Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (2 page)

Annie turned Mrs. Crenshaw’s hand back over to trace her Mercury line, which if she really did believe in palmistry would reveal information about Mrs. Crenshaw’s future health. Annie, however, didn’t believe in palmistry, and it didn’t take clairvoyance to tell her that the woman in front of her was unlikely to get well enough to spend Christmas in Iowa with her new grandson. But clairvoyance is what Madam Sibyl promised in her newspaper advertisement, and clairvoyance is what Mrs. Crenshaw expected for her $2 fee. This was a problem, since Annie Fuller, in addition to being a respectable widow and boarding house owner, was also Madam Sibyl.

After her husband John’s death, she had spent five wretched years being shunted between various branches of his family back east, finally coming west to settle in San Francisco, where she had inherited a house from her only remaining blood relative, her Aunt Agatha. Despite turning this grand old home into a boarding house, she found she still wasn’t financially independent, and Annie had turned to the only other way of making a living she knew, giving business advice. Although she had been trained by her father, one of the most successful stock brokers in New York or San Francisco history, Annie had discovered the only way a twenty-six year old female was going to get paid for her knowledge and expertise was if she pretended she got her information from reading her clients’ palms or casting their horoscopes.

Hence the invention of her alter ego, Madam Sibyl. She had added domestic advice to Madam Sibyl’s offerings, hoping she would also attract female clients. For the last year she had been gratifyingly successful in not only helping a number of local businessmen begin to recoup their losses from the panic and depression of the seventies, but also helping a number of women better manage their household finances, their domineering mothers-in-law, and their neglectful husbands. Mrs. Crenshaw, however, was different, and with each visit Annie felt increasingly uncomfortable with the charade she was playing.

The wig of intricate black curls she wore as part of her Madam Sibyl disguise felt unbearably tight and hot. Normally the small parlor in which she and Mrs. Crenshaw sat, with its velvet curtains and dim lighting, provided an inviting haven of coolness, but not today. As it was nearly noon, the fog had burned off, and, although it was the middle of October, the unusual heat of early fall persisted. The incipient headache that had hovered all morning finally attacked as Annie anxiously searched for an appropriate answer to Mrs. Crenshaw’s question.

She touched the barely visible horizontal lines along the outer edge of Mrs. Crenshaw’s palm that detailed a person’s travels and said, “Mrs. Crenshaw, I believe the difficulty I am having in reading the answer to your question is that it is really two questions. First, you want to know when you will regain your health. You also want to know when you will get to see your daughter and grandson.”

This is ridiculous
, Annie thought.
How can she come week after week, asking the same questions, getting the same vague answers from me? That damned doctor should have told her the truth; she isn’t getting better, she is getting worse
.

Mrs. Crenshaw’s hand trembled, and Annie could hear the soft liquidity of her shallow breaths as the older woman said, “Please, Madam Sibyl. I need to know. I’ve told you about how Mr. Crenshaw and I had become resigned to never having children when we were blessed with our lovely prairie rose, Sharon. Such a miracle and delight, though she worried us when she was young, seemed each winter she was so poorly. I hated it when Silas decided we needed to move out here, leave the farm to Sharon and her new husband, but he promised we could visit whenever I wanted. And now with the new baby … I just need to be there!”

Mrs. Crenshaw had first come to see Madam Sibyl last June, right after she got the letter from her daughter announcing she was nearly eight months pregnant. If Mrs. Crenshaw had had her way, she would have gotten right on a train to be with her daughter during the last month of her confinement. Yet her husband had told her that she shouldn’t risk infecting her daughter or the new baby with one of her persistent colds. Mrs. Crenshaw had sought out Madam Sibyl, hoping she could foretell if her daughter would have a successful delivery without her.

At the time Annie had wondered if her daughter’s delay in notifying her mother about the pregnancy and her husband’s reluctance to let her travel reflected their belief that Mrs. Crenshaw’s anxious personality would make her more of a burden than a help during this delicate time. Now she believed the real reason was the family’s concern about Mrs. Crenshaw’s health because Annie was convinced it was a dying woman who sat before her, a woman whose heart had probably been failing for a good many years.

