The Cliff House Strangler (12 page)

Madame Karpova’s expression softened as she regarded her daughter. “
Moyo malenkaya,
Miss Woolson is speaking to you. Please, try to answer.” To me, she added, “Ever since the night she was attacked, she has been terrified. She still has night tremors and eats like a bird. It is impossible not to worry.”

“I can certainly understand why she’s upset, Madame Karpova,” I said. “I’d be frightened, too, if someone suddenly jumped out at me and tried to pull a wire around my neck. It must have been horrible.”

The clairvoyant nodded, then looked at her daughter with concern. “Yes, it was a dreadful experience. I should not have allowed that policeman to change her room. Mrs. Reade did not need to be directly next door to Mrs. Ahern. She is old, and old women faint. Besides,” she added with a meaningful nod, “she does not have long to live.” She tapped her right index finger against her temple. “I, Madame Karpova, know these things.”

I stared at her, confounded by what she had just said. “Excuse me, Madame Karpova. What was that about changing rooms?”

“The policeman wanted the old woman closer to his wife, so he made Yelena change rooms. You know, in the event Mrs. Reade required assistance during the night.”

I managed to keep my voice controlled. “So, what you’re saying, Madame Karpova, is that the room Yelena occupied the night Darien Moss was killed was originally intended for Theodora Reade?”

“Yes, that is what I said. Yelena should have been in the room next to mine.” Her face darkened and she hissed several words that sounded like a Russian oath. Then she exclaimed, “If Yelena had
been attacked there, I would have taken care of the assassin—with my bare hands, if need be! I tell you, Miss Woolson, you must do something. I want to take my daughter and brother and leave this awful place.”

I spent the next quarter hour trying to convince my overwrought visitor that there was truly nothing I could do to stop the police department from questioning her brother. I could tell by her set expression that my words were making no impression. It was, therefore, a relief when Robert came bursting into my office (he rarely, if ever, knocked).

“Sarah, before you say no, I want you to think—” He stopped short when he saw the two women. “What are they doing here?” he added with his usual nonexistent tact.

The medium drew breath to put him in his place, but I managed to speak first. “Madame Karpova, Yelena, I think you remember my colleague, Mr. Robert Campbell, from the séance. Robert, we’ve been discussing how the police are coming along in their investigation of Darien Moss’s death.”

He eyed me warily. “Just discussing?”

“Of course.” Rising from my chair, I addressed my guests. “I hope you will excuse me, ladies, but Mr. Campbell and I have urgent business to discuss.”

Madame Karpova seemed about to object, then thought better of it. “Yelena,
nam pora idty.
It is time to go.”

Without taking her frightened eyes off Robert, the girl rose from her chair and went to stand by the door.

“I expected better of your country,” Madame Karpova told me tersely. Then, head held so high that I feared she might trip on the stairs leading down to the street, she sailed out of the room with her daughter.

When the door closed behind them, Robert sank into the chair Madame Karpova had just vacated, his turquoise eyes regarding me with suspicion. “So, what was that little visit
really
about? And don’t
tell me that woman came to see you just to discuss Darien Moss’s death, because I don’t believe it for one minute.”

“I’ll tell you about it on the way,” I replied, reaching for my coat, which was hanging on the clothes rack behind the door.

“On our way where?” he asked with a scowl. “I only stopped by to offer you work—
paid
work, I might add. Joseph Shepard doesn’t have to know that you were the one who actually did the job—”

“That will have to wait,” I told him. “Did you happen to see Eddie and his brougham parked outside? He was supposed to have been here half an hour ago.”

“Yes, he’s down there. But where the devil are you going?” “
We,
Robert,” I announced, walking out the door. “I would very much appreciate it if you would go with me.”

Y
ou think Mrs. Reade was the intended victim and not Yelena?” Robert asked after we were seated in Eddie’s brougham and I had told him about the last-minute room change.

“Don’t you agree it makes a good deal more sense than someone attacking Madame Karpova’s daughter?”

At that moment, Eddie took a corner too fast and I slid into my companion, causing him to grab hold of me to prevent us both from crashing into the door. Embarrassed to find my face all but pressed against his, I started to apologize, only to find myself inexplicably breathless.

