No Quiet among the Shadows

  No Quiet among the Shadows

  With the city’s Fourth of July celebrations in full swing, Celia Davies has stolen a moment away from her nursing duties to take in the festive spectacle, but is stunned when she spots the one person she thought she’d never see again—her supposedly dead husband, Patrick. Moments later, the investigator who had confirmed Patrick’s death is killed when he suspiciously falls from a high window, and Celia begins to fear that the roguish man she married has returned to haunt her life once again.

  Joining forces with Detective Nick Greaves to get to the bottom of the mystery, Celia is soon drawn into a murky séance group, where the voices of the dead suggest that everyone involved in the case is engaged in some sort of fraud or deception. Determined to discover which of them might be a murderer, Celia and Nick will find themselves following a trail of clues that leads them down dark alleys into a shadowy tangle of spiritualism, altered identities, traumatic pasts, and secrets worth killing for . . .

  Title Page

  

  Copyright

  No Quiet among the Shadows

  Nancy Herriman

  Copyright © 2020 by Nancy Herriman

  Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs

  Beyond the Page Books

  are published by

  Beyond the Page Publishing

  www.beyondthepagepub.com

  ISBN: 978-1-950461-30-1

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down- loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are 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. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Dedication

  To all those who love Celia and Nick and demanded more of their story . . .

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Author’s Note

  Books by Nancy Herriman

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  San Francisco

  early July, 1867

  “I’m hoping you can help me, Mrs. Davies,” said the woman, gripping her reticule as though she intended to strangle it to death. “My husband doesn’t know I’ve come to your clinic.”

  Her unexpected visit had interrupted Celia Davies’s cousin, Barbara, from the inventory of medical supplies she’d been conducting in Celia’s examination room. Barbara’s dark, slightly almond-shaped eyes—a legacy from her deceased Chinese mother—studied their visitor, a hint of apprehension in the tilt of her head. Celia could not assure her cousin she was mistaken to be wary of strangers. Even inside this house, an approving reaction to a Chinese girl was never a foregone conclusion.

  “You can finish later, Barbara,” said Celia.

  “I was almost done anyway.” Barbara set her notes upon Celia’s desk and limped out of the room.

  Celia’s visitor watched her go.

  “Barbara is my deceased uncle’s daughter and my ward, as well as my assistant,” explained Celia.

  “Her foot bothers her?”

  In this often unforgiving world, which was worse—the disfigurement Barbara had been born with or her mixed-race heritage? There were days none of them could be certain of the answer.

  “Yes.” Celia shut the door to her examination room. The woman flinched at the click of the latch. How strange. “Now, please tell me why you have not told your husband about this visit, Mrs. . . .”

  “Mrs. Wheaton.” She rolled her lips between her teeth. “I’ve heard you are discreet, Mrs. Davies. I’ve heard I can trust you.”

  “Most certainly you can trust me.”

  “Thank you.” She swallowed, the movement of her throat muscles shifting the high lace collar she wore—a stifling band of material on an unusually hot summer day like today. “You see, my husband doesn’t like me to trouble medical folks with my particular problem. I’m not supposed to ever consult our family physician,” she said. “I can pay for your services, if you’re concerned about that.”

  She reached into her reticule as though meaning to prove her claim.

  Celia lifted a hand to stop her. “I do not require payment. My clinic is free for all ladies.”

  Even those dressed as finely as her anxious visitor. Atop her head, Mrs. Wheaton had perched a hat trimmed with a navy ribbon that matched the silk soutache embroidery forming curlicues along the edge of her gown. More soutache swirled down the front of her buttoned bodice and banded the cuffs of her full sleeves. Clearly, Mrs. Wheaton did not lack for money, nor had she rushed out of her home before attending to her toilette; her gown’s cream muslin was pristine. Quite a feat, when arriving at Celia’s clinic required a journey along the dusty roads climbing Telegraph Hill.

  Mrs. Wheaton lowered her reticule. The breeze stirring the lace window curtains wafted the scent of the woman’s jasmine perfume, making Celia nostalgic for England, for home. Her mother had worn jasmine perfume. “You’re very generous.”

  “It is not a matter of generosity. This clinic is my calling. My family back in England . . .” what is left of them . . . “believes it is a foolish endeavor. But helping and healing are all I have ever desired to do, Mrs. Wheaton.”

  The woman looked around as if seeing the space with fresh eyes. She seemed small and lost among the contents of the room—the examination bench that was positioned against one wall; the tall glass-fronted case holding linen bandaging, strict rows of labeled medicine bottles on one shelf, and medical implements that occupied another; Celia’s large desk, which held patient files and a walnut box containing her prized stethoscope.

  Small and lost and distressed.

  “Nonetheless, I think you’re generous to do this,” she said.

  Celia gestured at the oak Windsor chair tucked in the corner. “Please take a seat, Mrs. Wheaton. You will be more comfortable.”

  She gave the chair a hasty, uneasy glance. “I’d rather not. I’m fine standing.”

