Double Jeopardy

OneSacramento Theater, August 1869 Sebastian Russell tugged at his unfamiliar starched collar and cast a quick sidelong glance at the woman seated next to him in the velvet-curtained balcony box. Huldah Wilmington’s big-boned frame rose out of a tidal wave of frothy skirt, her blunt, short-necked face emerging from a frilly neckline in dazzling turquoise, a house sparrow in parrot’s plumage. Despite his discomfort, Seb’s blood pressure spiked with secret amusement as he turned away from Huldah to peer down at her daughter Isabella, who was commanding center stage in a Parisian melodrama that had taken London and New York by storm and was now enjoying a star turn in California’s capital city. The contrast in demeanor between the widowed older mother and her charismatic daughter couldn’t be more pronounced, and Huldah clearly shifted between contradictory responses, alternately glowing with pride at Isabella’s obvious talent and worrying about the propriety of the girl’s determined dream to make her name on the stage. The Corsican Brothers, adapted from an Alexandre Dumas tale, was Isabella’s first big break, and Sebastian had been pressured into evening dress to accompany Huldah and family friends Alycia and Basil Stockton to see it. Before the curtain rose on the first act, Huldah had eagerly told Seb that “Queen Victoria saw it four times when it was on at London’s Princess Theater,” as if the monarch’s approval of the show when it was first staged a decade ago made it perfectly respectable for her precious Isabella now. He sighed, and the enveloping dark warmth of the full house pressed down on him. If only he could quietly and unobtrusively melt into the darkness with its lingering chocolate aroma from half-time treats. Disappear off the face of the earth, never to again have to start awake with midnight terrors or to drag his leaden feet from bed to floor every morning. He glanced at Huldah once more, anxious that she might read his thoughts, but he needn’t have worried. Her muddy eyes were fixed on Isabella’s graceful form, her protruding lower lip dropped open in rapt attention; like most of the audience, she was captivated by the action on stage. The story unfolding was of twin brothers with a psychic link and a carbine-touting mother; a tale of death, murderous duels and chivalrous revenge, and Sebastian could hardly bear to sit still and watch it. Four years of brutal Civil War fighting had convinced him nothing honorable came from the barrel of a gun; and the one brother’s claim that if his twin was dead he’d know it because his ghost would visit made him itch as though he had fallen in poison ivy. He thought of Robert, the one and only friend he made when he first arrived in Boston from Hong Kong as a twelve-year-old orphan. If anyone would communicate from beyond the dead it would have been Robert, and no, he hadn’t heard a peep. It was all nonsense. For the thousandth time he asked himself, as he had every day since General Robert E Lee surrendered, how can a man keep going when all hope that life — or God — is good has gone? He kept up a brave face with his brothers, rebuffed any attempt they made to talk about the war because if you hadn’t been there you couldn’t understand — and tried to act as if everything was going just fine. Peace had been made, and he had survived with both arms and legs intact. For that miracle he was eternally grateful. But he had imagined when the barbarity of war was over that his life would return to some kind of ‘normal’, and it was taking him a long time to understand there was no going back. The innocent 22-year-old who had joined up with best buddy and fellow engineer Robert Kingsley seven years ago had fled the field and would never return. Sebastian looked across the narrow aisle to where the ferociously successful merchant Basil Stockton sat, his chunky work-calloused hand affectionately entwined in his wife Alycia’s long, elegant fingers. Basil’s broad shoulders and square frame stretched his evening suit in all the wrong places; his tanned skin and the dark brown hair that frizzed around his ears proclaimed him a man who preferred moleskins to formal suits. His wife, slightly leaning into her husband’s protective bulk, was immaculate in a beautifully tailored cream suit marked with a thin red stripe, her white-gold chignon tucked low on her neck, her drawn-back hair framing her perfectly calculated beauty. As a couple, they personified the old adage that opposites attract. Seb knew that behind Alycia’s cool, assessing exterior lay a compassionate, generous heart. And as unlikely as their union might seem to outsiders, he had sensed in the few months that he’d been working for Basil that they were bound by a deep love that enabled them to face trouble head on. Basil was resolute, wily, unaffected by how much money he or others had, and he seemed more than willing — insistent, even — that Sebastian take over scoping for new business opportunities for him when the couple returned to their main operation on the East Coast in a few days’ time. His training as an engineer — completed just before he’d joined up — gave him perfect credentials for assessing the coming industrial boom and advising Basil on the myriad of big projects — whether it be irrigation, mines or railways — that were under way in the Golden State. His reverie was interrupted by Basil coughing, and he came back to the present with a jolt. The mood in the gallery had subtly changed while he’d been wool-gathering. An intense silence had invaded the house; the crowd had been attentive before, but now Basil and Alycia were hanging on the edge of their seats, gazing down in fixed anticipation. They must be coming up to the scene which accounted for the play’s remarkable popularity — the one when the ghost appears and begs his brother to avenge his death. He knew it was only a stage play, but bilious acid rose in his throat, and he was vaguely aware he was gripping the arms of his chair. The engineer in him knew all about the ‘glide trap’, the clever bit of stage machinery which gave such a convincing, eerie impression, but even he was surprised at the apparition’s dramatic effect. As the audience strained forward, a ghostly male head appeared, gradually rising to full body height, increasing in stature as he neared his shocked twin. Seb felt a slight current of air behind him and glanced back to see the door to the box open and a dark-suited man slide into the row behind them. His movements were calm and studied, and for a moment Seb wondered if he was one of the theater attendants preparing to show them out after the performance. On stage the bereaved brother was howling with rage, and an involuntary gasp — was it shock, or sympathy? — rose in one rolling wave from the stalls and echoed around the circle. There was a sharp movement to Sebastian’s left, the loud report of a pistol discharging, and Alycia slumped forward. An iciness invaded his core at the percussion. Acrid, sour smoke hit his nostrils, and he reared up in his seat. His legs, which moments before had felt like jelly, propelled him out of his seat. A red, bloody hole had torn open Alycia’s immaculate cream stripes. Beside him, Huldah emitted a keening shrill of terror; across the aisle Basil reached forward to catch his wife’s slumping body. He was upright, turning as if in slow motion, towards the shadowy form that stood transfixed, pistol still raised, observing his handiwork. The iron smell of blood and cordite, his ringing ears, the nervous sickness in his gut — he was back there on the battlefield, hopelessly trying to stanch Robert’s wound as the peculiar sizzling sound of musket Minié balls fizzed overhead. He could barely see. His eyes were streaming, and the box was dark, but his intention was deadly. This time the killer would not escape. He lunged forward and wrenched the man’s arm so forcefully he shrieked and the gun clattered to the floor. Then pandemonium erupted in the auditorium as the gaslights came up and people began making a panicked dash for the exits. Others stood craning their heads, trying to see what was happening. Underneath the uproar Seb was aware of Basil’s deep base voice. “Alycia, Alycia! Don’t die on me, my sweet lady. Not now. Don’t die on me now.” The big man was very gently rocking his wife in his arms. Her head was tilted back, her profile like marble, and he was peppering her forehead with tender kisses as she bled into his encircling embrace.