Deadly Proof: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (16 page)

Florence Sullivan gasped, and for a moment Nate was afraid she would faint dead away. He hated being so harsh, but Cranston’s words echoed in his mind. He leaned across the table and said softly, “But if you let me ask for a postponement, and when you are arraigned, you plead not guilty, you will have a chance at seeing her.”

Florence shook her head in apparent confusion, saying, “I don’t understand.”

“First, if you plead not guilty, there is always the chance that the judge will assign you a reasonable bail amount and you will be free until the trial. Even if that doesn’t happen, the prosecution could decide that they have a better chance of conviction if they lower the charge to manslaughter, which has a much shorter sentence. At that point, if you still want to plead guilty, you can do so. Finally, if you go to trial, there is always the possibility you will be found not guilty. In all of those eventualities, there is a good chance that you will get to see your mother again.”

“But why the postponement?”

Nate felt encouraged that she was paying enough attention to ask that question. “Because it will give me time, even if just a few days, to develop my arguments for why you should be granted bail as well as begin to prepare for the trial or, if you insist on pleading guilty, to prepare the arguments to convince the district attorney to lower the charge to manslaughter and ask for a lighter sentence.”

Nate waited as the seconds slipped by and Florence stared downward at her clenched hands. A flurry of movement outside the cell caught his attention, and the guard nodded to him. It was time.

She shook her head, and his heart sank. Then she whispered, “I don’t know if I can do this. But Mr. Dawson, I will try. If I am asked to plead today, I will plead not guilty.”

*****

J
udge Ferral only asked Nate one question. He looked up from the petition in front of him and said, “What difference will it make if I postpone the arraignment until next week?”

Nate told him that it would give him time to finish his preliminary interview of witnesses and consult with the doctor who did the autopsy so that he could give his client the best advice possible. The judge then announced that the arraignment was postponed until Wednesday morning, July 14, at eleven. And that was that.

As the court bailiff started to lead Florence toward the back exit, Nate told her that he would visit this coming weekend and that he hoped she would agree to see him. She looked over at him and nodded. He sighed as she disappeared through the exit, her back stiff, but her head bowed. At least he’d bought a little time.

As he turned to leave, he noticed a clean-shaven young man of moderate height standing at the back of the courtroom. Alan Sullivan? Who else would have attended the arraignment? His wide-spread brown eyes stared at Nate without flinching, and the well-formed mouth over a very determined chin was not smiling. Nate walked up to the young man, noticing the wide shoulders under the brown wool suit jacket and the spot of bleached out ink on his shirt cuff, and said, “Are you looking for me, by any chance?”

“Yes. I am Alan Sullivan...you asked to see me.”

Nate directed him out of the courtroom, which was beginning to fill up with people connected with the next case. The sun had burned off the morning fog, and he suggested that they walk over and sit on one of the benches on Portsmouth Square across from the Old City Hall to talk. As they walked, he asked after Mrs. Tonner, Florence’s mother, and Sullivan told him that the woman he had hired to stay with her came in early so he could attend the arraignment. The rest of the way they walked in silence, Nate trying to figure out how to ask a man if he thought his wife might have been in love with her employer. That was going to be more difficult even than asking if he thought his wife might have then killed that employer.

As usual, he found himself wondering what Annie would suggest he do. That led to thinking about tomorrow night, when they were to have dinner together. Maybe then he’d get a fix on just what she had in mind for the wedding. When they set the date, he’d been thinking a simple ceremony, a wedding breakfast with his family and the boarders, then the boat trip down to Los Angeles, and a month seemed a reasonable length of time to prepare. If she wanted something more elaborate...and with the time this case was taking...he wasn’t so sure.

When they found a bench, they sat, Sullivan holding his slouch hat in his hands.

Nate said, “I know this is difficult for you, but I could really use your help. For whatever reason, your wife has not been willing to talk to me about what happened Friday night. In fact, she’s refused to talk to me about much of anything...so I hoped you could tell me a little bit about her...give me some idea of how I might get her to trust me enough to listen to my advice.”

