Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Mrs. O'Malley's Midnight Mystery, Chapter Three, scene 2

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 1686:

Brief check-in: Big excitement yesterday morning was a 5.2 earthquake in the about 20 miles east of us. Definitely felt it as one quick large shake, followed by squeal of phone alert. Over quickly. I’ve been through some of the ones that seem to go rolling on and on so this wasn’t real scary, especially since it didn’t feel a whole lot different than the sonic boom of the SpaceX lander a week ago.

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 third chapter, scene 2. (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 Three, scene 2:

Not surprisingly, the room that Mrs. O’Malley ushered Kathleen and Patrick into was smaller than the first and initially it gave the impression of being just one large bed. On closer inspection, she saw that the bed was made of two iron frames put together. Actually, it was pretty roomy for three girls, two of them young, and she assumed this was where Mrs. O’Malley slept during the day.

Looking around, she realized that the room seemed small in part because of the large pieces of furniture––a washstand, a dresser, and a standing wardrobe––that occupied the wall on the left of the bed. In order to access these pieces of furniture, the bed was pushed almost to the other wall. This left only a very narrow space to walk on either side.

Despite the crowding, this room gave off a definite feminine air, with what Kathleen suspected were bargains Biddy had found at the Silver Strike Bazaar. Like the dark green chenille bedspread that matched the color of the curtains, which echoed the delicate green vines that decorated the basin and pitcher on the washstand. And while the washstand and other furniture in the room showed signs of great age, someone had painted the washstand a dark blue, which in turn matched the paper flowers that were woven around the small mirror that hung above it. There were even several colorful, hand-drawn pictures pinned above the dresser that revealed that at least one of the children had real artistic abilities. Alice?

The wardrobe was quite large and explained how it was that Alice, Deirdre, and Mrs. O’Malley’s outfits looked newly pressed, and she supposed it was a necessity for Biddy, given her job as a clerk in a grand emporium. What she had difficulty imagining is the complicated dance these women must engage in each morning to get dressed.

“Kathleen, please have a seat,” Mrs. O’Malley said, pointing to a chair wedged in the corner to Kathleen’s right. She continued, “Officer McGee, I’m sorry, but there is only one chair in here. I can have one of the boys bring in the kitchen chair for you.”

“Not necessary, Mrs. O’Malley. I am perfectly comfortable standing,” Patrick said. “And call me Patrick. But, first, could you go to the window and point out the exact direction the three men took when you saw them leave?”

Kathleen followed the two of them to the window as Mrs. O’Malley said, “The brown door on the building across the way leads into Mrs. Greeley’s lodging house. That’s where the first man was standing last Sunday when I noticed him. I saw his face when he lit a match. He wore a high-crowned derby and all I really made out was that he had a very large mustache. I could see him more clearly when he and the other two men stopped under the lamp on the corner of Folsom before crossing. One of the other two men had on a cap, and the other had one of those slouch hats. The man with the derby had on a long frock coat, while the other two wore short suit jackets.”

“And Kathleen said that the men were carrying bags.”

“Yes, the man with the derby had his bag slung over his shoulder, and it looked to me like there was something in it. But you understand, I only saw them clearly for the few moments they stood under the gas lamp.”

“How big of a bag?”

“Good size, like a burlap sack.”

“And you saw that all three had something in these bags when they returned, around four o’clock in the morning?”

“Yes, they gave the impression the bags were filled with something heavy, given the way they carried the bags over their backs.”

“Hmm…Have you ever seen any of the men in daylight, ma’am?”

“I believe I saw the man with the derby and the one with the slouch hat on Harrison this week when I was out shopping. I can’t give you much more of a description except to say that the mustache on the man with the derby was black…almost looked like he’d dyed it, and his nose appeared like it had been broken at some point. The other man looked younger and scruffier, and he had a sandy-colored, thin mustache. That’s about it. I didn’t want to stare.”

Patrick said, “No, no, that’s good. You don’t want them to have any reason to think you have any interest in them.”

“Do you think that I have something to worry about, Patrick?” Mrs. O’Malley said.

