No Pity For the Dead Page 19

  “Oh, Virgil.” She handed it over as reluctantly as she’d taken it from him. “Where was it found?”

  “In possession of a man found dead this morning,” answered Nick, tucking the watch into a pocket. The tea remained untouched on the table.

  “Thank heavens that the murderer is dead,” she said, pressing a hand to her throat, the rapid motion of her arm wafting the aroma of magnolia water his way. “Who was it?”

  “Nobody you know, ma’am,” he said. “I’m curious about something, Mrs. Nash. When my assistant and I visited you on Friday, why didn’t you tell me about the threatening notes your husband had received?”

  “I didn’t think it was necessary. Virgil and I both knew who’d sent them, even though they weren’t signed. One of Jasper Martin’s many ploys to get his way.”

  “When did they start?”

  She paused as she thought back. “More than a month ago. Not long after Virgil learned about Jasper Martin’s plans to level Second Street.”

  The timing made sense. “Since we last spoke, I’ve learned the name of the man who killed your husband’s brother. Cuddy Pike. Sound familiar?”

  She shook her head and finally reached for the tea, pouring it out for them both, the fawn-colored stream of liquid catching the sunlight. “As I told you then, Virgil didn’t like to talk about Silas’ death.”

  “And he never talked about cheating miners at the Comstock, either,” Nick said. “But what about the men he tried to cheat here, like Horatio Enright?”

  The lid of the china teapot clinked noisily as she set it down. “Horatio Enright’s complaints have no merit, Mr. Greaves. I repeat that my husband was an honorable man. How often do I have to say it?”

  “Mr. Enright thinks otherwise about your honorable husband.”

  “He envies my husband’s success, like so many others.” She drew out a handkerchief from the sleeve of her ink-dark gown. Above her head, the black-swathed portrait hung in mute testimony to the brutal end of one man’s life. “That’s all one finds in California—grasping men for whom nothing matters but the acquisition of wealth. I hate it.”

  He looked around at what Nash’s money had bought—a house brimful of luxuries most of the people in San Francisco could only imagine owning. Just like Frank’s house. Just like Russell’s. “Strong words, ma’am, when you’ve got plenty of wealth yourself.”

  “You think I’m a hypocrite.”

  Nick shrugged. It really didn’t matter what he thought about her.

  Her tears had dried and she gazed steadily at him, her emotions come full circle, back to the calm of the first time he’d met her. The woman was a wonder.

  “Well, none of my lovely, precious possessions will bring Virgil back, will they, Mr. Greaves?”

  * * *

  Now what, Celia?

  After seeking to confront Mr. Martin at his office and learning he was not there, she had taken the North Beach and Mission Railroad line all the way to Union Square. Celia walked the intervening uphill blocks to Jasper Martin’s impressive home on Sutter Street, nearly in the shadow of the onion domes of Temple Emanu-el that towered over the neighborhood. A limestone fence with sinuously carved balustrades separated the front yard from the pavement, the building further safeguarded from the passing street traffic by a thick screen of evergreen trees. The shutters behind the many arched bay windows were closed against the midday sunshine, though the fence and the trees were sufficient guards against the unwelcome scrutiny of pedestrians and conveyance drivers.

  Trust me, Mr. Martin, they very adequately relay your desire to remain undisturbed. But what to do next?

  Anticipating that she would speak to Mr. Martin at his offices, where there would be plenty of witnesses should he turn violent, she’d gone out alone. The lack of a protector had not kept her from impulsively visiting his house to speak to him, however.

  You can be rather imprudent, Celia.

  But surely there would be servants inside, and since she was here . . .

  Celia pressed her hand to the iron gate leading to the front steps. It swung open as silently as a skate blade gliding on ice. She’d known people who intentionally allowed their gate hinges to go rusty, the squeal an early alert to the presence of guests—or strangers. Celia supposed Mr. Martin must not be concerned about either, confident that he could dispose of anyone unwelcome.

  She climbed the limestone steps—seven in total and very steep—and arrived at the front door, which appeared as solidly forbidding as the rest of the property. Celia tugged the lever that activated the doorbell, hearing the responding trill echo through the front hallway. Minutes passed without any indication of life within.

