Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (49 page)

Hilda shook her head. “As usual. He repeated that he had promised his father he would take care of his mother and he couldn’t break a promise. I told him I was leaving, going back home. I even packed a small bag.”

“
Oh, my,” Annie murmured.

“
I left, but I didn’t go to my parents. I knew they would just say that I had to return; it was my marital duty. Instead, I walked around the city, and then I took the horse car out to the Cliff House and walked on the beach. It was a lovely June day, the sun didn’t set until nearly eight. When I came back to the city I had a late dinner at a small restaurant in North Beach. Then I came home. I had simply needed some time away.”

Annie nodded encouragingly.

“
When I got to the house it was around ten o’clock. I found Harold passed out in this parlor. He hadn’t had a drink in four years. I blame myself. He must have been devastated when I left. I ran up to check on his mother, to make sure he had put her to bed and given her the heart medicine she took every evening. There wasn’t anyone else to do it because it was the nurse’s night out, and our maid had been gone for much of the week because her mother was ill. And the cook doesn’t live in. Harold told me later she went home around seven, when he got back from the store and told her he wouldn’t be wanting any supper.” Hilda Hapgood stopped speaking.

Annie waited while the seconds slipped by, then she said quietly, “When you went up to check on your mother-in-law, she was dead, wasn’t she?”

*****

The girl stood, holding onto the back of the chair, as if this was the only thing keeping her upright. She picked up a doll from the chair and held it fiercely to her chest, whispering harshly. She then looked up, glared, and pointed a finger at the man who stood, looking back at her, his face filled with curiosity. She said, her voice shaking so badly with anger as to make her words nearly incomprehensible, “You won’t succeed. He tried to hurt our girl, but he failed. You’d better watch out, or your end will come very, very soon.”

“
J.D. Fay’s Death: A Belief by Some of His Friends That He Was Murdered.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle
, 1879

Annie knew she was pushing Hilda Hapgood to reveal a potentially damaging secret, but she also knew that this secret could reveal who was trying to torment Harold Hapgood to death and perhaps even who had tried to have her killed her last night. So she waited, praying the woman beside her on the couch would give up her secret.

After what seemed an eternity, Hilda let out the breath she had been holding and said, “Yes. When I got upstairs, my mother-in-law was still sitting in her chair. At first, I thought she was just asleep. But when I said her name and gave her shoulder a little shake, her head flopped to the side. It was horrible! I ran and got the looking glass from the dresser, put it up to her mouth, and there was nothing. She couldn’t have been dead long, her skin was still warm to the touch even though the fire had gone out.”

“
What did you do then?”

“
I know it’s terrible, but all I could think of was the possible scandal if the doctor felt her death was due to my husband’s neglect. So, I went downstairs and, after much effort, roused Harold. When I got through to him that his mother was dead, he sobered up enough so that he could help me undress her and move her to the bed. While I can imagine this sounds awful to someone else, the whole process didn’t differ much from what we went through each night. Afterwards, I straightened the room, picked up the pearls that had scattered, and . . . well, then we went to bed.”

Mrs. Hapgood stared into space for a few moments as if she was reliving the experience. She then resumed speaking. “Marta, our nurse, returned from her night out early the next morning and it was she who discovered her. We called in the doctor, and he said she had died of heart failure, which he had been expecting. He actually told Harold that our good care of her had probably given her an additional six months of life.”

Annie said, “How did your husband react? Did he accept that his mother’s death was inevitable, or did he feel responsible?”

“
At first we both felt such tremendous relief. We had been given our lives back, after eight long years, first taking care of his father, who had been bedridden by stroke, and then taking care of his mother. But then Harold got the invitation to go and attend his first séance. That was the beginning of all our troubles. When he came home that first night he said that the spirit of his father had visited him and blamed him for his mother’s death. He kept going back and, after a few weeks, he began to say to me that if he hadn’t gotten drunk and missed her medication, his mother would have lived. He even said the spirits also blamed me, for threatening to leave him, causing him to drink. I . . .”

Annie held up her hand, stopping Hilda. “Wait a moment. I can understand how the Framptons might have learned details about your mother-in-law, how she looked and acted, and the kinds of general complaints she made about the two of you. The servants, the nurse, or even friends of the family could be the source of that information. Even your husband’s drinking problems might have been generally known. But who would have known the details about that night, that you were out of the house and your husband was drunk?”

Hilda shook her head, twisting her handkerchief in her hands. “Oh, Mrs. Fuller, no one. I’ve not told a soul, until now. Only his mother would know, and she is dead. That’s what frightens me. Harold is convinced it’s the spirits of his parents and brothers who’ve been speaking to him. I kept telling him he was being foolish, but now, given your description of the last séance, I don’t know what to think.”

“
Could Harold have told someone else, confessed to someone about your fight, his getting drunk, your mother’s death?”

“
Maybe. He has admitted to me that when he drinks he blacks out and can’t remember much. But even he didn’t know about the necklace. You said the girl broke her necklace and the beads scattered? You see, my mother-in-law always wore these multiple strands of pearls, and they had broken and fallen all over the room. I didn’t notice them at first, and I must have picked them up on my shoes, because later I found a number of them all the way down the stairs, and near where Harold was sleeping on this sofa. While Harold was drinking the cup of coffee I had fixed him, trying to sober up, I picked up all the pearls I could find, down here and up in her room, and I never told him about her broken necklace.

“
I figured she must have had some sort of convulsion when she died, which caused the necklace to break, since her footstool and the table beside her chair were also knocked over as if she had thrashed about. I had to pick up all the little knickknacks that slid off. There was even a pillow from the bed on the floor.”

