The Body Snatchers Affair (19 page)

 

19

SABINA

Sabina stepped quickly inside, easing the door shut behind her. This was not the first time she'd encountered a victim of lethal violence, but the suddenness of her discovery and the stench of death that permeated the sparsely furnished room caused her gorge to rise. She locked her throat muscles and took several deep breaths to steady herself before she approached the body.

She had never seen the man before. He had been in his forties, partially bald, his craggy face pale-skinned beneath a thin growth of reddish whiskers. Roughly dressed, although the boots he wore looked to be new and fairly expensive. Artemas Sneed? The pale skin prison pallor?

She bent to gingerly place two fingers against a none too clean neck. The flesh was pliant, still warm. Not long dead, she judged, no more than two hours, perhaps as little as one.

A pistol was loosely gripped in his right hand, but the absence of a gunpowder smell told Sabina that it hadn't been fired. And that he hadn't been shot. She peered more closely at the chest wound, and saw then with some surprise that there was a similar wound in his back. Slits, both of them, thin and half an inch in width. Neither had bled much; death must have been instantaneous. No knife of any sort had made those slits, but rather something long and thin that had been thrust into him with enough force to pass all the way through his body. Not so much stabbed as skewered.

By what type of weapon? A saber, possibly, but hardly anyone carried one in San Francisco, not even the officers stationed at the Presidio. A sword cane, more likely. Many men carried such instruments, respectable citizens for self-protection (John had one that had served him on more than one occasion), the more sophisticated breed of criminal for intimidation and assault.

There was no sign of the weapon in any case; the murderer had wiped it off on the linsey-woolsey shirt—bloody smears on one shoulder attested to that—and taken it away with him. An overturned chair and a cot askew against one wall indicated a brief struggle before the fatal blow was struck. Some sort of confrontation, perhaps over money? Possibly, but not between Sneed and another man of his ilk. Pistols and knives and coshes were their weapons of choice.

Sabina steeled herself, breathing through her mouth, and knelt to search the man's clothing. In one trouser pocket she found a purse, inside of which was a small wad of greenbacks and two five-dollar gold pieces—a total of more than sixty dollars. Robbery hadn't figured in the killing, then. Which likely meant that the murderer was someone other than a Barbary Coast felon.

There was nothing on the body to identify the dead man. A small wardrobe contained an inexpensive sack coat, a pair of trousers, and two shirts; the pockets in all were empty. A cloth travel bag under the cot yielded nothing, either, and the only items on a low table beside the cot were a packet of matches and another of cheroots.

Was
the victim Artemas Sneed? It seemed probable, since this was his room. If so, a man with Sneed's background and propensities might have more than a few enemies. Any one of them might have ended his life, for any of a hundred reasons. He was also an alleged blackmailer, and blackmailers often preyed on more than one victim. Blackmail could have been the source of the sixty dollars he carried. But then so could gambling, and such crimes as petty theft, armed robbery, and fraud.

And then there was the type of weapon that had been used.…

Carson? Oh, Lord, could Carson have done this?

The thought opened a hollow feeling inside Sabina. He didn't seem the type of man capable of killing another in such a brutal fashion as this, even in self-defense, but then neither did he seem the type to have been involved in a gold-stealing scheme that left him open to extortion. She simply didn't know him well enough to make an accurate judgment. One thing she did know: The type of long, slender stick he carried
could
conceal a deadly piece of steel.

The time had come to face him with her suspicions; she couldn't put it off any longer. Whether he was innocent or guilty of any magnitude of wrongdoing, she would be able to tell it from his responses and his demeanor. No man had ever successfully lied to her about an important issue such as this. She fervently hoped Carson would not try.

*   *   *

The Nob Hill mansion owned by Carson's father occupied most of a steep block of California Street not far from Huntington Park, on the opposite slope from the Blanchford estate. It was similar in style to the grand French Second Empire–style home built by Leland Stanford, one of the “Big Four” tycoons and architect of the Union Pacific Railroad, though smaller and not quite as elaborately designed. Even at night, illuminated by street lamps and a scattering of electric lights, the three-story, mansard-roofed edifice and its surrounding gardens were impressive.

