Thursday February 13, 2025

Beatrice Bests the Burglars, Scene 3

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 1625:

For the month of February, I am offering, for free, the fifth short story in my Victorian San Francisco mystery series, Beatrice Bests the Burglars. Today is scene 3, but if you would like to read the short post I did on why I wrote this short story, click HERE, or if you would like to read the Historical Tidbit on San Francisco boardinghouses in this period, click HERE.

Brief check-in: The rain yesterday and over-night was a steady drizzle, with nearly an inch accumulation in the past 24 hours, with more substantial rain predicted for later today. Perfect weather for warm shawls and cozy reading, and today, as usual for a Thursday, a zoom meeting, a scheduled phone call.

Beatrice Bests the Burglars
by M. Louisa Locke
Copyright 2019

Scene 3:

Beatrice grunted as she shut the last kitchen window, feeling the twinge of sciatica that told her she’d been sitting too long on the hard wooden kitchen chair. Seemed contrary that sitting, rather than all the standing she usually did while cooking, woke up this familiar pain that snaked down the back of her right leg.

She hated closing the windows on a warm day like today. Even with the fire now out, the oven would be throwing out heat. Didn’t feel right, though, to go upstairs and leave any of the windows open with nobody in the kitchen. She could leave them open and sit in the rocking chair and close her eyes for a bit instead of going upstairs.

Knowing Annie, though, she’ll want to hear that I went to my room to rest, and a short lie-down does sound right nice. Anyways, I’ll be back in the kitchen in plenty of time to open up the windows before Mr. Nate drops off them off.

After removing her apron and hanging it up on the hook next to the kitchen door, she started up the back stairs, being careful to hold onto the railing and lift up her skirts so she wouldn’t trip as she went from the sunny kitchen to the unlit gloom of the narrow stairwell. Sitting might cause her sciatica to complain, but her knees were the grumblers when she went up the uncarpeted back stairs. She certainly was thankful that Annie usually came down to the kitchen during the day when she wanted to give Beatrice instructions. Let young Kathleen and Tilly run up and down these stairs a dozen times a day––they were young.

As Beatrice made it to the first floor, she decided to make a circuit of the rooms while they were all empty. She might reign supreme in the basement kitchen, but Kathleen, with little Tilly’s help, maintained the rest of the house. They cleaned the fireplaces, dusted and polished the furniture and woodwork, and swept the carpets on a daily basis. Kathleen would also decide when it was time to clean the lamps, take the draperies and carpets outside for a good beating, and she would let the mistress know if any of the upholstery needed mending. Nevertheless, Beatrice did like to take an occasional visit to the “upper realms,” as Hannah, the Waterstones’ first San Francisco cook, used to say.

As she exited the stairs and went through the door that divided off the front hallway, she first looked briefly into the small back parlor where Timothy Waterstone used to sit in his easy chair, smoke his pipe, and read the papers. She would swear that sometimes she could smell the special tobacco he used. Daft thought! This room, like many of the rooms in the grand old house, had undergone several changes since then.

When Annie decided the boardinghouse didn’t make enough income, and that she’d have to find some other way of making money, this room became the place where she would apply the cosmetics and wig that transformed her from being Mrs. Annie Fuller, the respectable widow, to Madam Sibyl, the exotic clairvoyant who gave advice for the tidy sum of $2 a session.

Since Annie’s marriage to Mr. Nate last year, she no longer worked as Madam Sibyl. Instead, she now saw people she called “clients,” even though they were often the same men and women who had come to her for business advice as Madam Sibyl. She had fancy cards printed that listed her new married name as Annie Stewart Dawson, Accountant and Business Consultant. Annie said she’d been right glad to be shut of her former married name. Too many bad memories. She confided to Beatrice that she hoped by including Stewart, her maiden name, people might remember her father, who’d been some kind of a genius at making money back in the day.

Annie also changed the purpose of this little back parlor to go with her new job. Got rid of the washstand and mirror, installed more bookshelves, brought in upholstered easy chairs, and started calling the room the library. Agatha Waterstone would’ve been pleased…never did like to see the room fill up with her husband’s smoke. Said it leaked down the back stairs into the kitchen. Mr. Nate had given up his cigars for Annie, Beatrice figured this was a fair trade for Annie giving up her fortune-teller outfit.

Beatrice crossed over to the dining room, the largest and grandest room in the house and not changed much from the time the house was brand new. The Waterstones had spent a fortune continuing the beautiful dark oak wainscoting and ceiling from the front hallway into this room. They’d also bought a table and chairs and an intricately carved sideboard in dark oak to match.

She thought back to how Agatha Waterstone would survey the room, making sure everything was perfect for one of her dinner parties—the table covered by a spotless white linen cloth, the special dark blue Wedgewood dishes and cut-glass crystal, all set out in rows. Then there’d be the lovely flower arrangements that sat between the tall candelabras, and the sideboard covered with wine decanters. Her mistress looked so elegant those nights, her wide satin skirts gathering up the light from the candles to fire up the glints of red in her dark brown hair.

