by Alice Duncan
My hand flew to my mouth of its own volition. I wasn’t going to cry out or burst into tears or anything, but Billy’s words both shocked me and chilled me to the bone. I just hated that I couldn’t do anything for him. Worse, I hated that Billy seemed to have become resigned to his fate. More than resigned. It sounded to me as if he positively looked forward to dying to get away from his misery.
I could feel Sam’s frown from where I stood. I could heard it, too, when he finally answered Billy. “I don’t like to hear you talking like this, Billy. You need to keep trying to get stronger. You may never be what you were before the war, but you can get stronger. You can’t give up.”
“To hell with that, Sam. I am what I am, and that’s a ruined man. Will you please just answer my question? Daisy’s been forced to take care of too many people since I got back from the damned war. Will you please just promise to look after her for me? If anything should happen to me.” The final sentence sounded as though he’d tacked it on as an afterthought.
My heart hammered so hard it hurt, and my hand remained firmly attached to my mouth as I waited for Sam’s response to Billy’s request.
A huge sigh came from the hall. I presumed it had come from Sam, because it was followed with, “I doubt that she’ll let me, Billy. We haven’t exactly been best friends since we met, you know.”
“I know it, but I think you and she would get along really well if you’d forget about her job. I love her, Sam. She’s the only woman I’ve ever loved. If you don’t watch out for her when I’m gone, all she’ll have is her father, who’s liable to die even before I do, and that faggot Harold Kincaid.”
As bitterly as I wanted to interrupt this conversation and chastise the two bigoted men for their opinion of Harold, still less did I want Billy and Sam to know I’d been listening to them in secret.
Ma returned to the dining room just then, and I only had time to hear Sam’s muttered, “Oh, all right. But there’s no need for this, you know. You’ve got many years left in you,” before I had to give up my listening post.
All through dinner, Billy and Sam’s conversation haunted me. Did Billy anticipate his demise? Was he planning his demise? My thoughts kept snagging on that box filled with bottles of morphine syrup I’d discovered in our closet. Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord. Please protect my Billy, I prayed over and over even as I sipped my soup.
Which was a stupid prayer. The Lord had already failed to protect my Billy. He was a shell of his former self: ruined in mind and body and, apparently, merely waiting for the moment he could shuffle off this mortal coil into a better beyond.
Boy, I wished I believed in a better beyond.
As a firm Methodist, I should. I know that. But the only thing I knew about for a sure certainty was this life I was living, and I didn’t want to live it without Billy, no matter how much I knew he suffered. Was that selfish? I guess it was.
But . . . oh, Billy.
Billy took my defection from the family that evening better than I’d expected him to. It was good that I’d asked Sam to come to dinner, I guess.
“Try not to be too late,” was all Billy said to me as I headed toward the front door.
“I’ll try.” Because I wanted him to know it, I returned to his wheelchair, bent over and kissed him on the lips. “I don’t want to do this, you know. It’s my stupid job. If somebody doesn’t get that Lola creature on the right track, the picture will never be finished. John Bohnert—he’s the director—is always carping because it’s behind schedule. I’m hoping good old Rolly will be able to drum some sense into Lola’s thick skull.”
He smiled at me. Definitely not a good sign. The old Billy would have been surly and probably even lectured me on how evil my line of work was. Instead, he said only, “I know it, Daisy. Don’t let the woman aggravate you.”
With a deep sigh, I said, “It’s too late for that. She already has.”
Billy chuckled as I returned to the front door. Fortunately for all of us, Spike sat on Billy’s lap, so I didn’t have to fight with the dog to get outside. My heart ached all the way back to the Winkworth mansion.
By the by, I’d changed my clothing for this evening’s séance. Deciding it was incumbent upon me to impress Lola with the importance of behaving herself, I dressed in truly spiritualistic splendor: a black wool crepe dress with a U-shaped neckline and an ankle-length straight skirt. The bodice bloused across the front, and was gathered with two ebony disks on the sides, purchased at Nelson’s Five and Dime for a penny each. I’d copied the pattern from one of Worth’s I’d seen in Vogue magazine. Mind you, I didn’t subscribe to Vogue, but I kept up to date on the current Worth and Chanel designs at the library. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but it does need stressing: I was very, very good at my job.
