Unsettled Spirits

by Alice Duncan

  "I am?" I said, feeling stupid.

  Dr. Benjamin added his hand to my forehead and said, "Yes."

  "We'd better get you home," said Pa.

  "Hmm," said I, feeling my own forehead and finding it hotter than your average frying pan over a big flame. "I guess you're right." Naturally, as soon as my illness was confirmed by everyone, I began feeling lousy. "Yes, let's go home. I'm sorry to ruin everyone's fun." And, right on cue, idiotically and typically, I burst into tears. Right there in Fellowship Hall. I hate being sick. I also hate crying in front of people, but oh, well.

  The Benjamins followed Sam's Hudson, which carried my family and me to our home a little south on Marengo. I was feeling weak and wobbly as I walked to the front porch, even with Sam holding me up by the elbows.

  For the first time since I could remember, the delicious aroma of Aunt Vi's waiting dinner didn't make my mouth water. In fact, I almost felt sick to my stomach, which isn't like me at all. Well, except for when Billy died. I couldn't eat for months after that, but this wasn't then.

  "I'm going to bed," I told everyone. Then I bent to pet Spike, who was leaping and wagging and loving his family and friends being home, and I fell, plop, on the floor. I don't think I fainted exactly. I think my legs just gave out on me, something they didn't do as a rule, and which I considered mighty rude of them.

  "Good Lord!" cried Ma. "Daisy! Sam! Do something!"

  So Sam scooped me up from the floor and carried me through the dining room and kitchen and to my bedroom, where he almost gently laid me on the bed. "You'd better get out of those church clothes and into a nightgown or something," said he. "I'll get the doctor."

  "I... I don't think I can walk," I whimpered.

  "Tell me what you need, and I'll get it for you."

  In the meantime, Spike had jumped on the bed and was snuggling up to me. Ordinarily, I loved it when he did that, but I was already afire, and didn't need his warm, furry body near mine to make me even hotter than I was. "Nightgown in the second drawer of the dresser." I lifted my right hand and pointed a shaky finger at the birds-eye maple dresser that used to hold both Billy's and my underthings. And Billy's morphine syrup.

  Thinking about Billy and morphine made me cry some more. Boy, was I a mess!

  But Sam, undaunted by plowing through ladies' underthings—probably because he'd been married and was used to such activities—did as I'd asked, and brought me a long, white cotton night dress.

  "Here. I'll give you five minutes and then send in the doctor."

  "Thank you, Sam."

  "Huh."

  Typical. However, I undressed, threw my dress over the end of the bed since I honestly didn't think I could walk to the closet to hang it up, and hunkered into my nightie. Spike looked on with interest, but his attention kept swerving to the kitchen, where delicious smells emanated. They still made me feel sick.

  In approximately the five minutes Sam had promised me, Dr. Benjamin knocked on my door and entered without awaiting my answer.

  "You poor thing," said he. "You don't get sick very often, but when you do, it's always bad. But I've noticed that a lot with people of your coloring." I had dark red hair and blue eyes, for whatever you want to make of that. "You'll get really sick really fast and then get really well really fast, too."

  "I hope you're right about that last part," I kind of croaked.

  He smiled and opened his black bag, which I knew he kept in his automobile for emergencies. This was the first time I could recall me being an emergency. Reaching in, he pulled out a thermometer case, which he opened and from which he removed a thermometer. As he shook it to get the mercury down, he said, "All right. Open up."

  So I did, he thrust the thermometer under my tongue, and let it stay there for a minute or so. When he removed it, he nodded and said, "Just as I figured. You, young lady, have a fever of a hundred and two degrees. That's not good. You probably infected the whole church congregation."

  "Oh, no! Did I really? But I didn't know I was sick." Tears trickled down my cheeks again.

  "Don't be silly," he said bracingly. "I'm going to give you three aspirin tablets, dose you with quinine, and I'll be back tomorrow to see how you're doing. Be sure to drink lots of water. Otherwise, the fever will dehydrate you, and you might become even more ill."

  "Water? Really?"

  "Water. Really."

  "Thank you."

  "Thank you. If you hadn't come down with whatever it is you have, Mrs. Benjamin and I wouldn't be partaking of one of your aunt's wonderful meals." He gave me a wink.