Sullivan looked sharply over at him and said, “You’re saying she hasn’t admitted to killing Rashers? The police made it sound like...then why has she refused to see me?”

“She hasn’t admitted to anything...to me or the police. I don’t know why she isn’t proclaiming her innocence, but I don’t think she did it.” Nate saw Sullivan’s shoulders lift, as if his words had removed a weight from them. He just hoped his confidence in her innocence turned out to be well founded.

“Can I call you Alan? Good. Then why don’t you start with some basic details? Tell me about how you met your wife.”

“It was the summer of 1870, during the short typographical union strike, you’ve heard of that?”

When Nate nodded, Sullivan continued. “I was only thirteen. I had just started working a few weeks earlier as an apprentice on the presses for the
Morning Call
. The strike lasted less than two weeks, but the
Call
temporarily hired a few women to replace the typesetters who went on strike. Florence was one of them. She was two years older and very kind to me. I was away from home for the first time...my family lives up near Sacramento. She invited me to come to Sunday services with her at Calvary Presbyterian.”

“You stayed working at the
Call
?”

“Yes, but Florence didn’t stay longer than the strike. I later learned that Iris Bailor used Florence to test if the paper would hire a woman. I think Iris was considering whether to try to get a job with the newspaper back then.”

“Is Bailor the woman who is now forewoman at the Women’s Co-operative Printers Union?”

“Yes. Florence and Miss Bailor stayed friends.”

Nate noted the lack of enthusiasm in Sullivan’s voice and wondered if there was some problem between Iris Bailor and Alan Sullivan. But he didn’t want to get side-tracked. So he asked, “Did your wife go back to the WCPU when she left the
Call
?”

“I don’t think so. I think she moved with a Mrs. Pitts Stevens to work on her own newspaper about that time. I really didn’t know Florence well then. I joined Calvary, so I saw her at services...but to her I was just a country boy she’d met once.”

Nate thought of his first grand passion. Esmeralda. He’d attended the very same Calvary Presbyterian church when he was living with his uncle in the mid sixties––only the church had then been on Bush Street, just a block away from his uncle’s law offices on Sansome. Esmeralda’s family sat two pews ahead of theirs but closer to the aisle. He’d spent a good number of Sundays studying her profile and thinking up some way of meeting her outside of church.

“Florence has always been more mature than most women her age,” Sullivan continued. “She’s been supporting her mother since her father died when she was fourteen. She takes her responsibilities very seriously.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Three years. We married in June of 1877.”

“And she has been working for Rashers for how long?”

“Five years.” Sullivan shifted on the bench.

“Did you know her well when she started working there? I wondered what her reasons were for joining that firm,” Nate said.

“I told her about the job. We were both attending Calvary’s adult Sunday School class by that time, and she’d confided in me that the publishing company she’d left the WCPU to work for was being bought out. I’d heard from someone that Rashers was looking for a skilled compositor, so I told her about the job. Worst mistake in my life.”

“Why? From what I heard, your wife made very good money at Rashers.”

“Yes, she made good money. But at what cost?”

Nate waited, hoping Sullivan would expand without more prompting. Another tactic that Cranston had drilled into him. As did most of Cranston’s tactics, it worked.

Sullivan sighed. “At first, I congratulated myself for having done her such a good turn. She came to me one Sunday after she’d worked there for a few weeks and gave me a big hug. Told me how much she loved her new job. The work was challenging but rewarding, Rashers was a wonderful employer who appreciated her skills, the pay was going to let her move into better accommodations for her mother. She just...I don’t know...it was as if she were suddenly brighter...like someone had turned up the wick in a lamp.”

“You said ‘at first.’ Then what happened?”

“About a month later, she stopped attending Sunday school. When I asked her about it after services one Sunday, she said the new job required her to work longer hours and she needed to spend more time with her mother on her day off. I asked if I could walk her home from work, but again she said she was too busy...her hours were too erratic. But she seemed different. Like whatever the source of the light—it was burning her out. I thought at the time she was just working too much.”

