“Thanksgiving Day. The stores were, as a general rule, closed.”––San Francisco Chronicle November 26, 1880
Thursday afternoon, November 25, 1880
Thanksgiving Day
“Who do you think I should ask to do the carving if Nate doesn’t make it back in time?” Annie looked down the hallway to the front door, as if she could mentally force her husband to appear at the doorstep. She stood next to Kathleen, watching Tilly try to find space on the dining room sideboard for a dish of apple and pear sweet-pickles. Not an easy task given the bowls of cranberry sauce, currant jelly, stewed peaches, and plates of cold corned beef, lobster salad, and celery cream slaw already crowding its surface.
“Surely the master will make it. I won’t be ringing the bell to call everyone to eat for at least fifteen more minutes.” Kathleen straightened the starched cap she was wearing for the occasion.
They’d opened up the pocket doors between the dining room and the formal front parlor so they could add a second table to fit all fourteen people comfortably, with no banging of elbows or knocking over of glasses. The cut-glass crystal and dark blue Wedgwood china she’d inherited with the house looked beautiful against the soft ivory of the linen tablecloths. Tilly spent much of yesterday polishing all the silver to a high gleam. There were even small place cards that Nate’s sister, Laura, had made at the printers where she worked part time, since there would be guests intermingled between the regular boarders. Nate was supposed to sit at one end…where the turkey would be placed. But if someone else had to carve, should she rearrange the place cards?
She looked down the hallway again and said, “He did promise faithfully he would be here, but I didn’t even get a chance to ask him yesterday if he’d ever carved before. Maybe he hasn’t…then it would be actually kinder to ask someone else.”
Truth be told, none of the other men at the table were sure bets when it came to carving experience. In the two years the bachelor, David Chapman, had boarded with her, he’d always demurred when asked to carve. Nate’s bachelor uncle had spent his whole adult life living in boarding houses, so she doubted he’d had many chances to practice this skill. There was Laura’s one male guest, Seth Timmons, who attended university with her. Annie thought about his varied career, fighting in the Union army when he’d been just a boy, then traveling around the west as a cowboy, eventually getting a teaching certificate, and now his part-time work running a printing press. None of these jobs, as far as she knew, meant he’d had any experience carving thin slices of dark and white meat.
She said, “Do you suppose I should ask Mitchell, Nate’s friend from his old boarding house? He is a medical student…so theoretically he should have some skill with a knife.”
“Oh ma’am, you aren’t serious?”
“No, Kathleen,” she laughed “But I’m getting desperate. Why does it have to be a man anyway? The person who really should do it is Beatrice. She has the most experience.”
“Oh goodness…no. She wouldn’t think it proper.”
Kathleen was right. Beatrice had very strong ideas about showing up “above stairs,” as she called it. Downstairs in her kitchen, however, she ruled the roost. And in getting ready for this Thanksgiving meal, she’d been acting like a general mapping out a campaign. This morning, Annie overheard her giving Kathleen and Tilly their marching orders. Once the bell for dinner was rung, Kathleen was to usher all the guests to their places, where Tilly would ask what they would like to drink and start filling their glasses with water or cider. Once everyone was seated, Kathleen would go downstairs and start bringing up the hot dishes: the roast turkey, baked ham, mashed potatoes and boiled onions, pork and beans, and macaroni and cheese. Meanwhile, Tilly would start passing the serving dishes from the sideboard.
As people’s plates began to empty, Tilly was supposed to take the serving dishes down to the kitchen and begin to bring up the desserts, which consisted of mincemeat and pumpkin pies, hand-cranked vanilla ice cream, boiled Indian pudding, pound cake, almond layer cake, cherry preserves, grapes, raisins and nuts. She would put these on the sideboard, until Annie signaled that it was time to remove the dinner plates. Then it would be time for Kathleen to serve the dessert along with tea and coffee, while Tilly would again make the multiple trips up and down the back stairs with the empty dinner dishes.
And, under Beatrice’s brisk supervision, all would go like clockwork…if Nate would just show up.
Annie sighed. “You said Biddy will be along soon? It’s so nice of her to offer to help with the washing up…but you make sure she will take some compensation from me.”
“Oh I will. I know the O’Malleys can use every penny. She’s glad to come help out. Gives her a good excuse to miss the family gathering over at her least favorite aunt’s house. She says the uncles always end up drunk and fighting and the aunts have tiffs over whose pie is best.”
“And Patrick?”
“I haven’t seen him since last Thursday…since he started working extra hours for the Silver Strike. But he said he’d try to come by this afternoon. His sergeant has scheduled multiple short shifts for everyone so they get a chance to eat a bit of Thanksgiving dinner. But then he’s off to do a shift at the store.”
Annie heard a note of censure in Kathleen’s voice. She’d have to ask her what was bothering the young maid. She hoped it wasn’t jealousy over the fact that he was getting to participate in Annie’s investigation while Kathleen was left on the sidelines. She knew how much the young woman had enjoyed the role she’d played last fall when she helped Annie look into the trance medium. Or was it just missing the little bit of time she did get to spend with her beau?
