Deadly Proof: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (10 page)

Annie, pleased, said, “Well, you can thank Mrs. Gordon. I recently read a newspaper report of a talk she’d given to the Pacific Coast Press Association on the need to repeal tariffs on imported paper. She pointed out that there had been a steep rise in the price of paper in the United States in the past year as a result of current policy.”

“Ah, yes, I’d understood that Laura Gordon, despite her new legal career, has stayed active in the press association. Have you ever met her?”

“I haven’t, but my fiancé, Mr. Dawson, has. In fact, she is the person who recommended that he represent Mrs. Sullivan.” Annie paused, hoping that Mrs. Richmond might take up this topic on her own.

“Yes. Iris told me on Monday about poor Florence having been arrested. For murder? That does seem quite improbable. By the time I was managing the Women’s Co-operative, she had moved on to work with Mrs. Pitts Stevens, one of our founders, so I don’t know her personally. I do believe she and Iris have remained good friends, and my impression is that she is a serious and upright individual.”

Annie said, “I gather she’s worked for Rashers for some years, which seems odd if he had such a bad reputation for how he treated his workers.”

Mrs. Richmond looked like she’d suddenly bitten into something unpleasant, and Annie stopped, worried that she had been too blunt.

Then the woman across from her shrugged and said, “Well, Joshua Rashers is...
was
ruthlessly ambitious. He let nothing stand in his way to get what he wanted, including badly underpaying many of his workers. Yet he had the ability to make people like––no––love him. He convinced men that he was their best friend––until they suddenly they found his knife in their back––and then somehow he’d convince them they had stabbed themselves and he was just helping by pulling the knife out.”

“And what about women?” Annie asked. “Was he able to charm women in a similar fashion?”

“Oh, that goes without saying. He was a handsome man. Tall, broad shouldered, with these piercing dark blue eyes. He used those eyes to very good effect on females of any age. Made you feel like you were the only woman in the room when he turned those eyes on you.”

“Do you know how his wife felt about that?” Annie blurted out. Mrs. Richmond’s description of Joshua Rashers made him sound like a man who would not hesitate to be unfaithful. The question was—had Florence Sullivan succumbed to his charm?

Mrs. Richmond didn’t respond for a moment and idly straightened the pile of papers in front of her on the desk. Then she said, “Actually, Catherine Rashers is a close acquaintance of mine. I met her when I first moved to San Francisco in sixty-nine. I was newly divorced and trying to support two young sons. We are of a similar age, and she was very helpful to me in getting settled. Since then we have kept in touch. We are currently serving together on the board of the Boy’s and Girl’s Aid Society.”

Annie waited...not wanting to say anything that might cause Mrs. Richmond to stop providing her useful insights into the personal lives of the Rashers.

Lizzie Richmond stared into space. Then, giving herself a slight shake, she continued. “Catherine isn’t the most discreet of individuals, so anything I share with you is fairly common knowledge. I can attest that theirs wasn’t a perfect marriage, but I can assure you that Joshua Rashers would never do anything that would seriously threaten it—like have an affair with Florence Sullivan.”

“What makes you say so?”

“Because Joshua needed Catherine...and she needed him. Both of them are extremely practical individuals, and I always felt that their relationship was rather like an old-fashioned marriage of convenience. Not what I would choose, but to each their own.”

Lizzie Richmond looked over at the silver-framed photograph of a strikingly handsome young man––no doubt her new husband––and smiled. Then she said, “Catherine met Joshua when he joined her father’s printing shop as an apprentice back in the mid-fifties; he was her way out from under her father’s thumb. She was only sixteen when they married, at which time Joshua started working for the large printers Whitton and Towne. Catherine intimated that her father and husband never got along and that Joshua felt his opportunities were limited working there. Whitton and Towne had the contract to print the daily
Bulletin,
and Joshua soon became the shop’s foreman.”

Annie nodded encouragingly.

“When I met her, Catherine had just given Joshua the money she inherited from her father’s death to set up his own print shop. He took a number of Whitton and Towne’s most important customers with him.”

“Oh dear,” murmured Annie.

