Tilly Tracks a Thief, page 1
Tilly Tracks a Thief
A Victorian San Francisco Story
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 © 2020 by Mary Louisa Locke
All rights reserved.
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Cover design © 2020 Michelle Huffaker
All rights reserved.
Contents
Tilly Tracks a Thief
Other Works by Author
About the Author
Tilly Tracks a Thief
Wednesday afternoon, December 21, 1881
O’Farrell Street Boardinghouse
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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 bro
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.
A few minutes later, when she got down to the kitchen, Tilly dropped a brief curtsy to the boarder, Mrs. Stein, who was sitting in the kitchen rocker, and nodded hello to young Emmaline, who was on the floor playing with Prince. She knew Emmaline was waiting for the other two young boarders, Jamie Hewitt and Ian Hennessey, who were out selling the late edition of the Chronicle. They took Dandy, the small terrier, with them––said they sold papers faster when he was along.
Mrs. Stein, who with her husband occupied the large two-room suite on the second floor, often spent time in the kitchen in the afternoons when Mr. Stein was away from home. She was ever so grand a lady, and given her pleasant parlor upstairs, Tilly couldn’t understand why she would want to sit in the noisy, crowded kitchen.
Mrs. O’Rourke said it was ‘cause Mrs. Stein wasn’t born wealthy. Said she’d told her that when she was first married, Mr. Stein sold second-hand clothes on the streets of New York City and they couldn’t afford but a crowded tenement flat. Mrs. O’Rourke said this was why Mrs. Stein wasn’t stuck up like some ladies.
Tilly thought that being born poor and ending up rich would be a good reason a person wouldn’t want to be reminded of their beginnings. Then again, she guessed it might be like how much she felt at home when she visited her aunt and cousins, even though with eight people living under one roof, the O’Malleys’ flat was certainly crowded and noisy. Maybe the boardinghouse kitchen was the place that felt like home for Mrs. Stein.
On the other hand, the mistress, Mrs. Dawson, wasn’t starched up, either, and Tilly knew she had been born wealthy, with servants and all, in this very house. Kathleen told Tilly she believed that Mrs. Dawson was such an easy mistress to work for because she had spent some years after the death of her first husband being treated like a kind of servant by her mean in-laws. But Tilly thought, rich or poor, Mrs. Dawson had probably always been kind—always thinking how someone else might feel, not judging them. Like how she understood why Tilly felt a little nervous sleeping all alone when Kathleen was gone on her night off, or why it was so important to Tilly to be with the O’Malleys on Christmas morning.
With a mistress like Mrs. Dawson, a girl wanted to do her best, which is why she’d been worried she’d made a mistake about throwing out the Christmas ornaments. Maybe she could retrieve the tinsel? Grabbing the slop bucket, she slipped out the kitchen door, crossing the yard to exit the gate to the back alley. The thin rays of the winter sun did nothing to take away the chill in the air, and she regretted not slipping into her room first to get her shawl. But that might have raised Mrs. O’Rourke’s suspicions, since dumping the contents of the bucket shouldn’t take but a moment.
Being short, and the bin being tall, she had to tip it over slightly to get a good look inside. There were the expected bits of eggshells and other scraps from breakfast that had landed on a soiled cardboard box she had put in the bin after she had thrown in the tinsel and cracked ornaments. She carefully tipped up the edge of the cardboard, trying to keep the food from sliding off. Right away, she saw the broken pieces of the red and silver glass balls as well as the tangle of faded paper chains and some bits of white fluff that she’d tossed.
But no tinsel.
Not a single strand. The bent tin trumpet seemed to be missing as well. She carefully sifted through the garbage, down to the next layer, but only saw the remains from last night’s dinner.
How odd.
As she emptied the slop bucket and returned to the kitchen, she wondered if Kathleen had already gone through the bin and rescued the tinsel, not wanting to disappoint Miss Laura.
No one paid her any mind as she came back into the kitchen. She returned the bucket to its place by the sink and began to scrub her hands, making sure to get off the last bit of sticky stuff she’d gotten from picking up the needles under the tree in the parlor.
Getting a bunch of carrots from the pantry, she sat down next to Kathleen, who was regaling Mrs. O’Rourke with the story of how her friend, Mary Margaret, was all in a dither about a piece of jewelry that had gone missing.
“I told Mary Margaret not to get so upset, Mrs. Ashburton wasn’t going to sack her because some a necklace has gotten temporarily mislaid,” Kathleen said, carefully peeling a potato.
Young Emmaline, who went to the Widow Ashburton’s house a couple of times a week to read to her in the afternoons, looked up from the cat and said, “I’ve seen the necklace you’re talking about, a really hideous string of amber and turquoise that doesn’t go with a single one of her dresses. But Mrs. Ashburton is quite fond of it because her husband gave it to her for their first wedding anniversary.”
Tilly saw that Emmaline was fingering her own mother’s locket that she always wore around her neck.
She wished she had something of her mother’s as a keepsake, but when she left home, her da wouldn’t let her take anything but the clothes on her back. Mrs. Buckley, her aunt Maureen’s friend who accompanied Tilly on the long trip to America, had been horrified that she’d not even a change of underthings, much less a comb.
The kind woman took the time to make a swift run through a Queenstown store to buy Tilly what Mrs. Buckley called the bare necessities, before they boarded the steamship that brought them to New York City. She told Tilly she was using some of the emergency funds her aunt Maureen had given her, but she always suspected the woman had paid for everything she bought her out of her own money.
Mrs. Stein tut-tutted and said, “Oh dear, no wonder Mrs. Ashburton is upset. Does Mary Margaret have any idea what might have happened to the necklace?”
Kathleen said, “That’s the problem. Mrs. Ashburton isn’t sure when she last wore it. She thinks maybe it was Monday. Mary Margaret says the clasp has always been a little difficult, so it could have fallen off anywhere. Mrs. Ashburton’s had Mary Margaret crawling over every inch of the house, looking for it.”
Mrs. O’Rourke, who’d just brought out some rolls from the oven, chimed in, “In my experience, it will show up in the most unexpected place. My former mistress, Mrs. Waterstone, once lost a ring. I searched for it everywhere, and she found it three months later in the center of a ball of yarn. Heaven only knows how it got there.”
“That’s what I told Mary Margaret this morning,” Kathleen said. “But she’s got it in her head that the necklace might’ve snagged on the trimmings of the dress her mistress asked her to hang out to air on the line yesterday, so she’s blaming herself.”
Emmaline waved a feather, and Prince made a fool of himself as he twisted in the air, trying to get it. She said, “If the necklace did fall to the ground in the backyard, it shouldn’t be difficult to find; that gaudy turquoise would stand out against the grass under the clothesline.”
