Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Mrs. O'Malley's Midnight Mystery, Chapter Five, scene one

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 1693:

Brief check-in: Lovely productive day yesterday, 2 walks, 800+ words written, good down time, and first episode of new season of Brokenwood mystery. Should be another good day, today. Leaving you with a yard with lots of rose bushes.

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 fifth chapter, scene 1. (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 Five
Sunday, late evening, October 9, 1881
O’Malley’s, Beale Street

Mrs. O’Malley sat in the wooden chair next to the window, watching for any signs of activity from Mrs. Greeley’s lodging house across the way. She could see light coming from one of the windows on the second floor, so it looked to her like someone was still up. She had purposely left the oil lamp on the shelf above the sink, with the wick turned down low. This way she could see out, but she hoped that no one could see her sitting here. Biddy had offered to sit up with her, but she had sent her to bed around ten.

This morning, when she got home and told Biddy about her conversation with Patrick McGee, her daughter had been as skeptical as she was about the idea that Mrs. Greeley would want a vegetable garden. Biddy pointed out that the men might have had some other reason to steal bricks, although neither of them could come up with another explanation that wasn’t even more hard to believe than the vegetable garden story. She did agree that it was a good idea not to tell any of the younger children about what was going on. Her daughter had declared that the last thing they needed was for the older twins, Bri and Bennie, to decide to investigate Mrs. Greeley’s backyard. Biddy had then looked at Mrs. O’Malley very pointedly and said that she hoped that her mother wouldn’t take it into her head to do any investigating either, that she needed to leave Patrick to do his job.

Biddy knows me too well.

She had been thinking about trying to catch Mrs. Greeley coming out of church this morning, just to strike up a conversation, maybe even mention vegetables or gardens. But she couldn’t trust Mrs. Greeley not to mention the conversation to her lodgers. That would put the fat in the fire, for sure. They might decide they needed to question the nosy neighbor, find out what she knew.

Waiting for tonight, when she could take up her post at the window to see what would happen, had been difficult. The hours had gone by slowly, even filled as they were with the normal Sunday routine. After getting everyone breakfast when she got back from mass, she had supervised all four boys in their weekly baths. Deirdre and Alice, as usual, had bathed the night before, but they spent time pressing their best dresses and doing a bit of primping before it was time for all of them to go off to the ten-thirty service at St. Patrick’s. After church, as usual, all her children went to their aunt and uncle’s for dinner and spent the afternoon playing with their cousins. They came home at four, which normally would have given her plenty of time to nap while they were gone.

But this afternoon she had difficulty getting to sleep, and when she did, she almost immediately woke up from a dream that her children were imprisoned in a corner of the kitchen behind a brick wall. She heard their screams but couldn’t get to them.

She gave up trying to sleep and had spent the rest of the afternoon in a frenzy of cleaning—making the beds in the back room, scouring the sink, and re-blacking the kitchen stove. This then required that she take her own weekly bath a day early, finishing just in time to welcome her children home.

Biddy, after looking at the stove, had started to say something about this being the boys’ chore, then her daughter took one look at her face and went quiet. It was only a few moments later that she pulled Mrs. O’Malley aside and asked whether she should stay at home this evening. Sweet girl. Of course she’d told Biddy not to change her plans.

In fact, she had been able to spend the rest of the evening quite pleasantly, giving the children a light supper, then while they finished up their school work, she prepared a soup stock and baked bread. That, plus the ham she’d baked on Saturday, should get them through dinners for the first part of next week. The boys and Deirdre and Alice were asleep by eight, and she sewed until Biddy returned at nine, which was an early night for her.

Mrs. O’Malley had been a little disappointed that Biddy’s plans for the evening had been to go out with her friends from the Silver Strike, not Frank O’Doyle. On the other hand, as far as she knew, Frank hadn’t asked Biddy to go out. Or maybe he had done so and Biddy turned him down. What she did know was that she shouldn’t ask her daughter about this. She remembered all too well how she had hated it when her own mother had questioned her at that age.

Wasn’t like Mrs. O’Malley wanted her oldest daughter to become serious about any young man, not yet. Biddy only turned eighteen last spring, and most good Irish girls didn’t marry until their late twenties or early thirties. Mrs. O’Malley had met her husband when she was twenty-four, but she hadn’t felt she could marry Brian as long as her parents needed her income. He’d understood because he knew he couldn’t stop working with his father and leave for America, which was his dream, until his younger brothers were old enough to take his place.

