No Comfort for the Lost Page 7

  A block shy of the police station, he turned west off Kearney. The Chinese lived and worked along Sacramento and Dupont, and they crowded the streets, mostly men in their silk tunics and wide pants, skullcaps over their pigtailed hair. They watched him as he strode past the tables they’d set up on the sidewalks to hawk their goods—unfamiliar vegetables and painted fans and oriental medicines and bits of just about everything. Red paper lanterns hung over doorways and red signs dangled from protruding balconies. A scrawny dog barked at him and a kid shouted in Chinese. A nearby man shushed the boy and sent him scurrying inside their shop. The man’s eyes followed Nick. Did the vendor seem apprehensive or fearful? Neither, it seemed. Maybe Mrs. Davies was wrong.

  But Nick wanted to be sure. He didn’t want every Chinese person in town wondering who might be murdered next, and if he could find out who’d killed Li Sha, they might begin to feel safe. He knew that’s what Uncle Asa, one of the finest detectives—hell, one of the finest policemen—Nick had ever known, would do. Because his uncle had valued justice like Nick did. And those who needed justice the most were the ones least likely to get it.

  He had almost reached Stockton when he heard a shout coming from an alley up ahead and began running toward the sound. Halfway down the passageway, a skinny Chinese laundry boy, his load of clean underclothes spilled into a dirty puddle, had been cornered in a doorway by a handful of white boys in filthy caps and torn duck pants. The kid’s lip was bleeding and there were cuts on his face.

  “Hey!” Nick sprinted forward, his hat flying off. The cowards scattered like marbles after a good strike.

  “Dirty China boy!” shouted one before vanishing around the farthest corner.

  With a sob, the little boy dropped to the ground, and Nick changed his mind about chasing the bullies and pummeling them. He returned to the kid.

  “Here,” he said, extending a hand. “Let me help you to your feet.”

  The boy looked up at him with tears in his black eyes but no sign of gratitude. He was all of seven or eight and his expression conveyed only hatred.

  “No!” a woman screeched, clattering down the alleyway in her high shoes. Angry Chinese words followed, some directed at the boy, some at Nick. She hauled the boy to his feet, gathered the spilled laundry, and thrust it into his arms. Grabbing the boy, she dragged him toward the road without looking back.

  Nick collected his hat, brushed it off, and restored it to his head. A glance around revealed faces in doorways and windows, hastily withdrawn. Mrs. Davies was right to worry. Trouble was brewing, and if they weren’t all careful, the pot might blow its lid.

  • • •

  “Crumpets and orange marmalade this morning, ma’am?” asked Addie, leaning through the doorway into the downstairs room Celia had converted into her clinic. “With some poached eggs?”

  “Addie, that sounds wonderful,” Celia answered, glancing over from her desk. “And tea. The strongest oolong you can brew.”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  Celia yawned into her fist. She had been called away last night to help a young Mexican woman through childbirth. The infant, a lovely black-haired boy, was stillborn. How his mother had wept. When Celia had finally returned home and collapsed into bed, she had lain awake and thought about Li Sha, whose baby had been likewise cheated of life. Thought about the cruel brevity of man’s existence.

  She wrapped her crimson shawl with its paisley border more tightly around her shoulders, the cashmere whispering against her neck. She closed her eyes and breathed in. The shawl had been her mother’s, and if she tried very hard, Celia could imagine she smelled her mother’s jasmine perfume caught up in the warp and weft. A small morsel of comfort.

  Perhaps her aunt in Hertfordshire was correct, and nursing was no proper occupation for a lady. Her aunt had never forgiven Celia when she’d reasoned that the quickest way to join Harry in the Crimea was to pretend she was older than her true years and volunteer as a nurse. When she’d learned just how different mending a bird’s broken wing was from tending shrapnel-riddled bodies, she’d almost turned back from her chosen path. But she hadn’t. She had persevered, seen success, and come to love what she did.

  She could not, however, restore a stillborn baby to life or save Li Sha.