  Celia leaned over the porch railing and attempted to peer through the shutters covering the nearest window. She couldn’t see any movement, or much of anything at all inside. A matron strolling by on the pavement gave Celia an inquiring look before continuing on down the road.

  “Hello?” Celia called out, tugging the doorbell lever again. She hadn’t come all this way to give up easily. “Any—”

  The door was yanked open, interrupting her midword. A thickset man in a frock coat scowled down at her, his expression bracketed by the bushiest mustache she had ever seen. He hadn’t released the handle, giving the impression he was quite prepared to slam the door upon whoever had been ringing the bell.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I need to speak to Mr. Martin,” she said, using her most imperious accent, the one that made her sound like the rector at her family’s parish in Hertfordshire when he was delivering a Lenten sermon. “Most urgently.”

  The man did not appear in the least impressed. “And who are you?”

  “A friend.”

  He did not appear impressed with that claim, either. In fact, he appeared utterly dubious. “Mr. Martin is not receiving ‘friends’ today.”

  He swung the door to shut it, but Celia inserted her boot in the way, preventing it from closing. The man scowled at her foot and pushed harder on the door, pinching her toes.

  “It is most important that I see him,” she said. “Tell him Mrs. Davies is here.”

  “My patient is resting and not seeing anybody.” He shoved at her foot with the toe of his shoe.

  Patient? “What has happened? I am a nurse. You can tell me.”

  “A nurse.”

  “Yes. I have a clinic on Vallejo,” she said, trying to peep around him into the depths of the entry hall. “Is Mr. Martin all right?”

  “He had an attack of angina pectoris, but he’s resting now. And not seeing anybody.”

  From within the bowels of the house, a man bellowed, “Johnston!” The physician glanced toward the sound.

  “Dr. Johnston,” said Celia, “you should probably return to Mr. Martin before he has another attack whilst calling for you.”

  He flung wide the door and ushered her inside. “Meddlesome woman,” he muttered as he hurried off down the hallway, bound for the steps rising from the center of the house.

  Celia closed the door. She barely had time to absorb the luxuriousness of her surroundings before she chased after Dr. Johnston, her footfalls muted by the Turkish carpet runner climbing the wide staircase. She felt only momentarily abashed for intruding upon Mr. Martin; he may have suffered an attack of angina but sounded quite recovered, if the volume and tone of his voice were any indication.

  “Johnston, what was keeping you?” Jasper Martin was asking the man as Celia located the bedchamber and stepped inside. Mr. Martin was propped up in his tester bed, a mountain of pillows at his back. The windows were shuttered here, too, which made an already dark room darker still. The space felt close and smelled of camphor.

  He noticed her arrival. “What are you doing here, Mrs. Davies?”

  “Now, now, Mr. Martin,” soothed Dr. Johnston. “Don’t let her dis
turb you.”

  “When did this happen?” she asked Mr. Martin, coming to his bedside.

  His color was good for a man whose heart had attempted to fail him. But the nightshirt he wore exposed the bones of his neck and hung awkwardly upon the sharp angles of his shoulders and elbows, making him appear even more gaunt than usual. Very frail, actually.

  She tried to feel the pulse in his wrist, but he moved his hand beyond her reach.

  “Really, Mrs. Davies,” protested Dr. Johnston. “Mr. Martin is my patient, and you’re agitating him. Please leave.”

  “When did this happen, Mr. Martin?” Celia asked again. Had guilt about pushing her contributed to the onset of the angina?

  “Last evening, Mrs. Davies. It seems our outing to Cliff House was more than my heart could stand,” he said with more than a hint of sarcasm. “But you haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been troubled by my small accident yesterday, Mr. Martin, and you may be able to set my mind at ease.”

  He elbowed himself into a more upright position and folded his arms in his lap. “Oh? How so?”

  “You were very near me, you and Mr. Hutchinson, and you had to have seen who shoved me,” she said.

  “I didn’t see anybody push you, Mrs. Davies. You should just accept that you fell on your own.”

