Unsettled Spirits

by Alice Duncan

  "Charles," said Katherine, at last finding her voice and jarring me back to attention. "There's no need to announce our ages. I'm sure Mrs. Majesty isn't interested."

  Actually, I was, but I didn't say so. Instead, I said, "I guess she led long and full life. Still, it's a shock when someone suddenly... well, dies like that. And in church. It was quite distressing to the entire congregation."

  "I can imagine," muttered Charles.

  "And it happened during the communion service?" said Vivian, making the statement a question.

  "Yes. I fear Miss Powell, who was assisting with communion that day, was quite unsettled by your mother falling over like that. Miss Powell dropped the tray she'd been holding, and communion grape juice went everywhere."

  "Oh, dear, did they ever get the stains out? Grape juice leaves such an awful stain." Vivian again. A practical woman, she.

  "My aunt suggested we try peroxide on the stains, and that seems to have done the trick fairly well. At choir practice last night, I checked the carpet. You could barely see a stain left."

  "Hmph," said Charles. "I hope they tested the carpet."

  Both of his sisters turned to stare at him. He frowned at them. "I don't care what you think. Mother might have been old, but she was in perfect health."

  "Yes," said Vivian as if she'd heard it all before. "You believe Mother was poisoned. But who would do such a thing to her, of all people? She was a wonderful woman." After sniffling once more, she turned to me and said, "Can you think of a single soul who would want our mother dead, Mrs. Majesty?"

  "No, I certainly can't. From what I knew of her, she was a kind and well-loved woman."

  Katherine sobbed into her hankie, and Vivian blew her nose. Charles just stood there, looking gloomy.

  "Well, I don't want to take your time. I only wanted to offer my condolences," I said and turned to go. Vivian stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. My shoulder, by the way, was draped in a black velveteen cloak, which was not merely fashionable, but which kept me almost toasty on that cold, windy day.

  "Wait, Mrs. Majesty. Mother told us you are a well-respected spiritualist-medium. Is that correct?" asked Vivian.

  "Er, yes, I am." I tried to look modest. "At least my clients seem to be happy with my services."

  "Do you think you could perform a séance for us? To see if we can get in touch with Mother?"

  "Vivian," Charles said sharply, "that's about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. A séance? Nonsense."

  I didn't consider my business nonsense, although I didn't tell Charles so. Anyhow, if he was the one who thought someone had poisoned his mother, wouldn't he want to know who did it? Not that a séance would tell him because I can't really communicate with spirits, but he didn't know that, darn it!

  Rather, I said in my most soothing voice, "It often takes a soul a while to get settled on the Other Side"—whatever that is—"so you might want to wait a few weeks before holding a séance for your mother."

  "Oh." Vivian was clearly disappointed. "I didn't realize that. I don't scoff at spiritualism as Charles does. And if he's right, and someone did poison our mother, I'd certainly like to know who it was."

  "Vivian," said Katherine, "I don't think here is the place to discuss this. Anyhow, it looks as if the minister is about to begin the service."

  Glancing at the elaborate coffin sitting on planks over a hole in the ground, I saw Katherine was correct. In fact, Pastor Smith had taken to glancing at us, and at his watch, and at us, in a way that let us know he wanted to get the show on the road. So to speak. I walked over and took my place with the choir.

  So, as the frigid wind blew, folks shivered, and whole lot of people, including Betsy Powell, wept copiously, Pastor Smith performed a graveside service, and poor Mrs. Theodore (her first name was Vivian, which I guess accounted for her oldest child's name) Franbold was laid to rest at Morningside Cemetery in Altadena, California. The choir did an admirable job with "Abide With Me," considering our vocal chords were frozen and we were singing a cappella.

  As folks dispersed after the rite, and in spite of the cold, I decided to visit my Billy's grave.

  "Is that all right with you, Pa?" Pa had a bum ticker, and I didn't want him exerting himself too much. But as long as I was at the cemetery, I felt almost compelled to visit Billy's grave.

  "Why don't you go back to the Hudson, Joe," Sam suggested. "You can be warmer in there, and you won't have to walk so far." He cleared his throat. "I'd kind of like to visit Margaret, too." Sam's late wife had been laid to rest not far from Billy.