  “What is it, then, that you need my help with?”

  “This.” She set her reticule atop the examination bench and peeled down the edge of her lace collar with one gloved fingertip. The wound upon her neck was raw and angry.

  Merciful God, what has happened to you?

&n
bsp; “It hasn’t healed like it should,” said Mrs. Wheaton. “I tried basilicon ointment on it, but the infection wasn’t drawn out.”

  “Would you mind moving nearer the window so I can better examine you?” Celia reached for the woman’s elbow to guide her.

  Mrs. Wheaton evaded her touch and took up a spot by the window. “Is here all right?”

  “I shall be gentle.” Celia eased the collar of Mrs. Wheaton’s dress away from her injury. “What caused this?”

  “I believe the physician at the hospital called it a seton, ma’am.”

  A seton in the neck. Celia had only once before seen the treatment used. A thick horsehair or the like would be inserted beneath the skin to induce an infection that would continuously ooze and supposedly act as a counter-irritation to the patient’s affliction. One of the doctors at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, where Celia had studied during the war, had employed the use of a seton in hopes of curing an epileptic.

  It hadn’t worked.

  “Do you have epilepsy?” she asked and walked over to her cabinet of medical supplies.

  “No, ma’am,” the woman answered. “It’s my melancholia. The blisters have healed, but not this.”

  The blue vitriol Celia had lifted down from the cabinet slipped in her hand, and she had to make a grab for it before it crashed to the ground. “You were blistered?” she asked, slowly setting the bottle of crystalline copper sulfate on her desk.

  “And bled, Mrs. Davies,” she replied. “I wasn’t the only one, you know.”

  Celia collected her pitcher of clean water and a porcelain bowl. “Were you at the asylum?”

  Mrs. Wheaton paused before answering. “My daughter died,” she said. “Of congestion of the lungs. She was just a tiny thing. So fragile.”

  Outrage, sympathy, misery stuck hard in Celia’s chest, emotions as weighty as lead. Had it been Mrs. Wheaton’s husband who had sent her to the state hospital in Stockton? Had this trembling creature been committed because he was uncomfortable with the intense grief she’d expressed over the loss of a child? She likely shied from sitting in the room’s chair because she had spent long hours tied to one. She likely recoiled from Celia’s touch because she’d come to associate an extended hand with pain.

  “I am deeply sorry,” said Celia gently. “I can attempt to heal the wound upon your neck, Mrs. Wheaton. I only wish I could heal the pain in your heart.”

  “Thank you. You’re very kind,” she said. “I do miss her. Perhaps I’ll attend one of those séances the spiritualists hold. Maybe I’d be able to talk to my sweet little daughter. Make sure she’s happy. In heaven. With God.”

  Celia mixed the blue vitriol in the water and dabbed the solution on Mrs. Wheaton’s wound. “My brother died in the Crimea,” she said. “I miss him desperately. Every day.” Harry. Her rock.

  “You understand.” The other woman’s eyes sparkled with tears, and she wiped them away.

  “I do.” So very well. Celia finished dressing the wound. “I will send you home with a supply of blue vitriol and instructions on how to tend to your injury, Mrs. Wheaton. Please return in three or four days, so that I may examine you again to make certain it is healed.”

  “I’ll try. Thank you,” she replied. “But I can’t promise. I have responsibilities at home.”

  “Tending to your own health is also your responsibility,” said Celia. “Your grief is natural, Mrs. Wheaton, and nothing to be ashamed of. You should not have been made to suffer as you have.”

  “I fared better than others at the hospital, Mrs. Davies,” she said, summoning a half-hearted smile. “During my time at the hospital, I learned calmness and to accept my loss. And I’m well enough in body and in soul, despite this sore on my neck. Not everyone was so fortunate, Mrs. Davies. Not all of the inmates left the asylum alive.”

  • • •

  “You’ve gotta still be lookin’ for my parents, Mr. Smith.” Owen Cassidy skittered to the investigator’s other side, catching a whiff of the moldy smell that was always attached to the fellow’s clothing. Can’t figure why Mrs. Davies ever hired someone who stinks so durned bad. “You’ve gotta.”

  Smith shook a foot at Owen, like he was trying to unhitch a clinging mutt. “Don’t you got somethin’ better to do, Cassidy, than bother a busy man like me?”

  “But you’re supposed to be searching for them, aren’t you?” Owen persisted, picking up his pace to match Mr. Smith’s, which was pretty fast for a scrawny fellow who looked like he hadn’t eaten a decent meal in months. In fact, if it was at all possible, he looked even scrawnier than usual.

  The investigator legged it across Montgomery, the street a jumble of preparation for the parade that would march down it come Independence Day. Owen had spied Mr. Smith charging down the road headed toward his office on Sansome in a blasted hurry. He wished the fellow would slow down. He’d woken up that morning not feeling so well, his neck stiff and hard to move. Trying to keep up with Mr. Smith was making him feel even more poorly.