That night I wore very light powder and dark mascara, so that I carried off a pale-and-interesting, vaguely ethereal bearing to perfection. My light complexion, the dark eye makeup and the black dress, which I wore with black pointy-toed shoes with Louis heels, made me appear every inch the spiritualist I pretended to be. If Lola didn’t shape up after tonight’s performance (mine, I mean), it wouldn’t be my fault.
This time I parked the Chevrolet in the front of the house and boldly walked up the marble steps to the massive front porch, which was flanked on either side by marble beasts. I’m not sure what kinds of beasts they were. Lions, probably.
Gladys Pennywhistle answered my ring of the bell.
I smiled at her. “Good evening, Gladys. I have to perform a séance for Miss de la Monster . . . I mean Miss de la Monica.”
She didn’t even crack a smile. Not an ounce of humor in her bones, Gladys. “Yes. Mr. Kincaid told me as much. He also said you and he have some business to transact with Mr. Mountjoy.” She sounded a trifle snippy when she spoke the latter sentence.
“Right.” She wasn’t truly jealous, was she? It was difficult to tell, since her countenance exhibited no emotion at all. Crisp efficiency. That was Gladys.
“Is Miss de la Monica here? Or is she at the dressing-room house?” I didn’t know what else to call it.
“Miss de la Monica has taken up quarters here for the duration of the picture shoot. Come with me.”
So I did. I, who’d rather be home with my sick husband, followed a stuffed-shirt secretary through a magnificent mansion bought with money from a business built on fantasy. And people had the nerve to disapprove of spiritualists!
Gladys led me through the front parlor, where I was surprised to see a card table set up. By gum, maybe it wasn’t only my family that played cards of an evening! I was even more surprised to see Mrs. Winkworth, Mrs. Pansy Hanratty and Dr. Homer Fellowes seated around the table, along with an empty chair, which I assumed had once been filled by Gladys. Although I had little to feel optimistic about that evening, this seemed a good sign to me. Perhaps Gladys and Homer would get together after all.
Mrs. Hanratty, who was friendlier than anyone else in the room, called out, “Mrs. Majesty! Have you come to play bridge with us?”
Bridge, eh? I guess bridge was somewhat classier than gin rummy, which is what Billy, Sam and Pa played.
Glad that someone in the world was happy, I went to the card table, shook Mrs. Hanratty’s hand, smiled at the other bridge-players, and said, “No. Unfortunately, I have to conduct a private séance for Miss de la Monica.”
Homer Fellowes frowned. “A private séance? Good God, don’t tell me the woman truly believes in that rubbish, does she?”
“Rubbish?” This, from Mrs. Winkworth. I presumed Dr. Fellowes didn’t know about Mrs. Winkworth’s fascination with spiritualism. “There’s nothing rubbishing about it, Dr. Fellowes. Mrs. Majesty is the premier spiritualist in our community. Why, you know very well she’s conducted séances for me.”
The look she gave Homer Fellowes might have frozen him into an icicle if he were a normal person. Instead, Homer being akin to Gladys in the stiffness department, he only said, “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Winkworth. I meant
no disrespect.”
Mrs. Winkworth sniffed imperiously.
“Anyhow,” I said, in an attempt to get out of an awkward situation, “this isn’t going to take long. Billy and I are really looking forward to your Saturday class, Mrs. Hanratty. I think Saturday is the happiest day of our entire week.” Actually, I knew it was.
Mrs. Hanratty’s broad and genuine smile made me feel better for about a minute and a half. But then I had to continue following Gladys through the parlor, up the stairs to Lola’s suite of rooms, and all feelings of happiness fled. As soon as Gladys tapped on the door, it was flung open, and Gladys and I were met by Lola de la Monica in a State, with a capital S. She reached out, yanked me into the room, and slammed the door in Gladys’s face.
Oh, boy, was I ever looking forward to this.