  "Fine with me. You two go on ahead. Don't rush. I'll be nice and warm, thanks to the hat and coat Daisy gave me at Christmas."

  I smiled. I was darned proud of that hat and coat, which Pa had left in the Hudson, because it wasn't correct funeral attire, being made of a bright plaid fabric. But he was right in that both garments were warm as anything. That's because I'd lined them with a double layer of flannel. I'd considered using fur, but the notion of an animal giving its life to keep a Pasadenan warm didn't seem proper to me. It might be different if we lived in Siberia. Or even Massachusetts with the rest of our family. Heck, cold for us was maybe forty-five degrees, which was probably the temperature that day, except the wind made it feel colder.

  "Sure you don't mind, Pa?" I asked for the heck of it. My father never minded what other people did as long as they weren't performing evil deeds.

  "Sure," said he.

  "Thanks, Joe," said Sam, taking my gloved hand in his gloved hand.

  "Thanks, Sam," I said, thinking I didn't deserve this kindness after the scene I'd made at Christmas. Oh, well.

  "I haven't been to Margaret's grave for too long," said he, making me feel not quite so unworthy.

  "I visit Billy pretty much every week. It's too cold for flowers, but..." I allowed my voice to trail off. Generally when I visited Billy's grave, I talked to him, very softly. Not that I expected him to answer, but because talking to him made me feel somewhat better about whatever was worrying me.

  Of course, what worried me that day, besides the possibility of a woman having been poisoned in our church, was the relationship between Sam and me. I'd like to tell Billy that I still wasn't sure if I should marry Sam. Naturally, I couldn't say those things if Sam stood at my side and listened.

  Billy's grave lay under a spreading oak tree in a very pretty part of the cemetery. Morningside Cemetery is lovely anyway, considering what it's used for. That day the lawns weren't bright green, as they'd been the June day when we'd buried Billy, but were sort of yellowing, in keeping with the season. The oak tree's leaves, after turning red in autumn, had turned brown and remained mostly brown and on the tree. A few leaves had dropped, but mainly acorns littered the ground on Billy's grave. His headstone was beautiful. I'd thought long and hard about what I'd had inscribed thereon: "Sacred to the memory of William Anthony Majesty. Beloved husband of Daisy. July 12, 1897-June 10, 1922. Rest now as you could not in life. The Good Die First."

  When Sam and I had met by accident over Billy's grave a year or so prior, he'd asked me about that "The Good Die First" thing. Well, I'll tell you, as I told Sam then. It's from a Wordsworth poem, The Excursion, which is actually part of a longer work called The Recluse. The entire sentence is, "The good die first, and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, burn to the socket." I'd made up the part about him resting now as he couldn't in life, because it was the truth. My parents didn't approve, but I didn't care. My husband; my husband's grave; my husband's gravestone; my money. So, pooh. Besides, it was the truth. He'd taken his life because he couldn't rest in peace in the body he'd been given at birth. The Germans had murdered him, actually. I believe I've mentioned that before. Sorry to repeat myself. You can tell it was an important fact of my life.

  I heard Sam heave a huge sigh beside me as we stared at the headstone and the acorn-littered grave. I heaved a sigh of my own.

  "Want me to brush off those acorns?" asked Sam.

&nbs
p; I thought about it. "No, thanks. I think they're perfect there." I hesitated for a minute, afraid I'd cry, and then said, "Poor Billy."

  Sam repeated, "Poor Billy."

  After standing and staring at my husband's last resting place for what seemed like too long, the weather being what it was, Sam and I moseyed a few yards up a small incline and stared at his wife's grave. Sam hadn't been as creative as I when instructing the stonecutters to commemorate Margaret's headstone. He'd only given her name and the years of her birth and death. That was all right. Sam had loved her; she'd known it; and life goes on.

  We walked back to the Hudson. I don't know about Sam, but I was depressed and nearly frozen solid.

  Chapter 5

  During the third and fourth weeks in January, my own personal business picked up. Mrs. Bissel asked me to conduct a séance at her home, Mrs. Pinkerton asked me to visit with both the Ouija board and my tarot deck, and Mrs. Wright called me in a dither and asked me to drive over and consult Rolly for her via the Ouija board. Mrs. Wright wasn't a ditherer as a rule, so this surprised me. However, I took Rolly and went.