After alighting from the hansom, Sabina once again asked the driver to wait for her. The cab fare was already substantial; a few dollars more wouldn't and didn't matter. The driver was as happy to bring her here as he had been to depart Davis Street and its dismal environs. The fact that his passenger had chosen to travel from squalor to the height of wealth obviously puzzled him, but to his credit he held his tongue.

Sabina hurried through a gate in the spike-tipped iron fence that enclosed the Montgomery property, then through a considerable amount of greenery to the house. A heavy bronze lion's head knocker made a booming noise when she lifted it and let it fall. The door was opened after a short wait by a middle-aged butler in full dress livery. If he was surprised to see a comely young woman calling alone at this late hour, he didn't show it.

“Yes, madam?”

“I'm an acquaintance of Mr. Carson Montgomery,” she said, and presented her card along with her name. “I'd like to speak to him if he's home.”

“I'm afraid he isn't.”

Damn!
“Gone out for the evening at what time?”

“To my knowledge, he has been away since early this morning.”

“I see. Do you know where I might find him?”

“I do not. Nor when he might return.”

“Then I'll leave a message for him.”

“As you wish.”

“A
written
message.” Frustration sharpened Sabina's voice. “In a sealed envelope.”

The butler was unperturbed. “Certainly, madam. Would you like me to supply stationery and a pen?”

“A sheet of paper and an envelope, yes. I have a pen.”

“Very good.” He studied her for a moment, apparently decided she was respectable and not likely to steal anything if left alone, and said as if bestowing a favor, “You may enter and wait in the drawing room.”

The high-ceilinged drawing room was empty except for heavy Victorian furnishings and several large paintings of members of the Montgomery clan, most of them done at advanced ages and rather forbiddingly austere. Sabina fancied the multitude of eyes appraising her as she stood waiting. None of the chairs and settees looked the least bit comfortable.

When the butler returned, she took to a secretary desk the letter-sized sheet of vellum and matching envelope he handed her. Both pieces of stationery bore an embossed Montgomery family crest. She wrote Carson's name on the envelope, checked the time on the grandfather clock across the room, and then proceeded to write her message.

Thursday, 9:20
P.M.

Carson:

I must speak with you on a matter of considerable urgency. Will you be so good as to meet me tomorrow at one
P.M.
in the Grand Central Court at the Palace Hotel? If you are unable to do so, please let me know at my office by telephone or messenger, but I sincerely hope that will not be necessary.

Sabina

She folded the paper and sealed it into the envelope, which she then gave to the butler. “Please put this where Carson will be certain to see it when he comes home.”

“Very well, madam.” He held the envelope gingerly between thumb and forefinger as he ushered her out, as if he couldn't wait to be rid of it.

Sabina gave the waiting hack driver her home address and settled back on the cushions. She felt almost relieved that Carson had not been at home tonight. Coming here had been an impetuous act; it would have been awkward and unpleasant confronting him, implying criminal guilt if not actually accusing him of it, in his own home. A public place such as the Palace Hotel was more suitable for the task.

She wondered if she should have requested an earlier meeting time in her message. This distressing situation with Carson and the Gold King scandal and the death of Artemas Sneed was a heavy weight on her mind; the sooner she had a firm grasp on the truth, the better able she'd be to deal with it. But no, one o'clock was soon enough. She might well have pressing agency business to attend to in the morning.

