The Cliff House Strangler Read online

  “Mr. Moss,” Madame Karpova pronounced coolly. “You may not take notes. The spirits are easily disturbed.”

  Moss’s expression was mocking. “My apologies, Madame Karpova,” he said with a sardonic nod of his head. “By all means, we must endeavor to keep the spirits happy.” His face twisted into an obnoxious smile as he put away the tools of his trade. My father, the Honorable Horace T. Woolson, superior court judge for the County of San Francisco, had no use for newspaper reporters, considering them to be social scavengers who make their living exploiting gratuitous violence and private scandal. I shuddered to contemplate Papa’s reaction when he finally learned that his youngest son, Samuel, was an enthusiastic member of this fellowship. Although I didn’t generally share my father’s prejudice, at that moment I perfectly understood his feelings in the matter.

  “It’s of little consequence,” Moss went on pleasantly. “As some of you have reason to know, I am blessed with a keen memory.”

  This comment precipitated yet another uncomfortable murmur about the table, as well as an angry grunt from Lieutenant Ahern. Madame Karpova once again cleared her throat in an obvious effort to reestablish the proper mood for the séance. For Darien Moss’s sake, she briefly repeated her earlier instructions concerning correct behavior during the reading, then requested that everyone take hold of their neighbors’ hands. Matching her actions to her words, the medium took her daughter’s left hand in her right, then reached for Lieutenant Ahern’s right hand and clasped it with her left. Finally, she directed everyone to close their eyes and attempt to relax.

  Considering the aftermath of Darien Moss’s surprise entrance, this was a difficult order to follow. Other tense movements around the table told me I was not the only one finding it difficult to calm my mind, much less my body. From across the table, I heard Mrs. Gaylord and Mrs. Reade take in deep breaths of air, followed by similar sounds from Mrs. Ahern and Mrs. Bramwell. Partially opening my eyes, I was amused to note that Senator Gaylord and Lieutenant Ahern were also peering around the table through slits in their own eyes. I was sure neither man had any intention of letting down his guard even for a moment, especially with Darien Moss in their midst.

  After one last nervous murmur, everyone grew quiet. Slowly squinting about the table, I saw the room’s sole candle waver fitfully in the draft, throwing the room and its inhabitants into sinister relief. Outside, rain pounded against the windows and the wind rose until it sounded like a wailing child. Once again, I felt tiny chills run down my spine. Had Madame Karpova planned it, she could not have created a more unnerving atmosphere in which to communicate with the dead.

  The medium herself sat as still as a statue at the far end of the table, her proud chin slightly raised, her dark eyes closed, hands held fast to her daughter on her right and Frank Ahern to her left. Well, I thought, if she wants to establish her veracity, she couldn’t choose anyone better to hold hands with than a lieutenant on the police force!

  The seconds slowly ticked by, each one seeming to last longer than the one that had preceded it. When nothing occurred after what I judged to be a full five minutes, people began to grow restless. To my left, Senator Gaylord cleared his throat, and I heard Darien Moss mumble something about hocus-pocus beneath his breath. One of the women gave a nervous giggle—I suspected it was Mrs. Ahern—but a stern “Shh” from Mrs. Bramwell’s direction quickly stilled the lieutenant’s wife.

  I began to wonder if Darien Moss’s unexpected, and clearly unwelcome, presence at the séance had somehow intimidated Madame Karpova and her spirits, but just then the woman gave a soft moan and dropped her head onto her chest. I felt a shiver of excitement, as it seemed something was at last about to happen. To my left, Senator Gaylord’s hand tightened on mine, as did Robert’s to my right. My own breathing had grown shallow. From the complete silence around the table, I realized no one wanted to break the spell that had settled around the medium like an otherworldly cocoon. Or, more practically, perhaps we were all simply tired of sitting there like a pack of gullible fools waiting for the performance to begin.

  I caught Robert’s dubious eye as Madame Karpova began mumbling words in tones too low to decipher. Then she flinched and her entire body commenced trembling. I know it sounds fanciful, but by the light of the single candle flickering in the middle of the table, I could have sworn the clairvoyant’s pupils were spinning in their sockets before curving up until only the whites were visible. Blinking, I leaned forward, trying to see more closely into those strange colorless orbs.

