by Alice Duncan
"Lecturing you is about as effective as lecturing a pile of rocks."
"Thanks, Sam." I felt my mouth flatten into a tight line.
"You're welcome." On the other hand, Sam had begun to grin.
Bless Sam's withered heart.
But no. I wrong the man. He had a big heart. The fact that he kept his softer emotions concealed some of the time—oh, very well, most of the time—didn't mean he didn't have any.
He turned into the Underhill parking lot and pulled up next to the Gumm/Majesty Chevrolet. Since he didn't kill the engine, I opened my own door. Before I allowed him to leave, I said, "You're coming to dinner tonight, aren't you?"
"If I'm invited."
I shook my head in mock annoyance. "You're always invited, Sam. I've told you that a thousand times."
Looking grumpy and slightly abashed, Sam said, "It hasn't been a thousand times."
"Has too." I leaned in and gave him a peck on his cheek. Which needed to be shaved again. I swear, the man grew hair faster than any other male human I've ever met.
"Well, then, see you tonight," said he, and he drove out of the Underhill lot. If I were to guess, he was a happier man than he'd been when he'd entered Mijares and espied Robert and me seated at that conspicuous table.
Shaking my head, I opened the door to my automobile and climbed in. Is there a way, I wondered, that a woman can ever understand the workings of a man's brain? I decided that was too complex a question for a short ride, so I ceased thinking.
As for my route, I turned north on Fair Oaks Avenue and tootled up the street a mile or two. Or maybe three. I'm not sure how far away the Underhill plant is from the Pasadena Public Library, but that's where I headed. I'd told Mrs. Pinkerton I'd ask about Stacy's beloved with another Petrie. Perhaps Miss Petrie, my favorite librarian, might have some dirt to fling about Mr. Percival Petrie, who might be of the same Petrie tree as hers or of one of its less savory offshoots. I figured, as long as I was out and about, I might as well get it over with because, sure as anything, Mrs. Pinkerton would be telephoning me in another tizzy about the same matter soon.
I had a most enlightening chat with Miss Petrie, but since our chat has nothing to do with the matter in question here, I'll go into it later.
Chapter 21
The rest of that week passed pleasantly enough. I read a lot, went for a daily walk or two with Pa and Spike, read the tarot and used the Ouija board almost constantly for Mrs. Pinkerton. As I'd predicted, she telephoned me each day, and every time she called, she was either in hysterics or a tizzy or both. All her states were related to her idiot daughter Stacy and Stacy's so-called fiancé, Mr. Percival Petrie. Naturally, I also ate a good many delicious meals prepared by my very own Aunt Vi.
Then came Thursday, which was choir-rehearsal night. Sam took dinner with us that evening he generally did.
"This is wonderful, Mrs. Gumm," said he, forking a bite of beef stew into his mouth.
Typical. He always complimented Aunt Vi, who deserved it, but he wasn't awfully creative in his use of adjectives.
"Superb," said I, in an attempt to give him a hint.
"Thank you both. It's just a regular old beef stew."
"Nothing you fix is regular old anything, Aunt Vi," I told her. "You make the best of everything there is to make." Recalling the luncheon salad she'd fed me a couple of days prior, I told the table in general, "Vi's going to give us all a salamander salad one of these days. It's delicious. I can vouch for it, because she gave me some for lunch at Mrs. Pinkerton's place a couple of days ago."
"Salmagundi, Daisy," Aunt Vi said with a shudder. "I wouldn't inflict salamanders on anyone."
"Oh, that's right," I said, embarrassed. "Sorry. Salmagundi."
"Aren't salamanders those lizard-like things that live under rocks?" asked Pa as if he really wanted to know.
"I think so," said Sam. Grinning at me, he said, "Why don't you try a salamander and tell us how you like it?"
"Don't be mean, Sam Rotondo. I meant salmagundi salad. I misspoke. I didn't mean Vi fed me anything at all having to do with lizards."
"Ew. I don't want to talk about lizards at the table," said Ma, frowning at me.
Sometimes I couldn't do anything right even when I tried.
Silence reigned for a few minutes. I figured I'd just let it reign, since my efforts at conversation seemed destined for failure.