  “Your tea, ma’am,” announced Addie, striding into the room with a tray, bringing Celia back to the here and now.

  “Is Barbara awake?” she asked.

  “Aye.” Addie moved aside Celia’s ledgers and set the tray atop her desk. She poured out a cupful of steaming tea. “She was sitting on the porch for a while, catching a chill, but she’s in the parlor now. Staring out the window, poor bairn.”

  After burning her tongue on a quick sip, Celia rose and wandered across the foyer that separated the two front parlors—one now Celia’s examination room, the other used as their sitting room.

  Barbara had turned one of the upholstered chairs to face the window and fixed her gaze on the street beyond the glass, her damaged foot resting on a low stool. There wasn’t much of a view across the stretch of dirt road except for the top story and roof of the house across the way, its ground floor below street level.

  “How are you feeling this morning, Barbara?” Celia asked from the doorway.

  Barbara had taken the confirmation of Li Sha’s death very hard. When Celia had returned from her patient last night, she’d heard her cousin sobbing in her bedchamber. She should have realized that Barbara had grown attached to Li Sha, though she’d rarely shown affection for the girl. Her cousin must have longed for a friend who could comprehend the isolation she endured, halfway between her mother’s Chinese world and her father’s white one, where people whispered behind their hands and didn’t fully accept her.

  “How can she be dead?” Barbara’s head drooped. “I keep thinking and thinking, but when Owen came by earlier, he said it’s just something that happens to people like him and Li Sha, people nobody wants.”

  “That isn’t true,” Celia protested. “Li Sha was wanted. And Owen Cassidy is wanted, too, by those who matter.” Having been abandoned by his parents, Owen scraped by, living on the streets and doing odd jobs, just one boy among the many lost souls in this city. “But I can understand his feelings.”

  Or were they more than feelings? Owen was Irish like many of the men in the anti-coolie groups. What might he know about Li Sha’s death? She would ask him the next time he came by.

  “It’s just awful,” said Barbara, toying with the folded lace-edged handkerchief in her lap, running her fingertip across the looping B embroidered in vermilion silk.

  “Are you afraid that the rioters who attacked those Chinese laborers a few weeks ago might have killed Li Sha?” asked Celia. “Because I am thinking that may be the case.”

  Barbara glanced over, a tiny crease in her forehead. “The rioters . . . oh yes. Of course. Them.”

  “I don’t want you to be concerned for your own safety,” said Celia. She hated to see Barbara upset like this. “I will not let anyone harm you. I promised your father on his deathbed I would take care of you, and I shall.”

  Barbara chewed her lower lip. “I wish I still had piano lessons with Em so I could talk to Mr. Palmer about what happened to Li Sha. I’m sure he’d have an explanation.”

  Why did she think that? Joseph Palmer and his family had met Li Sha at a charity event at the Chinese Mission earlier that year, but a casual acquaintance hardly meant Mr. Palmer would have insight into who had killed her.

  “But I’m not sure that Mr. Palmer is at home,” added Barbara, the crease in her forehead deepening.

  “Has he been away?”

  “I think so.”

  “Clearly, I don’t know Mr. Palmer’s plans,” said Celia. Barbara’s preoccupation with the man made Celia uneasy. She glanced up at Uncle Walford grinning down from his portrait. Barbara wanted a father. Was charming, handsome J
oseph Palmer the substitute she’d settled upon?

  “Once I’ve finished with my patients today, I shall be heading out to visit the Langes,” said Celia. “I need to pick up some supplies, and I also wish to see how they have received the news about Li Sha. Mr. Lange was fond of her. Would you like to go with me?”

  Barbara’s expression darkened. “No. I’d rather not.”

  “Then perhaps you can visit my patient in Chinatown. I want to know how the wounds to her arm are doing. The constable should be making his rounds”—Celia checked the time on her watch—“in about two hours and should be able to accompany you. If you are uneasy about going alone, you can take Addie.”

  “All right,” Barbara muttered, chewing her lower lip again, as she did when she was agitated.

