Deadly Proof: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (7 page)

Annie once told him that she’d learned from her work as the clairvoyant Madam Sibyl that it was important to get the client to sit down so they were at your level. She said, “A man or woman who stands will feel more powerful than you and less open to suggestions, and a person who has to look up at you will feel threatened and the result will be equally negative. Either they will take your advice blindly, without understanding, or they will refuse to take your advice as the only way to regain their sense of control.”

Florence Sullivan nodded and then looked down at her hands, which lay loosely in her lap.

Nate sat down at the end of the opposite bed so that she wouldn’t feel crowded by his knees. He put his hat down beside him and said, “There are some decisions you may have to make going forward that we should talk about. A grand jury is scheduled to hear the evidence presented by the district attorney against you tomorrow morning. As you may know, I won’t be able to be there. But if they indict you for the murder of Mr. Joshua Rasher, your case will go before a judge on Thursday. At that point, you will be asked to plead guilty or not guilty to the charges and be remanded over for trial if you plead not guilty. I would like to represent your interests going forward, and you don’t need to worry about the fees. Mrs. Pitts Stevens has taken care of all that. What I do need to go forward, however, is your signature on this document.”

Nate took the legal form out of his pocket, unfolded it, and placed it on the hardbound notebook he always had with him when working. Then he took out the new-fangled MacKinnon stylographic pen that Annie had given him for his birthday, took the top off, and gave it a shake to bring down the ink. He lay the pen and the form next to Mrs. Sullivan.

He said, “Please look over the form. You will see that you can revoke my rights as your representative at any point, verbally or in writing.”

She stared at the document for a moment. Then, without reading it, she took up the pen and quickly leaned over and scrawled her signature at the bottom of the document and handed it back to him. Saying nothing.

One hurdle overcome, he thought, as he put the pen and paper away, and he said, “Thank you Mrs. Sullivan, I will do everything possible to help you. But first I need to hear, in your own words, what happened Friday night. Remember, everything you say to me is privileged and confidential.”

When she simply shook her head and continued to stare down at her hands, Nate decided to try a different tack. “Perhaps it would be easier if I just got to know you a little. Were you born in San Francisco?”

After a moment, she said softly, keeping her head bowed, “Benicia. My father ran a small newspaper.”

“Ah, then working in the printing business is in your blood. When did you move to San Francisco?”

“In sixty-nine.”

“How old were you? Did you move with your family?”

“My father died and my mother’s health has never been good. There wasn’t much chance of employment for me in Benicia.” She sighed, shaking her head slightly.

“And you got a job working for Mrs. Pitts Stevens at the Women’s Co-operative and Printers Union?” This much he had learned from Mrs. Pitts Stevens, herself. And it sounded like Mrs. Sullivan’s mother was still alive. He wondered if the husband had told his mother-in-law about her daughter’s incarceration. Had the police been to interview them? He assumed that the Sullivan’s address was in the papers that Jackson had handed him.

Taking her silence as an affirmative to his last question, he went on saying, “Actually my sister, Laura, is working as a typesetter for them now.”

Mrs. Sullivan looked up at that, and Nate said, “How long did you work there?”

“Four years...I left with Mrs. Pitts when she set up the Women’s Pacific Coast Publishing Company in 1872. I left that company three years later when she sold it to Mrs. Slocum.”

Encouraged by the length of that answer, Nate said, “And is that when you went to work for Rashers and Company? I believe that Mrs. Pitts Stevens said you are a compositor?”

Nate watched as she knit her hands together, while giving a tiny nod. Feeling very much like he was handling a nervy horse, he backed away from the subject of Rashers again and said, “Could you tell me the difference between being a typesetter and a compositor? My sister says if she masters the skill of compositing, she will make more money. But she’s never explained the difference.”

Giving him a swift smile that completely transformed her face, she said, “It is confusing. If all you do is assemble lines of type, you are a typesetter and get paid a piece rate. A compositor has the additional ability to proof the work of a typesetter and lay out the different sections of composed type to form pages that are ready to be printed. Skilled compositors are usually paid an hourly or weekly wage.”