“Well, I did say he was ambitious, didn’t I? But Catherine always admired that about him. She is quite ambitious in her own way. She hated that her father made her and her mother work with him in his shop when she was growing up. Felt it was demeaning. As a result, she was very proud of the fact that her husband provided her with all the trimmings of financial success––the large house on Russian Hill, multiple servants, a carriage.”

After a pause, Mrs. Richmond added, “She is also a very shrewd woman. She insisted that she be named the majority partner in his new firm. Which is why I can’t believe that Joshua would do anything to seriously upset her––he would have too much to lose. No, when I met her, it wasn’t her husband’s propensity to flirt with every woman he met that was the source of her unhappiness.”

Mrs. Richmond paused, then said, “The problem was they had been married over ten years and she wasn’t able to conceive. Without children to raise and with Joshua working long hours setting up his new business, she was lonely and bored. I believe she took me and my boys under her wing as a form of distraction. Whatever the reason, I am glad she did. She helped me find housing and introduced me to people who were instrumental in helping me find the position here.”

Catherine Rashers must have been about thirty when Lizzie Richmond met her. Annie was only twenty-seven, but she’d read somewhere that the older a woman was, the harder it was for them to have a healthy pregnancy—one of the reasons for her own concerns about having children with Nate and one of the reasons she’d decided not to insist on a long engagement.

Pushing these thoughts away, Annie said, “Did Mrs. Rashers ever have any children?”

“Oh yes,” Lizzie Richmond replied. “Two sons. I think she’d completely given up. Then, unexpectedly, when she was thirty-five, she turned up pregnant. Quite a surprise. In fact, I’d the impression she was actually thinking about...well. Let’s just say that both she and her husband were very pleased with this blessed event.”

“You said two sons?”

“Yes, only fourteen months after the birth of Jason, Aaron was born. The second pregnancy was quite difficult, and to a degree I am not sure that Catherine has yet regained her full health. She is a devoted mother, but she hasn’t found caring for two infants under the age of five very easy––even with a full-time nursemaid. She certainly isn’t bored anymore.”

Annie felt a sudden sympathy for Mrs. Rashers and said, “And now...she is widowed. I can attest to how devastating the sudden death of a spouse can be, no matter how convenient or inconvenient the marriage was.”

“Yes, whether or not a marriage ends through death or divorce, it can be devastating. But, as I believe we both know, in time, what may have been felt as a curse can eventually be seen as a blessing.”

Annie again felt the acute intelligence of this woman. And a closeness. They both had weathered losses and come out stronger...and happier for it. But would that be Mrs. Rasher’s experience, as well?

As if Mrs. Richmond heard her thoughts, she said, “I believe that Catherine’s interest in the fate of the business is an excellent sign. Just yesterday, she wrote to ask me if I knew someone who could do an audit of her company books in preparation for probate. She wanted to know where the business stood before deciding what her next move should be. I was wondering if you would like me to give her your name?”

Wednesday, late afternoon, July 7, 1880

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“A double-windowed room...was fitted up with compositors' frames and type-cases.” H. Hart,
Periodical
, February 29, 1909    

––––––––

N
ate Dawson was not in the best of moods as he left his law offices, only a half a block from the Niantic Building where Rashers’ firm was located. He rather wished he’d stayed in bed this morning and skipped the whole day. When he got in last night, Mitchell, the young medical student who boarded across the hall, insisted they celebrate the news that Nate and Annie had finally set the date for their wedding, and he’d woken up late and mildly hung over.

Stopping off at his favorite coffee bar on his way to work had just compounded the bad start to the day. The service was particularly slow; as a result, Able Cranston, the firm’s most experienced criminal defense lawyer, had left the office for court before Nate got there. This forced him to turn to his Uncle Frank for advice on the petition to postpone Mrs. Sullivan’s arraignment. Not a pleasant alternative since his uncle tended to treat him as if he were still the fourteen-year-old boy who’d come to live with him while attending San Francisco’s Boys High.

Annie always advised him to ignore his uncle’s sarcastic comments, saying that he wouldn’t be handing over more and more of the firm’s business to Nate if he didn’t respect his skills as a lawyer. Nevertheless, it had been hard for him to keep his mouth shut when, after reading the petition, his uncle responded by saying, “Well, I hope that old Judge Ferral will take pity on you. Because it seems to me the only justification you’ve given for postponing the arraignment is that your client won’t tell you how she’s going to plead.”

