The Body Snatchers Affair Read online

  “About the kidnapping, yes, but not that he’s gone to his reward. He lingered at death’s door for weeks before passing through and you gave him little enough comfort.”

  “How could I? You’re the only one he wanted at his bedside.”

  Sabina cleared her throat. “About the, ah, kidnapping,” she said to Mrs. Blanchford. “Have you any idea who is responsible?”

  “Ghouls, that’s who. Monsters preying on the bereaved and grief-stricken.”

  “Yes. But I meant anyone in particular, by name.”

  “No one we know could conceivably be involved,” Bertram said. “Blackguards from the Barbary Coast is my guess, drawn by the funeral notices in the newspapers. The kind that will stop at nothing, including violence against those who deny them.”

  His mother sniffed. “You keep saying that, Bertram. It sounds as though you’re well acquainted with the Devil’s Playground.”

  “Hardly. But you and I both know its evil reputation.”

  “The racetrack touts and bookmakers you consort with are no better.”

  “Now, Mother, you know that’s not true…”

  “Do I?” She thumped the edge of her hand on a stack of magazines on a table between their chairs. “What do you call this trash you insist on bringing into the house?”

  “The Breeder and Sportsman is a respectable publication, devoted to people of culture and refinement who admire the sport of kings—”

  “Balderdash. Sport of kings! Greedy humans exciting themselves by betting on sweaty animals chasing each other around an oval of dirt and mud.” Then, to Sabina, “My son thinks we ought to pay the ransom.”

  “Yes, I do,” Bertram said. “It’s the only way to ensure a safe return.”

  “Do you agree, Mrs. Carpenter?”

  “I’m afraid not. Paying a ransom demand is a poor risk in any case.”

  “That is my position as well, at least for the present. I’ll have no rest until my husband’s remains are back where they belong, and none, either, until the perpetrators of this outrage are exposed and punished. That is why you’re here. I have been told you and your partner are competent detectives. The most competent in the city, would you say?”

  John would, in a heartbeat. Sabina was, as always, more discreet. “We have had considerable success in our investigations. If you would like references, I can give you the names of several satisfied clients—”

  “No, no, that isn’t necessary. I’m already aware of your credentials, though I must say I don’t understand why an attractive young widow would wish to undertake such a profession.”

  “My late husband and I were both employed by the Pinkerton Detective Agency when we met. I was not their first women operative, nor the last. More women every year are entering into one facet of law enforcement or another, and proving just as capable as their male counterparts.”

  “Mmm, yes. Well, I’m not sure I approve, but I admit to being old-fashioned when it comes to our sex. What assurances can you give me that you’ll succeed in finding my husband and punishing his abductors?”

  “None except that we will make every possible effort to do so.”

  “A proper answer. Yes, you’ll do.”

  “Thank you.” Sabina shifted on the hard cushion of her chair, seeking—and not finding—some relief from the heat of the fire. “Do you have any idea when the theft took place?”

  “One of the last two nights,” Bertram said. “Father was laid to rest in the mausoleum on Monday.”

  “Have you informed the police?”

  “Certainly not,” Mrs. Blanchford said. “Ruben considered the police inept and corrupt, and I quite agree.” So did John, despite his recent dealings with them, and Sabina concurred, though to a lesser extent. “And their involvement would bring the worst sort of sensational publicity, the likes of which I wish to avoid at all cost.”

  “Quite understandable. When did you receive the ransom note?”

  “This morning. It was in a package Edmund found on the doorstep.”

  “Edmund?”

  “My houseman. That package, there on the table.”

  Sabina had noticed it before, lying atop the equestrian publications, and now she looked at it more closely. It consisted of a small cardboard box with a closed lid, resting in a nest of torn brown wrapping paper and string.

  “Go ahead, young woman. Open it.”

  The box contained a large sheet of folded paper, a raggedly cut triangle of white satin, and a large gold ring with a distinctive ruby setting. Sabina unfolded the paper. Crude, childlike writing covered it on a downward slant. The message was brief and to the point.

