Marcia Muller - The Body Snatchers Affair

But seeing informants would have to wait until later. The Scarlett case, now that the attorney had been slain and John nearly so, was of much greater importance. And there was the afternoon appointment with Harriet Blanchford to be considered as well. So when she left the agency, she proceeded directly to the Scarletts’ home at the edge of Cow Hollow.

The neighborhood was an unusual one, even for San Francisco. Irrigated by several freshwater creeks, it had been ideal grazing land where many dairies and vegetable farms had been established in earlier times. By the late eighties, tanneries, sausage factories, and slaughterhouses began moving into the area, and for a time there had been numerous episodes of hoodlumism. Now it was slowly becoming gentrified. A number of prominent individuals had moved there, into new two- and three-story apartment buildings that overshadowed their more plebeian neighbors.

The Scarletts’ address was one of those new buildings, in the lower section of the Hollow overlooking what once had been a lake, now filled in, called “Washerwoman’s Lagoon.” Sabina was about to ring the bell in the vestibule for the third-floor apartment when, keen-eyed as always, she noticed a small hole in the wall next to the front door. It was waist high, so that she had to stoop to examine it.

It was a bullet hole, with the lead pellet still embedded in the wood. And judging from the look of its splintered edges, it had been recently made.

She entered and quickly climbed the stairs to the Scarlett apartment on the third floor. Two twists on the doorbell key and two raps on the panel produced no response. The door was locked, as John had apparently left it last night. He’d been inside and found nothing, so there was no need for her to make use of her own limited lock-picking skills.

She descended to the second floor. No one answered her summons at that apartment, either. But when she rang the bell to the first-floor unit, the door opened on a chain, and a rather amazing eye, kohl-rimmed so that it resembled a raccoon’s, peered out at her.

“Yes? What is it?” The woman’s voice was a rusty contralto.

“I’m looking for one of your neighbors, Mrs. Andrea Scarlett.”

“You a friend of hers?”

Apparently the woman hadn’t yet heard the news of James Scarlett’s murder. Sabina had one of her cards ready; she held it up for the eye to scrutinize. It widened, narrowed, widened again. “Well, my goodness! A detective! A woman detective!”

To forestall anything further in that vein, Sabina asked, “Have you seen Mrs. Scarlett in the past twenty-four hours?”

“Last evening about eight-thirty. That why you’re here?”

“What happened at eight-thirty?”

There was a pause. Then the eye disappeared, the chain rattled, and the door popped open to reveal the rest of the woman’s middle-aged face. It was as amazing as the black-ringed eye. Pale blond hair pulled to the top of her head, from where it frizzled down like champagne from a fountain. Bright orange rouge on both cheeks and smeared over a thick-lipped mouth. Around her neck was a multicolored feather boa, and in one hand she held the gaudiest, ugliest hat Sabina had ever seen.

Her expression must have betrayed her surprise, for the woman said, “Don’t mind the way I look, honey. I’m a performer at the Hermann’s Gaiety. Me and some other girls do a comic singing act... matinees this week. I was just about to leave for the theatre.”

“I see.”

“Astrid Allegra’s my stage name. My husband’s a famous magician, the Great Santini, you probably heard of him.”

“No, I’m sorry, I haven’t. About last night, Mrs. Santini—”

“Jones. Agnes Jones. Santini, that’s Hiram’s stage name.”

“About last evening. What happened?”

The orange-rouged lips thinned. “Some damn hoodlum fired off a gun right out front, that’s what happened. Came within a whisper of hitting poor Mrs. Scarlett. Scared her half to death.”

Eight-thirty last evening. It had been nearly midnight when John came; he hadn’t mentioned the bullet hole, so he must have missed seeing it in the darkness.

Sabina asked, “Did you witness the shooting?”

“No. I heard the report and ran out just as she came in.”

“Did she see who fired the shot?”

“Didn’t say so if she did. Too shaken up to say much of anything, poor lamb.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, I tried to coax her to come in for some, ah, tea to settle herself down, but she refused. Didn’t go upstairs to her rooms, either. Just said, ‘I can’t stay here,’ and ran out the back way. Never came back, far as I know.”

“So you have no idea where she went?”

“Maybe to find her husband. If she didn’t find him, he must’ve been real surprised when he got home and she wasn’t there.”

“She may also have gone to be with a friend,” Sabina said. “Do you know any of her intimates?”

The woman considered, nibbling at her rouged upper lip. “Well, I don’t know her all that well. But we got to passing the time of day once, just after her and her husband moved in, and found out we have a bit in common. She was never a performer, but before she married Mr. Scarlett she worked as a seamstress sewing costumes at the Bella Union. It was a friend of hers, the wardrobe mistress, who got her the job there, she said.”

“Do you remember the friend’s name?”

“Just her given name — Delilah. Unusual, that’s why I remember it. Girlhood chums, as I recall.”

It seemed a tenuous lead, but any at this point was worth pursuing. Sabina thanked Astrid Allegra née Agnes Jones, wished her and the Great Santini well in their professional careers, and took her leave.

The Bella Union, on the north side of Washington Street off Portsmouth Square, was the city’s most popular purveyor of variety, minstrel, and burlesque shows. Originally, Sabina had been told, it had been a gambling saloon, then a melodeon, and now, in addition to its main attractions, it housed both a small waxworks and a penny arcade. Although it was located in the Barbary Coast, it catered to all strata of local society and featured all manner of high and low performances. The highest: Lotta Crabtree entertaining during the Gold Rush era with such skill and “incredible innocence,” as pundits of the day had termed it, that wealthy miners were said to have tossed gold nuggets at her feet. The lowest: a famously ludicrous attempt to portray the male lead in Romeo and Juliet by Oofty Goofty — a local character who had once billed himself as “The Wild Man of Borneo” by covering his body with a mixture of tar and horsehair and fiercely yelling “Oofty goofty!” while eating raw meat in a locked cage in a Market Street sideshow.

A hansom delivered Sabina to the Bella Union shortly before eleven-thirty. The two-story building had a brick façade strung with electric lights that glittered with a starlike effect after dark, an advertising decoration that had become fashionable at the better gaiety palaces. Its main entrance was closed at this hour. An alleyway along one side led to the stage door at the rear, which was presided over, just inside, by an elderly twig of a man wearing flowered galluses and a clashing green eyeshade. Despite his age, his memory for faces was obviously keen — clearly one of the reasons, if not the primary one, that he had been given his job.

“Help you, miss?” he asked in crisp tones.

Sabina favored him with her brightest smile. “I’d like to see Delilah if she’s here.”

“Delilah? You mean Miz Brown, the wardrobe mistress?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“She expecting you?”

“No, but it’s important that I speak with her.”