Louisa and the Crystal Gazer

by Anna Maclean

  “And you were a hero in China,” I said, repeating what Mr. Barnum had told me. “You saved many lives during the siege of Canton.”

  “Messy business. Downright ugly,” he said. “Too many civilians involved. Battles should be between men who know what they are about, and why. Men trained for the fight and willing.” He shook his head with disapproval.

  “‘To lead an uninstructed people to war is to throw them away,’” Sylvia quoted. Both Mr. Phips and I turned to look at her. “Well, I did study Confucius for many months,” she said with a little smile. Sylvia could be most astonishing.

  “War, as terrible as it is, brought me to my beloved wife, may she rest in peace,” said Mr. Phips. “August made me promise that if anything happened to him, I would return that little portrait to her, with his eternal love. I kept that promise.”

  Mr. Phips reached into his coat and brought forth a very old-fashioned, finely painted enamel portrait of a woman’s head and shoulders. She was a brunette, with great, sad dark eyes and a long, regal nose.

  “Oh!” Sylvia gasped. “How very romantic!”

  “And Emily Grayling became Mrs. William Phips,” I guessed. “That you have the locket still in your possession would indicate she wished you to keep it. And since the locket is obviously a love token, then it seems you were able to heal her grief.”

  “I was greatly honored,” agreed Mr. Phips, “to earn the trust of such a devoted and loving woman. For ten years she made me the happiest man on earth.”

  “What a fine story! And how many children have you, Mr. Phips?” asked Sylvia.

  His face clouded. “Joy is limited. We were not blessed.”

  We were at the tobacconist’s by then, and I thought it wise to steer the conversation into less private realms. I pointed at various pipes in the shop window and asked Mr. Phips’s opinions, but he was fussy about such matters and we could not agree.

  Inside, the store smelled pleasingly of tobacco and wool, masculine scents associated with reading rooms and home studies. I found a small display of pipes in a dark corner. How fanciful they were, long and carved of ivory and wood, with all manner of embellishment.

  “Will this do?” I asked Mr. Phips, holding out one I found particularly handsome.

  The shopkeeper coughed into his hands and cleared his throat.

  “No, no, Miss Louisa!” protested Mr. Phips. “That is for smoking opium! It is a fine specimen, though, I admit. I collect opium pipes—just for show, of course, a sentimental habit left over from my service in China. We’ll put this one back on the rack. Consider this pipe, my dear. Any uncle would be most pleased to have it as a Christmas present.”

  He handed me a rather mundane-looking item, assuring me that the cherry wood would add a pleasant nuance to any tobacco, that the handle was well formed and the pipe a very good one. I purchased it, and was now one dollar and twenty-five cents poorer, and further away than ever from purchasing Lizzie’s present. But there was a quarter left over that I could put on my account at the music store.

  “I have one more errand to run. Will you both excuse me?” I said when we were again outdoors.

  Mr. Phips and Sylvia, chatting merrily about true love and other matters, headed back toward Commonwealth Avenue. I went into the music store. Six of the twelve Liszt portfolios had been sold, and my heart sank.

  When I returned home, there was further cause for dismay: a piece of paper, folded and sealed, had been pushed through the mail slot in Auntie Bond’s door, addressed to me. The writing seemed masculine, with thick, heavy lines, and in some places the pen had been pressed so deeply it had almost perforated the paper. Its message was simple and direct:

  Mind your own affairs. Stay away.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A Misadventure

  I HAD THREE jobs before me: to finish the reverend’s shirts so that I might purchase the Christmas presents for my family; to complete my story “Agatha’s Confession” so that I might send it out and hope for a publication; and to discover the secret of the fate of Mrs. Agatha Percy, the crystal gazer, for of course I would not stay away, or mind my own affairs. Crime is the concern of each citizen. We have an obligation to aid in the restoration of morality, not turn our back on vice.

  It would seem obvious that bringing a murderer to justice would require priority over the linens, perhaps even over writing, for if one woman has been murdered there is always the possibility that others might follow, habit and inclination seeming an indication of the murderer’s state of soul. This was part of the sickness of our times, that evil could so easily be repeated, Mr. Emerson had once told me. A single act of evil is the crack in the dam; a flood will follow.