Nate again let silence do its job, and Sullivan went on in a rush. “Finally, one evening, I waited for her outside Rashers. I told her I loved her and that if we married she wouldn’t have to work as many hours, maybe she could even quit working and take care of her mother full time.”

Nate shook his head in sympathy and said, “If your wife is anything like my fiancé, I can bet that didn’t go over well.”

Sullivan looked surprised, then sighed again. “No it didn’t. She got very upset. Said she was sorry, but she just didn’t ‘think of me that way.’ She started to cry...made me feel like a complete idiot. Particularly when she stopped going to Sunday services. I felt like I had driven her away from church.”

“Obviously something changed or you wouldn’t be married.”

“Not for a year. I asked for the night shift at the
Call.
It was better money, and it kept me from the temptation of trying to see her. That was a bad year. Hard to get used to night work. Most of the fellows I’d gotten to know worked days...so it was pretty lonely.”

“And then?”

“Then she showed up at church again. Looked terrible. Thin, well thinner. And that light had gone out.” Sullivan looked over at Nate and said, “I think Rashers did something to her. But she would never tell me what happened. And I never saw that light in her again.”

Friday, evening, July 9, 1880

––––––––

“Compositors arrange their type in this backward fashion, the type being reversed by the process of printing.” J. Tyndall,
Notes on Light,
1869  

––––––––

“H
e said Rashers’
did something
to her? Like what?” Annie again sat across from Nate at Montaigne’s Steak House, and as usual, Miss Pinehurst had reserved them a table tucked away in a secluded corner. 

He replied, “I couldn’t get him to tell me what he thought happened.”

“Let me see if I understand. Florence starts working as a typesetter for Rashers in 1875, and according to Alan Sullivan, she loves the job. More than that, this serious young woman positively glowed with happiness. She also stops going to church. As if she felt guilty about something. A year later, she shows back up at church, but no longer happy, quite the opposite.”

“Yes, that is about it,” he said.

“Sure sounds to me like she fell in love with Rashers and then something happened. I suppose he might have rejected her. Although her absence from church sounds more like they were in a full-blown affair. If Mrs. Pitts Stevens suspects that—it certainly would make sense that after the Laura Fair trial she wouldn’t want to be directly involved again in a case of a woman killing her married lover.”

She thought for a moment, then said, “Yet it appears that whatever occurred, it happened within the first year of her employment. And yet she stayed working for him and kills him...four years later? That part doesn’t make sense.”

Annie didn’t have any personal experience with unrequited love, but as Madam Sibyl, she’d counseled one woman with a hopeless passion for her very married pastor. This young woman spent much more time thinking about taking her own life than killing the object of her affection.

“Well, something happened four years ago,” Nate said, “And her husband said it killed her spirit. Killed his spirit too, if I am any judge. There was no emotion in his voice when he told me about how he finally got her to marry him. Like he was talking about someone else.”

“How did he get her to change her mind?”

“Mostly he talked about how patient he was, willing only to see her on Sundays, walk her home from church. One day, she asked him if he could come in to fix a window that wasn’t shutting properly and was leaving her mother in a draft. Her mother invited him to stay for Sunday dinner, which became a habit. Then Mrs. Sullivan’s mother got quite ill, and he offered to stop by midday to check on her. Well...at some point he renewed his offer of marriage and she accepted.”

“That’s right. Iris Bailor told me he just wore her down. She didn’t think much of him...called him a weakling.”

Nate laughed and said, “Well I got the distinct impression that he didn’t think much of Miss Bailor.” More somberly, he added, “I don’t think there is any question that he loves his wife. What I don’t know is if she loves him.”

Annie thought about the months after she had rejected Nate’s first marriage proposal, how he struggled to maintain and strengthen their friendship without pressuring her. How awful it would have been if he had made her feel guilty for not saying yes. Or if she’d only agreed to marry him because she thought she owed him something.