“Well, that makes it clearer.” Nate congratulated himself on his diversion and thought he would take a chance on bringing the topic back to Rashers. “I can imagine that putting together a newspaper or a magazine, with all of their various parts, would take enormous skill. Does Rashers and Company handle those sorts of jobs?”

“Yes.” This came out in a whisper, her face again pointing down and her hands tightly clenched.

“Could you tell me a little about your responsibilities for Rashers? Was it usual for you to work in the evening? Was there a specific job you were working on?”

Abruptly his client stood up, saying forcefully, “Mr. Dawson. These questions are useless. Go back and tell Emily Pitts that if she really wants to help me––she should spend her money taking care of my mother. She is the one who needs her help––not me.”

Nate, who had risen as well, said quickly, “What about your husband, Mr. Sullivan? Do you have a message for him?”

Mrs. Sullivan shook her head and pushed past Nate to pound on the door, shouting, “Guard, Guard. Mr. Dawson is leaving now.” Then she moved away and once more turned her back on him.

Tuesday, evening, July 6, 1880

––––––––

“Learning that Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, in company with Mrs. Pitts-Stevens, had paid a visit yesterday to Mrs. Laura D. Fair in the County Jail, a reporter called at the Grand Hotel in the evening to ascertain the views of eminent women who represent the Woman Suffrage party...”
San Francisco Chronicle, July 14, 1871

––––––––

“T
his morning, the grand jury indicted Mrs. Sullivan on the charge of murder in the second degree,” Nate said, sitting down next to Annie on the settee.

“She’s confessed to killing Rashers?”

Annie furrowed her brow in the way she did when she was concerned, and Nate took his thumb and lightly smoothed the lines on her forehead and then ran his fingers down the soft skin of her cheek. They were in the smaller parlor where Annie met clients as Madam Sibyl. At half-past six in the evening, her boarders would soon be finishing their meal and moving next door to the larger formal parlor, and Nate needed privacy to discuss the case with Annie. He’d asked Kathleen to tell his sister Laura to join them when she finished eating.

Meanwhile, he wanted to take advantage of the rare time alone with Annie, so he said, “She hasn’t confessed, but I will report all about my visit when Laura gets here. First, tell me how your visit to the Methodist Chinese Mission went yesterday. You weren’t late, were you?”

“The meeting was very productive,” said Annie. “You know that I’d convinced Mrs. Greenstock and her fellow directors of the Female Refuge to invest five percent of any bequests they get. Well, after four months of following my advice, they have been able to increase their reserve fund by twenty percent. And I was spot on time, no thanks to you.”

Since one of Annie’s clients, the Methodist refuge that rescued Chinese women from prostitution and abusive masters, was only two streets down from the Old City Hall and the jail, Nate had accompanied her there before going to his appointment with Chief Jackson. The weather was so lovely, however, that he convinced her to get off the omnibus and walk the last few blocks up Stockton Street with him.

He loved walking with Annie; she would tuck her hand in the crook of his arm and gamely try to match her stride to his, laughing when they would pause at a street corner so she could catch her breath. He still couldn’t believe that in less than two months they would be married, and he would be able to take a walk with her any time he wanted. And not have to go home at the end of an evening together.

“What are you smiling about, Nate?” Annie said.

“Oh, just thinking about how much I am going to enjoy living here.”

“You won’t feel crowded? Of course, in the evenings this will be our private parlor, and I was thinking we could move in a desk so that it could double as an office for you...I have the back room...”

“Annie, sweetheart, stop worrying. I’ve told you how tiny and cramped my attic room is at Mrs. McPherson’s. This will be like living in a palace.”

Nate leaned over to kiss the tiny furrow that again appeared between her eyebrows, and he was about to move down to her lips when noise from the hallway informed him that the dinner was over. Disappointed, he had to be satisfied with giving her a swift peck on the cheek, and he moved away to put a decorous few inches between them. From experience, he knew that at least Miss Minnie Moffet, the talkative of the two elderly dressmaking sisters who lived in the attic, would stick her head in coyly to say good evening on the way to the parlor across the hall.

