Tuesday December 10, 2024

Tilly Tracks a Thief: 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, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.

In addition, now and again I will provide some of my fiction to read, for free, on this newsletter. Everything is available to anyone who subscribes, but I am always pleased when someone shows their appreciation for the newsletter by upgrading to paid.

Daily Diary, Day 1560:

For the next few weeks, I am going to start putting the short story, Tilly Tracks a Thief, up for free, scene by scene. This previous post discusses why I chose to give this very minor character in the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series a story of her own.

Below is the first scene, but first, a brief check-in. I had a very productive day yesterday, finished commenting on friend’s manuscript, did morning yoga and chair pilates, giving me 50 minutes of exercise, had a phone call in the afternoon, and best of all, I started looking at the links I have been collecting to start my research on the next novel. Just wearing the left splint (see photos) seems to be working. Tends to throw up more typos than usual, but it will be at least a month before I am ready to start actually writing the next novel.

Tilly Tracks a Thief: A Victorian San Francisco Story
by M. Louisa Locke

Copyright 2020

Scene One:

Wednesday afternoon, December 21, 1881
O’Farrell Street Boardinghouse

Tilly finished scraping candle wax from the carpet under the Christmas tree and then stood up to take a deep breath, marveling at how the tree’s scent reminded her of the old pine up the hill from her childhood home in County Cork. That’s where she would go to hide when things got too bad down below on the farm. Her mother called the tree a Scots pine, goodness knows why. Tilly wished she’d asked her, but Da would have given her a slap and told her to stop bothering her mam with such foolishness.

Now it was too late to ask.

The letter from Father Murphy telling of her mother’s death came this past spring. He’d written to her aunt Maureen that Tilly’s mother had passed on peacefully in her sleep. She hoped that wasn’t a lie. If anyone deserved a peaceful ending to a life, it was her mother. She’d had eight children by a worthless drunkard of a husband, buried three of those babes within a month of their births, and suffered silently for years from what neighbors whispered was the white death.

Tilly shook her head, chasing these sad thoughts away. Her mother would have been the first to tell her not to dwell on what couldn’t be helped and to count her blessings. And this holiday she certainly had a lot of blessings to count, including the fact that she was able to buy gifts for all her O’Malley cousins.

Last Christmas, she’d had to make do with some taffy the O’Farrell Street boardinghouse cook, Mrs. O’Rourke, had helped her make because her wages simply hadn’t stretched enough to cover store-bought presents.

Not that the boardinghouse owner, Mrs. Dawson, didn’t pay decent wages. She was more than fair, and Tilly knew she was lucky the mistress had hired her at all, given she’d not known a thing about being a servant when she started working part-time for her two years ago.

No, the problem was that as long as Tilly lived with her aunt and her seven cousins, she needed to help out by paying for room and board. In addition, pretty much all the rest of her wages went into savings so she’d be able to bring her younger sister to America, just as her aunt Maureen had done for Tilly.

Then, this fall, when she moved into the boardinghouse as a full-time servant, Mrs. Dawson raised her wages. Tilly immediately started putting the extra money aside for Christmas presents. A week ago, Biddy, her oldest cousin, took her to the Silver Strike Bazaar, and she’d had such a good time picking out gifts for all her relatives.

First, she bought roller skates for Bennie and Bri, her older twin cousins. She couldn’t wait to take them to the roller rink at Woodward’s Gardens on Sunday afternoons, when she got half a day off. For the younger twins, Callum and Connor, who were only five, she’d gotten tin soldiers with brightly painted uniforms.

The best find of the day was Alice’s present. Tilly couldn’t wait to see how the quiet seven-year-old, who everyone said was the scholar of the O’Malley family, would react when she opened up the wrapping paper and saw the collection of six books that the store clerk called “British classics.” Their matching covers looked almost like leather, with fancy gold writing on them, and they would look really handsome sitting on the shelf in the bedroom that Alice shared with her mother and older sisters, Biddy and Deirdre.

Tilly had a more difficult time figuring out what to get Deirdre, who at thirteen was too old for toys and certainly wasn’t bookish. She finally settled on buying her satin ribbons in seven different shades so Deirdre could wear a different ribbon every day of the week.

Tilly hoped she would be pleased.

Biddy had pointed out that if Tilly bought ten ribbons, she would get a discount and could keep three of them for herself. After some encouragement, she’d done so, picking out three ribbons in different shades of blue that would match the shawl her mistress had given her for her last birthday. Tucking one of her unruly side curls back under her white cap, she couldn’t help but think how grown up she’d feel this Sunday when she went off to early mass, with her hair neatly pulled back by one of these ribbons.

