Strong Spirits (1)

by Alice Duncan

  I was seriously beginning to consider purchasing a Hudson as my next car. You know, when I got rich. Ha! Sorry. Sometimes I get these silly fancies.

  Although the Hudson was an improvement over the Model T, I still hoped nobody noticed me in it. My reputation was fragile enough, especially after having screeched at Mrs. Barrow this morning, without having all the neighbors seeing me driving around in a police car. Of course I was in the front seat and not behind the screened-in back seat, but I’m sure that part of the picture wouldn’t be bandied about. It would be the “Did you know that Daisy Majesty must have been arrested, and didn’t I just tell you it would happen one of these days?” part that people would talk about.

  “You say Mrs. Kincaid told you Applewood came back to the house?”

  “Yes. And that’s all I know. She didn’t tell me anything else over the telephone except about Edie throttling Stacy with the vacuum-cleaner cord.” I couldn’t help myself. Every time I thought about that part of the drama, I smiled.

  “Did she mention anything about her husband coming back?”

  I frowned at him. “I just told you every single thing she said to me. Did I say anything about Mr. Kincaid? No, I didn’t. And that’s because she didn’t say anything about her husband.”

  “Don’t get testy, Mrs. Majesty. This is a tough case. Sometimes people know more than they think they do.”

  “Well, I don’t.

  The expression he shot at the sky outside the Hudson’s window made me think he believed me, darn him.

  The Hudson had a smooth ride, too. If I hadn’t been in it with Detective Sam Rotondo, I think I’d have enjoyed the ride a lot. Drawbacks. There are always drawbacks. Sometimes I get frightfully tired of them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Featherstone met us at the door with his nose in the air, his patent-leather shoes shining like mirrors, and his pristine white cravat all but gleaming at his throat. I don’t know how the man did that—you know, look perfect all the time. It must have taken years of practice.

  I wanted to ask him if Edie had damaged Stacy with the vacuum-cleaner cord, but knew he’d never answer me, so I didn’t bother. Aunt Vi, now, she’d tell me in a second. Less than that. Aunt Vi was human. Featherstone was British. There’s a big difference.

  The commotion coming from the drawing room didn’t leave us guessing where we’d be heading. Although we didn’t really need the butler’s guidance, Rotondo and I followed Featherstone down the hall to the scene of the drama. We even let him do his duty, open the door, and announce us. Talk about important. I actually felt like a queen there for a second. Maybe half a second. I hate to admit it, but Majesty can be a heck of a name to live with sometimes—or live up to, I guess I mean.

  “Mrs. Majesty and Detective Rotondo, Mrs. Kincaid.” Featherstone might have been announcing the arrival of the Prince of Wales.

  “Oh!” Shrieked Mrs. Kincaid, vaulting up from the red velvet chair in which she’d been ensconced, and launching herself at me. Harold stood behind the chair, and it looked to me as if he’d been attempting to press her shoulders down and keep her put.

  I braced myself against a heavy table with a marble top so I wouldn’t fall over when she hit. I got a heck of a bruise on my bum, but I didn’t mind. The poor woman was practically out of her mind with all the fuss and bother going on in her life.

  “Daisy!” I heard somebody else scream, but I was at present enfolded in the rather fleshy arms of Mrs. Kincaid, so I couldn’t see who it was. I think it was Edie, though. It sounded like her voice. In a way. It sounded like her voice might sound if she’d been crying and carrying on for a year or two.

  It took a while, but things settled down at last. By then, I’d realized that not only was Edie in the room, sitting in another red velvet chair as if she were a normal human being and not merely a housemaid, but so was Quincy Applewood, who looked sort of like death warmed up, although it also looked as if death might claim him any second. His face was filthy and covered with bruises and welts, and his knuckles had been scraped raw. His chair and Edie’s were close together and they were holding hands. I thought that was just the sweetest thing. I guess I’m a romantic at heart, in spite of everything.

  After being released by Mrs. Kincaid, I went to Edie first, since she was my friend. “How are you holding up, Edie? I hope everything will clear up soon.”

  She started crying. Figures. Everybody seemed to be crying at me in those days. I patted her on the shoulder and headed for Quincy. “What the heck happened to you, Quincy? You look terrible!”