  But wait. I haven't told you about Rolly yet, have I? Sorry. Need to take a quick trip off-topic here.

  You see, at the height of the spiritualism craze after the Great War and the horrible influenza pandemic that followed hard upon its heels, people all over the world were mourning their lost loved ones. They flocked to folks who, like me, claimed to be able to get in touch with their dead relations. In order to do this, spiritualists required spirit controls. The spirit control, you see, would get in touch with the dear departed and pass messages back and forth across the Great Divide between life and death.

  Yes, I know it's all hogwash. But that's how I earned my living, and I was darned good at it. I did, however, often wish I'd given my spirit control a more dignified name than Rolly. For that matter, I wish I'd given myself a name other than Desdemona. Everyone believed Daisy to be derived from Desdemona, but it wasn't. When I was ten years old and conjured Rolly out of whole cloth for the amusement of my family, I didn't give a thought to dignity or my future livelihood. And I certainly didn't know in my tenth year that Desdemona was a world-renowned murderee, or I'd have chosen a different pretend-name.

  It probably didn't matter much. Most of my clients believed Rolly—who was, according to my story, an eleventh-century soldier in Scotland—spelled his name R-a-l-e-i-g-h. And maybe folks thought Desdemona was a keen name for a spiritualist. All I knew at the time all this unfolded was that it was far too late for me to change either Rolly's name or my fake one.

  Actually, I was in some ways proud of Rolly. Most fake spiritualists used made-up Egyptian royal names as those of their spirit controls. At least Rolly was unique. Besides, when it comes to the people on earth, living or dead, the ratio of royalty to plain old folks (including soldiers) is heavily weighted in favor of the commoners. I mean, how many dead royal Egyptians can there actually be floating around on the Other Side, anyway?

  But back to the main topic. As I said, my business picked up after the first-of-the-year doldrums. My first spiritualist session of 1924 was with Mrs. Wright, who lived in a magnificent mansion not far from where the Pinkertons lived, on Orange Grove Boulevard. Back in those days, Orange Grove was nicknamed Millionaire's Row, and the Wrights and Pinkertons didn't let the nickname down.

  The Wrights were a wildly wealthy family that had made its fortune producing and selling chewing gum. I know. But somebody has to invent stuff like chewing gum, I guess, and the Wrights did. And then proceeded to make vast amounts of money manufacturing and marketing it. Mrs. Wright was normally a calm, organized person, who had never dithered at me before.

  However, the day she telephoned and asked me to visit her, she was in a state almost big enough to rival of one of Mrs. Pinkerton's, if not quite hysterical enough to warrant a capital S. Therefore, I was curious as I parked my family's Chevrolet in front of the Wrights' massive home. The housemaid who answered my ring at the door filled me in. I vaguely knew her from high school, although she was a little younger than I, and we hadn't run around in the same circles, if you know what I mean.

  "Good morning, Violet," said I to the housemaid, dropping a little of my mystical aura so she wouldn't be intimidated.

  The notion of anyone being intimidated by me darned near made me laugh. However, I'm better at my job than that. At that moment, I was clad in a hip-length green velvet coat with an unfitted bodice that fastened at the waist and shoulders with pearl buttons I'd bought at Nelson's Five and Dime. Under the coat, I wore a dark brown mid-calf dress that was simple but oh, so, dignified. Greens and browns were my favorite colors to wear, because of my hair.

  Which made me think of that beautiful ring Sam had given me. It would have gone smashingly well with my costume that day. However, the ring was buried under the unmentionables in my underwear drawer. I did wear the juju Mrs. Jackson had made for me. Mrs. Jackson, mother of Mrs. Pinkerton's gatekeeper, was a real, live, New Orleans Voodoo mambo whom I'd met the year prior. She claimed the juju would bring me luck. At that point, I was still waiting.

  Anyway, back to the Wrights' front door. Violet Donaldson, the housemaid in question, said, "Morning. Mrs. Wright's in the front parlor." She turned to lead the way. I wondered where the Wrights' butler was. The Wrights' butler, Evans, was nowhere near as superior a specimen of butlerhood as was Mrs. Pinkerton's Featherstone, but he played his role well.

