The Spook Lights Affair

9

Homer Keeps was waiting for Sabina when she left her rooming house early Monday morning.

She had peeked out through the front window curtains and had seen no sign of lurking reporters, but to be safe — or so she’d thought — she’d exited down the rear stairway as she had on Saturday and started across the yard toward the mid-block carriageway. And the chubby little reporter for the Evening Bulletin popped out from behind a poplar tree, startling her, before she was halfway there.

“Good morning, Mrs. Carpenter,” he said cheerfully. He doffed his derby as he spoke, revealing his bald head with its thin, brown horseshoe fringe. His broadcloth suit was spotted with cigar ash; some other substance stained his stiff celluloid collar. All in all, an unappetizing sight this early in the day. “And a fine morning it is, or will be when the last of the fog burns off.”

“It was until now, and will be when I’ve seen the last of you.”

“Now, now, is that any way to speak to a member of the press? Distinguished member, if I do say so myself.”

“Muckraker is more like it.”

“Ah, you wound me deeply. Such insults are beneath a comely lady such as yourself — the result of too much time spent with that bibulous, conceited, and disagreeble partner of yours.”

“John is not bibulous, and hasn’t been for some time. You know that as well as I do.”

“Perhaps he isn’t. Conceited and disagreeable in any case. He even threatened my life once.”

“Did he? With just cause, I’m sure. He may even threaten it again after the inflammatory article you wrote on Saturday.”

“Inflammatory? I merely told the truth as it was presented to me.”

“By Virginia St. Ives’s brother, who was not present when his sister leapt from the parapet. I was, and I know what I saw.”

“Then you should have no objection to telling it to me.” With a flourish, Keeps produced a pen and a notebook from the pocket of his frock coat. “An exclusive interview, in your own words.”

“Which you’ll misquote and then in your customary fashion distort into an attack on the competence and ethics of the Carpenter and Quincannon agency.”

“Once again, you wound me deeply.”

“Not deeply enough,” Sabina said. “The answer, Mr. Keeps, is no. No interview, now or at any time in the future.” She started away toward the rear gate.

Keeps hurried after her. “It would be in your best interest to change your mind, Mrs. Carpenter. Silence on your part will only strengthen the case against you if Joseph St. Ives follows through on his threat.”

“What are you talking about? What threat?”

“Why, hadn’t you heard? He is contemplating a civil suit against you for negligence if his daughter is proven to have committed suicide.”

Sabina stopped again, abruptly. The little reporter was smiling eagerly, all but rubbing his fat hands together. “Who told you that?” she demanded. “Joseph St. Ives is in Sacramento—”

“Ah, no, he isn’t. He returned to the city yesterday.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I have my sources,” Keeps said slyly. “Well? Under the circumstances, don’t you think it would be wise to cooperate with an honest member of the press?”

“If I knew one, yes. But my answer to you is still an unqualified no.”

Keeps lost his smile and some of his composure. “You’ll regret that decision. As you’ll see when you read my story in tonight’s edition.”

Sabina eyed him sharply. “Write anything remotely of a libelous nature, Mr. Keeps, and I won’t be the only one facing a potential lawsuit.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No more than you’ve threatened me.”

She hurried ahead to the gate, leaving the reporter to stand sputtering to himself under the poplar tree.

Miss Hillbrand’s Academy of Art, on Post Street near Union Square, was a beloved San Francisco institution, having produced two alumna of note — Dolores Weston, a well-known watercolorist, and Eleanor Sand, whose ceramics were highly prized. Still-life, portrait, and landscape painting, as well as sculpting in clay and bronze, were taught to young ladies by Miss Hillbrand and her staff. It was de rigueur for wealthy families to send their daughters, artistically talented or not, to the academy for “aesthetic finishing.” One of those families was the DeBretts, one of the daughters Grace, Virginia’s St. Ives’s best friend.

At eleven o’clock Sabina stood waiting in front of the stone-faced building, her eyes on its wide front door. Fortunately she had had no other pressing business to attend to today; she would have had difficulty focusing on it if she had.

The mystery surrounding Virginia’s disappearance had given her a restless night, and the confrontation with Homer Keeps and the unsettling prospect of a civil suit for negligence by the St. Ives family made her even more determined to get to the bottom of it. For her own peace of mind as well for the reputation and financial security of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. Puzzles such as this nettled her to the point of distraction. No matter how many times she reviewed Friday night’s strange events, she still couldn’t quite identify the feeling of wrongness that continued to plague her. If she did … no, when she did, she was certain it would explain, or at least partially explain, what she’d witnessed. Meanwhile, she was not about to sit back and wait passively for her memory to dislodge it. That was why she was here at Miss Hillbrand’s Academy, waiting for Grace DeBrett to emerge. The more she knew about the post-deb and her various activities, the better equipped she would be to ferret out the truth.