Hilda paused and then said, “That’s strange, I hadn’t thought of the pillow before. How did it get on the floor behind where she was sitting?”

Annie pictured the room as Hilda described it, and she began to feel the stirring of an idea. She said, “Hilda, if someone, like the nurse, had come into that room the next morning and found it the way it was before you straightened up, the furniture turned over, the pillow on the floor, the pearls broken, they might have concluded that there was something suspicious about your mother-in-law’s death, particularly if they found you missing and your husband blacked out on the sofa downstairs.”

“
What are you saying?” Hilda put her hands up to her mouth.

“
I am saying that it would have looked like the pillow was used to suffocate your mother-in-law, and, in the struggle, the furniture was kicked over, the necklace broken. The doctor might not have just assumed she had died of natural causes, and he would have examined her more closely. If so, you and your husband could have become suspects in her murder.”

“
No, no, you’re wrong. Harold would never have deliberately hurt his mother. How could you say that?” Hilda stood up and was looking down at Annie in horror.

Annie stood as well and put her hands on Hilda’s shoulder, saying, “Mrs. Hapgood, please, listen to me. I am not saying I think your husband killed his mother, on purpose or accidentally. What I am saying is that it is possible someone else did kill her and wanted your husband to be blamed. Someone who knew you were out of the house, that your husband had blacked out and would probably not remember what had happened, someone who would have benefited in some way from either your mother-in-law’s death or Harold being accused of it.”

And someone who would try to kill the nosy woman who was helping a lawyer investigate the Framptons if they thought she was getting too close to the truth
, Annie thought, remembering that the accident with the barrels came the day after she had visited Hilda at the store.

Annie drew Hilda back down on the sofa. Seeing the shock in the woman’s face, she poured her out a fresh cup of tea, putting in several lumps of sugar, and handed the cup to her.

“
Trust me,” Annie said firmly, “the spirits conjured up by Arabella Frampton are not real. In addition, if your husband didn’t know the detail of the pearls, and you haven’t told anyone but me, then the logical explanation is that someone else was in the house that night. That person must have been the one who told the Framptons and asked them to use the information to terrify your husband in the séances. If one of your servants, perhaps the cook, came upstairs, or your maid returned that day and saw what the room looked like before you cleaned it up, it is possible they might try to blackmail you and your husband. Has that happened? Is the maid who opened the door the same one who worked for you back then?”

“
Yes, Betsy has been with us for four years. She isn’t all that bright, but both she and the cook have been quite loyal to us these past months, despite our troubles. We pay them well, and their duties are so much more pleasant now that my mother-in-law is gone. But there hasn’t been a hint of them having a secret or trying to get anything from us. Marta, the nurse, is actually one of my cousins, and I absolutely can’t imagine her as a blackmailer. I also don’t see any of them as murderers either.”

“
I would agree,” Annie said. “Even if one of them acted out of anger, and your mother-in-law certainly sounds like someone who might drive someone to strike out, I can see no reason why they would be funneling the details to the Framptons. No, I think it is very possible someone deliberately killed your mother-in-law, in the hope that you and your husband would be blamed. But, when you came home, which was not expected, and moved the body and cleaned up the room, so that the doctor declared it a natural death, they were stymied.

“
Normally a murderer would be delighted to have gotten away scot-free. But in this case, he or she might have seen the murder as a means to an end. The end being your husband’s death. If they couldn’t get your husband executed for murder, they hoped to drive him to take his own life. It has to be someone who knows about your husband’s history with suicide. When your husband wasn’t accused of murder, the real murderer must have turned to the Framptons, fed them the details about that night to create such fear and guilt in your husband that he would take his own life, or, at the very least, drink himself to death.

“
Mrs. Fuller, this is fantastic. Who would do such an evil thing. My poor Harold never hurt a soul.”

Annie sat back, worried that Hilda was correct, and that she had let her imagination carry her away. “I know, the motive does seem to be the weak link. I suppose someone could have a secret hatred for your husband, but money is usually the motive, and I can’t see how anyone but you would benefit by the death of both your mother-in-law and your husband.”

“
Mrs. Fuller, I may have disliked my mother-in-law, but I never wanted her dead, and Harold, how could you . . .”

“
No, Mrs. Hapgood, you misunderstood me, I simply meant that I assume that you would be the one who would inherit if Harold died.”

“
Oh, no. The business and the house are all part of a trust, which Harold, in conjunction with the bank, administers. If Harold were to die, I wouldn’t get anything, beyond a few personal bequests.”

“
Really? How extraordinary. What happens when Harold dies, who gets everything?”

Hilda frowned. “I think if we had a child, the child would inherit. But I haven’t been able to conceive. Another reason my mother-in-law disliked me so.” Her voice trembled. “In my heart of hearts, I believed that once we were finally out from under his parents’ roof, we would be blessed by a child. Now, I just don’t know.”

“
But if there were no child, what then?” Annie asked, feeling a pang of sympathy for Hilda, whose marriage seemed to have held nothing but unhappiness.

“
I think that Harold said when his mother died that his father’s sister and her offspring were named as the next beneficiaries. Harold felt badly about the terms of the will, that despite all the time and effort I had spent caring for both of his parents, his father had still cut me out of any inheritance. I tried to explain to him that I didn’t care, that I hadn’t married him to become wealthy.”

“
Does Harold’s aunt live in San Francisco?”

“
No. I think she lives in Missouri. You can’t possibly think she is behind any of this. She must be in her eighties, and her son says she’s in ill health.” Hilda sounded shocked.

“
Her son?”