“Sarah!” he exclaimed, looking as self-conscious as I felt. “Er, that is, I—” His words, such as they were, cut off and he sucked in a quick gulp of air. The blue-green eyes staring into mine appeared very large, or perhaps they seemed that way because they were a mere inch or two from my own.

I was the first to blink, and that seemed to break the sudden tension between us, leaving me surprisingly winded. Extricating myself as gracefully as possible from Robert’s embrace, I moved over to my usual place on the seat, straightened my skirts, and tried to
recall what I had been saying. For some reason, my previous train of thought had become a bit muddled. Then, as Eddie narrowly avoided hitting a depot wagon driven by an angry man with a very red face, it came back to me.

“Ah, yes, about the room changes. If you remember, Robert, Mrs. Reade sat almost directly across from Moss during the séance. The most likely explanation is that in that brief flash of lightning, she saw whoever killed him. But, of course, she fainted before she could tell anyone. The murderer must have known, or at least suspected, he’d been seen, and set out to silence her. What he didn’t realize was that Mrs. Reade’s room had been switched with Yelena’s, so that she might be closer to Mrs. Ahern.”

Robert shifted in his seat and cleared his throat, but he did not reply. Glancing at him, I wondered if he were going out of his way to avoid looking at me. The thought crossed my mind that he might still be discomfited by our chance collision moments before; then common sense disabused me of that fanciful notion.

“Robert? Are you all right? You appear to be flushed.”

“I’m fine,” he replied rather brusquely, still not meeting my eyes.

“Well?” I prodded. “Don’t you agree that is a likely hypothesis for what happened?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.” He darted a quick look at me from the corner of his eye and once again cleared his throat before going on in a more normal tone of voice. “I admit I found it hard to believe that Serkov would attack his own niece.”

“So you’re still convinced Dmitry Serkov is the killer?” I asked, not bothering to hide my annoyance.

Mumbling beneath his breath, he finally turned to face me. “Of course I am. Think about it, Sarah, who else could it be?”

“There were twelve of us at that table, Robert,” I reminded him. “And for several minutes, the room was in complete darkness. Anyone could have slipped out of their seat during that time.”

“Of course that’s possible, but he—”

“Or she,” I said, interrupting.

He looked genuinely surprised. “A woman? That seems unlikely. It hardly seems the sort of crime a woman would commit.”

“Not ordinarily,” I agreed. “But as it was most likely a crime of opportunity, even a woman might jump at the chance to silence Moss. That is, if she feared him enough.”

Grudgingly, Robert nodded his head. “All right, for the sake of argument, let’s assume the killer could be a man
or
a woman. Either way, he or she was taking a terrible chance of being seen.”

“I know. That’s why I’m convinced the killer had to have been truly desperate. Moss must have known something extremely damaging about that individual. And the assailant knew, or at least suspected, that Moss was planning to print it in his column.”

“That goes without saying. Discovering what that damaging information was is an entirely different matter. Moreover, it’s a problem best left to the police to solve.”

“Yes,” I agreed evasively, “at least for the time being. What worries me at the moment is Mrs. Reade’s safety. If we’re right and she was the intended victim, then her life is in grave danger.”

Before he could respond, Eddie reined up in front of a handsome Gothic-style redwood home on Pacific Street. The three-story dwelling was typical of houses erected in the 1860s, complete with an ornately carved bargeboard along the gabled roof, and a number of ornamental rooftop finials. It boasted a small garden in front—a vanishing luxury in a town seemingly determined to place as many houses as possible on increasingly limited land—and was enclosed by a black iron fence. Perhaps the dwelling’s most prominent feature was its lack of bay windows, having been constructed prior to the advent of what was rapidly becoming a citywide rage.

Eddie leapt easily down from the driver’s seat and opened the carriage door with a flourish so overblown that I was—despite the seriousness of our visit—strongly tempted to laugh. It was touching how hard the boy worked to please us.

Robert and I passed through the gate and up the brick path to the front door. Our knock was answered by a tall white-haired man, who announced himself as Mrs. Reade’s butler.

