by Alice Duncan
Scarlet Spirits
A Daisy Gumm Majesty Mystery, Book 15
Alice Duncan
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Contents
Don’t Miss Aunt Vi’s Stew Recipe
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Before You Go…
Exercised Spirits
Aunt Vi’s Beef Stew with Dumplings
Acknowledgments
Also by Alice Duncan
About the Author
Don’t Miss Aunt Vi’s Stew Recipe
You can enjoy Aunt Vi’s Stew and Dumplings just like Sam Rotondo. Go to the end of the book, right after the excerpt for Exercised Spirits, where you’ll find the directions for Sam’s favorite stew.
Email a photo along with your Stew Making Story and Aunt Vi just might share her recipe for Scotch Shortbread Cookies in return.
One
March, 1925, didn’t barge into Pasadena, California, like a lion. Which was a darned good thing, as I’d had an unpleasant experience with a lion not a month earlier. No, siree. This particular March tiptoed into our beautiful city more like a fluffy little kitten, warm and soft and pretty. With exceptionally short, dull claws.
Earlier in the year—on New Year’s Day, in fact—someone had tried to kill me via a motorcar. Several other attempts on my shortish life—I’d only just turned twenty-five—had followed, but I’d recovered by March. In fact, by the second week in March, the world felt like a safe and comfy place in which to live. It’s true I jumped approximately twelve inches into the air and squeaked every time a motorcar backfired in my vicinity, and I continued to have the occasional nightmare about a lion ripping off and devouring one or more of my body parts, but my nerves had settled down a whole lot and my physical self seemed to have healed completely.
What’s more, my wonderful fiancé, Detective Sam Rotondo of the Pasadena Police Department, had bought the house directly across the street from the one in which my family lived on South Marengo Avenue. I loved that house, and I loved Sam. And I don’t think he bought the place merely because he could thereby continue dining on my aunt, Viola Gumm’s, magnificent meals. Vi is a genius in the kitchen. I’m…well…not.
One of these days, when people stopped trying to injure Sam and/or me, we even planned to get married! Our engagement seemed to be dragging on for quite a long time, but that’s mainly because an evil woman had shot Sam in the thigh several months earlier and, as mentioned above, I received my own packet of injuries on and shortly after New Year’s Day. While I was all better—barring the afore-mentioned backfiring motorcars and nightmares—Sam still had some healing to do. He’d almost died on the day he was shot, and he’d had a couple of frightening relapses after being released from the hospital. Still, he was getting stronger with each passing day, and he didn’t need to use the lovely Malacca cane with the horse’s-head handle I’d given him for Christmas nearly as often as he’d first had to do.
I had resumed working once more, as well. This made Mrs. Pinkerton, my best client, extremely happy. You see, I’m a spiritualist-medium to many wealthy ladies in Pasadena. Unfortunately for her, Mrs. Pinkerton had been cursed with a ghastly daughter, Anastasia “Stacy” Kincaid. Stacy was the reason Mrs. Pinkerton telephoned me almost every day claiming to be in dire need of advice from my spirit control, a Scottish gentleman named Rolly.
That was all right. I didn’t mind too much. Having a daughter like Stacy—who, at the time, was behind bars for a series of nefarious criminal deeds—was a sore trial for Mrs. P. Truth to tell, Stacy was a sore trial, period. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me much to learn Stacy was a changeling. This is especially true because Stacy’s brother, Harold Kincaid, is a superb human being, a prince among men, and one of my very best friends.
We also had an interesting new addition to our South Marengo Avenue neighborhood. Actually, we had two of them; at least, I sure hoped we did. The first one, Mr. Lou Prophet, originated in Georgia before the Civil War (he preferred to call it the War Between the States). By the time he hit Pasadena, he was old, but he still boasted a slow, deep southern accent and was a fascinating relic. I don’t think he’d like me calling him a relic, so pretend I didn’t write that. After he’d been hired by a motion-picture studio to give advice on the sets of several western flickers the studios were churning out, he’d been in an accident and lost one of his legs. As a result, he’d relinquished not merely one of his more important limbs, but had also lost his job. He now boasted a leg and a peg, and he wasn’t happy about it. He’d ended up at the Odd Fellows Home of Christian Charity, where he didn’t belong. Trust me about this.
But Sam and I had sprung him from that awful place, and Mr. Prophet now resided in the little one-bedroom cottage behind Sam’s (and my, if we ever managed to tie the knot) new home. There he acted as a caretaker of sorts, since Sam’s job as a homicide detective entailed odd hours. Mr. Prophet had already proved himself to be resourceful and handy several times.
Honestly? I think Sam felt sorry for the poor old guy—as did I—and let him live in the cottage because Sam possessed a kind and tender heart (please don’t tell Sam I said he had a kind and tender heart. He’d kill me). It had to be galling for Mr. Prophet to be an old, one-legged artifact of days gone by. He’d once been a wild and woolly bounty hunter straight out of the Old West.
