Entangled Threads
ENTANGLED THREADS
A VICTORIAN SAN FRANCISCO MYSTERY
M. LOUISA LOCKE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Copyright © 2022 Mary Louisa Locke
All rights Reserved
Cover © 2021 Michelle Huffaker
All Rights Reserved
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CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
Author’s Notes
Glossary
Other Works by Author
About the Author
Acknowledgments
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” Marmion, Sir Walter Scott, 1808
“Ye maidens all, both old and young, Trust not to men’s false, flattering tongue; To know a man, pray know his life; How few there are deserve a wife.” Lines Written on the Death of Sarah M. Cornell, 1833
“Then give me my hood and my calico dress, And to the looms and spindles I’ll press, For to labor, is the life I love best, And I’ll pity those, who its blessings detest.” Voice of Industry, 1846
“I am too small to reach the spools, That on the spindles fly; I sit all day on great hard stools, And tangled threads untie.” Labor Standard, 1880
PROLOGUE
Saturday morning, June 3, 1882
Potrero Woolen Mills, San Francisco, California
Meghan Wilson shrugged her shoulders, trying to get the crick out of her neck. Except for when she’d stopped for her mid-shift meal at midnight, she had been on her feet for over seven hours, with another four to go. The constant clatter, clang, thump, and whir of the carding machines in the next room, and the clunk, clunk, clunk of the spinning machines in this room, added to her exhaustion, and she ached from the top of her head to the tip of her toes.
She sighed when she saw that one of the tall spools of carded wool on her machine had jammed, stopping the spinning frame from completing its slide towards her. She rapidly pulled the lever to ensure the machine wouldn’t start back up while she was fixing the problem. Straightening the tangled sliver of wool that looped between spool and spindle, she twisted it back into a single strand. Stepping back, she pulled the lever, and off the frame went, completing its journey towards her, drawing out the fibers, twisting them, and then making the circuit again to wind the resulting finished yarn around the spindles.
Some time later, she nodded to the young girl, Christy, to indicate it was time to replace the two empty spools on her machine. Poor child, pale and weedy, looked like a plant that had been denied sun or water for too long. The girl said she was fourteen, but Meghan suspected she was no more than twelve. She wondered what family troubles sent a young child out to work at night.
For Meghan, the decision to take this shift was her own. People on the night shift tended to keep their heads down, didn’t expect her to be sociable. In addition, if she succeeded in completely filling all hundred of the spindles on her spinning frame by five-thirty, she would be able to spend the last hour downstairs in the weaving room, helping set up the looms for the next day.
Since the weavers didn’t work at night, the weaving room would be quieter, the pounding of the carding and spinning machines muffled. The loom fixer, an old Scot called Mackie, never tried to talk to her, beyond giving a few terse instructions…very restful. She also loved seeing all the color and patterns on the looms, waiting for the day shift to come and start turning out yards and yards of cloth. She had been spinning a lovely turquoise yarn on her machine all week, and even under the harsh gas lights suspended from the ceiling in the spinning room, this shade of blue shimmered. She looked forward to seeing the completed cloth when it was woven into the Campbell clan plaid that had been ordered by the Silver Strike Bazaar.
Her cousin worked for the Silver Strike, and Meghan wondered if Biddy could get a bit of the cloth made from this yarn for her at a discount price. She would love to own something made from this shade, bring a little beauty home with her to brighten her drab life.
She started her machine back up, soon lost in the monotonous routine of spinning. Around four-thirty in the morning, Lily, who worked at the machine next to her, shouted, “I’m off to use the privy, Meghan. I’m fit to wet myself, if’n I don’t. Feel free to tell old Archie if he asks where I am.”
Meghan first met Lily three years ago when they both worked at Larkson’s Woolen Mills. Six months ago, the girl showed up here, at the Potrero mills, which rather surprised Meghan. Didn’t know what Mr. Douglas, the McKenzie brother who did the hiring for Potrero, was thinking. Couldn’t believe the mill foreman over at Larkson’s would give Lily a good reference. Not that the girl wasn’t experienced at running the kind of self-activating spinning mules found in this factory, but Lily had always had the habit of slipping away when she was supposed to be working. Lily would just laugh when a foreman complained; her cheeky attitude appeared to give her a pass––that, and a pretty face.