It had been Callie, at yesterday’s luncheon, who had told her about Grace DeBrett’s art lessons. No one of her acquaintance knew the city’s social upper class more intimately than her cousin, and Callie “had it on good authority” — she always had information on good authority, although she refused to say exactly whose authority it was — that the young woman was given painting lessons at Miss Hillbrand’s from nine until eleven on Monday mornings. According to Callie, Grace was not only an unattractive girl but a rather dim-witted one, and overprotected by her mother as a result. This was evidently why Sabina had not been allowed to talk to the girl on Saturday. “It would be just like Mathilda DeBrett to shield her precious daughter from anything that hints of scandal,” Callie had said. “All that flapdoodle in the newspapers about you, no doubt. But Mathilda doesn’t accompany Grace to Miss Hillbrand’s, so she won’t be there to prevent you from talking to the girl.”

Callie was a caution. She professed to know something about nearly everyone in this city, a claim Sabina had never disputed. She would make a good detective herself if she set her mind to it, she’d said once, and then audaciously suggested that Sabina hire her on a part-time basis so she could prove it. The thought of Callie working side by side with her and John, and of his fulminating reaction to what she would surely insist on doing to “perk up” the agency offices — lacy curtains on the windows, patterned pillows on the chairs — was wryly amusing. Fortunately, the suggestion had been made in jest. Genuine detective work bewildered and worried her cousin; Callie was forever warning Sabina against its dangers.

Promptly at eleven o’clock a bevy of young women began to emerge from the academy, carrying sketchbooks, portfolios, and examples of their artistic efforts, arranging hats and capes, talking among themselves. Sabina recognized two or three who had attended Mayor Sutro’s party on Friday night. Normally their chatter would have been animated and punctuated by laughs and giggles, but today it was subdued. The suicide and the disappearance of the remains of one of their acquaintances was doubtless the cause.

Grace DeBrett, like Virginia St. Ives and others in the current crop of post-debs, had been featured prominently in the society pages since her debut the previous year. Petite, with upswept brown hair, she had unfortunately been gifted by nature with a short neck, buck teeth, and a flattish pug nose. The fact that she and Virginia had been friends despite the contrast between her ugly-duckling looks and the St. Ives girl’s patrician beauty, came as no surprise. Many attractive girls chose homely friends in order to set off their own prettiness, and Virginia had been just such a type.

Grace stood apart from the others, not taking part in their good-byes to one another, looking lost and forlorn. She remained in front of the academy until the other girls were gone, then crossed the busy street and entered a tea room called The Creamery. Sabina, following, found the girl seated alone at a small, white wrought-iron table at the rear, head bent forward and propped in one hand.

Smiling, Sabina said, “Excuse me, Miss DeBrett. Would you mind if I joined you?”

Grace blinked up at her. “Oh … it’s you. Mrs. Carpenter. You were there last Friday night when poor Virginia…” The young bud shook her head, unable to finish the sentence, the shake so fervent that one of the white ostrich plumes on her broad-brimmed hat nearly came loose.

“I don’t mean to intrude, but I’d like to speak with you—”

“Couldn’t you have stopped her from doing such an awful thing? Really, couldn’t you?”

“I very much wish I’d been able to. But there simply wasn’t enough time.”

“Her brother, David, said you were negligent. In the newspapers. Mama said so, too, that’s why she told Inge to tell you to go away when you came to our house Saturday morning.”

“They’re wrong. Truly.”

A waitress appeared at the table. Sabina took the opportunity to claim the seat opposite Grace. The girl didn’t protest; her attention was on the waitress. She ordered tea with milk and honey, Sabina plain orange pekoe. The shop, with its cozy atmosphere, reminded her of the one near South Park where she’d spent an irritating few minutes with the crackbrain — John’s term, which she wasn’t completely convinced was appropriate, for the Englishman who called himself Sherlock Holmes — listening to him lecture pompously on the subjects of tea, the superiority of the British Empire, and his perceived deductive genius.

When the waitress departed, Grace sighed, blinked at Sabina, and resumed speaking as if there had been no interruption. “Inge is our downstairs maid. She’s not really fit for the position, she’s Swedish or Norwegian, I don’t remember which, and her English isn’t very good, but she tries and Mama says she’s coming along.”

“Miss DeBrett … or would it be all right if I called you Grace?”

