Deadly Proof: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (17 page)

Annie sighed and said, “How sad.” She leaned over and took his hand in hers. “At least we don’t need to wonder if one of us really loves the other, do we?”

Nate smiled and squeezed her hand tightly, and the stream of joy that lately ran just below the surface bubbled up. Sometimes she wondered what would happen when they were finally married and truly together as husband and wife. Would that stream subside...or threaten to sweep them away?

The waiter approached their table with a laden tray, and she reluctantly let go of Nate’s hand.

Once the waiter left, Nate changed the subject, saying, “What about your meeting with Miss Bailor? Did she saying anything specific about Rashers and Mrs. Sullivan?”

“No, besides saying the same thing she said to Laura, that it was impossible that Florence was the murderer. She seemed to think that we would do better to look for the killer among his business associates or the typographical union. Said that there were competitors out there who would be happy to see Rashers dead because he had ruined them with his sharp practices.”

Nate paused with his fork in midair and said, “Really, did she give you any examples?”

“I have some names. If you stop by the boarding house after dinner, I will give them to you. But let’s get back to the question of whether or not Florence was in love with Rashers. When I talked to the owner of the WCPU, Mrs. Richmond, she gave me the impression that he pretty much flirted with anything in skirts—so it is quite possible Florence was one of his conquests. Mrs. Richmond was quite firm, however, that she didn’t think he would actually have an affair.”

“Not according to Seth Timmons.”

“Really, you spoke with Seth? Did he ask about Laura?”

“I met him during his dinner hour, and what he had to say about Rashers was really enlightening. And yes, he asked after Laura. He was surprised to learn she was working as a typesetter, but not surprised she’d looked for work outside of teaching.”

“Did you tell her where she is working?”

“Yes, and I immediately kicked myself for giving him that detail...not knowing how they left things. Do you think she’s going to be angry?”

“I doubt it. I mean, it isn’t as if Seth doesn’t know where she lives...if he wanted to get hold of her. Something she said to me made it sound like he was the one who decided not to pursue the friendship. I wonder why?”

“Could be as simple as he didn’t have time. Man was working two jobs most of the spring,” Nate said.

Things are never that simple
, thought Annie.
Poor Laura
.

Last year had been a difficult one for Nate’s sister. First, she weathered a challenging fall term teaching in a rural school, harassed by one of her older students. Then she suffered the loss of her best friend just as she was adjusting to teaching in the San Francisco public schools and trying to figure out who had assaulted her in the alley behind Annie’s boarding house. Throughout all these events, Seth Timmons had been there, an enigmatic presence that Laura never quite understood or ever quite trusted, until he’d proven her savior. 

Annie looked over at Nate, carefully cutting up the steak that he’d ordered garnished with mushrooms. She made a mental note to tell Beatrice about this preference. For some reason she’d never taken a liking to these fungi, so her cook left them off when serving Annie. There was still so much to learn about her husband-to-be.

“Aren’t you interested in what Seth had to say?” Nate put the fork down and smiled at her.

“Of course. I was just thinking about how much fun Beatrice is going to have cooking for you. You know she is already trying to figure out how many eggs it will take to make the wedding cake. We really do need to decide who we are going to invite to the wedding festivities.”

“When we get back to the boarding house, we can be very organized and make lists. But in the meantime, I told Mrs. Sullivan I would come see her this weekend, and I would like to be able to tell her that I have made some progress in building her defense.”

“Which means that you need to undercut Mrs. Rashers’ testimony, at the very least. What did Seth say about her accusations?”

“Like Iris Bailor, he insists it isn’t in her nature to kill anyone. He also pointed out that Rashers was a big man and physically fit. Said he didn’t think that any woman, much less a slight woman like Mrs. Sullivan, would be able to kill him. But one of Cranston’s cases that I worked on was defending a woman who assaulted her husband, with good cause I might add. She was less than 5’ tall, and he was a giant of a man. But a kitchen knife in the right hands can be pretty damaging—if the victim lets you get close enough. One of the reasons I need to see the doctor who did the autopsy is to see if a woman, wielding a sharp instrument like the bodkin, could have done it.”