In March, 1925, I had reason to believe another relic from the Old West had just purchased the gigantic house down the street from us. This new relic was female, and her name was Mrs. Evangeline Mainwaring. The house she’d just bought had been the first ever built in our neighborhood. Other houses, including ours, had sprung up around it when its original owner had sold off parcels of land.
Therefore, and because I really wanted to meet the lady, I persuaded my mother, father, aunt and fianc�
� into giving Mrs. Mainwaring a welcome-to-the-neighborhood party. It hadn’t taken much persuading, since giving folks welcome-to-the neighborhood parties was a fairly well-established tradition. Harold Kincaid had told me Mrs. Mainwaring used to be something of a scarlet woman in old western towns like Tombstone, etc. I didn’t know if Harold’s understanding was based on anything other than gossip, but I kind of hoped it was. To the best of my knowledge, I’d never met a scarlet woman, and I wanted to see what one looked like.
That sounds awful, doesn’t it? Well, too bad. It’s true.
Be that as it may, except for Harold—who was almost always a credible source—everyone else in the neighborhood knew her only as a wealthy woman who had earned her vast fortune in the burgeoning Southern California orange industry. Pasadena brimmed full of orange groves and poppy fields, although by 1925 there weren’t nearly as many of either of those things as there used to be.
Therefore, after church on the third Sunday in March my mother, aunt and I decided to toddle down the street to Mrs. Mainwaring’s house. We brought with us a batch of Vi’s outstanding Scotch shortbread cookies, and we aimed to ask Mrs. Mainwaring if she’d like to meet more of her neighbors. Her house sat on a much larger parcel of land than others in the area, and the house and grounds were surrounded by a six-foot wrought-iron fence. When we walked up to the gate, we found it locked. There was, however, a newfangled buzzer-thing on a wooden post next to it; therefore, being braver and more daring than my aunt and mother, I buzzed the buzzer.
After a few crackling noises, a voice came through the speaking tube! I was impressed. Except in huge mansions owned by some of my clients, I’d never seen one of those speaker boxes. They certainly didn’t proliferate in our staid and middle-class neighborhood. The voice issuing therefrom said, “Mainwaring residence,” and sounded neither friendly nor unfriendly.
“Yes. Good afternoon. My name is Daisy Majesty. My mother, Peggy Gumm; aunt, Viola Gumm and I have come to introduce ourselves to Mrs. Mainwaring and welcome her to the neighborhood.”
“One moment, please.”
Ma, Aunt Vi and I exchanged a glance or two. I whispered, “Snooty?”
“Daisy,” said Ma. She does that when she thinks I’m being rude or unkind.
“I didn’t say she was snooty,” I said in my own defense. “That was supposed to be a question, Ma.”
“Well, it wasn’t a very nice—”
The speaking tube crackled again, and the same voice said, “Mrs. Mainwaring will be pleased to meet you ladies. Just press the big black button on the gate, and it will open for you.”
I said, “Thank you,” glad both for the invitation and because my mother didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence.
So I pushed the black button and, sure enough, one side of the gate opened.
“Fancy,” said Vi, watching the moving wrought iron with interest.
“Not as fancy as some. Mrs. Pinkerton has an entire gatekeeper just to open and close her gate, don’t forget.” My aunt cooked for Mr. and Mrs. Pinkerton as well as for our family, bless her. What’s more, I knew and liked Mrs. Pinkerton’s gatekeeper, Mr. Joseph Jackson.
“True, true,” said Vi with a smile.
The grounds of Mrs. Mainwaring’s estate were lovely. In March, daffodils and irises were beginning to bloom, and a whole row of rosebushes lined the brick-paved walkway to the house, a three-story number complete with a porch that wrapped itself around the whole structure. I noticed a fellow clad in white working with some flowering bird of paradise plants in the far north end of the property—in other words, the end closest to our house. He looked Chinese. Maybe Japanese. I’m no expert on Asians, although I did know a few of each. Chinese and Japanese people, I mean. White clothing seemed to me an odd choice for a person doing gardening work.
“Hmm. Look at that guy. The one working on the bird of paradise plants.”
“Yes?” said Ma.
Vi glanced at him and said, “What about him?”
“He’s wearing a white uniform. In the garden. I mean, won’t white clothing get really dirty? I always wear old clothes and gloves when I do gardening work because I don’t want to get my good clothes all mucked up.”
Both Ma and Vi shrugged. I guess they didn’t consider the fellow’s choice to wear white whilst gardening anything out of the ordinary. Of course, I did more gardening work than either of them, so maybe they’d just never thought about it before.
Anyhow, who cared? Evidently, only I.
