Louisa and the Crystal Gazer (8 page)

“Damn, damn, damn!” exclaimed Suzie Dear. I hoped, for the eternal life of Mrs. Percy, that her maid wasn’t correct.

“Louy, what is it?” called Lizzie from where she still stood next to Sylvia, in the hall.

“Stay there,” I called back. “Do not come in here.”

Of course, I had forgotten what it is like to be a younger sister always receiving commands from an elder. Lizzie was in the room before I finished my sentence.

“Oh! What a strange odor!” Then she saw Mrs. Percy. Her long-fingered, artistic hands shot to her face in horror. I feared that she, like Mrs. Deeds, might swoon, but no, Marmee steeled her daughters better, and Lizzie regained her composure. Instead, Sylvia swooned.

“Suzie, more water and smelling salts,” I said somewhat impatiently. But Suzie Dear had disappeared.

“Miss Dear!” I shouted, running into the hall. The maid was nowhere to be seen, and the front door, which had just been opened, fell shut with a groan.

I
DO NOT
mean this harshly, understanding reader, but I experienced a kind of exasperation with poor Mrs. Percy, that she had not found the means to resist death. She had become an interesting character study, and now here she was, dead, and only just recently.

“Another one,” said young Constable Cobban, bending over to check the wrist of the prone Mrs. Percy for a pulse, which we all knew he would not find. “Corpses tend to accumulate in your immediate vicinity, Miss Alcott.”

Constable Cobban of the new Boston Watch and Police, whom we had notified immediately after Suzie Dear’s departure, was, as you may have suspected from that above comment, no stranger to me. We had met the winter before, during the investigation of another untimely death.

“People will die,” spoke up Sylvia in my defense.

Constable Cobban grinned. He was a young man with orangish red hair, freckles, and a deplorable taste in suits,
which tended to be store-made from bolts of large plaid or bold-striped stuff. He tweaked the pillow under Mrs. Percy’s head as if trying to awaken her, but she remained unmoving, growing colder each moment. Next he examined an empty bottle of gin, the glass fallen on the floor under her hand.

“What’s this?” he said, his voice deepening with curiosity. He had turned to face a little table next to the chaise longue upon which a box of lucifers rested, and next to them a small pot of dark paste.

“Opium,” he confirmed, his mouth puckering from the bitterness of the taste, as he had stuck the tip of his little finger into that intriguing pot.

“That seems to complete the explanation of how she came to be dead in a locked room, doesn’t it?” I said. “She used the drug too freely.”

“Exactly,” said Cobban, smiling at me once again. “Opium can be a tricky business, especially if a weak heart is involved. Someday I imagine they will declare its use illegal and protect the citizenry.”

“Weak heart?” I asked.

“Look at her lips, her fingernails, the black shadows under her eyes. Our mutual friend, Dr. Roder, would say that not even the changes caused by death would erase the signs of a weak heart in life.”

“You have continued a relationship with Dr. Roder?” I asked, interested. The doctor had helped us last winter, when my friend Dot was murdered.

Cobban blushed as only a red-haired man can, turning almost purple with sudden embarrassment. “I visit his dissecting theater and lectures, yes.”

“Have you decided to train as a physician?” This young man never ceased to surprise me.

“No. At least, not yet. But I think a knowledge of the body would assist my work in the Boston Watch and Police.” He walked once more around the chaise where lay the body of Mrs. Percy, touching this, peering at that.

“It seems a straightforward enough situation,” he said after several more minutes. “But where is the pipe? I wonder.”

“Pipe?” asked Mr. Phips.

“Mrs. Percy’s opium pipe. I don’t see it,” said Constable Cobban.

“It must be here somewhere,” said Mr. Phips. “Shall I look for it?”

“No. I’ll have one of my men examine the room. For now, shall we go back to the waiting room, and the others? A few more questions and we can all go home.”