As she straightened the chairs around the parlor table, she thought about how kind her cousin Biddy had been to her since she arrived in San Francisco and how worried she’d been that she wouldn’t be able to find the right gift for her. Then she had the bright idea to ask her cousin for advice on what she should give Kathleen, Tilly’s fellow boardinghouse servant, and Biddy’s good friend. Biddy showed her this really cunning manicure set, all covered in silk with a plush interior, and when she went to the next counter to look at some hat trimmings, Tilly got the clerk to wrap up two of the manicure sets, one for Kathleen and one for Biddy herself.

Finally, for her aunt Maureen, she bought some beautiful blue wool yarn to make into a tea cozy that would fit over the new teapot Biddy was getting her mother for Christmas. Tilly owed her aunt so much that she wanted to give her a present she would use every day and think fondly of her when she did.

Tilly already knew how to knit; her own mother had taught her how when she was not much older than the five-year-old twins, Callum and Connor. However, knitting a tea cozy, with openings for the handle, top, and spout, turned out to be a bit trickier than knitting scarves and socks.

Thank goodness, the young boarder Emmaline, an expert knitter, helped her plan out the design. Even so, Tilly found she had to go real slow and careful-like to make sure the cozy didn’t end up too large or too small or all lopsided. She was beginning to worry she wouldn’t get the gift completed in time—given there were only three more days until Christmas!

That’s why she decided not to go to the O’Malley’s flat tonight, even though this is what she usually did on her once-a-week night off. That way she could finish the cozy, with Emmaline nearby to help if she got into difficulties. She’d be spending Christmas Eve at her aunt’s place, anyway. This would give her the chance to see her family open up their presents in the morning, but she would still be able to get back to the boardinghouse in time to help Kathleen and Mrs. O’Rourke prepare for the big Christmas dinner the Dawsons were hosting for all the boardinghouse residents and their friends.

She could hardly wait for Christmas Eve, when all the fun would start. Humming the tune from Jingle Bells, a song the three children in the house were fond of singing, she began to dust the old upright, wondering if her mistress wouldn’t mind––since it was her night off––if she sat and did her knitting in the parlor while Mrs. Hewitt played the piano and everyone sang along. Singing was not something her family had ever done, ‘cept her da in his cups. But Christmas hadn’t been a time to sing or make merry back then.

And even her mother would not have seen the purpose of bringing a live tree into the house for any reason besides more fuel for the cook stove. The idea of actually decorating that tree, well, Tilly shook her head at what her father or brothers would have said if she’d even suggested it.

In the daylight, the white strings of popcorn and the gaily painted ornaments were pretty against the dark green of the tree. But at night, when the candles on the tree were alight, and their flames danced in the curved surfaces of the glass balls hanging from the branches and lit up the glass angel at the top of the tree…she believed she’d never seen anything more beautiful.

But the tree did tend to shed, and she was kneeling to sweep up more of the needles that had been tracked throughout the room when she heard her fellow servant, Kathleen, say, “No you don’t, Prince. You know you’re not to come in here.” She turned and saw with relief that Kathleen had successfully captured the black cat.

Kathleen was a bit taller, four years older, and much less shy than Tilly, but since they both had dark hair and blue eyes, visitors to the boardinghouse often assumed they were sisters. Tilly thought this a compliment and wished she was half as smart and accomplished as the older girl.

Tilly stood up and said, “I thought as long as the tree was up, we were to keep the door to the back stairs closed so he can’t leave the kitchen.”

Kathleen shook her head and scratched the cat’s ears. “He’s so fast he must have snuck past me. I can’t imagine the destruction he would cause if he got at the tree.”

Tilly shuddered at the very idea and said, “Do you need me to take him down to the kitchen?”

“No, I’ll take him. You finish up here. I only came to ask you if you did anything with that tinsel that was in the box of ornaments we opened yesterday.”

“You mean that ball of silver stuff? Oh, Kathleen, I threw it away yesterday evening with the cracked glass ball and a few of the other broken decorations. I thought that’s what the mistress said I should do…the tinsel had turned all black and nasty.”

Tilly’s heart thumped painfully as she tried to remember exactly what Mrs. Dawson had said. Maybe she’d misheard.

“Oh, no, Tilly, I’m sure you did right. We didn’t use any of it last year, either, and it hadn’t been so tarnished then. It was Miss Laura who asked what happened to it. The master put up one bunch of the tinsel as a joke last year and said something about fighting with his sister over whether or not to decorate their trees with it every year. Miss Laura said she wanted to return the favor this year and put some on the wreath on the front door.”

Tilly took a deep breath. She hated making mistakes. Kathleen would tell her not to be a silly widgeon, that mistakes happen. Said that even when Mrs. O’Rourke snapped a bit, it usually meant her arthritis was acting up, not that she was mad at Tilly…that she’d be better off if she could stop taking things so personally.

Tilly wished she was fearless like Kathleen. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken it so personally when her da railed at her––it was just him needing his next dram of whiskey. But when he slammed her up against a wall for dropping one of the eggs she’d gathered, it sure had felt personal.

…to be continued.

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