Reggie, Suling, and Alice were on the ground coughing. Gemma sat on the grass, wheezing. But they were all out of the burning house. Everyone was safe.
All except for Madam Ning, lying beside Gemma.
A long smear of blood trailed from the front door and down the veranda steps, testament to Gemma’s painful journey to pull Madam Ning from the burning house. Still gasping for breath, Suling ran to kneel beside her auntie’s still form. “Auntie, Auntie,” she sobbed. The sky hung above, a pitiless red twilight that mirrored the flames leaping up behind them.
Alice came hurrying over. Reggie knelt beside Suling. Madam Ning’s dark eyes stared out from her pale face. Her hair, loosened from its chignon, fanned around her head. Her elegant green jacket was soaked in blood and one hand still gripped the strap of the leather valise.
Suling closed her hand over Madam Ning’s. “We’ll get you to a hospital, Auntie!” She rubbed Madam Ning’s wrists. “Miss Eastwood! I can’t feel a pulse!”
“She’s dead, my dear,” Alice said gently. “He shot her through the chest. Her heart.” She closed the dead woman’s eyes.
Suling held Madam Ning’s hand up to her cheek. “There’s no one else,” she cried, rocking back and forth. “No one else who remembers.” Madam Ning was the last remaining link to her parents. There was no one else who carried intimate memories of her mother from her first days in San Francisco to her last. There was no one else who would give blunt and unvarnished advice that sprang from a caring heart. It seemed impossible that anyone so vigorous and forceful could be gone, drained of life.
“What’s going on here?” a man’s voice called out. “Is someone hurt?” Tall and burly, Sergeant Clarkson strode across the lawn toward the small circle of women. When he saw Madam Ning’s body, a low cry escaped his lips.
“Nina? What’s happened?” He dropped to his knees and felt for Madam Ning’s pulse, lifted an eyelid. Finally he put an ear to her chest. Clarkson rose to his knees, still looking down at the lifeless face, and made the sign of the cross. His features were wooden, only the heaving of his shoulders betraying any emotion. After a few minutes he turned to the women.
“What happened? Who shot her? Looters?”
Suling was still crying, more quietly now, her face buried against Reggie’s neck. It was Gemma who spoke up. “Henry Thornton shot her.”
Clarkson’s astonishment broke through the wooden mask. “Thornton? The Henry Thornton?”
“We saw him do it,” Reggie said. “He shot her and locked all four of us in the conservatory, then he set the house on fire. He meant to kill us.”
From inside the octagon house, timbers crashed and flames shot out from another part of the roof. Alice’s crisp voice broke through the roar of the fire. “Sergeant, we can tell you more but right now we need to get away from this house. Are there any fire trucks nearby?”
Recalled to duty, Clarkson shook his head. “It’s no use even if there were, ma’am. The water mains broke during the earthquake. Best we can hope is that the wind doesn’t push the flames any farther and the fire burns itself out.” He took off his coat and covered up Madam Ning, and for a moment his shoulders heaved again.
Then he stood up. “Ladies, have you somewhere safe to go?”
“No, no!” Suling cried. “We can’t just leave her here!”
“I know Madam Ning was like an aunt to you, I’m very sorry for your loss.” Clarkson knelt beside Suling. “Miss Feng, I wish I could promise that your auntie will get a proper burial. But I can’t, even though I want it as much as you do. The city is in crisis and fires are spreading. Our first duty is to the living. Come with me, come with your friends.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, too,” Suling said after a moment’s pause. She wasn’t the only one who needed comfort. “She cared about you, Mr. Clarkson. I don’t think she wanted to admit it, but she did.”
“No, she wasn’t one to get sentimental,” he said. A small smile crossed his face. “And right now she’d be scolding us to stop wasting time and start walking to safety.”
They made slow progress, Alice with her blue-and-white pot leading the way, Clarkson keeping pace, Gemma between them holding tightly to Toscanini’s cage. Suling walked as though in a dream, clutching Madam Ning’s handbag, the small leather valise slung across her chest, Reggie’s hand holding her arm. Clarkson listened while Reggie and Gemma poured out the tale of Henry Thornton’s misdeeds. By the time they reached the Taylor Street boardinghouse, the sergeant was shaking his head in fury and frustration.
“So Thornton was behind Detective Langford’s disappearance,” he said. “Murdered. And you witnessed it, Miss Reynolds. That’s news for the chief of police. The Pinkertons have been badgering him since Langford vanished. A Chinaman named Danny, eh?”
“And the doorman, Desmond,” Reggie reminded him. “Big, Irish, squashed nose. But it was Thornton who stabbed Langford and had me committed. I would’ve rotted away in a cell if Suling and Gemma hadn’t figured out what he’d done.”