  Therefore, other people were in danger. Suzie was in jail and most likely safe there, for the time being, as long as I could find the true murderer and protect Suzie from hanging. The missing cook was either the murderer or another possible victim, since the timing of her departure would suggest she knew much of the strange goings-on in that household. Perhaps she had threatened to turn Mrs. Percy and her stepbrother in to the Boston police. Or perhaps she had murdered and robbed Mrs. Percy herself before fleeing. It is not true that there is honor among thieves.

  Miss Snodgrass, another suspect, might be in danger because of her association with Eddie Nichols and her moral lassitude. Eddie had stolen a pearl-and-diamond necklace from her when she had been most vulnerable, and he was also in an excellent position to blackmail her, if she had been silly enough to write love letters to him. Did she still have so-called tender feelings for Mr. Nichols? More important, had she killed Mrs. Percy to get back her stolen necklace? That had been particularly cruel of Mrs. Percy to give the necklace on loan to Mrs. Deeds, and have her wear it to that first séance, where Amelia could not help but see it.

  Mrs. Deeds was incomprehensible to me, and just as unamiable because of her habit of knowingly purchasing jewels that had been illegally obtained. Yet like Miss Snodgrass, Mrs. Deeds’s own moral lassitude might be placing her in danger. She knew evil things about shady people, and she was talkative if caught off guard. On the other hand, shady people knew evil things about her; could our matron, Mrs. Deeds, have murdered Mrs. Percy to keep her silent?

  Was Sylvia in danger? Logic and my heart said no. Sylvia had been invited to the circle because she was wealthy and easily gulled, but Sylvia had not been a part of the darker deeds of that circle. And Mr. Phips, likewise, had been invited because of his wealth, his desire to speak with his dead wife, and his willingness to pay for that conversation.

  Oh, how foolish is humanity!

  But Mr. Barnum worried me. I liked the gentleman, yet of all people in that circle, he had excellent reason to wish Mrs. Percy dead, if it were true that she had assisted Eddie Nichols with the forgeries that had brought Barnum to the brink of bankruptcy.

  So it was that on the morning after my visit with Miss Snodgrass and my walk on Boston Common with Sylvia and Mr. Phips, it was with some dread that I discovered a letter from Uncle Benjamin next to my place at the breakfast table.

  “It just arrived,” said Lizzie, pouring coffee into my cup. She had dark circles under her eyes, as if she had been straining her vision and getting inadequate sleep.

  “Lizzie, did you practice the piano all of yesterday?” I asked with concern.

  She sat heavily in her chair, and a tiny crease appeared between her fair eyebrows. “Yes. I am having such difficulty with a passage from Chopin. I can’t get the fingering correctly, and I don’t know what to do. I think that today instead of the piano I’ll attend to the reverend’s shirts.”

  “We must be close to finished,” I said, giving a somewhat hostile glance at the sewing basket in the corner of the room.

  “Nowhere near,” said Lizzie, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

  “Impossible.” I stood confused before the open basket, a shirt in each hand. “I finished three shirts, and now there are only two.”

  Lizzie frowned and bit her bottom
lip, as she did when worried.

  “One, two,” I said, holding them in the air. “Everything else in the basket is piecework waiting to be sewn. Maybe Auntie Bond took the other shirt to be washed and pressed.”

  “What other shirt, Louisa?” Auntie Bond asked, having just come into the room, still stretching and tucking strands of gray hair back into her bun.

  “The reverend’s third shirt. Have you taken it for the laundry?”

  “I would not touch your sewing basket, Louisa!” protested that kindly lady, somewhat offended. “You have misplaced it.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, crestfallen. Though I knew I had not. They had all been together in the basket. And now, somehow, I was even later than I had thought for finishing the order, for payment, for purchasing Lizzie’s portfolio and music lessons. There was porridge with a spoonful of strawberry preserves in the middle for sweetness, and bacon and bread with butter, but I could taste nothing.

  “What does Uncle Benjamin say?” Lizzie picked up the envelope that I had not yet opened.