I regretted my decision a second later, when Pa said, "So how'd your interview at the Underhill plant go, Daisy?"
A duet of "Your what?" went up from Ma and Vi. What's more, they both commenced staring in horror at me. Sam merely rolled his eyes and took another bite of his stew.
Aw, shoot. "It went well, thank you. I won't be working there."
Ma at once commenced interrogating me about why I'd applied for a job, and was I trying to pry into police business, etc., etc. I only sighed and continued to eat my meal, although my appetite had fled.
"Well?" Ma asked, sounding more irked than usual. "Why did you apply for a job at the Underhill place? Are you nosing into police business again, Daisy Majesty?"
Lifting my gaze to meet hers, I sighed and said, "Just thought I'd find out what a line job at the plant is like. It's like heck. I decided to stick with spiritualism. Talking to dead people pays better than filling poison bottles, anyway."
"Daisy!" said my mother, now peeved with my honesty. Or maybe my choice of words. Because I didn't like it when my mother was mad at me, I opted to tell her a smidgeon of the truth.
"Sorry, Ma. But I promised Miss Emmaline Castleton that I'd look into Mrs. Franbold's death, and now that Mr. Underhill has been poisoned, I thought there might be a connection, and it might be at his chemical factory." Staring at Sam, I said, "Since nobody's sharing any pertinent information with me, I have to dig around on my own."
"You do not," said Sam stonily.
"I agree with Sam," said Pa, giving me a regretful smile. "Sorry, sweetie, but you always seem to get into some kind of trouble when you poke into police business."
"According to Sam, I might get a commendation from the Altadena Sheriff's Department for helping to find Mr. Evans," said I defiantly. Didn't work.
"Might. That's not because you went up into the hills and confronted a gang of bootleggers by yourself. You gave the proper authorities a tip, and they found Mr. Evans." Sam chewed savagely on a biscuit.
Clearly I couldn't win that night. So I just finished dinner, smiled at everyone, washed and put away the dinner dishes, bade everyone a fond(ish) farewell, and went to church for choir practice.
Bother my family.
Not that I didn't love them all.
Oh, never mind.
* * *
I wasn't precisely surprised to see Miss Betsy Powell at the church that night. After all, she belonged to various church committees. We kind of jostled each other when I was poking around the sanctuary in an attempt to figure out who might have done in Mr. Underhill. My pokery went for naught, although I did, as I said, bump into Miss Powell.
We both leaped back several inches and slammed our hands over our thundering hearts. My heart was thundering, at any rate; I don't know what hers was doing. "Oh, Miss Powell! I'm so sorry. I didn't see you there." I squinted at her. "Why are you here?"
Very well, I suppose my question might be considered impolite, but the woman seemed to be everywhere I went during those several weeks.
"I'm just coming from a communion committee meeting. The meeting went a little late and the front door is locked," said Miss Powell, appearing both affronted and afraid, as if she were scared of me for some reason. "So we had to come through the sanctuary. Why were you at the Underhill plant yesterday?"
Question for question. I guess that was fair. "I was interested in the line-girl job that was advertised in the paper," I said, not precisely lying.
"You? But you're a fortune-teller, aren't you?" she spoke the sentence with some derision.
"No," I said firmly. "I am not a fortun
e-teller. I'm a spiritualist-medium. And a member of the choir, which meets every Thursday evening at seven." There. That should put her in her place. And then I bethought me of the reason she was at church the same evening as the choir. She'd assisted at both communion services during which folks had dropped dead. Maybe I could determine if she'd doctored the grape juice or wafers or something.
Trying to be sly, I said, "At your meeting, did you discuss the seeming fatality of communions in our church recently?"
She stepped back a pace, as if startled, almost bumping into Mr. Gerald Kingston, who had slipped up behind her. When she jolted him, his glasses slid down his nose. As he pushed them up his nose with one hand, he held out the other one, as if he wanted to touch Miss Powell's arm, but didn't quite dare.
"Oh!" she cried. "Gerald. I didn't see you there."
"I thought I'd ask if you need a ride home from the meeting," he said meekly. Everything about Mr. Kingston was meek, as nearly as I could tell.
"No. Thank you," said Miss Powell.
Mr. Kingston seemed to wilt a little.
