The Cliff House Strangler by Shirley Tallman

was dragged to see this charlatan by a gullible wife. As was Senator Gaylord, I dare say.”
    Henrietta sniffed. “I regret having to say this, but Maurilla Gaylord has always been far too whimsical for her own good. Now she may have irreparably damaged her husband’s political future. The Cliff House is acquiring a most unseemly reputation. I can’t imagine what she was thinking, forcing that unfortunate man to escort her to such a place.”
    “I expect she is so anguished over the death of her little girl that politics did not enter her mind,” said Celia, herself the mother of two small children and expecting a third child in less than two months. Of late, she’d fairly glowed with happy expectation. “Regardless of my personal feelings about clairvoyants and communicating with the dead,” she went on, “I cannot help but pity the poor woman.”
    “As do we all,” said Mama, perhaps remembering the death of her first daughter, my elder sister, Kat, when the child was but five years old.
    “You say Mrs. Bramwell was there with her son,” Papa said, passing me a basket of freshly baked bread. “If I’m not mistaken, Nicholas Bramwell recently passed the California Bar examination and has obtained a position as associate attorney at Riley and Taft.” He referred, of course, to one of the more prominent law firms in the city.
    “He has political aspirations,” Samuel put in as the now-empty oyster plate was removed from the table. “Or rather, his mother does. His older brother is being groomed to take over their father’s construction business, which leaves Nicholas free to pursue a seat in the senate.”
    Frederick regarded his younger brother. “And just how do you happen to know so much about Nicholas Bramwell?”
    “We belong to the same club,” Samuel replied, spearing a piece of roast chicken from the platter that had replaced the oysters. “I might add that Nicholas is very popular at the Bohemian Club, considering he’s been a member for less than a year. I’d say he possesses the intelligence and personality necessary to get himself elected to public office.”
    It was clear that Frederick did not find this a particularly heartening thought. In the years to come, Nicholas Bramwell might well become his political rival. As I held no false illusions about Frederick’s governing abilities, I found this prospect rather comforting. Frankly, it surprised me that California had thus far survived my brother’s first year in the state senate. Still, I saw no reason to press our luck by reelecting my brother to a second term.
    “It surprises me that no one at that séance saw or heard anything,” Papa said speculatively, getting back to Moss’s murder. “Seems to me it would be damn hard to kill a man with eleven other people in the room.”
    “It’s all rather horrible, isn’t it?” Celia put in with a little shudder. “Who could have wanted to see the poor man dead in the first place?”
    Papa gave a little chuckle, which was quickly dashed by a disapproving look from Mama. “I’m afraid, my dear, that Darien Moss was not a very nice man,” he said, very nearly parroting the words Nora Ahern had used to describe the reporter. “I’m sure he has made a great many enemies through that tell-all column of his.”
    “Perhaps,” said Charles, who, as a physician, tended to measure death in medical terms. “But to hate him enough to commit murder?It’s sad enough when a man his age passes away of natural causes. But to die like that. It seems so unnecessary—and tragic.
    Frederick was studying me, a questioning look on his broad face. “I would like to know what you were doing at that séance in the first place, Sarah. I’ve never known you to put much stock in the supernatural.”
    Samuel’s foot nudged mine beneath the table, but I required no reminder to keep his name out of this affair. So far, I was the only member of our family who was aware of his secret profession as a