by Alice Duncan
"Hell, you're the spiritualist. Do it when it feels right. Don't you go through some rigmarole first and then swoon or something?"
Blast the man! "All right. I'll follow my instincts."
"Don't get carried away," he said in a warning tone.
"I do not get carried away, Sam Rotondo! I'm a professional spiritualist-medium, and I know what I'm doing."
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say."
Sam Rotondo could drive me crazy in less time than any other human being on earth. Johnny Buckingham showed up at that moment, so I couldn't tell Sam so.
"Hey, Johnny."
"Hey, Daisy. How-do, Sam," said Johnny.
They were on a first-name basis, were they? Hmm. Not sure how I felt about that.
"Doing great here, Johnny," said Sam. "Did you bring the makeup and powder?"
"Right here," said Johnny, holding up a cardboard box.
"Good. Daisy, will you help Johnny use makeup to look approximately like this fellow, only dead? This is Michael Lippincott." He handed me a photograph.
Michael Lippincott had been an ordinary looking bloke. Not awfully handsome, but he had kind eyes. Unless that was my imagination, which leaps to unwarranted conclusions from time to time. Just by looking at this picture, however, I sensed I'd have liked him a lot better than I like Gloria. Poor guy.
"I'll do my best," said I. "Although I really don't know much about makeup. I only use white rice powder on my face to make me look the part of a spiritualist-medium."
"Which you do to perfection," said Johnny, giving me a good once-over.
I think Sam snickered, darn him.
"Maybe you should have had Flossie help you with this, Johnny. She's ever so much better at makeup than I am." As soon as I spoke those words, I wished them unsaid. I'm sure neither Johnny nor Flossie liked remembering the bad old days.
Thank goodness Johnny had a good sense of humor. He only laughed. "Flossie's got baby duty tonight, Daisy, so it's up to you. Make me look like a ghoul."
"White powder should do the trick," said Sam. "It works on you, Daisy."
Shooting him a hot scowl, I said, "I do not look like a ghoul, Sam Rotondo. For your information, I cultivate the pale and interesting look for my job."
"Whatever you say," said Sam, holding up his hands as if in surrender.
"Let's get this show on the road," said Johnny, interrupting our little spat. "Flossie told me to put on a little greasepaint under the powder so the powder will stick, and to make sure my eyes look sunken. She gave me some of this gunk for that." He reached into the cardboard box and lifted out a small jar filled with what looked like black cream.
"My goodness. I wonder what Flossie ever used this for," I said as I took the little jar from Johnny.
"She said it was all the rage to draw black lines around a lady's eyes," said Johnny, sounding not in the least embarrassed by his wife's tawdry past. Well, there was no reason he should be embarrassed; after all, he knew all about Flossie, and she probably knew all about him and how he hit the gutters after the war, addled from shell shock, bitterness and alcohol. That happened to a lot of men who fought in that ghastly conflict.
Pooh. I was almost in tears. I screwed on the little jar's lid and began ordering Johnny about. "Go into the dressing room there, Johnny, and sit on the bench. I'll see what I can do."
The first thing I did was stick Michael Lippincott's photograph under the upper frame holding the mirror to the dressing stand so I could study it as I worked on Johnny.
Perhaps I missed my calling and should have pursued a dramatic career, because, by the time I was through with him, Johnny looked as though he were Michael Lippincott, and he'd just climbed up the stairway from hell. I stood back, proud of my efforts.
"There," I said. "What do you think?"
Shaking his head in admiration, Johnny said, "I've never looked worse in my life."
"Wish I had one of those Kodak cameras. I'd take your picture so you could show Flossie."
"That's all right. I wouldn't want to scare her," said Johnny, chuckling.
"We can have a newshound snap your photo if you like," Sam offered.
"No, thanks. My flock would disown me if they knew I was mixed up in this adventure."
"Why would they do that?" I asked, indignant. "You're looking like a ghoul for a good cause!"
"I'm ribbing you, Daisy. My flock pretty much always gives other folks the benefit of the doubt, mainly because they've been in some bad fixes themselves."
"I really admire the work you do," I told Johnny sincerely.