Which, of course, was the crux of the matter. He tried seeing Mrs. Sullivan again this morning. No luck. He just prayed she wouldn’t contradict him tomorrow in court when he stood up and asked the judge for a postponement.

Neither the day nor his headache improved much after he’d dropped the petition off at the superior court house on Montgomery and took one of the North Beach Line’s yellow horse cars up to Mrs. Sullivan’s home. Located on Stockton, a half a block south of Washington Square, her residence was a narrow, two-story house crammed between a dry goods store and millinery shop. When a young, harried maid answered the door, he asked to speak to either Mr. Sullivan or Mrs. Tonner, Mrs. Sullivan’s mother. The young girl just stared at him as if he’d been speaking a foreign language.

He then asked if he could come in while she consulted with her master or mistress. That had some effect since she turned and fled, leaving the door open. He stepped in and shut the door behind him. The resulting darkness, in contrast to the sunny day outside, left him momentarily blind. He stood, his hat in his hand, listening, trying to get his bearings. The house felt hot and closed in and silent, except for a strange sound that Nate eventually recognized as snoring. Someone upstairs––surely Alan Sullivan––was evidently still abed. Not that strange, if he worked nights at the
Call.

The girl stuck her head out of a room to his left, whispered something about him coming on in, and disappeared back into the room. When he followed her, he found her hovering over a tiny white-haired old woman wrapped in numerous shawls. He bowed and introduced himself, and Mrs. Tonner (at least he assumed it was she) nodded and indicated that he should sit down in the chair next to her. He then proceeded to try and hold a conversation with a woman who turned out to be profoundly deaf.

As far as he could determine, Mrs. Tonner believed her daughter was helping the police with their inquiries into her employer’s death, although she seemed confused over why Florence would need to stay at the police station to do so. He did get confirmation that the snoring man upstairs was her son-in-law, and he thought she promised to give him Nate’s card.

The only useful piece of information he got out of this visit came from the maid. As he was leaving, he asked her when Mrs. Sullivan returned to work on Friday evening. She replied that her mistress got home a little early and ate dinner with her mother before leaving to return to work, a little after seven. When he asked about whether her master had dined with his wife and mother-in-law, the maid became agitated and shook her head, glancing upwards. Apparently reassured by the continued sound of snoring, she said her master wasn’t happy to learn his wife was returning to work and stormed out of the house without his dinner. What seemed most upsetting to her was that she’d made a special pudding for him that night that he’d never gotten to eat.

Brooding over the significance of this quarrel, Nate had then decided to go down Stockton to the city morgue, which was on O’Farrell Street just off Market. Only a twenty-minute walk, mostly down hill, the light chill in the air was a pleasant contrast to the over-heated atmosphere at the Sullivans’ home. He’d planned on asking some questions of the doctor who’d performed the autopsy on Joshua Rashers Saturday morning. Unfortunately, the man he wanted to see didn’t have an office at the morgue. Turned out, Dr. Blach, the City Physician, had been called in to do Rashers’ autopsy because the regular coroner and his assistants were all off for the Fourth of July weekend. Nate was going to have to track him down at Blach’s regular surgery and hope the doctor would have more to add in person to the very uninformative official autopsy report.

Trying to salvage something good from the trip to this part of town, Nate then decided to take the short four-block walk up O’Farrell to Annie’s boarding house on the off chance he could catch her between clients. That had been a bust as well. He went round the back to the kitchen entrance, not wanting to drag the maid Kathleen upstairs to answer the front door, but he was told that Annie, in her Madam Sibyl alter ego, had just gone in with a client and wouldn’t be available for the next few hours.

That had been disappointing enough, but then Mrs. O’Rourke, Kathleen, and the boarder Mrs. Esther Stein, began to put him through an inquisition about his plans for the wedding. Did he want a church wedding? How many of the law firm clients would he be inviting for the after-wedding party? Who was going to be his best man? Did he plan on having groomsmen as well? And where was he going to take Annie for their honeymoon?