No Darkness as like Death Read online

  “I suppose.” Barbara grabbed one of the satin cushions and hugged it to her waist. “Why did you ever marry, Cousin? You’re just as independent as Miss Shaw, and you love your clinic more than anything.”

  “Barbara, I love you and Addie. You know I do,” she replied fervently. “But when my brother died in the Crimea, I was heartbroken and married impulsively.” Ready to fall into the arms of a charming Irish soldier who’d promised to make her forget her pain.

  “I never did much like Cousin Patrick.”

  “I know.” He’d never been kind to her cousin; his charm only went so far.

  Barbara stared at her, the flames of the overhead gas chandelier washing light across her pale skin, deepening the shadows in her dark eyes. “Cousin Patrick isn’t dead, is he? And don’t look startled that I know. I’ve heard Addie talking to you about him. She’s loud when she’s upset.”

  “No, he is not dead.”

  “Which is why you stopped wearing mourning and put your wedding ring back on,” she said. “And stopped seeing Mr. Greaves.”

  Yes. Indeed, yes.

  “Will Cousin Patrick move in here?” asked Barbara, when Celia didn’t respond. “Or will he take you someplace else?”

  “According to someone who should know, Patrick has gone to Colorado and I would be utterly staggered if he ever returned to San Francisco,” she said.

  “But he might.”

  “Patrick Davies’s existence is neither here nor there, Barbara,” she said. “And all I ask is that you give Miss Campbell a chance.”

  The doorbell chimed, the person outside giving the knob a vigorous twist, startling Barbara. “Were you expecting a patient this late?”

  “No.”

  Addie, muttering, rushed past the parlor doorway on her way to answer. Celia hurriedly followed her into the entryway.

  One of the neighbor’s children—the eldest of the Cascarino boys, if Celia recalled correctly—stood on the doorstep.

  “Come now, Signora Davies. Mina. She is . . . sick.” He waved his hand for her to follow. “Come now!”

  “I must collect my supplies first,” said Celia. “Tell your mother I shall be right there. You understand, yes?”

  “Sì,” he said and ran back down the steps to the street.

  “Addie, I’ll need your help changing out of these things and into my working dress,” she said. “Barbara, please gather up my medical supplies. Quickly!”

  • • •

  “Mr. Greaves, you should be resting after your tiring journey.” His landlady looked at Nick with a pity so deep that if the emotion were a hole in the ground, the depth of it would reach the center of the earth. Mrs. Jewett wrapped her patterned Oriental robe around her stout frame. “It’s after eight and dark as pitch outside. What were you doing out there?”

  Nick reached down to pat his dog’s head. Riley sat obediently at his feet, his brown-and-white tail wagging, sweeping across the floor in the entry hall. “You didn’t need to check on me, Mrs. Jewett. I took Riley out for a stroll around the neighborhood. That’s all.”

  “That dog of yours.” She clucked her tongue against her teeth. “He has missed you.”

  “I was only gone for six days.” Six miserable days.

  “It was seven days, Mr. Greaves, and I missed you, too. There. I’ve said it.”

  Nick. The replacement for the son she’d lost in the war. A pitiful replacement, frankly.

  “I’m glad somebody beside my dog did.” Mina didn’t, but why should she? Their relationship was well in the past, and it needed to be left there.

  “Bah, don’t be saying foolish things like only your dog misses you.” Mrs. Jewett peered at him. “I’d guess that lady friend of yours also missed you. Although she hasn’t come around here in months.”

  She didn’t mean Mina. And Nick didn’t want to discuss Mrs. Davies with her any more than he’d wanted to talk about his father’s funeral with Taylor.

  “I’ll be heading upstairs now,” he said, evading the topic. “Good night. Come on, Riley.” The dog got to his feet, his tail wagging happily.

  “It’s not right for you to always be alone, Mr. Greaves,” said Mrs. Jewett, stopping Nick.

  “I’m not alone. I’ve got you and Riley.”

  “Bah.” She swatted him on the arm, her smile dimpling her cheek. She must have been a handsome woman in her youth. She was a handsome woman still. “I’ll be turning the lamp off here, then. Will you be wanting breakfast in the morning?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  A fist pounded on the front door. Riley took to barking.