As a result, they hadn’t married until she turned thirty-four, and even then they’d had to wait four more years until they’d saved the money to come to America. By then, she’d already had Biddy.

Not that she expected Biddy to wait ten years as she had. Once Bri and Bennie were established in some trade, their income would more than make up for the loss of Biddy’s wages. But that was at least six years away. There was the other possibility, of course, that Biddy might find a man who would be willing and able to support his wife’s family.

She sighed. A good Irish man like Frank O’Doyle would understand that. What she didn’t know was if the young men Biddy met when she went out with her friends from work would understand. It was possible these unnamed men weren’t interested in marriage, just having a good time. And that was even more worrisome.

The last light in Mrs. Greeley’s lodging house suddenly went out, and Mrs. O’Malley carefully pulled the curtain back in order to get a better view. She wondered if Patrick was anywhere nearby.

She sat quietly, listening to the soft sounds coming from her sleeping boys a few feet away. That, plus the hissing of the lamp and the plink, plink of the dripping faucet, were the only interior sounds. The nearby factories always emitted some sort of racket, but she’d learned to tune that noise out years ago. It was her immediate block that seemed unnaturally quiet. No sounds of barking dogs, the chickens in the roof-top coop down the street weren’t making a peep, and no foot or horse traffic broke the silence.

That meant the scrape of a shoe on pavement sounded like a shot.

She put her elbows on the sill so she could lean out of the open window to look down at the street. She thought she saw movement, and then the three men came into view as they passed under the lamp on the corner. They crossed Folsom and headed towards Market. When they were out of sight, she looked over at the kitchen clock. It’s eleven-fifteen! Nearly an hour earlier than the time they left last Sunday. She hoped this didn’t mean Patrick would miss them. She thought his shift ended at eleven. Should she try to follow them herself? No, that would be senseless…and dangerous. Her job was to wait so she could observe them when they returned.

She leaned down to get her needle and thread so she could start sewing on Bennie’s jacket that needed mending. Keeping all the children, especially the boys, in decent clothing was a never-ending job. However, this was one task she could do with her eyes shut, if need be, although the moon, now riding high in a cloudless sky, did provide a faint illumination.

What does it mean that the men left early?

Now that she thought about it, if they were just going up to Clay to get bricks, why had it taken them so long to return last Sunday? Getting to and from Clay shouldn’t take more than three-quarters of an hour, at most. Could it be that the bricks weren’t sitting around loose, but were part of an existing wall? That would explain why they had the pickaxe and other tools and why it took them over four hours to get the bricks.

If only she could see the bricks herself. Over the years, her husband, Brian, had taught her a lot about brickwork––how to tell where bricks had been manufactured, what kinds of mortar worked best for which jobs, the best ways to lay brick, how bricks were laid differently depending on their purpose. Her brother, Seamus, who had his own contracting business, always said that Brian was an artist when it came to brickwork.

Suddenly, she knew she couldn’t just sit there wondering. She got up and went to the front door and shrugged on her woolen cloak. As she leaned over to pick up the lantern that sat by the back door, she hesitated. Then sighing, she turned and went into the second room where her daughters were sleeping. The moonlight turned them into three sleeping beauties, and she stood and basked in their lovely faces for a moment. Chester, the young tabby, looked up at her with a quizzical expression on his triangular face. Crouching down beside Biddy, she touched her daughter’s shoulder lightly. Biddy stirred then sat up.

“Mother, what’s wrong? Why do you have your coat on?” Biddy whispered.

“I’m going across the way. The men left about fifteen minutes ago. I want to take a look at the bricks in Mrs. Greeley’s backyard before they return. But I didn’t want to worry you in case one of the younger boys called out and I wasn’t there.”

“What’s going on?” Deirdre sat up beside Biddy and rubbed her eyes. Alice continued to sleep beside her, but Chester made a small mew of protest.

Biddy, who was already putting on her shoes, said to Deirdre, “Mother and I have to go out and check something. But could you stay awake, in case Connor or Callum calls out? We won’t be long.”

Mrs. O’Malley, following Biddy out of the room, said, “There’s no reason for you to come.”

Biddy, putting on her own long woolen coat, said, “Someone needs to hold the lantern for you, or how are you going to examine the bricks?”

Shaking her head, Mrs. O’Malley said, “You can’t go out only wearing your night dress under your coat. Besides, you will catch your death.”

“Mother, it’s only October. And no one else is going to know what I have on because no one is going to catch us, are they? Let’s get this over with, before I change my mind and decide to tie you to the chair so you won’t do anything foolish on your own.”

To be continued…

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