  I loved Dr. Benjamin. He was one of the kindest men I knew.

  So he gave me the three aspirin tablets, which I washed down with a cup of sweetened, milk-laden tea brought to me by my darling aunt, gave me a dose of quinine, and tucked me into bed. Ma and Pa and Sam came in to make sure I was still alive and fit to be left on my own. By that time, my eyelids felt as though they were made of lead, so I told them I'd just go to sleep now, thank you, and they all left. They took Spike with them. I missed Spike.

  After the door to my room shut, I dozed off and on, listening to desultory chatter slipping into my room from the kitchen to the dining room and back again. I do believe Vi served up one of her delectable stews that day, which she always served with her flaky dinner rolls. I think, although I'm not perfectly sure, that she'd prepared a floating island for dessert. In our household floating island is a baked meringue floating in a boat of custard sauce. As a rule, I'd kill to be able to partake of a meal like that, but I was sick. Too sick to eat. Boy, what an un-Daisy-like thing to happen.

  Damnation! I hate being sick!

  Didn't matter how much animosity I held toward illness. I was sick in bed for five days. Dr. Benjamin visited every single one of those days, and so did Sam. Naturally, Pa kept an eye on me during the day, and Ma and Vi ministered to me as much as they could before and after their working hours. Vi made beef broth for me (she called it beef tea), which didn't hurt my throat too much when it went down. Sam said a Jewish lady in his New York City neighborhood claimed chicken soup could cure anything, so Vi made that, too. No matter how awful things got for me, I was blessed in my family and friends. And Sam. Sam was a true blessing, and at that time I was too weak to deny the truth.

  People came bearing flowers and other goodies, which was nice. Mrs. Longnecker, our sour-dispositioned neighbor from down the street a couple of houses, even brought me some homemade ice cream, telling Ma that if I was sick, I might be able to eat ice cream if I couldn't eat anything else. That was nice of her, although I didn't feel like eating ice cream any more than I felt like eating anything else. I only drank soup because Vi and Ma made me. I followed Dr. Benjamin's advice and drank lots of water, even though I didn't want to.

  Miss Betsy Powell and Mr. Gerald Kingston came by one day with a box of chocolates. Pa brought it and them in to me, and I tried to be polite and kind about them and the chocolates, but I wasn't about to eat anything Betsy gave me. She'd already tried to poison one person and had told me about it. I hadn't told Sam about her confession to me, mainly because I was so sick I forgot all about it. Then, after she came to visit, I wasn't sure what to do. She hadn't, after all, actually killed anyone. Besides which, I didn't blame her for wanting to do away with Mr. Underhill, the ghastly man. But now that she'd told me she'd actually tried to kill him, she might want to eliminate me, as someone who knew her worst secret.

  Nuts. Life is too complicated even when one is well. When one isn't well, it's just not worth thinking about.

  Still, although walking to the bathroom nearly did me in, I flushed the chocolates down the toilet. I threw them in a couple at a time and had to wait until the tank filled again before I could toss in another couple and pull the chain, but I emptied the box. I'd thought about burying them in the yard, but I wasn't equal to that task. Besides, Spike was a champion digger. Heck, dachshunds were bred to hunt badgers, according to Mrs. Bissel, and even went so far as to dig them out of the
ir burrows. Badgers were tough customers and not known for their sweet dispositions. An ordinary chocolate was no match for a badger. A poisoned one, however... Well, the mere thought of my dog succumbing to poison made me cry. On the other hand, just about everything made me cry when I was sick. Phooey.

  When Pa visited me after walking Spike and asked about them, I said I'd eaten them all. I could tell he didn't believe me, but I couldn't think of a more plausible lie. Again, that was unlike me. I know it sounds bad, but I'm generally able to lie with ease and facility.

  Dr. Benjamin finally diagnosed a severe case of influenza, and kept dosing me with aspirin, quinine and sleep. The mere word "influenza" frightened people in those days, and I was no exception. Right after the Great War, a pandemic of influenza swept the world, carrying off almost a quarter of its population, so I knew it was nothing to sneeze at. So to speak. Look at Robert Browning's lost fiancée, Elizabeth Winslow, who'd died of the influenza years after the pandemic had passed.

