Such thoughts made him feel like a lovesick fool. Which he supposed he was, confound it. Love, by Godfrey, was not all joy and sweet yearning; it could be, and often was, a blasted nuisance. Yes, and bad for a man’s digestion as well as his peace of mind. He banished the thoughts by opening the windows behind Sabina’s desk and banishing her lingering scent. Then he sighed and sat down to attack the remaining paperwork.
4
Sabina
The task facing her was daunting. On the surface it seemed unlikely that either Fenton or Prudence Egan had sufficient cause to threaten and then attempt to take Amity Wellman’s life, yet Sabina knew from experience that some people possessed hidden demons that caused them to act irrationally and violently. One of the Egans could be so afflicted. So could Nathaniel Dobbs or a member of the Liquor Dealers League or any other virulent opponent of woman suffrage. So could another individual Amity had offended in some way connected or unconnected to her work, perhaps without even knowing it. And it did not have to be the person who hated her enough to want her dead who had fired the shot last night; it could have been the botched work of a hired assassin.
Despite the difficulty, there were steps Sabina could take to try to identify the culprit. And to see that Amity was protected from harm in the process. The first of these, early on Monday morning, was a visit to the Hyde Street home of Elizabeth Petrie.
The one condition Sabina had placed on her willingness to investigate was that her friend agree to the company of an unobtrusive bodyguard. Amity had reluctantly done so. If Sabina was fortunate, Elizabeth would become that bodyguard.
The former police matron, a graying widow in her middle forties with a deceptively placid exterior that concealed a sharp wit and a tough-minded, uncompromising nature, was home and pleased to see her. Elizabeth’s primary profession was quilting, which she had undertaken after her police inspector husband, Oliver, was implicated in a corruption scandal and sent to prison; not long after his release, he had resumed his heavy-drinking ways and died of acute alcoholism. The scandal had cost her her matron’s job, but police work was in her blood and she eagerly supplemented her income by working with the city’s various private investigative agencies whenever a woman operative was needed. She particularly admired Sabina, the only member of her sex to forge a successful career in a business dominated by men; they had become friends as well as occasional professional associates.
As always — except when she was otherwise engaged, which she wasn’t at present — Elizabeth readily agreed to undertake the new assignment. She was even more enthusiastic in this case because of the subject’s identity. “I know Mrs. Wellman by reputation,” she said. “An admirable lady, to be working as hard as she does for the rights of women. I’ll do everything in my power to keep her safe.”
Amity had insisted that no public mention be made of her being in the care of a bodyguard; she and Sabina agreed that the operative was to adopt the guise of an old friend and contributor of time and money to the suffrage movement, who had recently moved to San Francisco and been invited as a temporary houseguest. Elizabeth had no problem with this. She would contact Amity right away at the Parrot Street headquarters of Voting Rights for Women and arrange with her to move into the Wellmans’ home this evening.
After leaving Elizabeth, Sabina considered paying a call on her cousin, Callie French, at the Van Ness Avenue residence she shared with her husband, Hugh, president of the Miners Bank. Callie was an active member of the social elite and as such knew or knew of everyone else of prominence in the city. Often she was Sabina’s first choice when information about the activities and foibles of influential citizens was required, for she was an eager gatherer and dispenser of gossip. If there was anything about the Egans, or Nathaniel Dobbs and others of his Anti ilk, that could be helpful, she might well know of it.
But in a case as sensitive as this one, Sabina’s cousin was likely to be more of a liability than an asset. For one thing, although Callie always promised never to reveal a confidence, she wasn’t always as discreet as she should be; Sabina wouldn’t dare admit to her that Amity Wellman was her client or the reason why, for fear of news of her friend’s unfortunate affair with Fenton Egan leaking out. For another, Callie was greatly interested in, if not always approving of, Sabina’s profession and was bound to ask too many probing questions despite Sabina having made it clear to her that professional ethics forbade her from discussing her cases.
No, she wouldn’t risk questioning Callie. There were other sources of information available to her. Including another, more discreet, even more well-informed source of gossip about well-to-do San Franciscans.
It was nearly ten o’clock when Sabina arrived at Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. The door was locked, and when she entered with her key she found no indication that John had yet put in an appearance. This was typical of him; he seldom arrived mornings before she did. His excuses included business matters, transportation difficulties, and late-night activities that resulted in oversleeping, but she suspected that an indolent tendency and abhorrence for the mundane tasks of running a detective agency were equally responsible.
Whenever bills, accounts receivable, and the like piled up, as they always did at the end of the month, he made himself scarce for long periods. Usually, if she wasn’t busy, she dealt with the paperwork herself to make sure it was all done properly instead of in his sometime haphazard fashion. But today she was busy. And since John had told her on Friday that he had no pressing business, she made sure before she left that there would be no shirking of his share of this month’s paperwork once he finally showed up.
She spent the rest of the morning calling on the two most trustworthy informants she relied upon. The first was the Market Street newsstand operator known as Slewfoot. The fact that he was blind, or claimed to be, was more of a useful tool than a handicap; all sorts of people told him things or said things in front of him. Both he and the second information seller, Madame Louella, who ran a Gypsy fortune-telling dodge from a storefront on Kearny Street, had a coterie of contacts that extended into the bowels of the Barbary Coast, among other parts of the city. If a hired assassin had made the attempt on the life of “a prominent woman on Telegraph Hill” last evening, one or the other would eventually ferret out the fact and put a name to the gunman.
Since she still had little useful information about Nathaniel Dobbs and the Egans, Sabina made her next stop the Commercial Street building that housed the Morning Call. Once known as “the washerwoman’s paper,” for it had been aimed primarily at the working-class Irish, it had since evolved into one of the more responsible general-readership sheets. While not editorially in favor of woman suffrage, at least it refused to lower itself to the level of the muckraking attacks in such rags as Homer Keeps’ Evening Bulletin.
She spoke to two employees she knew, society page editor Millie Munson and old Ephraim Ballard who presided over the paper’s musty, dusty morgue. From Millie she learned that the Egans, while wealthy, were not members of the city’s social elite, neither having come from a moneyed background. Fenton Egan’s partner, William Bradford, was largely responsible for the success of their importing firm; he had put up much of the financing to start the business, and it was his knowledge of teas and spices and their suppliers in the Orient that had made it successful. Fenton’s contribution was public relations and shrewd salesmanship. If he had a penchant for extramarital affairs, Millie was unaware of it. Both he and his wife evidently kept their private lives private and had thus avoided any sort of public scandal. Ephraim, who knew a little about almost everything and everybody mentioned in the pages of the Morning Call, confirmed this.