  Celia considered her. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Barbara?”

  “No.”

  Celia stepped back from the doorway. “I will have Addie bring you some tea, and a crumpet if you’d like. Some food will help you feel better.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Barbara answered. “I just wish . . . she didn’t have to die.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Lange’s business was located a few blocks south of the police station along a stretch of Pine Street that was thick with stores. Nick scanned the pedestrians, a better class of folks than Li Sha would have interacted with in Chinatown.

  He reached the store, where a middle-aged woman had her nose pressed to the window glass.

  “Is Mr. Lange in today?” Nick asked her.

  She startled. “Why, yes. Seems they are.”

  “Then maybe you should go in.”

  “Oh no. No, no, no,” she said, retreating from the window. “I heard about that Chinese girl of theirs getting killed and I wouldn’t want to disturb them, you see. Though I’m not surprised, you know. Mighty strange goings-on, if you ask me. Mighty strange.”

  “How so?” Nick asked.

  The woman leaned forward as if she were dispensing a great secret. “Peculiar comings and goings at night, you know? Strange men. Must have had something to do with that girl, though, don’t you think? She was a prostitute once, wasn’t she?” Something behind Nick attracted her attention. “Why, look, there’s that nice man at the dry goods store. I think I’ll see how he’s doing. His rheumatism’s been bothering him. Good-bye.”

  She scurried up the road before Nick could ask her any more questions.

  Nick stepped inside the store, the bell overhead jingling. The air was heavy with a pungent mixture of unidentifiable scents. Each wall was lined with tins bearing the names of the compounds they contained—sassafras bark, cochineal, oxide bismuth, flaxseed, poppy leaves. Beneath the tins were rows of dark glass jars containing acids and oils, or patent medicines labeled with doctors’ names meant to assure a customer of their curative powers. But the Dr. Richardson of Dr. Richardson’s Pectoral Balsam wasn’t likely any more a trained doctor than the corner quack who hawked hair restoratives. The same went for Dr. Fak and his Worm Lozenges or the Fahnestock of Fahnestock’s Vermifuge, whatever that was.

  A massive table occupied the room’s center, its surface covered with mortars and pestles, several reference books that looked to contain recipes for medicines, and a large brass weighing scale. From behind the table, a young woman straightened from a crouch, a brush and bin in her hands. The bin held the broken remains of a bottle of Dr. Chase’s Anodyne Dysentery Cordial, according to the label attached to a shard of glass.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. She was plain but not unattractive, and unusually tall for a woman, with light brown hair and large brown eyes. They watched him with defiant curiosity. “Or you just here to stare?”

  “I’m here to ask about a woman who worked here. Li Sha.”

  “And who are you?”

  “Detective Nicholas Greaves. From the San Francisco Police. And you are . . . ?”

  “Tessie Lange.” Hastily, she set down the bin and brush. “You should talk to my father.”

  Stepping over the pool of spilled cordial on the floor, she hurried into a back passageway that was separated from the main room by a thick gray curtain. Muffled voices came from the rear of the store, followed by footsteps. Mr. Lange, also tall, with thinning hair and narrow shoulders, pushed the curtain aside.

  “Detective Greaves?” he said, giving the r a raspy pronunciation. French, then. He peered through the spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose. “Can I help?”

  “I’m talking to anybody who knew the Chinese girl who was killed on Monday. I’ve been told she worked here.”

  A look of pain crossed Lange’s face. He exchanged a glance with his daughter, who’d come into the room behind him. “Effroyable. We saw the news in the paper.”

  Nick had read one of the accounts, an article on page two of the Morning Call. MURDERED CHINESE GIRL in bold letters, with enough sordid details of the discovery of the girl’s body to shock the reader. The reporter who’d penned the column hadn’t wasted space calling on the police to find her killer, though. One less Celestial, and a former prostitute at that; exactly who would care in this town? Not many, besides Celia Davies. And him.

  “So, it is true it is Miss Li?” Lange asked. “We thought, but I did not imagine . . .”