“I haven’t found out anything that supports your suspicions yet, ma’am. But that doesn’t mean I’m not taking your concerns seriously. However, when I spoke to my sergeant about what you saw, he told me to talk to the two constables responsible for this neighborhood before I did any other investigating.”

Kathleen suspected that what Sergeant Thompson had said was more along the lines that Patrick shouldn’t go haring off on some vague tip without consulting with the local men. Patrick’s ambitions had gotten him in trouble a few times with his fellow coppers, and Patrick’s aunt had cautioned him more than once that he needed to be careful about not stepping on the toes of fellow officers, men he might need help from some day.

Mrs. O’Malley said, “I see. Were they any help?”

Kathleen could hear the skepticism in the older woman’s voice.

Patrick shrugged. “I talked to the constable who has the day shift, a Scotsman named MacGowan, and he always impressed me as a sensible man. He told me this morning that yesterday he took a look at the passageway and the small yard behind the lodging house. Didn’t see anything that looked like something the men could have stolen. He said the yard was just about ten feet by six feet, with weeds, a pile of bricks, and a dustbin. Not even a privy.”

“No, Mrs. Greeley is very proud of that fact. Her late husband was a plumber. One of the last things he did before he died was install a water closet on the first floor. She’s able to get a good five dollars more a month from lodgers because of that,” Mrs. O’Malley said.

Patrick chuckled. “Well, I could tell MacGowan was glad he didn’t have to search a privy for stolen goods. There is a back door to the house, which might mean that they took whatever they had in their bags into the house through that door.”

Kathleen blurted out, “But that doesn’t make any sense, Patrick. If they had access to the house from the rear, why did they come back around to the front to go in that way once they had gotten rid of the stuff in the bags?”

Patrick shook his head and said, “I don’t know. I think the only way we will get to the bottom of this is if we can figure out where the men are going at night. That’s why I asked Furstenberg, the man who has the night shift, to see if he could catch the men either leaving the house at midnight or coming back at around four…since that is the pattern they followed the two nights you saw them, Mrs. O’Malley.”

Kathleen said, “Did he agree to do that?”

“Reluctantly. I caught him this morning when he came off duty, and he said he watched the place both Wednesday and Thursday nights, but no one came in or out of the house.”

“Oh, good heavens, they probably saw him lurking around and waited until he went back to his regular patrol,” Mrs. O’Malley said with disgust.

Patrick said, “You may be right. I don’t know the man at all, but he didn’t seem real happy with his current assignment. There was a definite…lack of sympathy for the permanent residents in the neighborhood.”

“Hmph. You mean he made it clear he thought all of us Irish were either drunks or lazy good-for-nothings.”

“Not that he would say that to my face,” Patrick said. “But, yes, he indicated that he thought that the tip I had gotten was simply the result of some local spat.”

Kathleen, worried about whether Mrs. O’Malley could be in danger if that was how this Furstenberg saw things, said, “You didn’t tell either him or the other patrolman where you got your information, did you?”

“No, I made it sound like I’d heard it from a man who had been walking up Beale Street in order to handle an emergency at the ironworks over on Fremont and just happened to be returning when the men were coming back at four.”

Mrs. O’Malley said, “That was clever of you, Patrick. Otherwise, it would be pretty easy to figure out which neighbor would be able to see the lodging house door. And I do appreciate that you tried to figure out what is going on.”

Kathleen could hear the resignation in Mrs. O’Malley’s voice. Biddy would not be happy if things were left this way.

“Oh, ma’am, I’ve not given up,” Patrick said. “I have the late shift Saturday, so I won’t be able to trail them from the lodging house. Instead, I plan on checking things out early Sunday morning, see if I can catch them on the way home, figure out where they’ve come from.”

“How will you do that?” Kathleen asked, sharing the puzzled look in Mrs. O’Malley’s face.

Patrick said, “There’s an outside access to the roof of the Union Hotel at Mission and Beale that I’ve used before in the line of duty. From that vantage point, I can see if someone is coming from north of Market, and I should even be able to see if they turn into Beale Street from Mission or Howard. I’ll still be in uniform. That means that if I do see men who fit your description around then, I can catch up to them before they get to the lodging house and get them to open up those bags and see what’s in ‘em.”

To be continued…

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