“I suppose so. It’s my name, after all. Such a pretty name, but it doesn’t fit me at all. I’m not graceful and I’m not pretty. Mama says I am, pretty that is, but I’m not. I’m just — Oh, here’s the tea. Do try the scones, they’re dreamy here.”

Babbling, Sabina thought, to mask her discomfort and her grief. Eating too much, too, for the same reason, judging by the amount of butter, jam, and clotted cream she heaped on to a scone.

“About Virginia. You and she were close friends?”

“Oh, yes, very close. Virgie … she…” Abruptly the girl’s eyes filled with tears. She took a huge bite of the scone, her cheeks puffing out like a chipmunk’s, swallowed, and then frowned, and said accusingly, “She didn’t like her parents hiring you to watch over her.”

“They felt it was necessary for her own good.”

“But it wasn’t, was it? For her own good?” Abruptly Grace’s face scrunched up and two large tears trickled down her cheeks; she dabbed them away with her napkin. “Virgie … oh, God, I can’t believe she’s gone. She was so full of life, so … here. I miss her terribly already.”

“I’m sure you do. Grace, do you have any idea why she would want to do away with herself?”

“None at all. It’s just so … so unbelievable.”

“Did she seem depressed or disturbed recently?”

“No, she was just … Virgie.”

“And at the party Friday night? I noticed you and she talking not long before she ran out. Did she seem in any way despondent then?”

Grace shook her head again. “She seemed … I don’t know, kind of nervous and excited. I thought it was because she was going to meet someone outside, on the overlook.”

“Oh? Who? Lucas Whiffing?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. She said I’d find out when I went out there with her.”

“… I’m not sure I understand. When did Virginia ask you to go with her? Friday night?”

“No. A couple of days before.”

“Why did she want you there?”

“Well … to sort of act as a lookout. So no one would bother her while she was with whomever she was meeting. But then at the party she said she’d changed her mind.”

“Did she give you a reason why?”

“No, she merely said she wouldn’t need me after all. I guess it was because she’d decided to … you know, do what she did.”

Sabina stirred her tea, digesting this information. Then she asked, “Did Virginia ever confide in you about her beaux?”

“Sometimes. Well, not everything about them. I think there were some things she kept to herself.”

“Such as?”

“Well…” A faint blush colored the girl’s cheeks. “You know, intimate things.”

“Do you think she’d been intimate with one of her beaux?”

The blush deepened to a rose hue. “Of course not! You don’t think Virgie wasn’t a … that she … no, not before marriage. Never.”

Protesting too much? Sabina wondered. She said, “I’m sure you’re right,” though she wasn’t sure at all. “Did Virginia ever mention Lucas Whiffing?”

“Yes, but not as if he was anyone special. They rode bicycles and flew kites in Golden Gate Park and lunched a few times, that’s all. She liked him, she said, but not enough to go against her parents’ wishes when they objected. They didn’t want her seeing him because he’s only a clerk in a sporting goods emporium … well, you know that.”

“I understand that’s where she first met him, in F. W. Ellerby’s.”

“No, that’s not right. She met him through David.”

“Did she? How did that come about?”

“I don’t know. Virgie never said.”

“But she did say definitely that her brother had introduced them?”

“Not introduced them, just that he was somebody her brother knew and that’s how she met him.”

So Lucas Whiffing had lied. To conceal his relationship, whatever it was, with David St. Ives? If so, why? In any event it confirmed Sabina’s suspicions that he was not the charming, trustworthy individual he pretended to be.

She said, “What can you tell me about David?”

“Well … I probably shouldn’t say anything, but…” Grace lowered her voice to a near whisper. “He likes girls, the wrong kind of girls, if you know what I mean. And he gambles. Mama says he’s lost thousands of dollars playing poker.”

Sabina had already heard about David St. Ives’s profligate ways. At yesterday’s luncheon, Callie had referred to him as “one of these young men celebrated for doing nothing.” He had trust funds from relatives on either side of his family, she’d said, and an indifferent attitude toward business matters that until recently had been tolerated by his father. But his bad habits had become so expensive and well known that Joseph St. Ives threatened to disown him if he didn’t cease and desist.

Her cousin was an inveterate gossip and as such an endless fount of information. Grace DeBrett had proved to be a fledgling gossip in her own right, though far less intelligent and circumspect than Callie. Which had made questioning the girl much easier than Sabina had anticipated.

She shifted the conversation back to Virginia by saying, “Tell me about Virginia, Grace, what she was like. Would you say she was secretive?”

“I guess she was. I was her best friend and we shared a lot, but she didn’t tell me everything like I told her. Really personal things, I mean. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, either, but her parents weren’t getting along — something to do with Mr. St. Ives’s political aspirations. Mama told me that. The things about David, too.”

