Read Online Madam Sibyl's First Client: A Victorian San Francisco Story by M. Louisa Locke - Free Book Online

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    This short story is based on characters from the full-length novels in Locke's Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, Maids of Misfortune , Uneasy Spirits , and Bloody Lessons .
     
    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are 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.
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    Annie Fuller peered into the mirror that hung over the washstand, trying to see if all signs of her own reddish blond hair were safely hidden away under the wig of black curls resting uncomfortably on her head. She’d found the mirror in the attic, but it was so mottled that she felt like she was looking at an image through muddy water. The fact that this small back room had only one lamp, sitting on the desk behind her, didn’t help matters. She walked over to the room’s one window, which faced the hedge separating her home from the neighbors, and opened the curtains. At nearly four in a February afternoon, little light seeped into the room. What did seep in was the cold. She quickly closed the curtains and shivered.
    Pulling a paisley cashmere shawl from the back of the desk chair, she draped it around her shoulders. When she returned to the mirror, she saw that the shawl’s intricate design of scarlet, gray, and gold stood out in sharp relief against her severe black silk. The shawl was one of several she found in a trunk up in the attic, probably brought back from India by the sea-faring grandfather she’d never known. Annie welcomed its warmth since the single layer of silk in the sleeves of her dress exposed her to every draft, and she didn’t want to waste money with a fire in the fireplace. Not when she was about to move through to the small adjoining parlor in a few minutes. Shivering again, she sighed. She was so tired of pinching pennies. But “needs must,” as her mother would say. Turning the San Francisco home she’d inherited from her aunt into a boarding house had eaten up all her capital, and running it was proving more expensive than she’d calculated. For now, she would have to make do with mottled mirrors and cold hearths.
    Annie tugged once more at the wig, which was made of human hair and cost her the outrageous sum of $15. An entire dress at the White House dry goods store cost less, if she had been willing to spend any money at all on clothing. No, as long as the black dresses the Fullers, her former in-laws, paid to have made for her four years ago held up, she was fine. The only reason they’d spent so much money on outfitting her widowhood was that she’d lived with them for the first six months after her husband John’s death. They knew the clothing on her back advertised their own wealth and supposed generosity towards the bereaved and penniless Annie. After they sent her off to live as an unpaid “companion” with a series of other Fuller relatives, their generosity ended. Once upon a time, she wore lovely silks of pastel hues or rich jewel tones that complemented her pale complexion and chestnut brown eyes. Once upon a time, before she’d lost her father, her fortune, and then her husband.
    Annie shook her head in disgust at her self-pity but stopped when she thought she felt the wig slip. This reminded her of one of the relatives she stayed with, the ancient but vain great-aunt Hortense, and she chuckled. The poor old dear insisted on wearing a partial wig of blond curls that were supposed to cluster over her ears in the fashion of the 1840s, but her white hair had gone so thin that the switch kept sliding sideways so that one mass of curls lay at the top of her head and the other under her chin.
    Picking up a hairpin, Annie added it to the others, tethering the wig more snuggly, just to make sure. She was nervous enough about the upcoming interview with her first client, without worrying that her wig was