Chapter Twelve
Extricating myself from Lola’s grip, which felt like a steel trap, I opened the door and peered out to see if Lola had managed to squash Gladys’s nose, break her eyeglasses, or mangle any other body part by her precipitate action.
She hadn’t. Gladys didn’t look any too happy, but she appeared intact. I said, “Sorry, Gladys. Just try to remember whom you’re dealing with.”
“How,” she asked tartly, “could I ever forget?” And she turned on her heel and went back downstairs to resume playing bridge. I envied her, even though I didn’t know how to play bridge.
“It’s happened again!” Lola shrieked at my back. “Why do you delay matters to deal with that peasant?”
I turned and stared at her for a moment. I’m sure I appeared as incredulous as I felt. “Peasant?” I asked at last. “Gladys Pennywhistle is no peasant, Miss de la Monica. I believe your status as a moving-picture star has skewed your view of the world. To the spirits in the Great Beyond and to God Almighty, Gladys is every bit as important as you and I are. Besides,” I added after thinking about it for a moment, “where would the world be without the peasants? They’re the ones who do the work to put food on all our tables, don’t forget.”
“Fah!” she cried, waving my philosophy about peasants and Gladys away with a delicate hand. “It’s happened again!”
“What’s happened again?”
Never blow up at a client. That was my motto, and I stuck to it through thick and thin—and this was getting pretty darned thick. But I had my own personal powers, by gum, and Lola needed them. She didn’t know I was a fake. In actual fact, she believed in my powers to communicate with spirits. In plain English, in other words, the woman was as stupid as a baked brick.
Reaching behind her, she snatched something off her dressing table and presented it to me with the same delicate hand with which she’d waved away the majority of the earth’s inhabitants. “Read this.”
Oh, dear. Another letter. I knew it even before I took the thing from her hand and scanned it. By that time, I could have recited it without going to the bother of reading it, since the letter-writer evidently had only one thing to say to his or her recipients:
CHANGE YOUR WICKED WAYS OR TRAGEDY WILL STRIKE!
Same newsprint. Same inked-in exclamation point.
“Well, whoever’s sending these is definitely not a spirit,” I said. “Do you mind if I keep this? I’d like to compare it to the other ones.”
Lola opened her beautiful eyes wide. “The other ones? Do you mean to say I’m not the only victim of this vicious person’s malice?”
To tell the truth, I was impressed with her phrasing. She was so dim-witted, I hadn’t expected such a coherent sentence from her. I was also as stupid as she, blast it. Monty and Harold would skin me alive if I let on to Lola that Monty was receiving letters, too.
“I mean the other one,” I said in a world-weary tone that I hoped conveyed conviction. “I have the other letter you received.” Recalling that her dressing room door was supposed to have had a special lock installed upon it and that a guard was supposed to have been posted at the door to said room, and that this wasn’t her dressing room, I asked, “How’d you get this one? Was it propped against the mirror in this room?”
If it was, Harold, Monty and I were in trouble, because it meant that someone extremely close to the family had means we knew nothing about with which to perpetrate his or her evil deeds. I couldn’t imagine who it could be. Mrs. Hanratty would no more write poisoned-pen letters than she would fly to the moon. Gladys didn’t have enough imagination—although, as I’ve mentioned, this particular letter-writer didn’t exhibit much imagination. Homer Fellowes was an unknown quantity, but I suspected him of being too Gladys-like to perpetrate nasty letters. And I couldn’t in a million years imagine the dignified, misplaced Mrs. Winkworth of doing anything so unrefined as writing threatening letters.
Lola shook her sleek, dark head. “No. I discovered it had been slipped into my pocket sometime after dinner this evening.”
“Oh? Where’d you dine?” Gee, maybe somebody was following her around Pasadena, which would give us an entire city’s population to work from. The notion didn’t appeal.
“Here.”
“With the Winkworths? I mean, with Mrs. Winkworth, Mrs. Hanratty and Mr. Mountjoy?” That cut down on the possibilities, although it didn’t make me feel appreciably better.
“Yes. And that other creature.”
“What other creature?”
“That costume person. Harold.”