“How else would you describe Virginia?”

Grace heaped another scone, swallowed a bite with a sip of her honey-laced tea. “Well, she was … changeable. One minute, she’d be off in one direction, next minute off in another. There’s a better word for it…”

“Capricious?”

“Yes, that’s it. You couldn’t always tell when she was serious about something and when she wasn’t. And she had a … a sort of devilish sense of humor.”

“How so?”

“Oh, she loved to play clever pranks. When I first heard about what happened on Friday night, I thought she must be playing another one. But it couldn’t have been a prank, could it?”

Sabina wondered. There would seem to be little purpose in a bizarre suicide hoax that caused a public scandal and damaged the St. Ives family’s stature, and at the moment she couldn’t see a way such a trick could have been worked. Still, given Virginia’s crafty nature and the fact that her body had not been discovered …

“I wish it had been one of her games,” Grace was saying. “Then she’d still be alive and we could laugh about it and everything would be the way it was.…” Another tear glistened and spilled over.

Sabina sipped her tea while the girl composed herself. At length she asked, “Did she have any other close friends she might have confided in?”

Grace seemed mildly offended by the question. “No. I was her best and closest.” But then she paused, nibbled at her lower lip, and said, “Well, there’s Miss Kingston.”

“Miss Kingston?”

“Arabella Kingston. She’s one of the instructors at the academy.”

“Why do you suppose Virginia might have confided in her?”

“I don’t know, exactly. But she’s much older than we are, almost thirty, and very easy to talk to. Virgie liked her, and once went to visit her at her lodgings.”

“Did she tell you that?”

Grace nodded. “But she wouldn’t say why or what they talked about.”

“Where does Miss Kingston reside, do you know?”

“No. Virgie didn’t say.”

It should be easy enough, Sabina thought, to find out the woman’s address. She asked a few more questions, but there was nothing further of interest to be gotten from Grace DeBrett. She left the girl to finish feeding her sorrow with tea and sweets alone.

At Miss Hillbrand’s Academy, she was told by a receptionist that Arabella Kingston had left for the day. “Oh, dear,” Sabina said, “and I had so hoped to see her. I’ve only just arrived in the city and my sister suggested Miss Kingston might be able to help me find employment. They went to school together, you see. Would you mind terribly letting me have her home address?”

This ploy worked with ease. Arabella Kingston resided at 611 Larkin Street.

F. W. Ellerby’s showroom was only a short walk from Post Street. But Sabina was denied an immediate conversation with Lucas Whiffing. He was not present in the bicycle and sporting goods emporium. The same clerk she’d spoken to on her previous visit told her she might try the company’s Third Street warehouse, though it wasn’t likely Mr. Whiffing would be there because he was supposed to be on duty in the showroom today and once again had failed to show up. “Another of his ‘illnesses,’ no doubt,” the clerk said snippily.

Sabina bought a large soft pretzel from a street vendor, a not very nutritious or filling lunch but all she felt like eating. Usually her noontime hunger was considerable — she was blessed to be able to eat anything she chose without gaining an ounce — but recent events had severely curtailed her appetite. While she munched on the pretzel, she considered her next move.

A cab ride to Third Street was a probable waste of time. The Montgomery Block, where the St. Ives Land Management Company’s offices were located, was not far from Powell and Market, but she was not quite ready to face Joseph St. Ives, if in fact he could be found in his place of business today; and if young David was like many habitués of the Cocktail Route and the Tenderloin, it would be noon or later before he went to work, if he went at all. As hostile as he’d been toward her on Friday night and in the newspapers, he might not even agree to see her.

Her best chance of obtaining more information, she decided, was a talk with Arabella Kingston. She hailed a hansom and rode it to 611 Larkin Street.

The block was a quiet, attractive one of private residences and small lodging houses set back from the cobbled street. Shade trees, neatly trimmed hedges and other shrubbery, and picket fences of wood and black iron gave each a sense of privacy. A discreet sign next to the front door of 611 proclaimed it to be a residence for single ladies only.

But the visit proved to be another fruitless one: Miss Kingston failed to answer her bell. Sabina rang the one marked with the landlady’s card, and by using the same story as at the art academy, learned from a middle-aged, prim-faced woman that Miss Kingston ate her evening meals at neighborhood restaurants between six and seven o’clock and on weeknights invariably returned to her rooms afterward.

The same hansom, which Sabina had asked the driver to hold in waiting, took her back downtown. To the financial district, the Montgomery Block, and the St. Ives Land Management Company.