“We would like to see your mistress if she is receiving callers,” I announced, handing the man my card. “I am Sarah Woolson and this is Robert Campbell.”

The butler barely glanced at my card before placing it upon a silver salver that lay on a table by the door.

“I am sorry, Miss Woolson, Mr. Campbell, but I’m afraid Mrs. Reade is not at home.” The man’s voice was so somber, I felt it would have better suited an undertaker than a domestic servant. “I will inform madam of your visit as soon as she returns.”

“When do you expect her?” I asked when he started to close the door.

The man seemed taken aback by my forwardness. “I really cannot say, miss. If you would care to call back tomorrow after lunch, I’m sure madam would be pleased to receive you.”

Robert made an impatient sound. “See here Mr., er—” “Fennel, sir,” the butler said, beginning to look annoyed at our rude insistence.

“Yes. Well, Fennel, it is imperative that we see your mistress today, not tomorrow, not the next day. She may be in grave danger.”

The butler’s eyes grew large. He looked from Robert to me, then back to Robert. “Did you say, sir, that she is in danger?”

“That is exactly what I said,” Robert replied. “Now, if you will be kind enough to tell us where your mistress has gone, we will depart and leave you in peace.”

Once again, the man looked from one of us to the other. “I—that is, I really don’t think I can reveal—”

“You can and you must,” Robert told the man firmly. “That is, if you care about your employer’s well-being. Come, man, there is no time to be lost!”

Fennel’s somber face displayed his growing alarm. “Daniel—that
is the footman—drove her to Washington Square about three-quarters of an hour ago. Madam enjoys visiting the park on fine days like—”

“Thank you, Fennel,” I said, following Robert down the brick path toward the waiting brougham. “Washington Square, Eddie,” I told the boy as he assisted me into the carriage. “And hurry.”

I should have known by now that instructing Eddie to hurry was tantamount to thumbing your nose at fate. Naturally, he took my instructions literally, and pulled back onto Pacific Street as if we were racing to a fire. I tried to call up to him that I had not intended for him to risk life and limb, but my words were lost in the din of traffic and the rumble of our own wheels. I could see that Robert was trying to tell me something as he clutched the seat with white knuckles, but all I could make out were the words “insane speed” and “kill us yet!”

We had gone on in this manner for a few hair-raising blocks, when I heard bells clanging loudly behind us. Looking out my window, I spied a police wagon pulling up on us hell-bent for leather, as Papa was fond of saying. Of necessity, Eddie was forced to lessen the brougham’s breakneck speed and pull over far enough to the side of the road so that the police wagon could pass. As it did, I was surprised to see that George Lewis was one of the uniformed men aboard the racing vehicle. Lowering my window, I waved my hand and called out to him, but he was far too engrossed in his mission either to see or hear me.

I was annoyed to realize that Eddie was following closely behind the police van—this was hardly the time for the boy to indulge his fascination with crime and police detection. Then as we pulled to a stop behind the vehicle, I realized its destination and ours were one and the same: Washington Square.

Apparently, I had spoken too soon about Eddie’s developing skills as a chauffeur. Abandoning the etiquette I had spent weeks attempting to instill in my young hackman, the boy leapt off the driver’s seat and, instead of opening the carriage door as he’d been
taught, took off pell-mell after Sergeant Lewis and his band of policemen. Hastily deciding that this was hardly the time to recall the youth to his duties, Robert and I hurriedly exited the brougham and followed in the lad’s wake.

Entering through a gate in the white picket fence that had been erected to prevent horseback riders from trampling the grass, we spied a group of people clustered around some park benches. As we made our way toward the center of the square (which, in reality, was a rectangle), the police were attempting to push back a curious group of onlookers—most notably a very excited Eddie, who kept slipping through their clutches like a slithery eel.

As the area was finally cleared, I spied Sergeant Lewis leaning over to examine what appeared to be a pile of rags heaped onto one of the wooden benches. Drawing closer, I realized that the object of George Lewis’s attention was not a pile of rags at all, but the body of an elderly woman slumped over in her seat. My heart sank when I caught a clear view of the woman’s face. It was Theodora Reade!