  But nobody needed to worry about me not being a good girl. I took care of myself and followed Doc Benjamin's directions to the letter. In truth, I felt so horrid, I couldn't have got out of bed and run around if I'd wanted to. All I wanted to do was sleep. I had a terribly sore throat, and pretty soon my voice deepened so much, I could have sung bass in one of the Van der Lindens' operettas.

  The phone rang off the hook, in a manner of speaking, but Pa told everyone who called that I was extremely ill and couldn't take calls. I got the feeling Mrs. Pinkerton had an even worse week than I did, since she wasn't accustomed to not having her every need administered to instantly every time she called. I knew she was upset about Stacy's engagement to Percival Petrie, for which she had good reason although she didn't know it yet, so she was undoubtedly in hysterics that grew worse with each passing day during which I remained unavailable.

  In fact, I knew she was hysterical, because Pa finally admitted as much to me. This was on Thursday morning, and I was finally beginning to believe I'd live through my ordeal, although there was no way I'd make it to choir rehearsal that night, and probably wouldn't be able to attend church the next Sunday. I was sorry about that, since that Sunday's anthem was "Now Thank We All Our God," a pretty hymn which, while written by a German, I liked anyway. Anyhow, that German had lived in the sixteen-hundreds and didn't have anything to do with mustard gas or Kaiser Bill.

  In actual fact, when Pa told me about Mrs. Pinkerton's annoying persistence, I was sitting up in bed, my head flopping to the side occasionally as I succumbed to exhaustion. When sitting upright, however, I perused the book Miss Petrie had been kind enough to bring me from the library when she heard I was sick: The Black Oxen, by Gertrude Atherton. One of the reasons my head kept nodding was that this book wasn't precisely the type of novel I preferred to read. I like stuff that makes me laugh. The Black Oxen dealt with a truly pathetic woman who didn't want to get old. Well, I don't suppose any of us wants to get old, but there's not a whole lot we can do about it, unless you take Billy's way out, and that hurts other people even more than if one is taken off by the influenza.

  "Do you think you can take a call from Mrs. Pinkerton next time she rings, Daisy? I hate to ask you, but she's really upset, and she's starting to... Well, she's about to make me lose my temper."

  I lifted my head, which had just flopped to the side once more, and blinked at Pa. "Wow, that's not like you, Pa."

  "I know, but the woman is a pest. She's really upset about something and claims she needs you desperately."

  I tried to sigh and coughed instead. When I caught my breath again, I said, "She's always upset. But I think I can crawl to the 'phone when she calls." I sounded kind of like a foghorn according to Sam (I'd never heard a foghorn, so I wouldn't know), so at least the pesky woman would understand I wasn't merely avoiding her for no reason.

  "Thanks, sweetheart. I don't know how you deal with her the way you do. She'd drive me batty."

  "She drives me batty, too, but I'm used to her."

  Right after that conversation, I decided to heck with The Black Oxen, set the book on the night stand, and curled up to sleep some more. Until I got that nasty 'flu, I didn't perfectly understand how weak a body could get under its influence.

  The ringing of the telephone jarred me awake I don't know how much later. Since, no matter when the telephone rings, it's always for me, I attempted to brace myself. I sat up, hunched into my bathrobe, and had just stuck my feet into my slippers when Pa came to my door. I glanced up at him through bleary eyes. "Mrs. P?"

  "Mrs. P," said he, sounding as if he wished it weren't.

  "Be right there."

  "I don't think you should get out of bed," said Pa, even though he'd asked me to take her next call.

  "It's all right. I'll be fine." My voice was extremely deep and scratchy. Strange not to sound like one's usual self.

  I dragged myself to the telephone on the kitchen wall and said, "Mrs. Pinkerton?" Pa brought a kitchen chair over to me, so I could at least sit whilst talking to the pestilential woman.

  After quite a pause on the other end of the wire, Mrs. Pinkerton said, "Who is this?"

  Good Lord. "It's Daisy, Mrs. Pinkerton. I've been quite ill."

  "Oh, Daisy! Oh, I'm so sorry! Oh, I didn't mean to drag you out of your sick bed. Oh, I just didn't know."