Hmm. What did this mean? I'd sort of begun thinking of them as a couple. Was I wrong? As much as I hate to admit it, it wouldn't be the first time.
Miss Powell turned back to me. "What did you mean by that remark?" Her voice was a trifle sharp. Not in the choir-practice way of being off-key, but in the brittle-comment way.
I shrugged. "It only seems odd that people have dropped dead during the last two communion services. I suppose it would be easy to plop poison into a communion cup of grape juice or something." Eyeing her slant-wise, I said, "You do work in a company that produces poisons, after all. I'm sure others in the congregation do, too."
I spared a glance for Mr. Kingston, who goggled at me from behind his glasses. "I do," said he in a softish, smallish voice.
"Are you implying that I..." Miss Powell stopped talking, pressed her lips together, and said, "Don't be ridiculous." And she stomped off.
"Miss Powell would never do anything the least bit underhand," Mr. Kingston told me in a shaky voice, standing up as tall as he could, which wasn't very. I think he was attempting to be brave. I got the feeling he was nutty about Miss Powell. At any rate, he scurried after her, uttering softly, "Miss Powell. Oh, Miss Powell."
She eventually stopped in her hurry to flee and allowed him to catch up with her. They exited the sanctuary together.
All right, that didn't go so well. Sloppy, Daisy Gumm Majesty. Mortifyingly sloppy.
So I went back to the chancel, sat in my assigned alto chair, and paid attention to the music we were supposed to learn for the next couple of weeks. The next Sunday was another communion day, so we had bread-eating hymns to learn. Our communion anthem for the upcoming Sunday was "Bread of Heaven, on Thee We Feed," which is really kind of disgusting when you think about it, so I didn't. Pretty soon we'd enter the season of Lent, and then all our hymns would be slow and dismal until Easter, when things would perk up again. Seasonal singing could be quite interesting sometimes.
The séance at Mrs. Bissel's house that Saturday went well. Mrs. Underhill was there, appearing distressed, but, when we spoke privately after the séance, I told her not to worry. The police were working on her husband's case, and none of her children was to blame.
I only hoped I was telling her the truth. She seemed happier, so I guess I did my duty well. Being a spiritualist-medium can be trying sometimes, but I do attempt to make people feel better.
* * *
On Sunday morning, March 2, 1924, Sam came to our house early so that he could partake of the delicious breakfast casserole Aunt Vi prepared for us.
"Delicious, Mrs. Gumm," said Sam, adhering to tradition.
"Thank you. I got this recipe from a cooking book Daisy borrowed from the library. It's called scalloped eggs, and it's from The White House Cookbook."
"You mean from the real White House?" asked Sam, glancing up from his eggs, which Vi served with sausage patties. Yum.
"Yes. There are all sorts of recipes in it. The White House folks eat pretty well," said Vi with a laugh.
"So do the folks in this house," said Sam, making Vi blush. My father, mother and I all nodded our agreement.
I said, "I'm glad you could use that book, Vi. I mainly wanted to see if you could create a shrimp cocktail sauce like the kind we had at the Hotel Castleton when I dined there with Harold and Miss Emmaline Castleton."
Vi gave me a speaking look. "You do travel in exalted company, Daisy Gumm Majesty."
"Yes," said Sam, sounding not pleased about it, "you do."
"Not all the time. Heck, I'm eating breakfast with you, aren't I?"
"Daisy!" said Ma.
I couldn't win. Maybe after Sam and I were married, I could say things to him without my mother thinking I was being rude. In this particular case, I was trying to be funny. My wonderful mother—and I mean that sincerely; she was a wonderful person—didn't possess an ounce of humor or imagination, which is why I couldn't get away with sly humor in our house.
"It was a joke, Ma," I said, knowing it would do no good.
"Hmph. Well, I thought it was quite rude."
Sam smirked at me. I didn't stick my tongue out at him, because I knew Ma would scold me again.
Vi saved the day when she said, "Actually, the tomato sauce recipe in the White House Cookbook works well for your shrimp cocktail sauce, Daisy. I just added a dollop of horseradish, and you said it tasted just like the sauce at the Castleton."
"It did!" I said, remembering, and pleased to have been of service to the entire family, who got to enjoy the results of Vi's mastery in the kitchen. "It was actually better than the one they served at Castleton's."
