with his customary cup of clam juice.

As he was finishing the second sandwich, Ben Joyce, the head barman, approached him. “Well, you bloody Scotsman, I see you and your partner are back in the public eye. But with a black one of your own this time, eh?”

“What are you nattering about?”

“The queer business with your partner at the mayor’s home last night.”

Quincannon felt a twist of alarm. “
What
queer business?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know. It’s front page news in the latest edition of the
Evening Bulletin
.”

“I haven’t seen that blasted scandal sheet. Bring me a copy, if you have one.”

Ben Joyce had one and brought it. The headlines were prominent:

FANTASTIC OCCURANCE AT MAYOR’S HOME
W
OMAN
D
ETECTIVE
C
LAIMS
S
OCIALITE
L
EAPT TO
D
EATH
S
UICIDE
N
OTE BUT
N
O
B
ODY
F
OUND

The story that followed, penned by an inflammatory yellow journalist named Homer Keeps with whom Quincannon shared a strong mutual dislike, was even more puzzling and infuriating. The socialite whose alleged suicidal plunge from the Sutro Heights overlook was Virginia St. Ives, the young debutante Sabina had been hired to watch over. No one seemed able to explain why a careful search of the Great Highway below the cliff had failed to locate the girl’s body. Sabina remained steadfast in her claim that she had witnessed the plunge, one which no one could have survived. David St. Ives, the girl’s outraged brother, claimed that no matter what had happened, Sabina had been “severely negligent” in her watchdog duties. Homer Keeps inferred agreement, and had the audacity to add another, gratuitous insult: “Mrs. Carpenter and her flamboyant partner, John H. Quincannon,” he wrote, “are well known among the lower classes of our city, in the past having reportedly indulged in business practices of a questionable nature.”

Quincannon slammed the newspaper down so hard on the bar that glasses jumped and heads swiveled all along its length. After which he kicked a spittoon for good measure. Flamboyant! Well-known among the lower classes! Business practices of a questionable nature! As if these borderline libelous slurs were not injurious enough to his and Sabina’s professional reputation, the bloody swine had deliberately—and it was surely deliberate—misprinted his middle initial. H. indeed. John
Frederick
Quincannon was not about to stand for such sly calumny.

From Hoolihan’s he went straight to the Market Street offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. His rage had calmed to a slow simmer by the time he got there, but it kindled quickly when he found a newshound from the
Chronicle
waiting for him with a string of annoying questions. He growled his refusal to be interviewed, and when the reporter persisted, Quincannon turned on the full force of his freebooter’s glower and loomed threateningly until he beat a hasty retreat.

The fact that the office door was locked did nothing to improve his disposition. The lack of any message on his desk indicated that Sabina had yet to put in an appearance today. Confound it, why not? He believed none of the David St. Ives claptrap about her having been derelict in her duties last evening, but before he took steps to repair the damage done, he needed to have her version of what had happened.

He was at his desk, fidgeting and smoldering while he sifted through the day’s mail, when the door opened. But it was not Sabina who entered. Nor was it a prospective client or any other visitor who would have been polite enough to knock first. No, it was the last person on earth he wished to see, this day or any day—a presence that set his blood to boiling again like the brew in a witch’s cauldron.

The man who stood there smiling at him, gray cape flung over his narrow shoulders, walking stick in hand and deerstalker cap shading his hawkish countenance, was the pestiferous crackbrain who fancied himself to be Sherlock Holmes.