  “Thanks.” He grinned, which made a split in his lip start to bleed, and I felt awful. I patted the air with my hand to show him he needn’t smile. Lord, I couldn’t wait until this lousy mess was cleared up.

  After I’d spoken to Quincy, I aimed straight at Harold, whom I knew to be sane and normal. Mostly normal. He greeted me warmly, and I felt better.

  “All right, everyone, let’s get organized here.”

  I was almost glad Rotondo had decided to put on his tough-copper attitude and take over. We all stood (or sat) at attention instantly. Rotondo turned to Quincy.

  “Young man, tell your story. Make it quick and clean, and don’t leave out any essential details.”

  Quincy sighed, leading me to believe he’d already told his story more than once and that it would hurt, literally, to tell it again, but he knew what he was up against. After all, the Kincaids were millionaires. Quincy worked as a stable boy. He didn’t expect anyone in the room except Edie and me to believe anything he said.

  “Wait! Wait!”

  Before Quincy could begin, Mrs. Kincaid hurried to his chair and commenced hovering over him.

  It looked to me as if Rotondo couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was sort of unusual, I suppose, since Quincy was Quincy and Mrs. Kincaid was Mrs. Kincaid, but I never have thought Rotondo truly understood people.

  Quincy’s expression was one to behold when Mrs. Kincaid laid a hand on his shoulder. He looked scared to death.

  “Mr. Applewood, we must get your wounds attended to before you do any more talking. Do you need more carbolic? Ointment? That’s such a dreadful cut on your lip, and I’m sure you ought to keep ointment on it.

  “And your head! My goodness, I don’t know what to do for that wretched lump on your head. But I have lanolin and boric acid ointment. They’re both good for wounds And I’m sure you could use a cool drink. Or would you prefer a cup of hot tea or coffee? You’ve endured such an ordeal.” She turned in a circle, apparently seeking something (probably a maid), and then, not seeing any present except Edie who wasn’t acting that particular role today, she stopped still, confused.

  I got up from the sofa I’d commandeered. “Let me get some things for him, Mrs. Kincaid. I’m sure Aunt Vi will know exactly what to do.”

  There went Mrs. Kincaid’s hands to her bosom again. “Oh, Daisy, I knew I could count on you!”

  “Absolutely.” Harold. It sounded to me as if he was trying not to laugh. Couldn’t say as I blamed him.

  Aunt Vi knew what to do, precisely as I’d predicted. She made tea and coffee, put some little petit fours on a platter, and had the second housemaid, a twelve-year-old girl named Karen who worked at the Kincaid mansion after school except during summer vacation when she worked all day, carry them to the drawing room.

  As for the medicaments, first of all, Vi gave me firm instructions on cleanliness. “I just read an article in the Saturday Evening Post that says germs cause infections, and infections lead to death.”

  I couldn’t help it. I made a face.

  Aunt Vi shook her finger at me. “Now don’t you go getting squeamish on me, young lady. You’ve had practice in nursing.” She was right on that count, and I’d hated every minute of it. “You have to clean wounds thoroughly so they won’t grow germs. Germs are the killers. Silent killers, the article said of them.”

  “Germs. Right.” I had no idea what she was talking about. That had never
stopped me before, and it didn’t stop me then.

  “So I’m going to give you two bowls of warm water.” She held up one bowl. “I’m putting carbolic soap in this one. Wash that bump as well as you can, whether he likes it or not.”

  He wouldn’t like it at all. I could tell I wasn’t exactly going to be having a swell time during the next several hours.

  “Then rinse it with the clean water to get all the soap out. All the soap, Daisy. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And then he’ll need to medicate the wound and keep it clean and bound so germs can’t get at it. Sanitation in what’s needed here.”

  Sounded like a good idea to me.

  Aunt Vi handed me a jar of lanolin. “Make sure he keeps the wound on his lip well greased with this or it’ll never heal and he’ll have a scar for life. It would be a shame for such a good-looking boy to have a hideous scar to mar him. He shouldn’t be talking at all, but you know as well as I do that that dreadful policeman will make him go on until they take him down to headquarters and give him the third degree.”