“But what about the idea that Florence and Rashers might have had an affair?”

“He thought it unlikely. In his opinion, she didn’t much like Rashers and kept their relationship very businesslike. But that doesn’t preclude something having happened in the past. However, he named three different women, two who work in the same building, that he believes Rashers was involved with in some sort of on-going dalliance.”

“Oh Nate, if you could prove that––it would go a long way to weaken Catherine Rashers’ testimony against Florence.”

“That’s my hope. I don’t think Chief Jackson likes the fact that he hasn’t been able to get a confession out of Mrs. Sullivan. He will be even more uneasy if I come up with some alternative suspects since right now all the evidence they have is circumstantial. I am hoping he will look into the question of whether or not any of the businessmen that Rashers ruined could have killed him out of revenge.”

“Did you discover anything else in your visit to Rashers?”

“I learned that Franklin Griggs, Rashers’ foreman, knew about the trip that he was planning on taking with his wife but that he’d heard nothing about his boss intending on firing Mrs. Sullivan. Both he and Seth thought that the idea was preposterous. Said that Rashers needed her too much––particularly if he was going to be away for any length of time. Evidently she is not only a superior compositor, who can lend her hand to any part of the printing business, but she seems to have handled the basic accounting and helped put out with the weekly pay packets.”

Annie put down the glass of water she’d just raised and said, “Well, that explains why Mrs. Richmond, who considers herself a friend of Catherine Rashers, asked if she might give my name to her as an accountant. I thought it was very odd that the company didn’t already have someone they worked with. As I wrote to you, I told her I would have to think about it since I was afraid you might feel this would be a conflict of interest.”

Nate said, “When I met with Mrs. Rashers, I kept thinking how much I wished you were with me. I just couldn’t get a lead on her. But if you were to meet with her––even if she didn’t end up hiring you––that would be a great help. I can’t see why it would be unethical, as long as you told her about your engagement to me. Anything you learned directly from her would be hearsay anyway—so I couldn’t actually use any testimony from you. But I sure could benefit from your impressions of her.”

“Then, I will tell Mrs. Richmond to forward my name and hope I do get that meeting.”

“Try to find out what she plans to do with the business. The foreman seemed to hope she intended on running it herself...with him as manager.”

“That’s interesting. Mrs. Richmond did say Mrs. Rashers has always had controlling interest in the firm...which is why she believes that Rashers wouldn’t have ever crossed his wife by having an affair.”

“But if Seth is correct, he frequently has dalliances with other women—which gives his widow a good motive for killing him herself.” Nate speared the last bite of his steak.

“And blaming the woman she saw as her chief rival for the murder,” said Annie, who then had a thought. “If she agrees to hire me, it could be her way of keeping tabs on you...using me to find out what sort of defense you are mounting. I hadn’t thought of that.”

Nate leaned over and took her hand, twisting the sapphire ring slightly on her finger. “I don’t have to tell you to be careful, do I? Now that I apparently have asked you to start meeting with someone capable of killing her husband.”

Annie smiled and said, “Of course not. I would hate for anything to happen before the wedding. Beatrice would be so upset if she didn’t get to make you that cake.”

Saturday, morning, July 10, 1880

––––––––

“
Medical Testimony Favorable for the Defendant: The testimony, with one exception, was entirely of a medical character.”
San Francisco Chronicle,
February 28, 1879

––––––––

“P
lease do be seated, Mr. Dawson,” said Dr. Charles Blach as he removed a white cotton coat, throwing it in a wicker basket. “I understood from your letter that you are representing the woman who has been arrested for the murder of Joshua Rashers.”

“Yes, Mrs. Florence Sullivan. I appreciate you seeing me this morning,” said Nate. “I am hoping that you will be able to clarify some of the details in the autopsy report.”

He sat down and watched as Blach carefully washed and dried his hands at an enamel washbasin on a metal washstand. He then put on a black frock coat that hung on the back of the office door before coming to sit on the other side of his desk from Nate. The faint scent of carbolic acid followed him.