  “But I am certain I felt a hand at my side. And—you will find this most disturbing—two people have told me they believe the hand belonged to you.”

  Dr. Johnston gasped. Mr. Martin laughed—perhaps at his physician’s response, perhaps at her accusation—then clutched his chest.

  “Mr. Martin, remain calm,” said his physician, hastily pouring a glass of water from the crystal decanter waiting at Mr. Martin’s bedside and dispensing the powdered contents of a packet into it. “Ma’am, I insist you leave. My patient needs his rest.”

  Mr. Martin exhaled as the pain passed. “It’s all right, Johnston. Mrs. Davies is an amusing diversion,” he said. “Why would I push you, ma’am?”

  “I have no idea. I was hoping you would tell me.”

  “Don’t you think that if I’d been attempting to kill you, coming here and confronting me was rather unwise?”

  “With servants in the house, Mr. Martin, you would not harm me. They would overhear my shouts for help.”

  “But I don’t have any live-in servants, Mrs. Davies,” he said. “And my hired domestic hasn’t returned from an errand I sent her on. If it weren’t for Dr. Johnston here, it would’ve been just you and me.”

  Her skin prickled. What had she been thinking?

  Dr. Johnston thrust the glass at Mr. Martin. “Drink this, Mr. Martin. This woman is going to bring on another attack if you’re not careful.”

  “I’m feeling fine, Johnston. It’s you who’s going to give me another attack with your endless pestering.” Jasper Martin waved his hand, nearly knocking the glass out of Dr. Johnston’s hand. “Who was it who saw me push you, Mrs. Davies?”

  “I would prefer not to tell you.”

  “And I would prefer not to respond to your accusation,” he said. “I don’t know why you imagined I might confess to such a ridiculous assertion.”

  “I did not believe you would confess, Mr. Martin.” She had merely wished to observe his reaction. But his coolness disconcerted her, and she felt rather like an insect trapped within a spider’s web. And here I had imagined myself the spider, expecting to entrap him . . . “I have a different question now. What has Frank Hutchinson done that you disapprove of?”

  The bell rang again downstairs, and Dr. Johnston went off to answer it.

  “I’ll tell you plainly,” said Mr. Martin. “His open feud with Virgil Nash has cast suspicion upon Martin and Company for the man’s death. We deal in trust, Mrs. Davies, not merely real estate. Our customers trust our judgment when it comes to recommendations for purchasing property, or securing the best price for property they own or for buildings they would like to construct. And any action that diminishes our customers’ trust is an action I can’t accept.”

  “I believe it was the discovery of Mr. Nash’s body in your cellar that brought suspicion upon Martin and Company,” she answered.

  His sudden frown wrinkled his face. “Take my advice, Mrs. Davies, and leave the detective work to the police.”

  “Who pushed me if not you, Mr. Martin? You must have seen.”

  “There were a lot of people scuffling for a view of the excitement. If you felt pushed, one of them did it. An accident,” he said. He waved the same hand he’d waved at Dr. Johnston. “My doctor insists that I rest, and that’s what I plan to do. Good day to you.”

  He folded his hands over his stomach and closed his eyes.

  With a sigh, Celia departed the bedchamber and headed downstairs. Dr. Johnston was in the entry hall with a robust woman whose wiry hair sprung out around her straw bonnet.

  “I told him on Saturday that all the recent excitement would make him sick, Doctor,” she was saying, her chapped hands undoing the ribbons of her hat.

  Undoubtedly she was the housekeeper who did not live in, thought Celia as she descended to the ground floor. The one who was not usually around and would not see whether her employer had ever returned late at night with dirt on his clothes.

  “Not surprised he’s had an attack,” the woman added.

  Dr. Johnston murmured an agreement. Hearing Celia’s tread, he looked over. “Leaving, Mrs. Davies?”

  That he did not clap for joy was something of an astonishment.

  “I suggest tincture of belladonna for Mr. Martin’s condition, Dr. Johnston,” Celia replied. She didn’t wait for him to open the front door for her. He did not look as though he intended to extend the politeness anyway.