  We have your husbans body. Hidden where nobuddy can find it. $75,000 in large greenbaks or youll never see agin. Instrukshuns soon. No coppers or else!

  Disguised writing? Faked illiteracy? Possibly, but Sabina couldn’t be certain in either case.

  She asked Mrs. Blanchford, “The ring belonged to your late husband, I take it?”

  “Certainly. I gave it to him as an anniversary present many years ago. It was interred with him.”

  “And the piece of satin—cut from the lining of his casket?”

  “Yes.”

  Bertram added, “As soon as we opened the package and read the note, Mother and Edmund and I went straightaway to the mausoleum. We found the door locked and apparently undisturbed. If it hadn’t been for the ring and the piece of casket cloth, we would have considered the whole business a monstrous hoax.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Bertram and I went downtown to Whitburn Trust to get the mausoleum key,” Mrs. Blanchford said. “After the funeral I put it in my box in the bank for safekeeping.”

  “Is that the only key?”

  “Yes, the only one.”

  “And no one has access to the safe box but you and your son?”

  “No one but me. The box was my husband’s and mine. Its contents are of no concern to anyone else, even my son, as long as I am alive.”

  Bertram made a sound that might have been a stifled sigh. “You can imagine how we felt when we returned and entered the mausoleum and found the casket empty.”

  “And this piece of satin fit into the hole cut in the lining?”

  “An exact fit.”

  “Devil’s work,” Mrs. Blanchford said. “Almost as if entry had been gained and Ruben spirited away by supernatural means.”

  “Mother believes in spiritualism,” Bertram said to Sabina.

  “Spiritualism, yes. Demonic ghouls, no. I said ‘as if,’ didn’t I? No, by heaven, whoever committed this atrocity is human and damnably clever.”

  “And potentially dangerous to your safety and mine.”

  The long-suffering look Harriet Blanchford aimed in Sabina’s direction told her she wasn’t the only one who considered Bertram a weakling and likely a coward. The opposite of his strong, feisty mother—an admirable woman despite her old-fashioned attitudes.

  “I’ll have a look at the mausoleum now, Mrs. Blanchford, if your son will show me the way.”

  The old woman produced a large key from the pocket of her dress, placed it in Sabina’s, not her son’s, hand. Bertram’s lips tightened; he rose stiffly from his chair. He, too, was aware of what she thought of him.

  He left the parlor to fetch a lantern, and when he returned he led the way through French doors onto a terrace surrounded by an opulent garden dominated by rosebushes and yew trees. The cool air was a relief after the overheated parlor. Although she was practical to a fault while engaged in a business matter, Sabina couldn’t help but admire the sweeping views. The Marin headlands, the bay and the military garrison on Alcatraz Island, the forest of masts on the sailing ships crowding the piers and warehouses along the Embarcadero—all were visible in the bright afternoon sunlight.

  Nor could she help wondering, briefly, what it would be like to live in such lofty surroundings as these. One day, perhaps, if Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, conti
nued to flourish and she were ever to remarry, she would find out. That thought brought a familiar handsome face to mind, and she quickly shuttered it. Curiously, and a little discomfitingly, the image had been John’s, not Carson Montgomery’s.

  The mausoleum stood at the opposite end of the garden, at the bottom of a short incline—a square, squat, moss-coated stone structure with no external markings. Nearby stood a carriage barn, behind which a carriageway led to a cross street beyond. The Blanchfords’ nearest neighbor in that direction, Sabina noted, looked to be several hundred yards distant. Simple enough, then, for the body snatchers to have driven a wagon in and parked it directly behind the crypt. Done in the dead of night, they would have little fear of being seen.

  The door set into the mausoleum’s facing wall was made of filigreed bronze and appeared to be several inches thick. Sabina had learned about locks while a Pink Rose, from Stephen and later from experience; she bent immediately to examine the one here, peering at it through the small magnifying glass she carried in her bag. There were no indications that lock picks or any other tool had been used on it. The only marks were light nicks made by the key when it was inserted into the lock. Nor had the hinges been tampered with in any way.