  The third degree? I eyed my aunt suspiciously. “Have you been reading my detective novels, Aunt Vi?”

  She blushed, giving me my answer. “I’ll tolerate no sass from you, my girl.” Aunt Vi, like Mrs. Kincaid, couldn’t sound strict if someone tied her to a tree and commanded her to do so or die, so I wasn’t scared. “I don’t know how much you’ve been told so far—”

  “Nothing,” I broke in.

  Aunt Vi nodded. “As I suspected. Well, poor Quincy suffered a vicious smack on the head and has a huge lump there. This is the padded bandage he’s going to need to keep on it. And it will have to be changed daily. I will see to that.”

  “You will?” She’d probably have to fight Edie for the privilege, although I didn’t mention it. But I was confused. “I thought he’d been fired. Will he even be here for you to change his pad?”

  Her face took on an expression of fierce militancy that I myself had encountered once or twice when I’d been sick and rebelled against taking the gruesome-tasting medicine I was supposed to take. “He’d better be. I can’t believe that such a kind-hearted woman as Mrs. Kincaid would turn the poor abused boy away from her door when he’s so ill.”

  Since I couldn’t come up with an opinion on the subject to save myself, I remained mute.

  As she’d been talking, she’d also been working, folding some clean white cotton material into a thick pad. After that she dunked the pad in water. Then she poured some witch hazel on the cloth, made sure the pad was well saturated, put some other kind of smelly, oily stuff on it—I think I recognized the aromas of eucalyptus and maybe mint, but can’t say for sure—and handed the pad to me. “There. Now I’m going to give you some bandages, and I want you to promise me you’ll tie this pad to the bump on his head after you’ve thoroughly cleaned it and before he starts talking to those miserable policemen, and I don’t care how much he kicks and moans about it. Have that fat detective sit on his feet if you have to.”

  Fat detective? “Are you talking about Detective Rotondo?”

  “Is that his name? I guess that’s the one. The dark one.”

  “Gee, I never thought he was fat.” I thought he looked pretty darned good, as a matter of fact. Muscular rather than thin, but not fat. Maybe it was his name. I mean, face it, Rotondo makes people think “rotund,” and that makes people think fat. That’s my theory, anyhow.

  “I don’t care if he’s the Lord Harry, you just promise me you’ll get that poor boy’s head patched up before he says a single word to the coppers.”

  Good soldier that I was, I saluted. “Yes, ma’am”

  She smacked me on the bottom as I left the kitchen, taking Quincy’s cure with me. It wasn’t a hard smack.

  When I entered the drawing room, I could tell the housemaid had brought in the refreshments and skedaddled, because she wasn’t there and the refreshments resided all by themselves on a gorgeous table in the middle of the room. Everyone was ignoring them with what I could only consider deliberate perfection. Guess when things go really badly, people don’t care about food.

  Other than that, it didn’t look to me as if any of the drawing-room occupants had moved so much as an inch. It was kind of like in “Sleeping Beauty,” when the good fairies put the kingdom to sleep for a hundred years.

  My entrance changed all that. Mrs. Kincaid squealed, Harold said, “Daisy,” in a relieved-sounding voice, Edie gasped, Quincy gave me a very small wave, apparently deeming a wave less painful than a smile, since waving didn’t make his split lip bleed.

  Rotondo, as might have been expected, huffed and muttered, “It’s about damned time.”

  I gave him as good a glower as I could come up with. “You’re going to have to wait to question Quincy until I doctor him, Detective Rotondo, so you might as well get used to it.” I put my own tray full of ointments and bandages on the table next to Quincy, who eyed them uneasily. I looked over my shoulder at Rotondo. “Why don’t you eat a few of Aunt Vi’s petit fours. They might sweeten you up, although that seems unlikely.”

  I saw his lips pinch before I turned to doctor my victim—er, I mean, my patient—and added another point to my side of the Rotondo-Majesty sniping scoreboard.

  Since I believe in getting the worst over first, I decided to start with Quincy’s head. “Turn your back to me, Quince. I have to put a patch over your bump, but first I have to cleanse it.”