Briefly she considered, as she had on the ride up from Davis Street, whether she should notify the police—anonymously—of the dead man in Sneed's room at the Wanderer's Rest. It was the proper thing to do. John might be cavalier about bending and breaking the law, but she wasn't; Stephen and the other Pinkerton agents she'd known had taught her to obey it except in incidents of dire necessity. There was no such necessity in this case. The body would be discovered soon enough, she had no specific knowledge of who had committed the crime, and the police would have little interest in the violent death of an ex-convict and Barbary Coast hanger-on—except, she thought wryly, to “confiscate as evidence” the sixty dollars in his purse if the money was still there when they arrived on the scene. Only the hack driver had seen her entering and leaving the rooming house, she was sure of that, and he would have no reason to come forward; homicides were so common in the rougher sections of the city that they were seldom reported in the newspapers. Her wisest course of action was to do nothing at all until she met with Carson tomorrow.

She closed her eyes, shifted her tired body into a more comfortable position, and let the rattling of the wheels and clopping of the horse's hooves lull her into a half-doze the rest of the journey to Russian Hill.

 

20

QUINCANNON

Friday morning was bright, sunny, the air crisp and winey as well as briny, and Quincannon whistled “The Drunkard's Funeral,” one of his collection of temperance tunes, as he alighted from the Powell Street cable car and proceeded at a brisk pace down Market Streeet. The briefcase he carried swung loosely at his side, but his grip on it could not have been tighter.

For once, he arrived at the office before Sabina. The morning mail had already been delivered; he scooped it up from the floor under the mail slot and tossed it on his desk. Went to turn up the steam heat to dispel the lingering night's chill, then knelt and twirled the combination lock to open the office safe. It was a Mosler, one of the best manufacturers of strongboxes; large, bolted to the floor, and as secure as any private business could expect. Far more secure than the small one in his bedroom.

He opened the briefcase and transferred the files he'd appropriated from James Scarlett's law office to the safe. They constituted important evidence and now he didn't have to worry about their safety until the time came to turn them over to the authorities.

The mail wasn't such-a-much—only one containing a check in payment for services rendered, the rest circulars, bills, this month's issue of the
Police Gazette
. There was also a sealed envelope with “Mrs. Carpenter” scrawled on it in a barely legible backhand. The writing was familiar, that of the news vendor, Slewfoot, one of their more reliable informants. A communication from him, as from others in the city-wide network of information sellers, was often delivered in this fashion after office hours.

He was putting the envelope and the bills on Sabina's desk blotter when the telephone bell jangled. Alexander Graham Bell's invention had its uses, but he had yet to get used to the sudden shrill clamor of its summons. He cut off the noise on its second ring.

A woman's imperious voice said, “Is that you, Blackbeard?”

Mrs. Harriet Blanchford. Not even such as the Blackbeard slight bothered him this morning. He said cheerfully, “John Quincannon, Mrs. Blanchford,” listened, said, “No, Mrs. Carpenter, hasn't come in yet this morning. I imagine she'll arrive shortly.” Listened some more and then said, “Yes, I'll make sure she gets the message,” and was rewarded with an abrupt termination of the call. Ah, well, the elderly had their privileges, a tolerable amount of rude behavior among them. The more so when the party involved was wealthy and destined to be another satisfied client.

He would be leaving shortly, so he sat down to commit Harriet Blanchford's message to paper. He was in the process when the door opened to admit his erstwhile and much coveted partner.

“Good morning, my dear. Beautiful day, isn't it.”

“Is it?” she said. Her tone was uncharacteristically bleak. “What makes you so jolly today?”

“Considerable progress on the Scarlett case. What makes you so dispirited?”

Sabina didn't respond. Instead, she went about unpinning her hat and hanging up her cape on the coat tree. He inspected her more closely as she did so, and what he saw was alarming. She looked even more tired today, her eyes betokening a sleep-deprived night. There was a remoteness about them, too, as if her mind were heavily burdened. And her mouth and jaw bore the kind of tightness that came from teeth-clenching. Carson Montgomery again? If the man had harmed or severely upset her in any way …

Quincannon watched her sit at her desk. She noticed the “Mrs. Carpenter” envelope immediately, opened it, read the paper inside without a change of expression, reinserted it, and put it aside.

“Good news?” he asked.