The Body Snatchers Affair by Marcia Muller

Author:Marcia Muller [Muller, Marcia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781429997232
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

13

SABINA

Sabina didn’t sleep long or well that night. Too many things weighing on her mind, made even more acute by the odd and disturbing meeting with the would-be Sherlock Holmes. She disliked using makeup as so many other modern women now did, but the dark circles under her eyes required an application of powder and a touch of Pan-Cake. Adam gobbled his breakfast before streaking for the window she left partially open for him to come and go, but she had little appetite herself—a certain sign that she was out of sorts. But her determination to get to the bottom of the Blanchford case and the situation with Carson and the English poseur’s insinuations about him hadn’t waned; if anything, it was even stronger this morning.

Before going downtown to hunt the additional information she needed, she felt obligated to stop at Elizabeth Petrie’s flat to see how Andrea Scarlett was faring. Much better, it seemed; Elizabeth had taken her well in hand, and the ex-police matron’s strong, motherly influence had eased her fears considerably. The two women had struck up a bond over their shared interest in needlecraft, as Sabina had hoped they might. Elizabeth was teaching her charge some new sort of stitch whose intricacies went well beyond Sabina’s limited knowledge of sewing. Fortunately, her upbringing, though it had emphasized the usual woman’s homemaking role, hadn’t excluded a broader, more sophisticated education.

Once downtown, her first stop was the building on Commercial Street that housed the Morning Call. Founded in 1856, it was generally the least guilty of the city’s sheets of inflammatory yellow journalism, and often ran articles on such topics dear to Sabina’s heart as the abuses of women. Still, it was not altogether a paragon, on occasion joining the Examiner and others in reporting drunken escapades, sexual misconduct, political hijinks, and the alleged evils of the “heathen Chinee.” One of the two employees she’d come to see, society editor Millie Munson, with whom she’d formed a friendly relationship, was not at her desk. She was due back shortly, however, Sabina was told.

The other casual acquaintance was present—Ephraim Ballard, the old man in a green eyeshade who presided over the Call’s morgue. Despite his age, Ballard’s memory was both prodigious and reliable. “The Gold King scandal?” he said in answer to Sabina’s question. “Why, sure, I recollect it. Mostly happened in Amador County … let’s see, about eight years ago. Had to do with the high grading of gold ore. You know what that is, high grading?”

“Yes. Was the story well covered in the Call?”

“It was, on account of a local bigwig being mixed up in it.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“Kinney. George M. Kinney. An investor and former Gold King Mine stockholder who’d fallen on hard times.”

The name was unfamiliar, thankfully. “I’d appreciate it if I could look at the requisite back issues.”

“No sooner asked than done.”

It took Mr. Ballard only a short time to locate the issues. The first one, dated July 11, 1887, broke the story under bold black headlines.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.