  “It hurts enough already, Daisy. You do anything to hurt it more, or I won’t be very happy with you.” His tone of voice was merry, but I recognized the threat behind the tone.

  “Don’t you dare try anything with me, Quincy Applewood. At the moment, I’m in better shape than you are and I’ll squash you like a beetle if you don’t cooperate. Besides, I have my aunt Vi’s permission to make Detective Rotondo sit on your legs if you even think about taking it on the lam. And Harold and Edie can hold your arms down.” I thought of a great idea. “And if you really annoy me, I’ll just have you tied to chair until I’m through with you.”

  “Crumbs, Daisy, you can be a real shrew without half trying, can’t you?” He was exceedingly unhappy with me. I could tell.

  “You’re wrong, Quince. I try hard.” I jerked a nod at Harold, who came over to the chair. “Hold his shoulders down, Harold. Aunt Vi promised me this is going to hurt. A lot. It’s going to be even worse if he tries to fight me.”

  I think I heard Quincy repress a whimper.

  Rotondo said, “I’ll hold his legs down,” giving me one of the more momentous shocks of my life. I’d never have expected a civil deed to emanate from this source while he was performing his policeman act.

  I peered up at him. “Thanks.” I know I sounded as surprised as I felt, and I also know he didn’t appreciate it. But shoot, what had he ever done to make me think he might be a nice person under his outer crust?

  “All right. Let’s see here.” I eyed my operating theater. Harold pressed hard on Quincy’s shoulders, Edie held one of his hands to the arm of the chair, and even Mrs. Kincaid joined the party, keeping his other hand still.

  Aunt Vi proved to be absolutely correct, as usual. As I worked on him, I hurt poor Quincy. A lot. My heart took to squishing and quaking, and it was all I could do to keep my hands from shaking and me from bawling like a baby as I washed his wound. It was an ugly one.

  Someone had belted him a good one on the back of the head with something hard and unmistakably knobby, because most of his hair had come off onto the implement and the rest was stuck in blood-clotted cuts and scrapes. He must have fallen down in an area where there was a whole lot of dirt, because there was a plethora of dust, leafy matter, and—I swear this is true—bugs. Little bugs. Ants, in fact. There weren’t many of those, thank God (I hate bugs) and they were all dead, so I didn’t have to fight nausea, which was the only blessing I could detect in the entire process. I felt sorry for Quincy, but I did as Aunt Vi had instructed me,
no matter how much I hated doing it.

  After I was through de-germing him, he looked as if he’d gone ten rounds with a gorilla. Maybe a mountain lion.

  It was a truly hideous bump sitting there on Quincy’s head, and I knew it must hurt like crazy. Now I had to hurt it some more by applying a pad soaked in witch hazel, which I knew from experience hurt like the very devil when applied to cuts and sores. By this time, I actually did feel a little sickish.

  “Don’t let go yet,” I instructed my aides. “There’s witch hazel on the pad, and it’s going to sting like anything.”

  “Dammit, Daisy, this isn’t fair!” Quincy shouted. I wondered if he’d ever be my friend again.

  That didn’t stop me, but it almost made me cry when I gently pressed the pad on Quincy’s lump and, in spite of his supreme self-control, he stiffened up like a starched petticoat and tears leaked from his eyes. He’d probably be embarrassed about those tears for the rest of his life, but he had no reason to be. Tears just come on their own sometimes, you know?

  My hands were shaking as if I had St. Vitus’ Dance, and I longed to sit down, put my head between my knees, and regain a modicum of composure before I had to tie the pad down, but I didn’t dare. I had to get this operation over with because Quincy couldn’t take much more, and neither could I. And he still had to undergo a grilling from the police.

  That being the case, I put on my best combative expression and picked up the first strip of cloth Vi had given me. “Okay. Now for the fun part.”

  Quincy gave me a scowl so vicious, I was impressed, as I didn’t think he had anything of the sort in him. “Don’t look at me in that tone of voice, young man,” I said sternly, trying to infuse some humor into what was not a humorous situation. It didn’t work, so my effort was wasted. Everyone in the room looked as if they were undergoing unspecified but brutal tortures.