Agatha and Annie’s mother were sisters, and while Annie had inherited her father’s fair hair and business sense, Beatrice knew that the bits of red in Annie’s hair and the chocolate brown of her eyes came directly from her mother’s side of the family. To Beatrice’s mind, baby Abigail looked to have gotten her mother’s coloring. She hoped the baby had inherited Annie’s sweet nature as well.

Picking up an errant crumb from the tablecloth and putting it in her skirt pocket, she thought about how nowadays, the dining room was always in use. At breakfast and lunch the sideboard was crowded with chafing dishes so the boarders could come in and eat according to their different schedules. Each evening, the table held all eleven boarders with occasional guests, their chatter and laughter filling the room and spilling out into the hall. So much more cheerful than in the years when Mr. Timothy’s declining health meant that the elderly couple had taken most of their meals upstairs in their sitting room.

Shaking her head at this sad thought, she went through the pocket doors that joined the dining room to the formal parlor, or drawing room, which is what Mrs. Waterstone had always called it. The dark oak wainscoting from the dining room continued in this room, although the ceiling was painted a light blue to match the new wallpaper Annie had hung in both rooms. There were easy chairs, a settee, a small writing desk, a table with four chairs that matched the dining room furniture, and an old upright piano.

Back in the Waterstones’ day, this parlor was only opened up on the one day a week when friends knew they could call and find her mistress home, or when the couple was having one of their dinner parties. Now any boarder who wished to use it, could do so, any time they wished. The Moffets, the elder dressmakers, often did their sewing here during the day, and in the hours after dinner, many of the boarders gathered to talk, play card games, and listen to Mrs. Hewitt play the piano. As a result, the doors between the two rooms usually remained closed—so the servants could set the table and then clear the dishes after each meal without bothering anyone.

Today, Kathleen must have left the pocket doors open to let the cool morning air that came in the parlor’s front windows freshen the dining room. Most summer days she would have closed those front windows by now, to keep out the noon-day heat. The poor girl had been in a hurry this morning, trying to get all the daily chores done before Mr. Nate came by with the carriage. He’d taken Kathleen with Mrs. Hewitt and the bulk of the food, and the plan was for them to swing by Mason Street where Kathleen’s brother Ian and Mrs. Hewitt’s son Jamie and his dog Dandy would be waiting after a morning spent selling the special edition of the Chronicle. Mr. Nate had then returned to the boardinghouse and picked up the Misses Moffet and their niece Emmaline, the clerks, Mr. Chapman and Mr. Harvey, and the rest of the food. Only then did he return for Annie, Abigail and Tilly.

Beatrice closed the pocket doors to the dining room and went over to shut and lock the two parlor windows. She’d ask Tilly to open them back up once a cooler breeze started up this evening. Now, all she had to do was go across the hallway and check to see that Kathleen hadn’t left the windows open in the small front parlor as well.

When the home was first built, over thirty years ago, this smaller front parlor was where the men congregated after the meal when the Waterstones had a party, to smoke, drink, and discuss business, while their wives withdrew to the formal parlor. Years later, after Beatrice returned as cook, this small parlor was used less and less, as the Waterstones restricted their entertaining to only their closest friends, Esther and Henry Stein, feeling no need to follow the dictates of fashionable society.

Then Annie had arrived and chosen this room that had remained pretty empty for years for her work as Madam Sibyl. In those days the most important piece of furniture was the large round table where people paid good money to sit across from her in her full clairvoyant get-up. She pretended to read their palms and talk about their star signs.

Annie tried to explain to Beatrice how such smart, wealthy people would fall for the Madam Sibyl foolishness, but Beatrice thought that this never did make much sense. She was glad that her mistress no longer had to put on the wig and make-up to get people to pay her. Yet she thought Annie sometimes missed those days. Might be why she continued to get involved in what her mistress called her investigations.

Now the room was called the office or study, and it was where Annie met clients during the day and her husband did his lawyer work when he was home in the evenings. Mr. Nate’s sister, Miss Laura, and her friends often gathered here to prepare for their university classes on the weekends. Gone was the table with its green velvet tablecloth; instead, there were two desks, a settee under the front window, and two upholstered chairs next to the fireplace.

As she walked over to shut the windows, several loud popping noises startled her.

Firecrackers for sure. Sounds like it was just down on Market!

She sure hoped Officer Stanley, who patrolled this neighborhood, was keeping a sharp eye out. Glancing out the window, she noted how empty the normally busy street appeared in the hot, mid-day sun. She guessed everyone was taking advantage of the nice weather to leave their stuffy houses.

Now Beatrice, you could have gone with Annie and them all. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get upstairs for that little rest you’ve promised yourself.

To be continued…

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