“Thank you, ladies,” Clarkson said. “I’m sorry you suffered so much at the hands of that devil, but you’ve done more than the police or the Pinkertons to solve the mystery of Langford’s disappearance, not to mention exposing Thornton’s criminal past.” He pulled a pencil and small notebook from his coat pocket. “Now, I’ve never actually met this devil Thornton,” Clarkson said. “Can I get a description? And how can I get in touch with you all after we’ve arrested him? We’ll need you all to testify . . .”
After Clarkson left, they trooped inside the boardinghouse. Mrs. Browning’s tenants milled about in varying stages of panic. Mrs. Browning herself was on a settee in the drawing room, sobbing into a dinner napkin. One tenant had stationed himself in the foyer and was shouting out instructions, that they had to leave and leave now, that they should try Golden Gate Park, where the army was setting up a camp for refugees, or find open spaces such as Portsmouth Square, away from the reach of falling buildings. In the dining room, two women were exchanging information, stories of narrow escapes and which landmark buildings had burned down. A young couple had already packed and were ready to leave, only coming to the dining room to grab some food.
The four women pushed their way up the stairs past a man hurrying down with a wicker trunk and a duffel bag. Gemma went into her room to “get Toscanini settled” and the rest of them followed Alice upstairs to her room, where she set down the Queen of the Night plant on a small table by a window.
Suling sank onto the settee. Whatever reserve of strength and will she had drawn from all day, Madam Ning’s death had drained it dry.
“I think you need a wash and some proper clothes, Reggie,” Alice said as Suling sat frozen. “We’ve time for that.”
She gave Reggie a damp tea towel to wipe the worst of the grime and soot from her hands and face. After a brief discussion, Reggie put on a pair of Alice’s denim trouser skirts and a linen shirt, slipped on a field jacket with roomy pockets. Then Reggie knelt beside Suling with a washbasin and tenderly rubbed a sponge over her face, neck, and hands.
“We’ll take a proper bath as soon as we can,” she whispered to Suling. “Feeling better now?”
Suling managed a weak smile in reply. Yes, she was better. Despite all that had happened, despite losing Madam Ning, she was with Reggie. Suling reached inside her shirt and pulled out the red silk cord. Wordlessly, she held up the ring to show Reggie.
“I have something for you,” Reggie said and reached down beside her. She held up the laundry bag. “Look inside.”
Suling untied the rope and opened the bag. The blue dragon robe. She gasped. “This was why you went back upstairs?”
“It was in Gemma’s room,” Reggie said, “and she told me how much work you’d put into repairing it. It was too beautiful to leave behind and I figured you’d earned it.”
“It won’t be easy getting to Golden Gate Park,” Gemma said, coming in, hair damp, face clean, “but if we have to, we can walk.”
Alice glanced at the dining table, stacked with specimens. “Not good enough. I’ll rent a horse cart or wheelbarrow. Something, anything. We did not save these just to leave them behind.”
Suling sat up. “I’m going to Oakland. I must find Auntie’s girls and tell them she’s gone. I need to make sure they’re all right.” She indicated the valise. “Her money is now theirs.” Then to Reggie, “Will you come with me?”
Reggie gave her a look. Did she even need to ask?
Then they heard Gemma gasp, a sharp, shocked sound. She was at the east-facing window. They joined her there to look. “Oh dear lord,” said Alice.
Outside, the darkening skies made the inferno consuming San Francisco seem brighter and closer, more terrifying, each new fire adding its orange light to the horizon. On the street, horse carts and automobiles rattled down the hill loaded with boxes of belongings, bits of furniture, children and pets. In the distance sirens blared, and then a blast of gunpowder shook the air and another fire flowered red and gold on the skyline.
Silently, the four women watched San Francisco burn. Suling sobbed quietly. This was her city, her home. Alice dabbed her eyes with a sleeve.
It was Gemma who first caught the scent. Delicate, soft, exotic. She turned around and a moment later so did Alice. The scientist gasped.
The Queen of the Night flower was opening.
Alice rushed to the side table, lit an oil lamp, and placed it beside the blue-and-white pot. “Like jasmine,” she murmured, “but warmer and sweeter. More potent and yet more delicate.” She sighed happily, flipped open a notebook, and began scribbling. “White central petals open first, releasing more fragrance with each passing second . . .”
The Queen of the Night flower dangled from its stem, white rounded petals unfurling slowly, a white so pure it glowed like a small moon in the lamplit room, the blossom surrounded by a ruff of long, narrow petals. Its sweet scent permeated the attic and attracted a moth flying through the open window. Alice finally stopped scribbling, and the four women simply gathered around the table and gazed in wonder. For a brief time they forgot about the burning city, forgot the horrors they had endured. Stopped thinking about the hardships yet to come.
Such beauty and grace amid so much destruction. Such balm for their tired souls.