“
Madam Sibyl, what do you see when you look at my palm? Why aren’t you telling me what you see? I deserve the truth,” Mrs. Crenshaw said, pulling her hand from Annie in order to scrabble for a handkerchief to press against the coming cough.

Annie watched helplessly as the older woman struggled to regain her breath. She thought about the distressing number of dying women she had attended in her peripatetic shuffling from one in-law to another after her husband John’s death: the ninety-year-old grandmother whose last days were a peaceful shutting down of each organ, the twenty-two-year-old new mother whose body burned itself out from a puerperal fever, the aunt of enormous appetites whose life had seeped away through her gangrenous extremities.

However, Mrs. Crenshaw’s blue-tinged lips, the swollen hands that contradicted her loss of weight, and the labored cough . . . these she had observed only once before, when she was twelve and her own mother lay dying. No one had been willing to tell her the truth fourteen years ago, and so Annie had agreed to leave her mother and travel up north to San Francisco to visit her Aunt Agatha. Her mother had died and been buried in the hot dry Los Angeles winds before she had been able to make it back home.

With searing clarity, Annie knew she couldn’t lie anymore to this woman. She rose and went over to the small sideboard, where she poured Mrs. Crenshaw a cup of tea, putting in the three lumps of sugar the older woman liked. After Mrs. Crenshaw had sipped her tea and gotten her breathing under control, Annie again leaned over and picked up the left hand, beginning to speak in the low, singsong tones Madam Sibyl often used when “giving a reading.”

“
Mrs. Crenshaw, the truth I see written in your hand is one I believe you already know. Your Mercury line confirms what your life line foretells: that your heart is wearing out, and death, as is true for us all, is your fate. As with any glimpse we are given into the future, the timing is not precise. Yet you have been given the gift of foreknowledge, and your character is such that I know that you will embrace this truth to shape your own destiny.”

Mrs. Crenshaw’s hand clenched hers, and Annie’s words faltered. She squeezed the hand she had been holding, placed it gently down on the table, and took up the right hand, finding the light horizontal lines that intersected with the vertical Mercury line.

“
I do not see any more travel in your future, but I do see visitors. I see your daughter sitting beside you in your parlor, which is all decorated for Christmas. I see you holding your adorable grandson, all wrapped up in that lovely blue blanket you have been knitting for him. Finally, I see your bravery in accepting your illness, thereby permitting your family to come together to celebrate every moment you have left in your life.”

Annie found both of her hands clasped spasmodically between Mrs. Crenshaw’s own as the woman’s soft sobs filled the room.

What have I done?
Annie shifted nervously in her seat.
Poor woman, I’m not a doctor and I am certainly not clairvoyant. I have to tell her I am a sham; I can’t possibly know what the future holds for her.

She forced herself to look up, but Mrs. Crenshaw’s face stunned her. The older woman was certainly crying, but there was a watery smile emerging as her sobs stilled, and the pinched frown that usually marred the genuine sweetness of her expression had disappeared.

Mrs. Crenshaw pulled her hands from Annie’s, blew her nose, and began to talk excitedly. “Madam Sibyl, thank you. Of course I know I am dying, that is why I so wanted to make this trip. It might be the last time I can see my daughter. But I was afraid to tell Silas this. I have found men don’t deal well with bad news; I am sure in your business you have found this so. I just don’t know why I never thought of asking my daughter to come here! But of course she will be able to come; it will be good for her and the child to be out of Iowa during the worst winter months. Her husband, Stephen, such a good man, will not begrudge me this visit. Perhaps he can get someone to take over the farm for a month so he can be here for Christmas, too. Oh, dear, there are so many plans to be made. Silas will grumble at the expense, but how can he say no to his dying wife? I must get home. I swear, this has given me a new lease on life!”