If only Meghan could muster the same sort of courage to tell Archie Egerton, the night foreman, where he could go when he poked her shoulder and told her to “step lively, those spindles won’t jump into the box on their own.”
As she watched Lily disappear into the stairwell that led down to the large yard at the back of the mill, Meghan mused that the girl was probably going to cadge a smoke from Smitty, the coal pusher, rather than go to the privy. Glancing around the room, she couldn’t see Archie, which was probably why Lily took this opportunity to slip away. He must have gone down to the hosiery knitting department, which only employed Chinese workers. This department had their own manager, but Archie loved to make trouble. Called the workers terrible names, then laughed and said they didn’t understand English, so no harm done. r />
Her machine shuddered to a stop, caused this time by a broken thread on a spindle. After she fixed it and got the machine going again, she forgot both the foreman and Lily. Wasn’t until her machine stopped one more time that she noticed Lily hadn’t returned. Looking at the big clock on the wall, she frowned. The girl kept hinting that sometimes when she slipped out it was to meet a lover. But even Lily wouldn’t be so crazy as to step away from her machine for nearly three-quarters of an hour and not expect she wouldn’t get in trouble.
As if this thought summoned him, Archie, the tall gangly foreman, appeared beside her and said, “Where’s Lily gone? Lois said she didn’t notice when she left.”
“Gone to the privy, sir.”
“She’d better be here and working by the time I finish my circuit of these rooms, or else.”
Meghan, looking for an excuse to go look for Lily, said, “Sir, the right wheel on my frame is sticking. Can I go down to the engine room to get the oil can? It’ll throw off the tension on the threads if it doesn’t move at the same pace as the left wheel.”
Archie leaned over and peered at the frame as it made its next circuit, then grunted. “I don’t see it. But go if you must; you’re the one’s going to have to make up the time at shift’s end if you don’t fill up all those spindles.”
He walked away, towards the carding room.
Archie probably suspected she was covering for Lily, but Meghan knew he had a soft spot for the girl, didn’t really want to sack her.
Guess I don’t want her sacked either. Why else am I wasting my time looking for her?
Assuring that the heavy coil of hair at her neck was still securely pinned and grabbing her long skirts to keep them away from the moving pulleys and gears that could catch and injure a worker in a moment’s inattention, Meghan walked quickly down the row of spinning machines to push through the heavy stairwell door. The noise and heat began to lessen as she walked down the three flights of stairs and into the open air.
She took a deep breath, glad to have escaped, if only for a brief few moments, what she sometimes imagined the priests were describing when they talked about the “hell of the damned.”
At five-thirty in the morning, it was still pitch black, except for the shafts of light from the main building behind her and the glow from the high windows of the engine room on her left. She might try that room first; Lily could still be with Smitty, the coal pusher. Then she noticed shadows caused by flickering light in the first-floor windows of the building to her right.
The second floor housed the Chinese workers who ran the knitting machines. Too early for any of the day shift to be up yet, and there shouldn’t be anyone in the drying room on the first floor at this time of night, certainly not anyone carrying a lantern. Surely Lily wouldn’t be so stupid as to choose this building to meet someone. The night watchman wasn’t much use, but even he would notice light in a room that was supposed to be empty.
Irritated, she went over to the building, and finding the door unlocked, she pulled it open. Startled by how bright the light was, it took a second for her to register what she was seeing—ribbons of fire running along the racks of drying yarn and licking at the floor in front of her.
Meghan had started to retreat to safety when she felt someone shove her, hard, and she fell, screaming, right into the greedy flames.
CHAPTER 1
Monday morning, June 5, 1882
O’ Farrell Street Boardinghouse
Nate Dawson picked his daughter up and gave the wiggling girl a kiss on the top of her reddish-blond curls before setting her back down on her wobbly legs. At thirteen months, Abigail struggled hard to stay upright. Her little lower lip caught in her upper teeth, she staggered the two feet to her mother, giving a little crow of triumph when she made it without falling down.
His wife, Annie, laughed. “She’s working so hard on walking. Kathleen says if we thought it difficult to keep her out of trouble when she was crawling, she’s going to be a terror once she’s steadier on her feet.”