"Yeah. Me, too, but it's a little after eight now and the culprits are arriving, so you'd better get on out there, Daisy," said Sam, pulling out his pocket watch and squinting at it. He wore eyeglasses for reading, but I guess he didn't need them to read his watch.
I'd heard the doorbell ring a couple of times while I'd been fiddling with Johnny's face—that sounds odd, but it wasn't meant to—so I was sure Sam was correct.
"All right. I'd better take advantage of the facilities before I face the mob."
"Don't use this bathroom," said Sam. "We're locking this place up right now, and nobody can come in or out until Johnny's grand entrance."
"All right. I'll grab my handbag and go to the upstairs bathroom." There were actually two upstairs bathrooms; one at the head of the grand staircase and the other at the west end of the house near the servants' stairs.
"Don't go through the main part of the house," warned Sam. "I don't want anyone seeing you yet."
"How am I supposed to get my handbag? It's hanging in the sunroom."
"You don't need it. Just wipe your nose with a tissue, and it won't be shiny any longer."
"My nose is shiny?" I screeched. But honestly. I applied my spiritualistic makeup with great care, and my nose never shone.
"He's teasing, Daisy," said Johnny. "You don't shine anywhere. Well, except for those beady things on your gown."
"Yeah," said Sam. "You look kind of like the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come."
"Good," I snapped. "Then I'm perfect for my role." I left the men to their chuckles and went up the servants' staircase on the west side of the house. The bathroom was nearby and a door from the hall led into it. The house was full of suites of rooms. On this, the west side of the house, there was a huge room that might have been used as a bedroom, a dressing room, a bathroom, another dressing room, a sitting room, and a small bedroom. The moment I opened the door to the bathroom, I heard angry whispery voices coming from the dressing room at the northern end of the bathroom. Puzzled, and clutching my juju through my dress, I tiptoed over to the door. What was going on in there? wondered I.
It took me a few minutes to find out, and then all heck broke loose.
Chapter 27
"Why the devil did you give me so much of that damned stuff?" a woman asked as if she were sorely irked.
"Because it needed to look real, sister dear," a man answered. He sounded irked, too.
I didn't recognize his voice. Mind you, they were whispering, but I recognized Gloria's voice as that of the woman. But who was the man? And was he really Gloria's brother?
"It more than looked real," snarled Gloria. "I damned near died. Then where would you be?"
"Still pretty damned rich, although I'd also still be married to the most insipid woman in the universe."
"That's going to happen anyway."
"I guess." The man heaved a sigh.
"If we ever do this again, I'm not even going to entertain the notion of poison," Gloria declared in a passionate undertone.
"You will if there's a rich widower to snatch out of a wealthy dead wife's hands."
"I don't know about that. I was so sick, Jack. It was horrible."
Jack! Jack? The person whispering to Gloria was Jack? Whoever Jack was, he wasn't Max Van der Linden. I could tell by the quality of his voice, which maybe sounds nuts because they were whispering, but trust me, you can recognize a familiar voice, even in a wh
isper. But who the heck was he? I didn't dare open the door and look. I did, however, listen harder.
"And then there was that cursed paving stone. I pulled the rope attached to it, and almost got brained!"
"Nuts. That went off perfectly. I ran over to you and untied the rope, and nobody ever suspected you'd pulled the stone down yourself."
"Huh. I'm not doing that again either. I had to leap out of the way, and leaping in a corset and heels isn't easy."
"Yeah, but we made a great spectacle of ourselves. Everyone thought we were lovers." The man chuckled softly.
"Well, I don't like being a target. If we do this again, no stones and no poison," said Gloria, sounding as if she meant it.
"As soon as this idiotic séance is over, Malcolm Miller will be fingered as the culprit and then you can ply your wiles on dear Max after we get rid of poor little Connie. And then we can get rid of Max, too."
Good Lord Almighty. I'd never heard such coldblooded words issue from a human throat.
Actually, that's a lie, but never mind that now. These two, Gloria and whoever Jack was, were two of the most merciless characters I'd encountered in my career as a spiritualist-medium who occasionally gets caught up in crimes. Unintentionally, I'm sure I need not add.
"I hope so," said Gloria. "I think this is an idiotic way to go about it. Daisy Majesty might well be a fake, but she's a good one, and I don't know how we're going to finger Malcolm during the séance."