Seated once again in Mrs. Percy’s waiting room, I watched silently as Mr. Barnum tended to the fire and Lizzie served tea. Mrs. Deeds’s teeth were chattering from horror as well as the cold, Mr. Phips had descended into a stony silence, and Mr. Barnum poked at the fire too energetically, sending bursts of sparks into the room and all over Mrs. Percy’s new carpet. The door to Mrs. Percy’s preparation room had been shut once again.

“Tell me one more time, please, why you were all here waiting?” Cobban demanded, wetting his pencil on his tongue and preparing to write in a little notebook. He was enjoying this; indeed, when I had first admitted I was there to attend a séance, his red eyebrows had shot all the way up his forehead to his hairline. Miss Alcott, sensible, frugal, daughter-of-a-philosopher Miss Alcott. Attending séances!

“You already know,” I said patiently.

“Sé-ance,” repeated Cobban, writing slowly. His grin widened.

“Obviously you have had no experience with the spiritual world or you would not be quite so lighthearted,” muttered Sylvia.

“I know spirits as well as the next fellow. Judging from the smell in there, Mrs. Percy was no stranger to spirits either—at least not the kind that can be poured,” said Cobban.

“Oh!” Sylvia stamped her foot. Constable Cobban gave her a long, cool glance and then returned to his notes.

“Young man, I’ve business to attend to,” protested Mr. Phips, rising. “We’ve told you everything there is to tell.”

“Please return to your chair,” Cobban said in the same tone of voice with which I have instructed schoolchildren to sit and open their books.

Mr. Phips sat back down.

We had gone over the events of the afternoon several times, each time discovering some minutes later that Cobban wished us to tell them one more time. And each time another detail had been recalled. Cobban, despite that foolish grin and mocking manner, was a young man of fine intelligence and cunning.

“You say that when Miss Amelia Snodgrass walked by, she was wearing the exact same costume as she had worn the week before?” Cobban addressed this question to Mrs. Deeds, who had watched from the window.

“Exact.” She sniffed. Mr. Deeds, sitting next to her on the settee, patted her arm.

“Now, the ladies present must inform me, for I am out of my depth here. But do the fair sex like to repeat their wardrobes so exactly?” He addressed this question to Sylvia.

“Usually not, if they can afford variety,” said my friend, frowning. “She did seem to wear it more as a kind of livery or uniform, I thought.”

Mr. Barnum poked the fire again. “Too much costume,” he said. “That’s what I think.”

“Too much costume?” repeated Cobban, turning his attention to the showman.

“Yes. Mrs. Percy, for instance. Dressed up like a Gypsy, with veils and sequins and heavy bracelets. Totally unnecessary. If you’re going to humbug a crowd you don’t announce it with a flashy costume. Blend in; that’s the key. And that vanished maid of hers, Suzie Dear. Dressed like an opera dancer. Sets the wrong tone for a sober enterprise.”

Cobban was writing furiously, his plaid sleeves a throbbing red in the gaslight.

Mr. Phips cleared his throat. “I did notice something else, I just now recalled,” he said. “The maid was wearing heavy bracelets, and I would swear they were the same ones her mistress wore last week.”

“Theft,” said Cobban, frowning. “Theft, and then she skedaddled. I’ll have her picked up. Shouldn’t be too difficult to find a newly homeless and unemployed working girl down in the stews near the harbor. That’s where she’ll head.”

“How do you know Mrs. Percy didn’t give her the bracelets?” I asked. Suzie Dear seemed a young woman in need of guidance, but Mrs. Percy no longer needed the jewelry, and I
disliked the thought of a young woman going to prison for such a frivolous crime. The bracelets were most likely brass, not gold.

“We’ll ask a few questions and find out,” Cobban said. “That’s it, ladies and gentlemen. Leave me your cards, please, in case there are other questions. And now, go back to your homes and find more sensible pastimes.” This last remark did not endear him to Mr. Phips, whose mouth, under his gray mustachios, grew thin with dislike. Dressed now in our heavy coats, we filed out one by one through the front door, back into the winter night. I gave him one of Auntie Bond’s calling cards with my name written in under hers.