Vi blushed again. "Pshaw," said she, an expression she used quite often and which made no sense to me, not that it matters.
So we finished breakfast, and Ma and I washed up the dishes. Then we set out for church. The weather had turned chilly, now that it was almost springtime (I'm joking again) so we all got into Sam's Hudson for the drive to the church. That day I wore my favorite worsted suit (made by me, naturally) in a lovely green color that went well with my hair. Sam's ring would have gone beautifully with the outfit, but I hadn't dared take it from its box since I'd hidden it under my unmentionables that Christmas of 1923. Sam hadn't brought up the matter of our secret engagement, which I appreciated. There was a lot to like about the big lug, even if he did drive me crazy more often than not.
As ever, once we exited Sam's automobile and approached the church, I veered off to enter the choir room and don my robe. Because the chancel, where the choir sat, always seemed to be warmer than the sanctuary, where the rest of the congregation sat, I took off my suit jacket and hung it on the hanger upon which my robe hung the rest of the week. Then we all lined up and, when Mrs. Fleming began the organ prelude, we processed to our assigned seats.
Because I knew Miss Betsy Powell would help serve communion that day, and also because I knew she was upset with me, both for chatting with folks at the Underhill plant and for questioning her about possible poisoning of the communion elements, I'd planned ahead for this day's service. In my handbag, I had a tiny rubber envelope and an elastic band with which to secure it. Darn it, if Betsy Powell were murdering folks during communion, I was probably next on her list. Therefore, I aimed to take no chances. I also aimed to do something positive with regard to her villainy if she was, indeed, a villain.
Truth to tell, at that point even I didn't much care who'd killed Mr. Underhill, but if Miss Powell had poisoned Mrs. Franbold, she deserved to be punished for same. Stupid woman. Miss Powell, not Mrs. Franbold.
The choir did a spectacular job on "Bread of Heaven, on Thee We Feed," and then, after the sermon and the prayer, Pastor Smith called for us choir members to take communion. Miss Powell stood next to him and helped, holding the communion cups on a silver tray. As Pastor Smith held out the wafers for us to take, saying to each of us as he did so, "The body of Christ, broken for yo
u," we each said, "Amen," as we were supposed to do. As I pretended to put the wafer in my mouth, I palmed it and held it concealed in my choir robe.
Then along came Miss Powell with the little glass communion cups. As we each took one—I noticed she positioned the glasses on the tray so that the communion-ee would take a specific cup, she said, "The blood of Christ, spilled for you," and we each said, "Amen" again. Then, as I knelt at the altar, I surreptitiously wrapped the communion cup in my handkerchief. I'd never be able to use that hankie again, the cloth-staining properties of grape juice being what they were. I tried to hide my hankie in my robe without spilling any of the juice, but that didn't work awfully well. I sure hoped grape-juice stains would come out of my choir robe with the judicious application of hydrogen peroxide.
When I regained my seat in the choir nook, I opened my handbag and stuffed the communion cup, hankie and all, into the rubber receptacle I had ready for it. Then I wound the elastic band as tightly as I could around the top of the rubber envelope, and prayed fervently that it wouldn't leak grape juice all over the insides of my handbag. Actually, I expect that was my most fervent prayer of the entire service, which just goes to show you how devout I was.
Naturally, I felt guilty.
However, my state of guiltiness didn't stay me from my purpose, which was to discover if Miss Powell had doctored either the communion wafers or the grape juice with something that shouldn't be there. Mind you, I wasn't entirely certain how to ascertain that truth, but I trusted my ingenuity.
Thank the good Lord, nobody fell down dead during communion service that day. I believe the entire congregation was fairly giddy with relief when the service ended and everyone except the choir headed for Fellowship Hall and tea and cookies. Or coffee and cookies. Or, for that matter, lemonade and a piece of cake. We Methodist-Episcopals aimed to please.
As for me, before I dared look into my handbag, I hung up my robe. I was relieved that no telltale purple stains adorned it; however, I did see that one of my fingers was sort of purple, tried to remove the purple stain with a rag that happened to be lying on one of the tables in the choir room, failed, sighed, and donned my suit jacket.