"Never you mind about that. I haven't forgotten our dear father's teachings. I can still throw my voice like nobody's business. Poor sweet Connie nearly fainted one day at rehearsal. I do believe the poor dear thinks she's going crazy."
"As planned," said Gloria.
"As planned," the fellow affirmed. "Daddy was good for something, I guess."
"Vaudeville," said Gloria in a repressive tone of voice. "Good old Daddy. A barrel of laughs, he was."
"Mother didn't think so."
"No. She didn't. Good thing I shot him for her."
Good Lord Almighty again! Gloria had shot her own father? And it sounded as though these two really were siblings! My mind boggled and my body went kind of limp. I've meet my share of crooks, but boy, this callous couple took the cake. A poisoned cake, if somebody'd allow me to be in charge of its creation. I neither gasped nor cried out, but I felt like doing at least one of those things.
"Anyhow, don't worry about the séance. When your little friend begins babbling about Michael, I'll take over for her."
"Daisy might object," Gloria pointed out. "From what everyone says of her, she has her art of séance down to a science, and she doesn't tolerate much nonsense."
She was right about that!
"We've garnered hundreds of thousands of dollars thanks to our own science, don't forget."
"How could I forget?" Gloria sounded pleased. What a totally despicable human being. Or maybe she was some alien life form come to earth to torment us normal people.
Or maybe I'd been reading too many of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars books recently.
"Anyhow, don't forget that I planted Malcolm Miller's scarf in that idiot Dennis Bissel's Rolls."
"Why haven't the coppers cottoned on to the fact that the scarf didn't belong to Dennis?"
"I haven't a clue, but I can drop more evidence to pin the deed on Miller. He's a dope."
"You think they're all dopes, but I'm not sure about Daisy Majesty."
"Oh, hell, she doesn't matter. That clunk of a copper is a big dope."
If whoever spoke those words was referring to Sam Rotondo, he was dead wrong. Sam might look like granite obelisk, but he was smart as a whip.
"I have to go to the bathroom before this performance begins, so I'll meet you downstairs," said Gloria to her cohort.
Yeeks! That meant she was going to come right into this room. As she turned the doorknob on the other side of the door at which I'd just been listening, I scrambled as quietly and quickly as I could to the door that led from the bathroom to the hallway. I got out just before Gloria entered the bathroom.
However, I guess she saw the door close, because she hollered, "Someone was in here listening to us!"
"What? Damnation!"
And I pulled my lovely long dress up to my thighs and hightailed it to the main staircase, and that meant I had to traverse the long upstairs hallway—which was wide enough to hold a ballroom dance contest—and clear on the other side of the house. Darn, darn, darn, darn, darn! Why hadn't I taken the servants' stairs? Idiocy, I reckon.
I heard footsteps thundering after me, so I know whoever chased me wasn't Gloria. But who was it? Although I knew it was a big risk, I looked over my shoulder and lo and behold, if it wasn't Lawrence Allen himself chasing me!
Lawrence Allen? Was he Gloria's brother? Was he the other murdering maniac of the Gloria-and-fiend pair? And was his name really Jack?
Dang, he ran fast.
"Come back here, Mrs. Majesty," Lawrence called cajolingly.
He was catching up with me. I wished in that moment that I were six feet tall and had really, really long legs. But I wasn't, and I didn't. I did spur myself on to greater speed, however.
"You misunderstood what you heard in there," said Lawrence. "We were going over roles for our next production."
Did I believe that?
After giving myself approximately half a second to think about it I decided I didn't.
Just as I made a skidding turn at top of the staircase, Lawrence almost grabbed me by the shoulder. Since he couldn't quite do that, he did the next best thing, reached out, and gave me a hard shove, making me stumble and teeter at the top of the stairs. He wanted me to fall to my death down that blasted staircase!
To heck with it. I screamed bloody murder. I also grabbed hold of the staircase railing to keep from falling. The stairway was steep, and I was at the top of it. If Lawrence got another chance at me, he might just fling me over the banister and down to the hall below. After struggling and struggling—later I'd think of me in those moments as akin to one of those trick riders in circuses, but not nearly as graceful—to lift myself to a sitting position without falling completely overboard, at last I achieve success. Darned if I didn't sail down Mrs. Bissel's banister as if I'd been doing stuff like that all my life. Mind you, I'd always kind of wanted to slide down Mrs. Bissel's banister, but, being a dignified spiritualist-medium with a professional reputation to uphold, I'd never done it—until sliding down the banister was the only way to save my life.