Later, after the boarding house’s cheerful young Irish maid, Kathleen, had ushered a still animated Mrs. Crenshaw out of the parlor, Annie stood at the small washstand in the back room and jerked the wig off of her head, hoping to release the pressure that had built to an intolerable level. She poured water into a plain white enamel basin and, dipping a washcloth into the water, began to pat at her face. She longed to plunge her whole face into the water, but she couldn’t afford to let the precious elderberry paste she had used to darken her eyelashes and eyebrows be washed away. She tugged down the bodice of her severely cut black silk and tried to ease the restrictive tightness of her corset. She had two hours to rest, but then she had three more clients to meet today.

Annie stared at her reflection in the mirror, poking ineffectually at the mess she had made of her braided hair by pulling off the wig so precipitously.
How pale I look
, she thought, as she tucked a reddish blond curl back into place.
You would think I was the one who was at death’s door. What if Silas Crenshaw comes here demanding to know how I could tell his wife she is dying? What do I say? I don’t even have the excuse that I believe in any of the rigmarole I spout. How much longer can I keep all this up? I’m just not sure what I am doing anymore, and I am so tired.

“
A. J. WELSH, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW, 434 California street--Divorces, insolvency, probate cases, etc.; prompt action and low charges, no charge for advice.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

The clatter of wooden planks as the train traversed the Mission Creek Bridge alerted Nate Dawson to the fact he was almost within the city limits and the train would reach the Townsend Street depot in just a few minutes. He put away the copy of the
Chronicle
he had been reading, in preparation for arrival. After hours of seeing nothing but sun-seared brown hills, he welcomed the glimpses of the narrow, rectangular houses silhouetted in the evening twilight. He was home.

Odd, he’d never thought of San Francisco as home before. Not in the four years he had boarded in town while attending Boys High, nor the last six years he had spent working in the city in his Uncle Frank’s law firm. Home had always been his family’s ranch, nestled among tall oak trees in the hills due west of Santa Clara. That’s where he’d been for over a month, helping with the fall round-up, something he’d done almost every year since his family had moved west when he was fourteen. Even the years when he’d been back east at college and law school, he’d still thought of the ranch as home and longed to be in the saddle gathering up the stock every September. But this year had been different.

This year he had become increasingly restless, anxious to come back, come home to San Francisco, and he knew the reason was Mrs. Annie Fuller. He wished he had the nerve to go straight to her home tonight, but his Uncle Frank was expecting him. Nate knew there would be, as usual, a hundred and one tasks that needed to be completed immediately, but tomorrow was Sunday, and maybe he would be able to break free and go see her. For a brief instant, he could see Annie’s laughing face, the light sprinkle of freckles across her nose, the soft curve of her mouth.

The squeal of brakes emerging through the hissing steam and the simultaneous slowing of the car wrenched Nate’s attention back to the train’s arrival at the depot. He stood up and pivoted into the aisle, keeping his right hand firmly on the seat back in front of him, waiting for the inevitable jerk forward and back as the train stopped. He then swung down his leather valise, feeling the contents slide to one end. He never brought much with him to the ranch, since he left his comfortable work clothes there, along with all his saddles and tack. Instead, he had brought the bound copy of the new state constitution, all twenty-two articles of it, as well as a number of law journals. He couldn’t say he had spent as much time reading as he had hoped. He always forgot how physically exhausting ranch work was, and this year the demands were even greater, because, hard as it was to admit, his father was slowing down. His younger brother, Billy, had been his father’s right hand since the age of twelve, and everyone knew that in time he would inherit the ranch. But this fall Nate could see that something had shifted. Billy, not his father, had been in charge.

Nate opened up the latch on the valise and stuffed the newspaper in, meanwhile thinking about why this had bothered him so. He had never envied Billy’s position on the ranch, never wanted to take his place. But taking orders from his father was one thing, taking orders from his younger brother was quite another. It had irritated the heck out of him. Yet his father had seemed fine with the shift.