  “Whoever is that at this hour?” asked Mrs. Jewett. “Hush, there, Riley.”

  “Let me answer it,” said Nick.

  A street cop waited on the top step, the star sewn to the left breast of his dark gray coat eerily bright in the flare of the gas lamp at Nick’s back.

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but we got a message at the station for you.” He tipped his cloth cap at Mrs. Jewett, who’d come to stand behind Nick.

  “Can’t it wait until the morning, Officer?” she asked. “Mr. Greaves returned today from his father’s funeral. He needs to rest.”

  “Can’t wait, ma’am. Sorry,” he replied. “There’s been a body found, sir. A Mr. Ambrose Shaw. Found in his room at the Hygienic Institute. Could be suspicious.”

  Chapter 3

  The lamps lit in the ground-floor parlor of the Cascarinos’ house spilled light onto their barren fragment of a front yard. Mrs. Cascarino waited for Celia in the doorway, a frayed dressing robe tossed over her thin nightgown, strands of her graying dark hair peeking from beneath the scarf tied over it.

  “Thank you, Signora Davies,” she said, her normally deep and powerful voice muted.

  “There is no need to thank me, Mrs. Cascarino.” Celia stepped inside, her medical bag swinging at her side. “How is Mina?”

  “Bad. So bad. Her face white. Her head hurts her, and her stomach . . .” She made a gesture indicating nausea. “She is so tired she cannot stand. I send for you as soon as I see how sick she is.”

  The Cascarino children—there were five in total, including Mina, who was the eldest—huddled in the entry and in the front room, their expressions grim, the younger ones clinging to their older siblings. Usually boisterous and happy, they scuffed bare feet against the oilcloth-covered floor, twisted anxious fingers in the fabric of their hand-me-down nightclothes.

  Angelo, the youngest boy, stepped forward. “Mina will be okay, sì?”

  Celia ruffled his dark hair. “I shall do my best, Angelo. You and your brothers and sisters should find something to occupy yourselves with. I will let you know if I need you to fetch Barbara or Addie to help me.”

  “Sì, signora.”

  “Come, Signora Davies.” Mrs. Cascarino climbed the steps, the treads creaking. “Mina is in our room. Away from the children. The noise.”

  Celia entered the bedroom. Mr. Cascarino, whom she rarely saw because of the long hours he worked, sat next to the bed.

  Mina heard her footsteps and looked over, her eyes struggling to focus. “Mama?”

  “I am here. Shh, piccola. Shh.” Mrs. Cascarino hurried to her daughter’s side, taking the stool her husband vacated.

  “Signora Davies,” he said with a polite nod of his head.

  Celia greeted him, wishing she had comforting words to smooth the concern on his face. He and Mina had come to America together, years before the rest of the family had been sent for, and his attachment to his eldest child was fiercely strong.

  “You make Mina well again, signora,” he said.

  “I shall do all I can.” The room smelled of sickness. Celia went to open the window before going to Mina’s bedside. “What has she told you?”

  Mr. Cascarino brought a chair for Celia and she sat. “She makes no sense. She came home—she never comes home—she came home, sick. Her mind . . . she remembers nothing. And she looks like this.” He gazed down at his daughte
r. Mina, normally so vibrant, lay wan beneath the embroidered coverlet.

  Celia lowered her medical bag to the floor and drew the bedside lamp closer. “Mina? It is Mrs. Davies. I’ve come to help you.”

  Her eyelids fluttered open. She squinted in the lamplight. “Mrs. Davies. I feel awful.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “I am so tired. So tired . . .”

  “Are you in pain?” Celia ran a hand along the girl’s bare arm, rousing her before she dozed off again. “Do you have an injury to your head?”

  “My head hurts, and I’m . . . I’m so dizzy.”

  Celia eased her hands beneath Mina’s head to feel for any lumps or contusions. Her fingers found what she sought.

  “There is a substantial swelling on the back of her head,” she replied to Mrs. Cascarino’s questioning look. She examined Mina’s arms and palms. Her skin was scraped in spots. “Do you recall falling and hitting your head, Mina?”

  “I don’t. I . . . what has she . . . ? She didn’t . . .” She shook her head. “Terrible. It’s terrible.”