  I slit the top with a knife and took out the thick, crisp paper that was Uncle’s stationery and read with little interest, still distracted by the missing shirt. Or was I so distracted by Mrs. Percy that I could not even account for my labor?

  “Marmee and Father are well,” I reported, preoccupied. “They have had a foot of snow and went sledding, and next week they are to put up a Christmas tree.”

  “Will we, Louy? Will we put up a Christmas tree?” Lizzie asked with excitement.

  “I don’t see why not,” said Auntie Bond. “I’ll take the little table out of the parlor corner, and we can put the tree right there. We’ll make a garland, and I have a box of German glass tops and balls, and little silver candleholders for the branches. Oh, how lovely!” Auntie Bond clapped her hands at the wonderful vision she had created.

  “We can place our presents under the tree,” said Lizzie shyly.

  “Marmee says that Uncle Benjamin is sending presents,” I said. “A boxful, due to arrive next week. I guess I’d better wrap mine and get them ready for the post.”

  “What else does Uncle Benjamin say?” asked Lizzie, buttering a piece of bread.

  “Not much. Mostly bits and pieces of rumor about Mr. Barnum.”

  “I like Mr. Barnum very much,” Lizzie said.

  “You think kindly of everybody.” I kissed her on the forehead and went to pace in the garden, to think. For this is what Uncle Benjamin had written:

  It’s known Barnum has a temper almost as great as his pride, and this situation with Eddie Nichols has been his undoing. He’s now in debt to the tune of $40,000, I’ve heard, all from those bad notes that Nichols forged to pay his gambling debts. Barnum calls his cousin a serpent and a libertine and has pledged to get satisfaction. I’ve heard a woman was involved as well. There will be a court case, it is certain, and it will be a blow to his pride. What’s worse, he genuinely liked the boy, treated him like a son, and this betrayal has embittered him. They are already making jokes about it at the club. “What did P. T. Barnum say to General Tom Thumb? ‘Why, you’re as short as my bank account!’” Poor Barnum.

  You asked to know the color of the shawl your mother was knitting for Lizzie. It is blue, kind of lightish rather than deep. Summer-day blue rather than stormy-weather blue.

  Love from all here. Your fond uncle embraces you.

  If Mr. Barnum was so angry with Eddie Nichols, would he brutally attack Mrs. Percy? Perhaps. The two were conspirators, after all. Mr. Barnum would be returning home to Bridgeport soon. First I needed to speak with him.

  “Louy, light the fire in the downstairs sitting room before you go, will you?” called down Auntie Bond, who was rummaging through her sewing room to find the boxes of Christmas ornaments. “And take some caramel toffees with you! I just made the first holiday batch. They’re on the hall table.”

  So distracted was I, the box of lucifer matches ended up in my pocket with the toffees, instead of back on the mantelpiece. Small gestures, even accidental ones, can make such a difference.

  Outside of the yarn shop, I saw Constable Cobban coming around the corner toward me. Sylvia was with him, and they were walking arm in arm. They broke apart like guilty children when they saw me. I pretended that I hadn’t observed them until Sylvia tucked her hands into her fur muff and we all stood shyly, looking anywhere except at one another’s faces, for the embarrassment was great.

  “Miss Louisa.” Cobban blushed and tipped his hat, and picked a piece of lint off his bright plaid coat sleeve.

  “Beautiful day, isn’t it!” I said, studying my boots. “Have you come to purchase yarn?”

  “I have. I’m knitting socks. The pattern is ever so interesting,” said my dearest friend in the world next to my sisters.

  “I bumped into Miss Sylvia on the way to see you, Miss Louisa,” Cobban explained. “I have news.”

  “Judging from your expression, it is not good news.” I rocked back and forth on my heels and chafed my hands, wishing I had time to knit myself a new pair of gloves.

  “Eddie Nichols has posted bail. Seems he had a bit of savings put away. We can’t hold him, though he must stand trial, based on what Suzie has said about the stolen goods.”

  “But what if he was involved in the murder of Mrs. Percy? He will flee!”