  Could a skeleton key have been used? No, not on a lock of this age and type, unless the original locksmith was involved in the abduction. A possibility to be checked, but a highly unlikely one.

  “This door is the only way in or out?” she asked Bertram.

  “Yes. No windows, of course, or any apertures.”

  “I’ll have a look just the same.”

  “Are you sure you want to go inside, Mrs. Carpenter? There’s really nothing to see, and it’s rather dank and unclean.”

  “Yes, I’m sure. I’ve been in much less desirable places.”

  “But your clothing…”

  She pressed the key into his hand. “Open the door, please.”

  Bertram shrugged and fired the lantern’s wick before sliding the heavy key into the lock and turning the bolt. The door was as heavy as it looked; it took a bit of effort to swing it open. The hinges creaked, but not loudly enough for the sound to carry even at night. The walls were thick and well sealed, the atmosphere as dank and cobwebby as Bertram had indicated.

  He handed the lantern to her, saying, “I’ll wait here, if you don’t mind.”

  She stepped into the gloomy interior, holding the lantern aloft. By its flickering light she could see four stone biers arranged along the walls. Bronze coffins rested on two of them, both with their lids closed. One of them was small; she went to that one first. Engraved on a silver plate on its side was the name Jennifer Blanchford and the dates 1872–1886.

  “My younger sister Jenny,” Bertram said from the doorway. “She died of consumption.”

  “Her casket wasn’t disturbed?”

  “No. The lid is still tightly bolted, as you can see.”

  Sabina went to examine the second coffin. It was one of the largest and most elaborate she had ever seen, with knobs, hinges, and handles made of pure silver. The silver plate on its side bore Ruben Blanchford’s name and the dates of his birth and death. She grasped the handle, and found the lid heavier than expected when she tried to raise it.

  Bertram came to her assistance. The lid had been screwed down and the screws removed without damage, she noted. There was a hole in its satin lining where the triangular piece had been neatly cut out. The satin ruffles covering the sides were unmarked. She ran fingertips over the satin-pillowed bed, which was smooth and unwrinkled.

  While he lowered the lid again, she bent with the lantern to study the stone floor around the bier. Nothing there caught her eye—no marks, no objects of any kind. An examination of the walls confirmed that they were all solid, inches thick like the door, with not so much as a tiny chink in the mortar between the stones.

  Outside again, as Bertram swung the heavy door shut and relocked it, Sabina asked him, “Was the lid on your father’s casket open or closed when you and Edmund first entered the crypt?”

  “What possible difference can that make?”

  “Open or closed, sir?”

  “Closed.” Bertram frowned. “Have you an idea of how the deed was done?”

  “I’ve only just begun my investigation, Mr. Blanchford. Any ideas I might have at this point are premature.”

  She took the key from him, without any fuss on his part, as they started back to the house. Mrs. Blanchford had entrusted it to her and she would be the one to return it. Her credo had always been and always would be to never violate even the smallest trust.

  7

  QUINCANNON

  Upon leaving the agency Quincannon rode a streetcar up Market to Van Ness Avenue, from where he walked the short distance to Hayes Street and St. Ignatius College. The Jesuit school had grown considerably since being granted a state charter in 1859 and had moved to this location some fifteen years earlier. It had several hundred students and a faculty that included Father James O’Halloran, whom Quincannon had had the pleasure of meeting during an investigation two years before.

  Father O’Halloran, in addition to other talents, was a student of languages. Quincannon was unsure whether Chinese was among them, but if not, the priest would know someone who could translate the two-page document he’d found in the Mock Don Yuen file in Scarlett’s office.