  “What’s terrible, Mina?” asked Celia. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t.” She peered at her mother, who gripped Mina’s hand. “I’m sorry, Mama. Sorry.”

  “You must not be sorry, piccola. Shh. Shh.”

  Suddenly, Mina blanched and curled into a ball on her side. Celia grabbed the bucket someone had helpfully placed nearby, but the young woman’s bout of nausea passed.

  “What has happened to my Mina?” asked Mr. Cascarino.

  Celia looked over at him, noticing that one of Mina’s sisters stood outside the open door at his back, her face blotched with tears.

  “She has suffered a concussion, it appears,” replied Celia, gesturing at her own head by means of explanation. “Your daughter needs rest. Maybe tomorrow we will learn more about how it occurred.”

  But would they like what they discovered?

  • • •

  “Thank you for coming so quickly, Detective.” The fellow who’d met Nick at the front door of the Hygienic Institute waved him and the street cop inside. “This is quite alarming.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Nick looked around. Glass-shaded gas jets lit the entryway and curving staircase. A patterned runner—clean of the ever-present city dust and grime—covered the checkerboard marble floor. The banister of the oak staircase gleamed, and the air was thick with the scent of roses, an overflowing vase of the flowers in the adjacent parlor. An establishment working as hard as possible to look refined and respectable.

  From somewhere nearby—possibly the passageway that crossed the far end of the hall at a T—came the sound of whispers, folks trying to simultaneously gossip and hush one another.

  Nick looked over at the man. He must have hastily thrown on his clothes, the buttons of his black frock coat misaligned with their respective holes. “The officer here tells me you’ve had a resident die, Mr. . . .”

  “Ross. Milton Ross. The Hygienic Institute is my facility.” Short and thickset, his wide face was bracketed by heavy black whiskers and equally lush eyebrows that moved as he spoke. A pair of wire-rim spectacles perched on his nose, and he blinked at Nick over the top of them. “Yes, one of my patients has passed away unexpectedly. Suicide, I fear.”

  “A Mr. Shaw, I’ve been told.”

  Mr. Ross shuddered. “Yes.”

  “Have you sent for the coroner?”

  “I have,” he replied. “I didn’t mean to disturb the police, given the nature of the death, but my assistant thought it best.”

  “Ah.” Maybe his assistant wasn’t as convinced that Mr. Shaw’s death had been a suicide.

  “I’ve sent for Mr. Taylor, Mr. Greaves,” said the police officer, dawdling near the front door.

  “Thank you.” Nick nodded in the direction of the staircase. “Since I’m here, I’d like to see the body, Mr. Ross.”

  “Yes, certainly, Detective. Mr. Shaw’s room is on the first floor above this one, in our largest accommodation and apart from most of our other patients, which are on the upper floors. As he’d requested,” he said. “Mr. Shaw is a prominent banker and politician, as I’m sure you’re aware. For his peace of mind—very important to his recovery—he wanted our most private and spacious room. I had no idea how fragile he was. I should have recognized the extent of his melancholy, his weakness, but . . . this is dreadful. Truly.”

  “Yes,” said Nick. “Can we go upstairs now?”

  “Of course. Please follow me, Detective Greaves.” Ross padded up the stairs, light on his feet.

  “What exactly goes on here, Mr. Ross?” asked Nick, climbing the steps past the walls covered in flocked paper, the gas lights flickering.

  He glanced back over his shoulder. “You are not familiar with the water cure, Detective?”

  “Can’t say that I am. Is the treatment like what they do at the Turkish-Roman Baths over on Pacific Street?”

  “In some ways they are similar. However, we primarily believe in the healthful benefits of perfectly pure, cold water. Although steaming can be salubrious,” he replied. “Cold baths, wet bandages and sheets, and drinking plenty of good, fresh water are most beneficial. A plain diet, vigorous exercise, and absolutely no alcohol. Those, Detective Greaves, are the elements of a therapy guaranteed to cure the most stubborn malady. We have treated chronic nervous conditions, headaches, piles, rheumatism, stomach disorders, palpitations of the heart—”

  “And what malady was Mr. Shaw hoping to cure?” asked Nick, cutting off the man’s litany. “Besides his peace of mind?”

  Ross paused at the landing and frowned over the question. “I’m not at liberty to say, Detective.”