  Right. Even though Pa had been telling her I was sick for a week. Well, almost a week. "I have the influenza, and I'm not quite ready to work yet. I'm sorry I can't assist you immediately. Would you like me to telephone you when I'm well enough to come over with the Ouija board and the tarot cards?"

  "Um... Yes, that would be nice. Um... I don't suppose I could visit you for a session? I don't want to impose, but..."

  Good Lord again. She was talking to me on the telephone, hearing my voice, knowing I was sick as a dog—well, sicker than Spike—and she didn't want to impose, but she wanted to come over and have me do a special reading for her? I guess when you've never had a responsibility in your life, you sort of don't realize other people have their limits. However, I'd reached mine.

  "I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Pinkerton, but the doctor won't even allow me to have visitors." Told you I could lie when it was necessary. Darn the woman, anyhow!

  "Oh, Daisy, I'm so sorry. Please take care of yourself, dear, and call me as soon as you can."

  "I shall. Thank you for your understanding." Huh. Understanding? I think not.

  "Get well, dear."

  "Thank you."

  We hung up, and I crawled back to bed.

  I learned about an hour later that I'd perhaps wronged the lady. The doorbell buzzed—we had one of those twisty bells that make a grinding sound when you turn them—and when Pa went to the door, Harold Kincaid stood there with a cardboard box stacked to the brim with all kinds of things: flowers, candies, books, a beautiful silk shawl, and I can't even remember what all else.

  "From my mother," said Harold as he staggered into the entryway. I know he staggered, because Pa told me so. "She even made me go to Jurgensen's and get some pickled herring, because she said fish is good for you. Don't know about that. It stinks something awful."

  Pa laughed. "Thanks, Harold. The smell reminds me of my youth in Massachusetts. We down-easterners eat all sorts of things folks in California don't even know about."

  "Not sure I wanted to know about pickled herring," said Harold. I heard him plop the box on the dining room table.

  "If Daisy doesn't want it, I'll eat it."

  "Good. Hate to have it go to waste." He and Pa both laughed at this piece of nonsense. "Is Daisy fit to be seen? I know she told Mother she couldn't have visitors, but I think that was self-defense on her part. I know my mother."

  "I'm sure she'd love to see you. Go ahead. She's in her bedroom there."

  I'm sure Pa pointed to my room, because Harold knocked at the door and entered without waiting for me to tell him to come in.

  Chapter 27

  "Hey, Harold," I croaked from my be
d. I'd managed to sit up when I heard him enter the kitchen and realized he was he. Or whatever I mean.

  "Good God, you look like hell. Sound like it, too," said Harold.

  "Thanks a lot, Harold. You always make a girl feel special."

  "You look as bad as when you got sick in Turkey." I'd had a ghastly case of what they called Pharaoh's Revenge then, which is basically the stomach 'flu. Don't know why they called it Pharaoh's Revenge in Turkey, but they did.

  "Thanks. You're so encouraging."

  With a laugh, Harold said, "It's all right, Daisy. You'll get well, and then Mother can relax and give the rest of us a... well, a rest."

  "Lucky me."

  "Yeah, but you're used to it." He plunked himself down at the side of my bed, which dipped under his weight, and I had to grab the backboard so as not to end up on the floor. "By the way, did you manage to dig anything up about the Franbold and Underhill cases? I know you're sick, but I also know you, and I know you must have done some sleuthing before you got sick."

  Aha! I could tell Harold about Betsy Powell's semi-confession and see what he said. Harold had tons of common sense, so he could advise me about whether or not to tell Sam Betsy's dark secret. So I revealed all.

  Harold's eyebrows lifted. "Good God, so she really did try to poison the bastard, did she? But she didn't do in Mrs. Franbold?"

  "Nope. She was trying to kill Mr. Underhill that day when Mrs. Franbold died and Betsy thought she'd managed to kill the wrong person by mistake. But Mrs. Franbold died of natural causes, and Betsy claims never to have tried to poison anyone again. So I still don't know who did in Underhill, but it wasn't Betsy. If she was telling me the truth, and I think she was. She was too miserable to lie."

  That didn't make sense even to me, but never mind.

  "That doesn't make any sense, Daisy," said Harold, blast him. "People can always lie. You must know that as well as anyone."