My temper spiked. “Harold is not a creature, any more than Gladys is a peasant!” Then I recalled my spiritualist’s motto and said more mildly, “Mr. Harold Kincaid is one of the most talented costumiers in Los Angeles. Perhaps the world. He is also a dear friend of mine.” I’d have liked to have set her straight about Gladys being smart as two whips and infinitely more intelligent than Lola de la Monica, too, but decided any comment about Gladys’s understanding and appreciation of algebra would only muddy waters that were already murky.
She sniffed. “Well, I prefer men who like women.”
“I see.” I suppressed the urge to ask her why she hung out with Monty Mountjoy if she preferred men who liked women. Every now and then I can show a modicum of good sense. Wish I could do it more often. However, common sense attacked me that night. “So,” I continued, “may I keep this letter? I’d like to compare it to the other one you received.”
The letter having been slipped into her pocket at dinner was every bit as appalling as it having been propped against her mirror. Clearly someone in the Winkworth household, either a family member or a member of the staff in very close contact with the family, was writing—or cutting and pasting—the stupid letters. I didn’t know a single thing about the staff, except for Gladys, and I’d pretty much ruled her out. Perhaps I’d been too quick to do so. Fiddlesticks.
“I don’t care what you do with it,” Lola said in a high-pitched, slightly panicky voice. “I just want them to stop! Are you sure they aren’t written by the spirits?”
“Positive,” said I truthfully. “The spirits can’t write letters.”
I don’t think she believed me. She turned in a swirl of white fabric and made her way to stand in front of the sofa in her sitting room. This particular sofa wasn’t red, but a tweedy brown and I defy anyone, even Lola de la Monica, to perform a grandiose tragedy on a tweedy brown sofa. “Then let’s get on with the séance,” she said in a pouty voice. “Although I don’t know why we should be doing one if the spirits aren’t responsible for the letters.”
Suppressing yet another unseemly urge, this one to throttle the aggravating woman, I said sweetly, “Your inner mind is troubled. Perhaps the spirit world can guide you toward a path that will ease your way.”
Giving yet another abrupt, dramatic swirl, she said, “Yes! Yes, that’s true. Yes, I need inner calm. The Virgin Mary came to me, you know.”
“I know,” I said quickly, not caring to hear again the nonsense about Mary having given Lola fashion instructions. “But the spirits with which I deal are very good at giving advice, too.” And they wouldn’t say a thing about c
lothing preferences; I could guarantee it.
Lola bowed her head. “Very well. Let us begin.”
I glanced around the room, endeavoring to find a good place to conduct my so-called “personal séance” for Lola. “One moment, please,” I said, lowering my voice to a becoming spiritualistic level. “First I must prepare the room.”
With big eyes—she truly had magnificent eyes—Lola watched as I surveyed the room. The furnishings in her sitting room were as lovely as those in Monty’s suite; I assume they came with the house, although I don’t know that for a fact.
Fortunately, I espied two medallion-backed chairs with a cunning little piecrust table set between them. Therefore, I positioned the two chairs facing each other and left the piecrust table where it was. I’d come prepared with my cranberry-red lamp loaded with a candle. I placed the lamp on the small table, lit the candle, walked to the electrical light fixture and pressed the button. The room went dark, except for that small, glowing red light between the two chairs.
Lola, as might have been expected, gasped dramatically.
Then I stood back, clasped my hands together, stared at the positioning of the chairs, and bowed my head. Lola had nothing on me when it came to drama. I pretended to fall into a transcendent state for a moment or two, then lifted my head and murmured, “The spirits are ready.”
My performance seemed to have struck Lola with some kind of awe, because she whispered when she asked, “What do we do now?”
I gestured at one of the chairs. “We each take a seat.”
“Which one should I take?” Her voice was still tiny.
“It matters not,” I told her in sepulchral accents.
“Are you sure?”
I only gazed at her, expressionless, and she quickly sat in one of the chairs. Much more gracefully, if I do say so myself, I took the chair opposite hers, folded my hands in my lap, and bowed my head yet once more. “One moment. I need to make contact with my spiritual control.”