  In my transfixed state, the clairvoyant’s eyes seemed to grow steadily larger, until her entire face filled my vision. Everyone else at the table faded into the background; it was as if Madame Karpova and I were the only two people in the room. With an effort, I tried to force my gaze away, but I was dismayed to discover that I couldn’t tear my eyes off that spellbinding face. The experience was at once unsettling and strangely fascinating. Either the woman was a first-rate actress or she really was going into some kind of trance. Is it possible, I wondered, to will yourself into that state? And, if so, can you take others with you?

  “Tizoc,” the medium groaned. “Tizoc, is that you?“

  The men to either side of me sucked in their breath as Madame Karpova rose halfway out of her chair, then sank down again, eyes closed now, body rigid. Moaning softly, her turbaned head rolled from side to side as an almost translucent white smoke seemed to appear out of nowhere. It swirled about the psychic’s head, then spun down to enter her open mouth. As it did, her whimpering began to change. There were stifled murmurs as her natural voice, already deeply resonant, took on a much huskier timbre, slightly wheezy and hoarse, like that of a very old man.

  “I am Tizoc, high priest of the Tenochcas,” the new voice informed us in raspy tones. “Why have you summoned me?”

  Tenochca, I repeated to myself. Where had I heard that name before? Then I remembered. As a young girl, I had read that the Aztecs—one of the most important Indian groups of the North American continent—were also known as the Tenochcas, a name derived from one of their ancient patriarchs, Tenoch. So, this was Madame Karpova’s spirit control. An interesting choice for a Russian medium, I thought wryly.

  “Is it your desire to communicate with entities on the astral plane?” the voice demanded.

  Across from me, Mrs. Gaylord whispered, “Oh, please, yes. Dorothy. My baby.”

  Madame Karpova was silent for several moments; then once again she began speaking in that strange ancient voice.

  “There is a child here,” it announced. “A small girl of seven or eight with pale yellow hair. She is wearing a white pinafore with pink ribbons, and she is standing there”—eyes still tightly closed, the medium nodded toward the Gaylords—“between her parents.”

  Maurilla Gaylord gave a sob, staring at the psychic with wide, tearful eyes. “Oh, dear Lord,” she cried plaintively. “Is it Dorothy? Has she really come back?”

  “Yes,” Tizoc’s hoarse voice went on. “The child’s name is Dorothy. She is kissing her mother’s cheek. She wants her parents to know that she misses them both but that she is happy and at peace now.”

  “I felt it!” Mrs. Gaylord cried out, her hand flying to her cheek. “Percival, she kissed me! Oh, my darling baby. You really are here!”

  “Oh, for the love of God!” Robert muttered. “What kind of cruel hoax is this to play on a poor woman who has just lost her child?”

  I did not reply. My entire attention was taken up with Mrs. Gaylord. Her slender shoulders shook as she cried into a handkerchief. Senator Gaylord awkwardly patted her shoulder, obviously not having the faintest idea how to comfort his distraught wife.

  “She’s fine now, Maurilla,” I heard him whisper, trying for her sake, I was sure, to mask his cynicism over this whole affair. “You heard what that, ah, priest said. Please, Maurilla, stop crying.”

  I couldn’t hear the grieving mother’s response because her mouth was buried in the handkerchief, but I clea
rly caught Senator Gaylord’s frustrated sigh. He looked up from her, and even in the dim light I saw his consternation as every eye at the table was focused on him and his wife. Embarrassment quickly overcame any sympathy he might have felt for the inconsolable woman.

  “Maurilla, pull yourself together,” he said, looking as if he dearly wished he could climb into a hole and pull it closed over his head. “Dorothy’s at peace now. We should be happy for her. For God sake, stop crying!”

  There was a soft snicker off to my right, and I turned, to see Darien Moss shaking his head, as if this was all too much for him. Madame Karpova (or should I say the high priest, Tizoc?) turned her face briefly in the reporter’s direction, then went on in the Aztec’s voice.