  Such was the case. Father O’Halloran’s command of the Chinese language was limited, but he knew a scholar fluent in Cantonese and other dialects who should have no difficulty translating the calligraphy. Could this be done as quickly as possible? The priest thought it could. Quincannon left the document with him, with a request that it and the translation be sent to him at the agency by messenger. Although the priest asked for no recompense, Quincannon insisted he accept a five-dollar gold piece—if not for the translation and messenger service, then for the church. Thrifty he might be, but there was also a streak of generosity in his nature that overwhelmed him every now and then.

  * * *

  Next stop: Chinatown.

  The Quarter was twelve square blocks of wooden and brick buildings surrounding Portsmouth Square—home to some twenty-five thousand people packed into apartments and rooming houses, business establishments, temples, family associations, bagnios, opium dens, gambling halls. By day it was teeming and noisy, the incense-laden air filled with the clatter of carts and other conveyances on the narrow streets and alleys, the cries of street hawkers, the constant ebb and flow of Cantonese dialects.

  Quincannon was one of the few Caucasians in the jostling throng as he made his way along Dupont Avenue, Chinatown’s main thoroughfare, named after a naval admiral when California was admitted to the Union in 1846. The Chinese called it “Du Pon Gai.” His destination: the herbalist shop owned by Mock Don Yuen.

  He would not have been surprised to find the shop closed. Considering the bubbling stew created by the events of the past few days, the venerable new Hip Sing president might well have taken protective refuge in the company’s headquarters on Waverly Place. But the shop was open for business—an indication, perhaps, if the tong leader was presiding within, that tensions in the Quarter might not be running quite as high as everyone feared.

  Quincannon paused for a few moments before entering. The shop was one of several in a row along one side of a narrow cul-de-sac just off Dupont, most of which had Chinese calligraphy on opaque windows that hid both wares and purpose from Caucasian eyes. Mock Don Yuen’s, however, was an exception. English words as well as Chinese characters were written on its window—MOCK DON YUEN, HERBALIST—and the glass itself was transparent enough to reveal a dozen or so varieties of exotic herbs. Each of the plates had a piece of red paper affixed to it, identifying in both languages what it contained: Old Mountain ginseng, ambergris, fossilized lizard teeth, lapis, clove bark, powdered ivory, magpie dung.

  There were two doors set side by side in an alcove next to the window. One had a dusty glass pane and opened into the herb shop; the
other, hanging slightly crooked in its frame, was solid except for a peephole at eye level. That one, Quincannon thought, would lead upstairs to the room where Mock Don Yuen reputedly ran a gambling parlor in which fantan, mah-jongg, and other games of chance were played for high stakes and the house took a hefty percentage. At the second-story level were three windows with louvered green shutters. No doubt there would be heavy curtains on the inside as an added precaution, and mayhap a spotter stationed somewhere outside in the alley while the richer games were in progress to warn against a possible police raid.

  Quincannon opened the shop door and stepped inside to the accompaniment of a small tinkling bell. The interior was not much larger than the parlor of his Leavenworth Street flat, clean and tidy, dimly lighted by a trio of lanterns. On the left was a counter, and behind that, across the entire wall, were blue-lacquered cabinets with hundreds of little drawers. At the rear, heavy bead curtains covered the entrance to an inner room. The front part of the shop was unoccupied when he entered, but a couple of seconds after he shut the door, the bead curtains parted and an aged Chinese appeared, his hands crossed in the voluminous sleeves of a Mandarin robe.

  His years numbered at least seventy-five, possibly more, his skin as finely wrinkled as old parchment. His queue was long and pewter-colored, as were the sparse and wispy strands of hair that hung down from each side of his mouth and from his chin like moss on an ancient tree. Rimless, thick-lensed glasses made his rheumy eyes seem overlarge.

  He bowed and said in accented but cultured English, “Welcome, most honorable sir. How may I be of service?”

  “Are you Mock Don Yuen?”

  A nod and another bow.

  “John Quincannon. Of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.”

  Mock Don Yuen knew the name well enough, but chose not to acknowledge it. He cocked his head to one side, birdlike, and said in the same polite voice, “Have you an ailment, sir?”