When we reached the wide front door of the house—I think people called those wide doors “coffin” doors back in the days when folks laid out their dead loved ones on the dining-room table before their bodies were placed in a coffin; so the doors had to be wide enough to accommodate a coffin—a pleasant-looking Negro woman greeted us. Ma, Vi and I all smiled at her, and I stuck out my hand. The woman seemed a little surprised, but she shook my hand anyway.
By the way, not that it matters, but I’m glad we no longer laid dead folks out on our dining-room tables, but have them taken to mortuaries instead. The notion of dining where a dead body had rested, no matter how beloved the corpse had been in life, gives me a funny feeling in my stomach.
Back to the front door of Mrs. Mainwaring’s house.
“I’m Daisy Gumm Majesty,” said I to the woman after we’d shaken hands.
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Majesty.”
Fiddlesticks. I was actually Missus Majesty, but I didn’t want to correct the woman. I should have been more specific to begin with.
“And this is my mother, Peggy Gumm. And my aunt, Viola Gumm.”
“How do you do? Just call me Hattie, and please come along with me.”
Very well then, I deduced Just Hattie to be more or less the equivalent of Mrs. Pinkerton’s butler, Featherstone. Only Hattie allowed herself to smile at people. Featherstone might have been stuffed and mounted for all the animation he showed. But he was a crackerjack butler. He even had an English accent! I adored the man and wouldn’t have minded having a butler like Featherstone. I’m almost positive Lou Prophet didn’t count.
We followed Hattie down a hallway lined on both walls with gorgeous paintings. Hattie then ushered us into a pleasant, airy sitting room, its windows open to admit a gentle breeze, and lacy curtains dancing gracefully on the same breeze. A woman rose from a chair and came forward, holding out her hand and smiling.
Now I hadn’t had a clue what to expect of Mrs. Evangeline Mainwaring, but her appearance surprised me. A tall woman, she wore an elegant day wrapper that looked to me as if it were genuine Chinese silk. The pattern on the fabric was certainly Chinese, and the fabric itself clung to Mrs. Mainwaring’s body in all the rounded places women weren’t supposed to have back then. As a really good seamstress myself—that’s not a boast; it’s the truth—I really wanted to ask her where she’d purchased so comely a garment. She wore her shiny dark hair in a classic Castle bob, with loose curls and a side part. She might have been any age from thirty-five to sixty, but I guessed she was probably somewhere in her fifties.
Both my mother and my aunt were also in their fifties, but they sure didn’t look like this woman. Mrs. Mainwaring had skin like creamy magnolia petals, eyes as dark as her hair, and hands as graceful as a dancer’s. I noticed her delicate hands as she held one of them out for us to shake.
“It’s so kind of you to call,” she said in a voice that also reminded me of magnolias: smooth and mellow. “My name is Evangeline Mainwaring.”
In short, the woman was beautiful. Even in her fifties! I was impressed. And, truth to tell, a little jealous. I took care of my appearance due to the nature of my business, but I doubt I’d look as good as Mrs. Mainwaring when I reached whatever age she was.
Being me, I held out my hand and spoke first. “I’m sorry we didn’t visit you sooner, Mrs. Mainwaring. We…well, I was recovering from an accident. I’m Daisy Majesty—Mrs. William Majesty—and this is my mother, Margaret Gumm; and my aunt, Viola
Gumm.”
“How kind of you to call,” she murmured, shaking each of our hands in turn. “Won’t you take a seat? I’ll have Hattie bring in some tea.”
“Thank you.” I remembered the Scotch shortbread. “Oh, and please accept these from us. My aunt, Vi, made them, and they’re delicious.”
“Thank you. Such a thoughtful gesture,” purred the lady of the house, accepting the which box, which I’d tied with pink ribbon.
Mrs. Mainwaring didn’t have to signal Hattie; the maid—I assumed she was a maid—appeared in the sitting-room doorway as if her mistress’s wishes had been received by her through some kind of spiritual signal.
Nertz. I hoped like heck Mrs. Mainwaring didn’t aim to set herself up as a spiritualist-medium!
But no. What a silly thought. The woman was obviously rich as Croesus, whoever he was, and didn’t have to work for a living.
“Will you please bring tea for our guests, Hattie? And please take this box to the kitchen, too. Mrs. Gumm has kindly baked us some shortbread.”
I liked that she said “please” to her servant. Lots of rich folks weren’t so polite to mere underlings.
Hattie said, “Yes, Miss Angie,” took the box, and vanished.
Ma, Vi and I sat on a magnificent sofa, and Mrs. Mainwaring took a chair opposite us. I noticed a grand piano in the corner of the sitting room. Boy, you didn’t see too darned many grand pianos in people’s sitting rooms. We had an upright piano, which I played, in our living room at home. I’d love to get my fingers on that grandie, though.