  “Another entity is present—a woman,” the voice droned on in a scratchy monotone. “I think it is—yes, it is an old woman. She is wearing a black dress with white lace at the neck and there is a gold pin shaped like a bird on the bodice. The bird has a sapphire eye.”

  “That’s Mama’s pin!” Nora Ahern cried out, staring expectantly at Madame Karpova. “Mama, is it really you? I’m so sorry I couldn’t be with you when you—” She stopped, swallowing hard to fight away the tears that glistened in her eyes. “When you passed over.”

  Madame Karpova tilted her head, listening, it seemed, to a voice only she could hear. In the old priest’s voice, she said, “Yes, yes, I will tell her.” The clairvoyant’s closed eyes turned to Mrs. Ahern. “Your mother does not wish for you to be distressed, my dear. She is with your father, and wants you to know that they love you and will always be with you in spirit.”

  Darien Moss grunted loudly in bored disgust. “Oh, please, enough of this trite nonsense. A dead child and an old woman—how very creative. Even on a bad day, any two-bit circus charlatan could put on a better act than this. Is that the best your so-called Aztec priest can come up with, Madame Karpova? Let’s give old Tizoc a real challenge. Why doesn’t he tell us why Lieutenant Ahern here has been spending so much time with a lady—and I use that term loosely—who keeps a certain business on Sloan Street?”

  Once again, Ahern came out of his seat, his face an ugly mask of rage. “Why you bloody good-for-nothing bastard—”

  “Or can this so-called high priest of yours tell us why Senator Gaylord has consistently voted to levy taxes on small independent businesses in the city,” Moss went on, ignoring the policeman’s outburst, “while at the same time glad-handing those same businessmen and promising them low-interest loans? And can Tizoc tell us how,” he continued before Percival Gaylord could retort, “the good senator has suddenly found the funds to construct a multimillion-dollar country estate in the Palo Alto hills?”

  “How dare you, Moss!” the senator exclaimed, his right hand balled into a fist. “It’s just like you to crash in here and bandy about your lies and innuendos. Have you no shame, man? Has the newspaper world sunk so low that it must resort to fabrications and character assassination in order to sell copies?”

  Before Moss could come out with the explosive retort I saw forming on his lips, the Tizoc voice shouted, “Silence! Your childish bickering is driving away the spirits. They have—Ahhh—”

  There was a collective gasp as a trumpet suddenly appeared above the psychic’s turbaned head and began to float about the table. Although I had half-expected this rather mundane manifestation—after all, what psychic worthy of the name could not produce a trumpet or two some time during a trance?—I found it interesting to note that the instrument remained beyond anyone’s reach, unless someone were bold enough to stand on the table. My eyes strained through the dim light to locate a string or a rod attached to the horn, but I could find nothing. I was forced to admit that, whatever it was, the so-called manifestation had been cleverly camouflaged.

  As suddenly as it appeared, the trumpet vanished, and an unusual three-stringed instrument took its place, floating above our heads much as the trumpet had, well above everyone’s reach.

  I must concede that even I was momentarily startled when music suddenly began issuing from the interior of the instrument. As far as I could see—and believe me, I was doing my utmost to examine the apparatus through the flickering candlelight—there was no one remotely close to the stringed device as it drifted above the table. I did not recognize the tune it was playing, although I guessed it was a Russian folk song of some kind.

  “Now that’s a good trick.” Robert chuckled softly, eyeing the illusion with a dispassionate eye. “How do you suppose they manage it?”

  “I wonder if it plays ‘Home on the Range’?” Darien Moss asked mockingly, picking up on Robert’s comment. “Or perhaps ‘The Last Rose of Summer’? That would be appropriate, don’t you think, considering the sorry old bag of tricks this fraud is subjecting us to?”

  Nora Ahern gasped at this, causing her husband to glare at the reporter who was seated to his wife’s left, “That’s enough, Moss,” he hissed. “Either keep your damn comments to yourself or leave.”

  “It is a balalaika,” Theodora Reade said to no one in particular, her voice—as is common with the hard of hearing—loud enough to drown out even Lieutenant Ahern and Darien Moss. “It is from Russia. Madame Karpova produced a similar manifestation at the last sitting I attended.”