*****

S
everal minutes later, as Miss Minnie and her sister Miss Millie finished offering their congratulations to Nate and Annie and moved across the hall, Laura, who’d come in with them, asked cheerfully, “So you two,
have you
been discussing wedding plans?”

Laura had rather enjoyed watching her older brother’s discomfort as Miss Minnie went on and on about what a gentleman he was and how pleased they were that he was going to be joining “their little family” at the boarding house. Miss Millie, as usual, said nothing but emphatically nodded her agreement with her older sister’s sentiments.

“We haven’t had a chance,” Annie said. “But there is plenty of time for that. Come pull that chair over so we can converse more easily and do shut the door first so we won’t be disturbed. Your brother was going to tell us about the grand jury indictment of Mrs. Sullivan.”

“And then I must tell you what I learned from Iris Bailor, my forewoman at the WCPU. No, Nate, I am perfectly capable of dragging a chair two feet,” Laura said as she shooed him back to the settee.

Annie laughed. Then more seriously she said, “Nate, what does it mean exactly that the grand jury indicted Mrs. Sullivan for second degree murder?”

“Murder in the first degree means that the killing was premeditated, and the sentence is either death by hanging or life imprisonment,” Nate replied. “This is what Laura Fair was charged with because she brought a gun with her to the ferry when she shot Crittenden. The prosecution in her trial argued this showed premeditation. However, since the murder weapon that killed Joshua Rashers was a tool found in the press room, it would be much harder to prove premediation against whoever killed Rashers. Although I suspect that Dart, the district attorney, didn’t want to push for a first degree murder charge because it is much harder to get a jury to convict a woman if it means she might hang. There hasn’t been a single woman executed in California––and of course Fair’s initial murder conviction was over-turned.”

“Laura Fair,” Laura exclaimed. “I remember that case. I must have been eleven or twelve. For weeks the San Jose papers included full transcripts of the trial. She had my first name, you see, which somehow made it all the more interesting. I thought it deeply romantic and tragic that Fair loved someone so much she would kill him rather than lose him.”

Laura didn’t mention that she also started having nightmares once Laura Fair was found guilty and was supposed to hang.

“I can’t believe Mother let you read about that case.”

“Oh, Mother forbade me, but that made me all the more curious. I discovered that Billy snuck the papers from the woodbox every night and stashed them away under his mattress to read. So during the day when he was out working on the ranch, I was reading them in bits and pieces when I was doing my chores. I devoured every word, particularly when the papers included a whole transcript of a speech made by Susan B. Anthony. I think she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were visiting San Francisco during the trial, and they gave a lecture. First time I’d read anything about the reasons why women should have the right to vote—or serve on a jury. Anthony said something about how it was really men like Crittenden who were to blame for forcing women like Fair into prostitution in order to support themselves.”

“Laura, really, I...”

“Nate, you aren’t going to shush me. I think I am old enough to say the word ‘prostitute’ out loud! And she was right. Think about those poor women in the refuge that Annie is helping. They certainly aren’t prostitutes because of some moral failing.”

“Don’t harangue your poor brother. He gets that enough from me,” said Annie. “But Nate, she’s right. I now remember that California suffragists were using the trial to get their point across about the double standard. They pointed out that Crittenden was the one committing adultery, but Laura Fair was the one who was being accused of wrecking his family. Didn’t local suffrage supporters pack the courtroom?”

“Yep. I asked my Uncle Frank, and he said the judge got very upset, threatened to fine some of the women for contempt of court for their outbursts. I gather Mrs. Emily Pitts Stevens was rather the ring-leader. She was the editor of
The Pioneer
back then, really the first women’s rights paper in town, and Uncle Frank said she gave back as good as she got in her editorials. But then some reporters began to write that she was a ‘free lover’ herself and started the rumor that she pulled a derringer on a state senator at an anti-suffrage rally.”

“Heavens,” Annie exclaimed. “I can see why Mrs. Pitts Stevens would be worried that if she or Mrs. Gordon got involved in this case the newspapers would jump on the trial and dredge up all that old stuff.”