  “There is nothing to point that way. He insists he was at the theater that night, and he can provide witnesses. Dancers.” Cobban grinned. “I checked the alibi. Of course, they would say about anything for a dollar.”

  “So he is free.” I sighed. Poor Suzie. He had used her badly, and now she was in jail, and he was not.

  “Well, not quite.” Cobban grinned again. “We can’t keep him, but Pinkerton men from Cleveland arrived this morning with their own warrant, in pursuit of Mr. Barnum’s case against him there. Nichols will be arrested again before he has time for a good shave and bath. Probably already in custody. He’ll stand trial in Ohio, for thievery and forgery if nothing else, and if Mr. Barnum is telling the truth.”

  “At least Nichols will answer for some of his crimes.” But would he answer for all of them? Oh, if only the dead really could speak! Mrs. Percy, I thought, show me the face of your murderer! Tell me his name!

  “Mr. Barnum will be pleased by the news, though it won’t get him his fortune back.” Constable Cobban ended our conversation with a little nod of the head, rather than taking his cap off again. The day was becoming very cold, with a stern wind coming in from the northeast that promised bad weather ahead. Tiny flakes of snow danced around us, the kind of snow that appears when it will soon be too cold for any snow at all. A hard freeze would curl the rhododendron leaves in Auntie Bond’s garden and freeze overnight the water in our washbasins. I realized that by thinking about the weather, I was avoiding thinking about Mr. Barnum. Lizzie liked him. So did I.

  Before parting, Constable Cobban told me, upon my request, that Mr. Barnum had taken rooms, during his Boston visit, at a boardinghouse on Arlington Street. Why hadn’t I noticed this before? He was just seven houses away from Mrs. Agatha D. Percy’s home! I must not have been paying close attention when Constable Cobban took our names and addresses. Of course, having just discovered a body, I was reasonably distracted, but this proximity of his address to the victim’s surely was of significance. How easily he could have slipped from his rooms, attacked Mrs. Percy, and returned home without even as much as a half hour passing. And wasn’t it Mr. Barnum who had showed us how to lock a door from the inside, even though one was standing outside the door? Had he been boasting of his deed?

  I dreaded the visit with him. To delay it, I stopped in front of Mrs. Percy’s house. Had the front door finally been locked? I walked up the unswept steps and tried it. It was. I walked around back to the kitchen door, passing the windows that Mr. Phips had broken to gain admittance to Mrs. Percy’s preparation room. It had been boarded with planks, but not well enough to keep the snow from seeping in. Again, I thought of tha
t beautiful parquet floor being ruined. There were old footprints in the snow by the back door, old enough that they had melted into a larger shape than the original and then filled in again with new drifting snow, so that I couldn’t tell if they had been large or small, man’s or woman’s. The kitchen door had been forced open by someone else and swung easily in my hand, and there on the floor, where it had been hastily removed and accidentally dropped, lay a solitary man’s glove. I picked it up.

  I paused there on the doorstep, a sudden thrill of fear making me hesitate. What if someone were inside? The murderer? My chest felt hollowed out; my head was light. Yet I knew I would go in.

  The kitchen was dark, because all the curtains had been pulled. Remembering the lucifers in my pocket, I lit a candle I found on a side table. There were wet footsteps on the wooden floor, steps leading to the doorway that connected the kitchen with the pantry, which led into the hallway, which was as dark as night, since Mrs. Percy, for her activities as a medium, had shut out as much light as possible by removing or covering windows.

  As I walked, slowly as possible to avoid creaking boards and bumping into furniture, I thought of who might be in the house, and why. Constable Cobban or one of his policemen would have lit a lamp for their work. This person preferred darkness.

  Barely breathing, I made my way through the hall, bending low so that the candle might illuminate the floor and I could follow those wet footprints. They led to the circular staircase, and there they stopped, for the staircase had been carpeted.

  The house seemed very still. The air was so cold my breath frosted before me. No fires had been lit here since Mrs. Percy’s murder. Who was there to light them? Suzie was in jail, the cook had fled and was in hiding, and Mrs. Percy’s stepbrother, Eddie Nichols, was being escorted back to Ohio for trial.