  Celia swept out onto the street as the hack that had brought the housekeeper wheeled away from the curb. She watched it depart, noting the unusual coloring of the horse . . . The horse! She rushed out to the road just as the dapple gray pulling the carriage turned the corner. The horse was very pale, except for its mane, which was dark as coal. Just like the horse Ginny had described.

  The one that had been hitched to a wagon at the end of an alleyway the night Celia and Owen had interrupted a man attempting to exhume Virgil Nash’s decaying corpse.

  * * *

  Celia hopped down from the horsecar, leaping to avoid a puddle of kitchen wastewater, and hurried toward home. She had to inform Mr. Greaves. Because the more she considered, the more she was convinced that Mr. Martin had been at his offices Thursday night, trying to remove Mr. Nash’s body. He had the opportunity and no one at home to notice when he came or went or what condition his clothing was in when he returned. Most important, he had both the motive to murder Mr. Nash, who’d been an obstruction to his plans to increase his wealth, and an understandable desire to dispose of the evidence of his crime, once he’d somehow learned the corpse had been found. Furthermore, that she and Owen had interrupted his scheme explained why he might have wished to shove her over the cliff wall yesterday. In such a public venue, however, he had taken quite a risk to remove a witness.

  “There you are at last, Mrs. Davies,” a male voice called down to her from the porch.

  Mr. Greaves leaned against one of the posts. He turned his flat-crowned hat in his hands, his expression dour. No matter. He would be pleased to learn what she’d uncovered.

  “Ah, Mr. Greaves. No wonder you were not at the station.” She paused on the stairs to catch her breath, her blasted corset restraining her efforts. “I am glad you are here. I have news.”

  “Sleuthing, Mrs. Davies?”

  “I have just been to Mr. Martin’s house. He is our killer!”

  He glanced up and down the length of Vallejo. “You feel the need to announce that to every one of your neighbors, ma’am?”

  Right then, Angelo popped up fro
m where he’d been playing on the Cascarinos’ porch and peeped at them over the top of the railing. The rest of the street, including the balcony of the boardinghouse on the corner, was empty and quiet. The children who’d earlier been playing in the road were no longer outside. All was deserted save for a twist of windblown dust propelling a piece of straw wrapping paper along the street.

  “It is only Angelo to overhear, Mr. Greaves, and his English is poor,” she answered, nodding at the boy. She climbed to where the detective stood. “However, if you are concerned, come inside where we can talk without all of my neighbors hearing.”

  He scrubbed the soles of his boots over the iron scraper near the door and followed her inside. “What has you so convinced Martin’s our murderer?”

  “Grace Hutchinson saw him push me over the wall at Cliff House.”

  Mr. Greaves offered a blank stare in response. He is annoyed that I uncovered a key piece of information before he did.

  “And you went to ask him kindly if he was trying to kill you, too?” he asked.

  “I was not in danger,” Celia said, hanging her bonnet on its hook by the door. Barbara and Grace had abandoned the parlor and gone off elsewhere. Possibly to Barbara’s bedchamber or the back garden. “Mr. Martin was incapacitated, as it turns out. He suffered an attack of angina pectoris last evening and is bedridden under his physician’s care.”

  “You didn’t know that before you went to his house,” he said.

  “Then I am fortunate he was ill, am I not? Please come through to the kitchen and allow me to tell you all my news,” Celia said, stepping into the parlor. “I shall endeavor to make us both coffee. It comes from Mr. Folger’s company, so at least the beans have been roasted properly. I cannot vouch that I will brew it properly, however.”

  “Don’t worry about the coffee. It’ll be better than the sludge I drank during the war.”

  “Nonetheless, I apologize in advance. Addie is the one who is skilled at brewing coffee, but she is not here.”

  As they passed the dining room windows that overlooked the rear yard, Celia spotted Barbara and Grace seated on the wicker chairs near the unhappy rosebushes that inhabited the garden. They were so unlike the bushes in Mrs. Nash’s garden, their flowers lush and bountiful. Celia wondered if Mrs. Nash would sell the house, and the rose gardens, now that she was widowed and alone. But who would purchase the property, knowing that the Second Street cut was coming?