As luck would have it, everyone in the whole darned house had heard me scream. As I reached the bottom of the banister and bumped my fanny, hard, against the newel post, an entire gang of spectators was there to see me do it. At the moment, my skirt was up to my waist, and everyone had a splendid view of my black silk stockings, garter belt, supporters, and combinations.
Huge hands plucked me off the banister before I could even catch my breath.
"What the devil are you doing?" demanded Sam. It would be he, wouldn't it?
Still frightened out of my wits, I turned in his arms and flung my own arms around his neck. I felt my skirt slide down and only then realized what a spectacle I must have made of myself. I sure heard a lot of buzzing and chatter around me, though.
"Oh, my, whatever is going on?" asked Mrs. Bissel. "What's the matter, Daisy?"
"What was that horrible noise?" asked Mrs. Cummings, appearing from the dining room. She'd probably been in the kitchen.
"What's the matter?" asked Keiji, joining the mob.
"It's... It's..." I sucked in a gallon or two of air to try and calm myself. "It's Gloria Lippincott and Lawrence Allen!" I cried onto Sam's shoulder blade. "They're the ones who killed Michael Lippincott and are poisoning Connie Van der Linden. I heard them talking about it in the dressing room next to the bathroom!"
Gasps and more chatter all around.
Connie squealed, "Poison?"
Max said, "I'll kill them both!"
"E
veryone, stay exactly where you are!" Sam dumped me onto the floor in the hall and hollered, "Doan! Pickett! They're upstairs!" He turned to Mrs. Bissel. "Is there a way out of the house from up there?"
Poor Mrs. Bissel. She wasn't accustomed to policemen asking her abrupt questions. She stood there, her mouth opening and closing, looking a bit like a landed trout for a few seconds, before Dennis rescued her.
"The only way out of this house is through the downstairs. There are no exits from the second or third floors." He turned to his mother. "That's a fire hazard, Mother. You should install a staircase leading down to the patio or something."
"Never mind that right now," growled Sam. "Doan and Pickett, go upstairs and arrest the woman who calls herself Gloria Lippincott and the man who calls himself Lawrence Allen."
"Lawrence? Lawrence! Lawrence isn't involved in anything!" screeched Sylvia Allen, whom I hadn't noticed before. I could have set her straight, but I'd begun shaking and my tongue had stuck itself to the roof of my mouth. Anyway, how could she say Lawrence wasn't involved in anything? She herself thought he was involved with Gloria Lippincott. Or the woman who called herself Gloria Lippincott. I'd seen Sylvia sulking at all those Mikado rehearsals with my own eyes.
Oh, golly. The Mikado. Now we were short not merely Pitti-Sing, but also Go-To, a noble lord of Titipu. Flossie could play Pitti-Sing, but Go-To was a bass part, and basses weren't all that thick on the ground.
"Cuff them!" hollered Sam, and I looked up to see Gloria and Lawrence, appearing at the top of the stairs like a couple of frightened and furious something-or-others.
Doan and Pickett pounded up the staircase. Doan reached Gloria and caught her arm to stop her sudden turn and mad dash to nowhere.
Gloria snarled, "You put cuffs on me, and you'll die, copper!"
Doan evidently didn't believe her, because he grabbed both of her arms, yanked them behind her back, and I heard the satisfying sound of handcuffs being clamped around her slender wrists.
The other officer, Pickett, was having a struggle with Lawrence Allen, who didn't seem to want to go gently into those metal cuffs. He actually clipped Pickett on the chin with his fist and turned to run the other way. Not quite sure what he aimed to accomplish by doing that since he was headed straight for Mrs. Bissel's upstairs sitting room. Anyhow, according to Dennis, who ought to know, there was no way out of the house from the second floor unless he wanted to leap from a window. I didn't think he'd want to do that. He clearly had no qualms about causing the deaths of others, but, as I'd noticed before when reading articles about black-hearted murderers, they held their own worthless lives as precious.
