Thursday, April 17, 2025

Mrs. O'Malley's Midnight Mystery, Chapter Four

Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. Occasionally, I will also publish some of my shorter fiction in this newsletter to read for free.

Daily Diary, Day 1688:

Brief check-in: Good day yesterday of walks, 1000 words written. Today, regular noon zoom meeting, but hope to get in both walks and more writing!

Throughout the month of April, I am offering, for free, the seventh short story in my Victorian San Francisco mystery series, Mrs. O’Malley’s Midnight Mystery. These posts will come out every Tuesday and Thursday. This story, right on the border between being a short story and a novella, actually has chapters, so below is the fourth chapter. (And if you are impatient, you can just go and buy either the ebook or audiobook for only $1.99.)

Mrs. O’Malley’s Midnight Mystery
by M. Louisa Locke
Copyright, 2020

Chapter Four:

Sunday, early morning, October 9, 1881
St. Mary’s Hospital, Rincon Hill

As Mrs. O’Malley walked out of the front doors of St. Mary’s Hospital, just past five, it was to see the city below blanketed by a thick fog. The grounds of the hospital itself, on Rincon Hill, were clear, but the only features in the rest of the city that she could see were the tips of some of the masts of the ships down at the docks and, as she moved towards First, the tops of Russian, Nob, and Telegraph hills to the north.

She shivered and pulled her shawl around her shoulders, wishing she’d worn her woolen cloak when she came to work last night. She also should have waited for the night porter Jerome this morning. He usually walked down the hill with her, but a new patient had just arrived at the hospital, and he had to help get her up into her room. She never felt easy walking home in a fog, not being able to judge whether the men she passed were simply honest folk trudging off to work or drunks stumbling on their way home.

Mrs. O’Malley hadn’t wanted to wait for Jerome because she wanted to go straight home before she went to early mass at St. Patrick’s on Mission, just in case Patrick McGee stopped by to tell her what he had discovered in his investigations early this morning. Now, seeing the thickness of the fog, she doubted that he had been successful—given that it was probably impossible for someone on the roof of the Union Hotel to be able to make out people walking on the streets below.

“Mrs. O’Malley?”

As if she had conjured him, Patrick McGee appeared out of the fog, looking quite official in his dark navy-blue uniform. He tipped his high-crowned derby and said, “I hoped I would catch you before you started home. I wanted to tell you what happened, but I didn’t think it a good idea to be seen going into your place, not after I had my little official run-in with your three men this morning.”

“Oh, Patrick, you found them?”

The young man nodded and offered his elbow for her to take, quite like she was some fine lady. He did have nice manners.

“Yes, I did, ma’am, although I’m afraid I haven’t learned anything of great importance yet.”

Mrs. O’Malley said, “Was the fog too thick? I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to see anyone, even if the men did show.”

“I did have to abandon my idea of using the Union Hotel rooftop as a look-out. But the fog actually worked in my favor. I was able to stand in a doorway of a shop on the corner of Mission and Beale, and the fog made it pretty much impossible for anyone on the street to see me. When I got there about three, the street was silent as a tomb. Hadn’t been there for more than forty-five minutes when I heard men’s voices, coming from up near Market. Sure enough, three men appeared under the lamp at the corner of Market and Beale. Looked to me like they’d just crossed Market.”

“What did you do?”

“I pulled back into the doorway and held my breath while they went right past me. I wanted to make sure I had the right men, although the quick glimpse I got of them did fit your descriptions, full bags and all. I followed them until they crossed Folsom. Then I came up and stopped them, asking to see what was in their bags.”

“Didn’t they object?”

“The one with the slouch hat started to protest, but the man in the derby shut him down right quick. Clear to me he was the leader of the three. He was polite…no, I would say he was amused, like this was a big joke. He even volunteered his name. Said he was James Smith, from Iowa. Plopped his bag down and opened it, told the other two to do the same.”

Mrs. O’Malley knew that she wasn’t going to like what she heard. If the bags had been filled with stolen material, Patrick wouldn’t be here but would have taken the men down to the local station for questioning. But she asked anyway, “What was in the bags?”

“Mr. Smith’s bags held a pickaxe, some chisels and hammers. And some bricks. The other two bags appeared to hold nothing but bricks.”

“Bricks!”

“Yep, bricks.” Patrick shrugged.

“Whatever was their explanation for being out at that time of night, carrying bricks?”

“Smith said that they’d offered to build their landlady, Mrs. Greeley, a wall for a raised vegetable bed. And they had a friend who told them about a stack of bricks that they could have for cheap, been sitting outside an abandoned building, up near Clay.”

“But that doesn’t explain why they were getting these bricks in the dead of night. Surely they must be stealing them.”

“Oh, this Mr. Smith had a ready answer for that as well. Said the owner of the site had told Mr. Smith’s friend to find people willing to haul the bricks away because they were going to start new construction in a few weeks. Mr. Smith said that they were getting the bricks at night because the friend who had made the arrangements was the night guard at the site.”

As they turned on Harrison, towards Beale, Mrs. O’Malley thought for a minute about what she’d heard. Sounded almost like it could be the truth. Could she have misread everything she had seen? Maybe the three men had been avoiding Furstenberg last Sunday simply because they didn’t want some officious local copper stopping and questioning them. And, as for what she saw as suspicious behavior in the two men emptying the bags before they went into the house…well, they were just dropping off the bricks.

She said, tentatively, “I expect you’re right disgusted with me…making a mountain out of a molehill, Patrick. I hope this doesn’t get you in trouble with your sergeant. I know Biddy will have a good laugh when I tell her.”

“Oh, Mrs. O’Malley, I’ve by no means given up looking into these men and their story. I mean, Mr. Smith, really! The man didn’t even try to come up with a decent alias. And didn’t you say that Mrs. Greeley said the men were out-of-town toffs looking into buying property? Hard to see them doing manual labor.”

Mrs. O’Malley suddenly felt much better, and she said, “Now that you put it that way, it’s equally hard for me to see Mrs. Greeley wanting a vegetable garden. The woman doesn’t take in boarders, so why would she want a garden? And no one in their right mind would start a garden in October.”

Patrick said, “I agree. What worries me is, if they are up to no good, even if it is stealing bricks––for goodness knows what reason––they now know the police are on to them. That’s one of the reasons I don’t want to be seen with you.”

“You think they’re dangerous?”

“I don’t know. But I can tell you, I didn’t much like this Mr. Smith. The other two men seemed like your average young hoodlums, mostly bluster, no action. But Smith was different. Now that I’ve met him, when I get a chance, I’m going to look through our books of photographs of men who’ve been arrested, been in prison, see if he’s got a record. But first I’m going to see if I can prove their story about where they got the bricks.”

“How?”

“I arranged to take the late shift today. Gives me a few hours of sleep before I go on duty. When l get off at eleven o’clock tonight, I’ll take up my hiding place from this morning, where Beale Street dead ends into Market. If they show up, I’ll follow them to see if they indeed go up to Clay. Then I can at least check out their story about the night guard and the owner giving them permission to pick up the bricks.”

“Thank you, Patrick. That’s really kind of you. Maybe they will turn out to be telling the truth, and then I can rest easy.”

“Let’s hope so,” he said, although Mrs. O’Malley thought he sounded a bit disappointed at this possibility.

To be continued…

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