  “A patient has unexpectedly died on your premises, Mr. Ross. I imagine we’d both like to resolve the manner of his death as quickly as possible.”

  “Our patients are treated in the utmost confidence, Detective. I can’t break that trust. No matter the consequences.”

  “The coroner is going to ask, so you may as well answer now.”

  The fellow considered Nick over his glasses, using the tip of his forefinger to adjust where they sat on his nose. “A heart condition among other, more sensitive, issues,” said Ross. “I see now that he’d become agitated these past few days, rather than refreshed by his treatments. If I’d suspected—”

  “How long had Mr. Shaw been a resident at the Institute?” interrupted Nick.

  “Since Monday morning.”

  Three days. “Any explanation for what had caused his recent agitation, Mr. Ross?”

  “None.”

  A door to their left opened and a matron, clutching her emerald silk robe around her small-boned frame, poked her head into the hall. Shaw had clearly not been the sole patient on his floor. “I thought that was your voice, Mr. Ross. Something has happened to Mr. Shaw, hasn’t it? I knew it. I knew it!”

  “Now, now, Mrs. Wynn, there’s no need for you to be alarmed,” he responded in the soothing voice of a doctor. Or a quack. “Please return to your room.”

  “No need to be alarmed?” She narrowed her eyes to slits. “We could’ve all died from gas poisoning, Mr. Ross. Why shouldn’t I be alarmed?”

  “Gas poisoning?” asked Nick.

  “Coming from Mr. Shaw’s room,” said Ross. “It was . . . ahem . . . the means by which he . . .” He shot a glance at Mrs. Wynn. “You know.”

  “How he supposedly killed himself,” said Nick.

  Mrs. Wynn gasped. “Killed himself? Oh, no! Not at all! There was an intruder!”

  Ross’s face drained of blood faster than Nick had ever seen a body manage, until his skin turned the same shade as the white collar around his neck. He gaped at the woman. “An intruder? There was not an intruder.” He turned to Nick. “I operate a very safe establishment, Detective. Mrs. Wynn is merely upset.”

  “Detective?” she asked. “So you do believe Mr. Shaw was murdered.”

  “Can you describe this intruder, Mrs. Wynn?”
asked Nick.

  “I only caught a glimpse of the person. There, at the end of the hall. Escaping through that door.” She pointed to a closed door, the hallway’s gas light flickering over its dark wood.

  “Could you tell if it was a man or a woman?” Would be helpful to narrow down who he’d be searching for.

  “No, not really,” she said. “A man? A female wearing trousers?”

  Great. “What’s beyond that door, Mr. Ross?”

  “The staircase leading down to the private side entrance, which is solely used by the occupants of our suite,” he said. “Mr. Shaw currently is . . . was the only one with access to it.”

  The street cop had followed them upstairs and leaned against the wall a few feet away. “Look around for any clues as to how somebody got into the building, Officer,” Nick said to him, and he hustled off. “What time did you see this intruder, Mrs. Wynn?”

  “Around a half hour after supper had concluded and I had retired to my room,” she said.

  “Which would make it . . . when?” asked Nick.

  “Seven thirty or so,” replied Ross. “We serve the last meal of the day from six fifteen to seven. We encourage our overnight patients to retire at that time and rest. Some choose to briefly socialize before turning in, but most are in their rooms by eight.”

  “Whenever the precise hour was,” said Mrs. Wynn, more interested in telling her story than in worrying about the exact time, “I was readying for bed when I heard a door closing. It was too early for Mr. Platt to be making his rounds—”

  “Who is Mr. Platt?”

  “My evening assistant,” answered Ross.

  The fellow who’d told him to send for the police.

  “As I was saying,” continued Mrs. Wynn, “it was too early for Mr. Platt to be making his rounds and Mr. Shaw had already retired to his room for the evening. The sound of a door shutting was very disconcerting.”

  “How do you know he’d already retired, Mrs. Wynn?”

  “On my way down to supper, I noticed him in the private parlor having his meal. He did not care to eat with the rest of the patients,” she said. “I’d returned to my room around six thirty and again observed him in the small private parlor. He’d finished his meal and was preparing to return to his room. I expected he did not mean to join the other men in the main parlor.”