If so, Annie certainly understood the feeling. Nate had not come home last night until after midnight…and then had gotten up before she was even awake, just leaving her a note promising to be back before one today. She looked across at the clock on the fireplace mantel and saw it was ten to one. She sighed and said to Kathleen, “Best nip downstairs and see if Beatrice has any last orders before you ring the dinner bell. Maybe she has an idea of who I should ask to carve…”
She whirled around at the sound of the front door latch disengaging. Running down the hallway, she greeted her husband as he came through the door, bringing in the smell of damp air and wood smoke in his wake.
“I am so sorry, love. I didn’t mean to cut it this close,” he said, shrugging off his coat and hanging it and his top hat on the now very crowded hall stand. “Looks like I made it in time, though.”
She put her hands to his red cheeks and said, “You look frozen.” Noticing the lightness in his step and smile, she said, “Oh, Nate. You’ve found something to use against O’Grady, haven’t you?”
“Yes I have. Knudson is going to rue the day he decided to bribe a degenerate like Mrs. Inglenook’s half-brother to besmirch a good woman’s name. But I will tell you all about it later. Do I have time to freshen up?”
“Yes, Kathleen will ring the bell in about five minutes. But Nate…I have something important I need to ask you.”
“What?” Nate’s smile disappeared.
“Can you carve a turkey?”
“Kathleen, dear, you must tell Mrs. O’Rourke how much we have enjoyed the feast she prepared for us,” Miss Minnie said, delicately blotting her lips with her napkin. “You know, back in Natchez where Miss Millicent and I grew up, celebrating Thanksgiving was a very daring thing to do. Too much a Yankee holiday, you see, with turkeys and Puritans and all. Not at all the thing. But my mother was a devoted reader of Mrs. Hale’s Godey’s Lady’s Book, and Mrs. Hale was very committed to turning the celebration of our country’s founding into a national holiday. My, don’t you remember, Millicent, how Dr. Hodgekiss nearly had apoplexy the year Mother invited him to dinner and expected him to recite the prayer she’d copied out of the magazine? Sputtered on about it being abolitionist claptrap…well, you might imagine that feelings were running high…that was in 1851, wasn’t it? But even on the eve of her death, Mother wouldn’t stand for anyone saying anything negative about our national heritage…too proud of her ancestors who’d fought in the Revolution.”
Annie looked at the two elderly dressmakers with affection. They were dressed in their best black silks, with their white hair pulled back and up into their white lace caps in a fashion at least thirty years out of date. They were both quite thin and bird-like in their physique, and she worried that some morning Tilly would come running to say they had just collapsed in a heap of bones. Yet their appetites weren’t bird-like at all. Today, Miss Minnie and her sister had tucked away more than their fair share of the enormous amount of food Beatrice had prepared. Personally, Annie didn’t think she could eat again for a week.
“And Mr. Dawson, I want to thank you for the fine way you carved that noble bird,” Miss Minnie continued. “Such a delicate art. My father was a master, and he taught my older brother to follow in his footsteps. Such a manly skill. But sadly, my younger brother Jasper was never interested in learning. Then no one could have guessed that he would become the head of the family in 1840 when the Great Tornado hit the town. You know, most of those killed were, like my father and older brother, steamboat operators. The funnel just tore right down the Mississippi, flipping… Oh, Millicent, you’re right, not at all the proper conversation for this celebration.” Miss Minnie smiled sadly and took a sip of water.
“Miss Minnie, thank you for your compliment,” Nate spoke up hastily. “But I’m afraid most of the congratulations should go to Mrs. O’Rourke for the roasting of the bird. The meat practically fell off the bones.”
Annie smiled warmly at her husband. How sweet he was to step in and rescue Miss Minnie. She suspected most of the guests had tuned her out some time ago, glad to have someone else maintain the conversation as they ate the last bits of their desserts. And he really had done an admirable job of dividing up the massive bird so everyone got at least two slices of their preferences between light and dark. Evidently, like Miss Minnie’s brother, he’d been well instructed by his father in this “manly art.”
“Mr. Dawson, did you ever hunt wild turkeys?” Jamie piped up.
“When I was a boy your age, back in Ohio. Quite crafty birds they can be. But I assume this bird was probably raised on one of our California farms. Good thing…since then we didn’t have to worry about getting buckshot mixed up in our stuffing.” Nate smiled warmly at the boy, and Annie thought for the thousandth time what a good father he would be, when…
“Mr. Dawson, sir,” whispered little Tilly, who’d come up behind Nate as he was speaking. “If you please, you’re needed in the hall. He said to say it were important.”
Hearing the distress in the girl’s voice, Annie got up and walked swiftly down the table toward Nate, wondering what had possibly happened to require his presence. Something about his divorce case? When she got to the end of the room, she saw Patrick McGee standing in the hallway, turning his helmet around and around in his hands. With a strong sense of deja vu, she followed Nate out of the room, hearing him say, “McGee, what is it? What’s happened?”
“Oh Mr. Dawson, ma’am. It’s the Silver Strike, sir. That dressmaker, Mrs. Fournier, she’s dead, and I think it might be murder.”