  Miss Lange’s face was stony hard.

  “When did you last see her?” Nick asked.

  “Her last workday,” answered Lange. “Which was . . .”

  “Monday, Papa,” said Miss Lange, sounding as if she often finished her father’s sentences.

  “Yes, Monday. Thank you, Thérèse. Monday. The day she . . .” Lange struggled for words. “She does not work on Tuesdays, but she was to come yesterday. Now we know why she did not.”

  “On Monday did she seem worried? Scared of somebody, maybe? Did she have plans to meet anybody later that night?”

  “She said nothing to us.”

  “She never said much, Detective,” explained Tessie Lange. “Came to work. Swept. Tidied. Went home.”

  “She didn’t come here looking for a place to stay sometime last week?” Nick asked, remembering that Li Sha had moved out of Tom Davies’ room.

  Miss Lange’s gaze narrowed. “No,” she answered.

  “Do you know who killed Miss Li, Detective Greaves?” asked her father.

  “We’re following some leads. You?”

  “Me?” he asked, eyes widening. “Oh! You wonder who I think . . . this I cannot say. I have the customers who learned of her work. They make the complaints, but I do not think they would be so angry as to hurt her. If I had hired a Chinese boy, they might understand. The boys, they are everyplace in the city, no? I have heard of the ladies who prefer them to the Irish girls.”

  He wiped his hands down his apron and recollected Nick’s question. “None would want to hurt her. Miss Li, she was a fine young woman. It is difficult to comprehend how she was ever in that life. Just ask Madame Davies. She will tell you. Miss Li had left the past behind and was now a fine young woman.”

  Based on the frown on Miss Lange’s face, Nick expected she didn’t share her father’s high opinion.

  “I have already spoken to Mrs. Davies,” he said. “What about that man she’d been with? The father of her child . . . Tom Davies. Had they fought recently?”

  “Child?” Lange seemed startled by the news.

  Tessie Lange’s brow crinkled for a second, but she didn’t seem as shocked as her father was. But then, women had a way of knowing such things.

  “She was going to have a child. Didn’t you know?” asked Nick. The girl must have been keeping the pregnancy from Lange, hoping to keep her job; no doubt she’d have been let go if Lange had found out.

  Lange shook his head. “Ma foi, no. No.”

  “You’re not thinking Tom’s guilty of killing her, are you?” interrupted Miss Lange.
>
  “Do you know Tom Davies?”

  A peculiar expression crossed her face. “He works down the street. We were acquainted. He doesn’t seem the type, though.”

  “Murderers come in all types, miss.”

  “Tom Davies would not murder anyone, Detective,” said Lange firmly. “He has the temper, c’est vrai, but is a good boy. He is the brother of Madame Davies’ missing husband. She will tell you he would not hurt Miss Li.”

  “She’s said that, too.”

  “You know, Papa,” said Miss Lange, “maybe Li Sha was acting fidgety lately. I think she was afraid of somebody. Folks are pretty upset with the Chinese these days. Maybe she was having trouble, too.”

  “She never said this to me, Thérèse,” said her father.

  “Although it could’ve been one of her former customers bothering her, I guess,” continued Miss Lange.

  Nick went on, “One of your neighbors mentioned there have been men hanging around, men who possibly wanted to speak to Li Sha. Have either of you noticed them?”

  Tessie Lange slid her father a look, then answered for both of them. “Can’t say that we have. None besides Tom.”

  “This is terrible,” said Lange. “It must be those horrible people who hate the Chinese. They make such trouble. Our poor Miss Li.”

  Mr. Lange shoved his spectacles up the bridge of his nose, though Nick wasn’t sure they’d slipped down. The man’s hand was trembling. The last time he’d seen somebody so shivery, the fellow had been ready to confess to murder.

  Nick started to count how many blocks it was to the wharf where Li Sha had been found—nine—and pondered ways Lange or his tall daughter could have hauled her there, or lured her there.

  “Where you were on Monday night, Mr. Lange?” he asked.