  "Where is Mr. Evans today?"

  My question stopped Violet in her tracks, and she spun around, her face pale. "Don't ask me! I think that's the problem. Nobody knows where Evans is. Mrs. Wright has been having spasms all morning long."

  "My goodness. I'm so sorry."

  "Huh. You'd be a lot sorrier if you worked here." She brightened fractionally. "Say, maybe that's why she called you in. Maybe she wants you to use your magic to find Evans."

  "I don't use magic," I said in as repressive a voice as I could muster.

  But really! Evans was missing? How exciting! I hoped nothing horrid had happened to him.

  "Well, whatever you use, try and find Evans, will you? He organizes everything and everyone's duties. The whole household is up in the air without him."

  "I'm sorry. When did he go missing?"

  "Last Friday. But I can't talk any more. Here's the front parlor."

  I'd been in the Wrights' front parlor at least a dozen times before, so I knew where it was, but I thanked Violet anyway.

  When I entered the room, it was to find Mrs. Wright in a deep discussion with, of all people, Mrs. Pinkerton! Oh, dear. What did this mean? Mrs. Pinkerton saw me first. She leaped up out of her chair—quite a feat for so large a woman—and rushed at me. I braced myself for the blow, but she surprised me and stopped before she hit me. That didn't happen often.

  "Oh, Daisy, I do hope you can help poor Vera! Evans has vanished!" Vera, in case you wondered, was Mrs. Wrights' first name.

  "My goodness," I said in my staid, spiritualistic voice.

  "But do come on in, Mrs. Majesty," said Mrs. Wright, also standing. She didn't lunge at me, thank God. Mrs. Pinkerton was the only one who did that on a regular basis.

  I wafted across the floor in my practiced, spiritualist's glide, and sat on a chair near the two from which the women had risen. They sat, too. "Now," I said in order to get things going and to preclude Mrs. Pinkerton taking charge of the conversation, "what's this about Evans?"

  "He's gone," said Mrs. Wright. "Vanished." She lifted her arms in a helpless gesture.

  "Into thin air," supplied Mrs. Pinkerton in a dramatic whisper.

  Interesting. "Did he take his personal belongings with him?" I asked, trying to be practical. Heck, maybe the guy had become sick of butlering and lammed it out of Pasadena for greener pastures. If there were any pastures greener than those in Pasadena; I wasn't sure about that. Pasadena was a pretty place.

  "No. That's what's so strange," said Mrs. Wright. "All of his personal belon
gings are still in his room. But he left on Friday to go to out for a bit, and nobody's seen him since then. I'm terribly worried about him."

  "Hmm. Have you been in touch with the police department?"

  "The police?" Mrs. Wright pronounced the word kind of like Mrs. Pinkerton did; as if the police were foreign and unpleasant beings that had no place in her vicinity, and the very word tasted nasty on her tongue. I suppressed my sigh.

  "Oh, I don't think it's a police matter," said Mrs. Pinkerton.

  "A man is missing, and you don't believe you should tell the police? It's been what? Today is Tuesday, so he's been missing for nearly four days. Don't you think you should call the police and tell them this? Perhaps something terrible has happened to Evans. Perhaps he dropped dead on the street or something. Perhaps he's lying now on a cold marble slab in the morgue." I didn't know if morgues had cold marble slabs, but it sounded good. The two women both gasped, so I guess I got my point across.

  "Oh, dear!" said Mrs. Pinkerton, covering her mouth with her hand.

  "Good gracious," said Mrs. Wright, doing likewise.

  Rich folks. Gotta love them. "Does Evans have any family to whom you might drop a line? I don't believe you're doing Evans any favors by not taking his disappearance seriously."

  "Oh, but I am taking his disappearance seriously," cried Mrs. Wright, this time slapping a hand to her bosom. "The household can't even run without Evans overseeing things! Everything is at sixes and sevens, and nobody knows what to do."

  "I can't even imagine trying to get along without Featherstone," whispered Mrs. Pinkerton, who also thought Featherstone was a peach, although I'm sure her reasons for thinking so were different from mine. Featherstone even had an English accent. How much more perfect can a butler get?