  A shopkeeper, out hanging bunting beneath his store windows, scowled at the two. He muttered something about “bums” but Owen was used to such talk; he’d heard it all the time when he was living on the streets.

  “I mean, Mrs. Davies is still payin’ you to find my parents, right?” Owen was starting to worry. Maybe, now that Mr. Smith had found out about Mrs. Davies’s husband being dead and all, she’d stopped paying the investigator altogether. She wouldn’t do that though, would she? She’d promised to help Owen find his parents, and he trusted her. Mrs. Davies was just about the only person he did trust. “Can you slow down, Mr. Smith? I gotta talk to you.”

  Wagons and horses evaded, they stepped onto the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street.

  “Get lost, kid.” They pushed through a crowd shoving to get inside a saloon, where the celebrations looked to be under way early. “Answerin’ all your questions is gonna make me late for a meeting I got.”

  “But you ain’t . . . haven’t answered any of my questions!”

  Abruptly, Mr. Smith pulled up. He stared at Owen. “They’re dead.”

  His statement was as shocking as a plunge in icy water. Enough like it that Owen’s teeth took to chattering and his head to aching. “You’re just sayin’ that to get rid of me.”

  “Is it workin’?”

  “You’re just sayin’ that!”

  Mr. Smith swatted a hand through the air. “I ain’t never findin’ ’em, Cassidy.” He took off walking again. “You may as well be expectin’ to reach for your shadow and grab it as thinkin’ I’ll be bringin’ yer ma and pa home to hug and kiss you.”

  “But you gotta find ’em. I need to know what happened.” Why they left me behind like I wasn’t worth nothin’ . . . anything.

  A few doors down from his office, Mr. Smith halted, dragged his battered bowler hat from his head, and ran his fingers through his greasy hair. Hat returned to its place, he scowled at Owen. “You gonna pay me?”

  “Ain’t . . . isn’t Mrs. Davies payin’ you?”

  The investigator mumbled. To Owen it sounded like he’d said “not enough.”

  Owen got panicky. “I haven’t got any money to pay you, Mr. Smith, because I don’t have a job right now. But I can do work for you. What do you say to that?”

  “Sure, kid. I can use some help. In exchange for searchin’ for your parents,” he said. “Come by tomorrow.”

  “Thanks!” Owen stuck out his hand, though he didn’t relish shaking Mr. Smith’s grimy paw. “It’s a deal.”

  “No need to shake. My word’s good.”

  Immense relief washed over Owen. “And you promise me they ain’t . . . aren’t dead.”

  Mr. Smith frowned. “Now, don’t be askin’ me to make promises like that, Cassidy. Don’t ever be askin’ me to make promises like that.”

  He strode on, reaching his office door just as a man with a thick goatee beard and a fancy walking stick in one hand arrived.

  “Doc!�
�� Smith called to him.

  The man was red-faced and shouted at Mr. Smith in return. Owen couldn’t hear what he’d said over a horsecar clopping past and the bang of a hammer from some fellows working on a store at the corner. He sure looked angry, though. Durned angry. Maybe he should go help Mr. Smith, as his new assistant. But Mr. Smith didn’t look over at Owen like he expected him to come join them.

  While Owen stood there trying to figure out what to do, Mr. Smith grabbed hold of the man’s elbow and yanked him into his street-level office, slamming the door behind them and snapping closed the window blinds. Now, that’s not right.

  He supposed it wasn’t his business to mind Mr. Smith’s clients yet. Besides, he needed to go visit Mrs. Davies. He was feeling something awful.

  • • •

  “Captain’s looking for you, sir,” said J. E. Taylor, Nicholas Greaves’s assistant. He’d come from the police station and trotted across Kearney to join Nick, who leaned against the iron fence enclosing Portsmouth Square. “Something about finding a missing woman.”

  “I’ll be in to talk to the captain about this missing woman as soon as I’m done out here, Taylor.”

  “But the captain—”

  “The captain can wait.”

  “I won’t tell him you said that, sir.” Taylor looked around. “What’s going on out here?”

  “Some kids were shooting off firecrackers.” Nick nodded toward the retreating pack of boys, who’d noticed Taylor in his police uniform and had scattered.

  “Just firecrackers? That ain’t so bad, now, is it, sir?”

  “Not at the moment, it’s not so bad,” said Nick, returning his attention to the square. The rangy shrubs and trees the city had planted to beautify the space wilted in the hot midday sun. The boys were lucky they hadn’t set any of them on fire. “And stop calling me sir, Taylor.”

  “Yes, s . . . Yes, Mr. Greaves.”

  Nick scanned the streets that surrounded the square. Though the Fourth of July was still a couple of days off, red-white-and-blue bunting already hung from storefronts and offices. Some of the houses clinging to the hillside north of the square sported patriotic decorations, flags and banners snapping in the wind. There’d be the usual carousing that accompanied Independence Day celebrations.