  A chorus of shushing noises caused Mrs. Reade to flutter in embarrassment. “Oh, dear, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disrupt the reading.”

  Even as she spoke, the balalaika seemed to vanish into thin air, much as the trumpet had disappeared before it. Madame Karpova stirred restlessly in her seat, head thrashing from side to side as if in considerable distress.

  “Another spirit wishes to come through,” the Aztec’s voice intoned. “An angry, disturbed spirit. Who are you?” Tizoc demanded. “Whom do you wish to address?”

  Outside, a particularly fierce gust of wind set the windows rattling, surprising us all and prompting several people to jerk nervously in their seats. The resulting draft caused the single candle on the table to sputter fitfully and go out, casting the room into total darkness.

  To my right, Robert whispered sarcastically, “Nice effect, don’t you think? A storm, a darkened room, an old Indian? This psychic of yours doesn’t miss a trick, I’ll give her—”

  His works halted abruptly as a wraithlike figure—all in white and faintly gleaming with an eerie light of its own—rose up from behind Madame Karpova to stand between the clairvoyant and Lieutenant Ahern to her left. Mrs. Gaylord and Mrs. Bramwell cried out and I heard Frank Ahern mutter, “What the hell?”

  Illuminated by this shimmering glow, I stared in fascination as the ghostly specter floated higher, until it towered over the medium’s still figure. Try as I might, I was unable to detect the exact shape hidden beneath what looked to be some kind of white netting. It was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman, much less how the thing had materialized.

  “Why have you come?” Madame Karpova asked in Tizoc’s voice.

  Silently, the figure raised unearthly arms and began gliding slightly farther to the medium’s left, until it hovered directly behind Lieutenant Ahern. It gave a low sigh and seemed about to speak, but when the room was lit by a brilliant flash of lightning. Several women at the table squealed in fright, and I heard the medium gasp as she was startled out of her trance. Then, as suddenly as the trumpet and balalaika had disappeared, the ethereal apparition was gone. Without the candle, or the strange glow that had accompanied the specter, the room was once again thrown into total darkness.

  Although I could no longer see her, I heard Madame Karpova moaning softly. “Someone, please,” she murmured, once again speaking in her own voice, “light the candle.”

  To either side of me, I felt Robert and Senator Gaylord rummaging through their pockets for a match. Across the table, Nicholas Bramwell beat them both to it. I heard the strike of a match and saw him lean forward. Once again, a pale, flickering light illuminated the table.

  There was a general murmur of relief, followed
by a few nervous giggles, when Mrs. Bramwell suddenly screamed. She was on her feet, one hand clutched to her heart, the other pointing across the table in horror. Mrs. Reade followed her gaze with bulging eyes, then with a shocked gasp, she silently crumbled into a dead faint. Luckily, Nicholas Bramwell was able to reach around his mother and catch the elderly widow before she struck her head on the floor. Next to Lieutenant Ahern, Nora Ahern’s chair crashed over as she, too, jumped up and backed hastily away from the table.

  All eyes followed Mrs. Bramwell’s pointing finger. To the left of Mrs. Ahern’s fallen chair, his thick body sprawled back in the seat, lay Darien Moss. The reporter’s head had dropped onto his chest, and for a moment it seemed as if he had merely fallen asleep. The stream of blood flowing from beneath the reporter’s chin onto his starched white shirt and brown woolen jacket, however, quickly shattered this illusion.

  Carefully, Lieutenant Ahern lifted Moss’s chin, revealing the victim’s grotesque and darkened face. The eyes, which had exuded such arrogance and contempt only moments before, now bulged from their sockets in a blank, unseeing stare. A trickle of blood dripped slowly from his nose, and below this his tongue protruded through swollen lips. A deep red gash ringed the dead man’s neck. I could just make out the glitter of wire embedded inside the wound. Evidently, this had been employed to snuff out the reporter’s life.

  On the floor behind Moss’s chair lay the balalaika. One of its three strings was missing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It took Lieutenant Ahern an hour to deal with the aftermath of our gruesome discovery. Theodora Reade had been carried into the saloon and settled on a sofa. Nora Ahern, who had recently nursed her own mother through a long illness, kindly offered to stay with the elderly woman until she recovered.