Blach’s office was neat and tidy, reflecting the man himself. Tall, balding, with a squared-off face, serious gray eyes, and pale almost translucent skin, he was clean-shaven, except for the gray sideburns that came down to his jaw. His coat, subdued vest of silver and gray, and his black cravat all looked expensive and spotless, while his starched shirt was as white and crisp as newly fallen snow.

Next to him, Nate felt the slightest bit scruffy since the work of Mrs. McPherson’s maid often left much to be desired in the laundry department. When he first started courting Annie, he asked what he had done to cause her maid Kathleen to frown at him so. She’d laughed and said Kathleen was displeased by the slightly grey cast of his cuffs, not by him. He suspected that once married, he would find his whole wardrobe quickly refurbished and renewed to meet Miss Kathleen’s exacting standards.

“I am afraid my initial notes were probably not very illuminating,” Blach said with a slight smile. “As you can see, I usually see patients on Saturday mornings. I am afraid my initial examination last week was done fairly hastily because I had a patient with a nasty burn from a fireworks accident that I was scheduled to see at ten. Anyway, the main purpose of my initial examination of the body was to confirm that the cause of death was not due to natural causes or self-inflicted and that there was no need to call the coroners’ jury to confirm that ruling. Not that we could have rounded them all up on the July Fourth weekend, anyway.”

“So you did a further examination later?”

“Yes, I came back in the afternoon and did a full postmortem to get ready for my testimony before the Grand Jury.”

Nate had asked around about Blach after learning he’d been the physician who did Rashers’ autopsy and found out he was well respected as the city physician, a post he had held for the past eight years. He was very glad to hear there was more information forthcoming than the sketchy details Chief Jackson gave him.

“I am particularly interested in your opinion on the time of death,” Nate said. “And while the report I read mentioned several stab wounds, I wasn’t clear about what actually killed Rashers. For example, it said the mode of Rashers’ death was ‘syncope,’ and I don’t know what that means exactly. He fainted to death?”

“It means that he ultimately died because his heart was unable to pump enough blood to deliver the needed oxygen to his brain. The immediate cause of this was the extensive hemorrhaging from multiple stab wounds.”

Blach opened a folder on his desk and pulled out two pieces of paper that he handed to Nate. They were printed with front and rear outlines of the human form, filled in with what looked like veins, arteries, and organs—very similar to the illustrations from his college biology textbook.

“These are how we record wounds we find on bodies. On the first page I have inked in small x’s to mark a series of wounds, one on the neck that nicked the left external jugular vein, a second one on the back of the right hand, a third one under the right clavicle that pierced the subclavian artery, and a fourth that nicked the brachial artery on the right arm.”

Nate stared at the x’s and tried to figure out what had happened. He also noticed hatch marks inked into the forehead and said, pointing to them, “What does this mark indicate?”

“There was profound bruising on the forehead, along with some damage and bleeding from the nose. That, combined with signs that some of the man’s hair on the back of his head was torn out, suggests that the wounds to the head came from the assailant grabbing him by the hair and repeatedly banging his head to the floor.”

“And could the force of this have killed him?”

“Doubtful. It probably rendered him unconscious, which would have prevented him from doing anything to get help in staunching the flow of blood from his wounds.”

“Do you think that this attack could have been done by a woman? I mean, from what I understand, Rashers was a big man. How would a woman get him down on the ground that way?”

Blach pulled another sheet of paper from the folder and looked at it briefly, then he said, “This is partly speculation on my part—something I wouldn’t testify to in court––but I think the victim was caught completely unawares. Probably by someone he knew or didn’t think was threatening. The first wound, probably the one to the neck, would be a surprise. While unlike a wound to the carotid artery, which bleeds out in seconds, this first stab in his neck clipped a vein and wasn’t too serious. However, the victim probably clapped his right hand to the wound, which is when the second stab wound on that hand would have occurred. We call that a defensive wound.”