“Did Walpole suit you?” the constable asked me in a voice low and private, taking the card. “I, for one, am pleased you have returned to Boston. You, as well, Miss Shattuck.” He gave Sylvia a little nod of the head, turned on his heel, and strode off down the sidewalk.

Lizzie put her arm through mine and sighed.

“Louy, what a terrible afternoon!” she said.

“It started out with such promise.” Mr. Barnum stood beside us, swinging his walking cane to and fro, as if batting at snowflakes. “Ah, well. She has gone to meet her Maker. Let us hope she returns to Him with a clear conscience, though her parlor tricks argue against that event.”

“Any sin was as much ours as hers, for we paid for the entertainment and so encouraged it,” I said.

“I do feel a fool,” said Sylvia. “How will I ever communicate with Father now? Patiently, through prayer and reflection,” she whispered.

“What did you say, Sylvia?” I asked.

“Why, I’m not certain! Something about reflection. Do you think the words I just said might have been guidance from poor Mrs. Percy?”

“Sylvia, you need to rest,” I told her.

And so my friend returned to her mansion and her mother, probably for another long evening of conversations about marriage and who was betrothed to whom, which heirs were still “on the market.” Lizzie and I returned to Auntie Bond’s, where my sister practiced her études on the parlor piano and I took a candle up to my attic writing room. Mrs. Percy’s face floated before me, pale and round as a moon, with that strange grimace upon it, as if she had just received bad news. This vision entangled itself into my story, now named “Agatha’s Confession,” and the story became the tale of a woman, once loved, not yet suspecting she has been cast aside in favor of another—her own friend Clara. Character must be accounted for within the plot, and Agatha Percy’s character suggested to me a great betrayal. Women happy in their destiny do not turn to crystal gazing. And so I heard her say to me,

Horror. A knowledge of premature death by another’s hand. That was what I had seen in Mrs. Percy’s painted face.

The next morning, at breakfast, I had a letter from Father waiting beside my porridge bowl.

I put down my teacup and tapped my fingers on the table. Bankrupt? How could that be? Mr. Barnum had made a fortune with his Jenny Lind tour and he had made almost as much money again last year from the sales of his autobiography. I myself had purchased a copy of the book, so good was the promotion, managed by Mr. Barnum himself. The book itself had been…well, let’s say that it did not aim for high literary quality and it achieved that aim. Bankrupt? I put down the letter and sipped my tea.

“More oatmeal, Miss Louisa?” asked Auntie Bond’s maid, Martha.

“I’ll have more, please,” said Lizzie, who sat opposite me reading her own mail from Mother and Father. Undoubtedly Father had reported to her what I was to receive for Christmas, and now Lizzie and I would have even more secrets from each other. I hummed, thinking about that red leather portfolio in Mr. Crowell’s window, and also wished Father had thought to mention the color of Lizzie’s new shawl. I could have trimmed a new hat to match from Auntie Bond’s scrap bag. But men do not generally think of such things as colors of shawls, and whether that red will clash with that violet.

“Good to see a young woman with appetite,” said Martha, scooping a second helping into Lizzie’s bowl. “The cold weather is good for digestion, I always say.”

“It is not too cold,” said Lizzie, looking at me. “Shall we skate today, Louy, and have a holiday? There’s ice on Boston Pond.”

The thought of a holiday was tempting. I could be out in the air with sweet Lizzie, racing over Boston Pond and enjoying a fine winter day, or sitting indoors and stitching the reverend’s shirts by dim candlelight. The choice was obvious; I also hoped a day in the fresh air would help Lizzie recover from yesterday’s shock. It is not often, fortunately, that a young girl is turned away from a séance circle only to discover the medium has died of a weak heart that very afternoon.

“Give me two hours,” I said. “Then meet me at the pond.” While Lizzie finished her second helping of oatmeal, I dressed
quickly, brushed my hair to a sheen, and then twisted it into a snood, put on hat and coat, and was out the door.