Nate loved the mornings when he and Annie had breakfast together upstairs in their bedroom before starting their busy days. The maid, Kathleen Hennessey, who slept next door in the nursery, would bring Abigail to them at five, so she could go down and start her duties in the kitchen. Most mornings the child would go right back to sleep, giving them another hour before they had to rise and get dressed. Then Kathleen and the other maid, young Tilly Gallagher, would bring up their breakfast trays. Abigail would sit in her highchair and eat her cereal and fruit with her fingers, while they had their eggs, toast, and tea.
Nate looked at the clock on the mantel as it chimed the quarter hour and slid on his summer-weight wool frock coat in preparation for the trip across town to the legal firm of Hobbes, Cranston, and Dawson. He had an eight o’clock meeting, and while the trip to the office on Sansome Street wouldn’t take him more than fifteen minutes, he wanted to arrive in time to get ready for his first appointment.
Being careful to avoid his daughter, who was clinging to Annie’s skirts, he gave his wife a kiss on her very own reddish-blond curls, which she hadn’t yet tamed into a braided twist at the back of her head.
Stepping back to let her tie his cravat, he said, “When’s your appointment with Mr. Livingston this morning? He’s meeting you here, not in his offices at the Silver Strike Bazaar, isn’t he?”
“He’s coming at eight-thirty. His letter said he would prefer to meet here because he knows how quickly rumors would fly if I met him there.”
He nodded. This was an understandable concern on Robert Livingston’s part. He probably didn’t want to start any rumors, given that the last time the owner of the Silver Strike Bazaar had employed Annie this grand emporium had been facing a multitude of problems.
Nate said, “Do you have any idea what he does want to talk about?”
“Not an inkling.” Annie gave a small shrug and straightened his collar. “I confess I’m glad his letter asked to meet me here because this means I can keep Abbie with me until the last moment. I hate taking up Kathleen’s time on wash day.”
Nate marveled at how his wife had been able to organize her schedule and her staff of three so that everything ran smoothly, despite the fact that currently there were nine boarders, three of them energetic children out of school for the summer. Yet she had found time to take care of their daughter and begin to build back her business as a financial advisor after the hiatus caused by her pregnancy and Abigail’s birth.
Looking at the way Annie’s eyes sparkled at the thought of her upcoming appointment, he knew he’d been a fool to ever question her determination to combine career and motherhood. And Abigail certainly hadn’t suffered, doted on by every person who lived under their roof.
Annie gave his cravat a last tug into place and said, “Is Mrs. Pitts Stevens going to be at this meeting of yours?”
“No, thankfully. She’s so intimidating that she makes me nervous.”
Mrs. Pitts Stevens was a short but imposing woman in her early forties who had made a name for herself in the city as a journalist, newspaper editor, and lecturer. Above all, she was a stalwart supporter of women’s rights, including the rights of women to adequate legal representation. Over the past few years, this had led her to refer several cases to Nate, often covering the initial legal costs if the woman wasn’t able to pay.
“Sweetheart, don’t be so silly. She wouldn’t keep referring cases to you if she didn’t think you were an excellent lawyer. And even your uncle Frank must admit that your work on divorce and child custody cases for women have elevated the reputation of the firm.”
“I wish that were true, but you know my uncle; he still treats me like the boy I was when I first came to the city, a boy whose head might be turned if he deigned to give me a modicum of praise. Cranston, however, was quite complimentary when I won that substantial settlement for Mrs. Hargrove.”
“So there, you have nothing to worry about. Is this another divorce case?”
“No, which should make Uncle Frank happy. Mrs. Pitts Stevens said the woman I am meeting, a Miss Ada Bateson, believes her brother, the executor of their mother’s will, is treating her unfairly. I am hoping it won’t require much more than a consultation and some routine paperwork. That sort of case was my bread and butter the first six years I was with the firm. In my experience, the options are usually pretty cut and dried. However, clients often don’t want to hear what the law says if it doesn’t give them what they want. Their emotions are so tangled up in old family grievances, they won’t listen to reason.”
“Then you will just have to disentangle things for this Miss Bateson,” Annie said as she handed him his top hat. “Do try to make it home in time for dinner. You can tell me all about it, and I can tell you why Mr. Livingston wants to see me.”
Annie heard the quiet knock on the door to the small downstairs parlor that acted as Nate’s and her office and said, “Come in.” She got up from where she had been kneeling to help her daughter stack blocks, straightening her skirt as she rose.