Daisy Gumm Majesty 05-Genteel Spirits

by Alice Duncan

  Not that I was a whiz at mathematics, as you might have gathered by some of my earlier statements, but Mrs. Hanratty had demonstrated how her dog Theodore—a bulldog named after the late Theodore Roosevelt because they looked vaguely alike—could do simple math tricks. It isn’t too difficult to train a dog to do anything once you get the hang of it.

  Anyhow, class was a pleasure, as it always was. The June day was perfectly glorious, Brookside Park gorgeous, and I enjoyed being around Mrs. Hanratty and all those dogs. Dogs are ever so much easier to get along with than people as a rule. You can’t fool a dog with such idiocies as séances and tarot cards or Ouija boards. Dogs know a good person when they meet one, and they can smell a rotter a mile away. That’s my theory, anyway. It was nice to be around creatures who didn’t believe in anything but what they could see, hear, taste and smell. You wouldn’t find a dog trying to communicate with its dead relations; that was for sure.

  The rest of that day went well. Billy actually condescended to go for a walk with Spike and me, although he refused to try to walk.

  “There’s no point to it, Daisy. My legs just don’t support me any longer, and my lungs can’t take it.”

  I wanted to argue, to tell him that if he put a little effort into walking, he might surprise himself, but I held my tongue. Life with Billy had become easier in the last few months, but that was only because he seemed to have given up on himself. I wasn’t about to try bullying him. I’d already talked to everyone I could think of who might help with his problems, from Johnny Buckingham to Dr. Benjamin to Sam Rotondo, and there didn’t seem to be much more I could do for Billy than be agreeable.

  So we went for a nice walk, down Marengo, waving at the neighbors as we passed, Spike trotting obediently at heel as I pushed Billy’s chair. Pa went with us as far as the corner, where aimed to turn. He walked a block farther to the little grocery store on the next corner, then he aimed to detour into the store to see what goodies he might find. His mother, my grandma Gumm, had sent him a recipe for Boston brown bread, and I had a feeling we’d be having baked beans again sometime soon, this time with the official bread to go along with them. Pa said I’d love the stuff. I didn’t argue. I liked most food.

  “It’s a nice day,” said Billy at one point.

  His words surprised me. Generally when we went out into the world, he griped and grumbled because he couldn’t get up and enjoy it. I didn’t trust this mood of his. Then again, what did I know? “It’s about perfect. Hope it doesn’t get too hot.”

  “I doubt that it will. September’s when it gets really hot around here.”

  “Too true. I remember the first day of school was always the hottest day of the year, and we had to bring a hundred pounds of books home with us to show the folks.”

  Billy chuckled. I stared at the top of his head, which was covered with a soft cap, and prayed silently that this acquiescent mood of Billy’s didn’t mean anything awful. Then I took myself to task for being dramatic. What could it mean? My mind skipped back a few months to the stash of morphine syrup I’d discovered in our closet, but my heart gave a giant spasm, and I told myself I’d been hanging around Lola de la Monica too much. Billy was only becoming resigned to his fate. That was all.

  I wished I believed it.

  At any rate, we walked around the entire block and when we got back home, Aunt Vi had prepared lunch for us: chopped chicken sandwiches and a mixed fruit salad—rich folks called this type of thing a fruit compote—to go with it, and chocolate cookies for dessert. Yum.

  The following day, the entire family walked to church on the corner of Marengo and Colorado. As I sang the alto part of our anthem for the day, O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing—which is the first hymn in all Methodist hymnals, by the way, although I don’t know why except that it was written by Charles Wesley, but then again so many hymns were—I looked at my family. They always sat toward the front, so that Billy’s wheelchair wouldn’t get in the way of the departing throng when the service ended and everyone headed to Fellowship Hall for food. We Methodists like our food. I understand Baptists do, too.

  Anyhow, I saw my family as I sang, and I noticed Billy watching me, a dreamy expression on his face. Again my heart lurched. What was going on here? Blast it, I wished I could stop worrying and take Billy’s altered behavior as a good sign instead of a disquieting one.

  Oh, well. There wasn’t a blessed thing I could do about Billy’s health, mental or physical, from the choir loft, so I decided to stop worrying, watch Mr. Floy Hostetter, the choir director, and sing. Maybe the words to the hymn would penetrate my heart and give me some peace.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The rest of that day passed peacefully enough. As usual, Vi presented us with a delicious dinner, which we took at noon on Sundays. I don’t know why, either, except it was traditional to do so. That day she fixed pork chops and served scalloped potatoes, acorn squash and green beans with them. Butterscotch pudding for dessert. I swear, Aunt Vi was the best cook in the entire world.

  Then it was Monday again. Darn.

  “But this is the last week,” I assured Billy and Vi at the breakfast table. “The shooting is scheduled to wrap up about mid-week, and then the only thing left to be done is the editing. So I’ll probably not have to go back to the Winkworth estate until next week, when they aim to take publicity pictures.

  “Why do you have to be there for the publicity pictures?” asked Billy, not accusingly, but as if he was honestly interested.

  “Because Lola de la Monster will be there, and when she’s there, I’m there,” I said, feeling grumpy about it. “But then it’s over.”

  “I think it’s swell of Mr. Mountjoy to be taking us all out to dine on Saturday,” said Pa, who loved his food as much as I loved mine.

  “Me, too,” I said, a trifle cheerier than before.

  “It’s very nice of him,” said Billy.

  I waited for a cutting comment about how Monty could afford to feed us all and a hundred like us, but it didn’t come.

  He saw me staring at him. “What?” he asked. “Did I drip on myself?” Vi had fixed waffles for breakfast, and we were eating them with genuine maple syrup sent to us by Ma’s sister in Auburn, Massachusetts.

  Oh, as an aside, Pa had taught Spike to sneeze on cue, if anyone’s interested. The brilliant dog managed to sneeze his way through an entire waffle that morning.

  “No. You haven’t dripped,” I said. “It’s just that . . . never mind.” It was just that I wasn’t accustomed to him not showing his bitterness and envy of people like Monty Mountjoy, whose only claims to fame were that they looked good on a picture screen. I couldn’t say that. Nor could I say that Billy would have looked good on a picture screen, too, if he hadn’t been ruined by the cursed Kaiser and their cursed mustard gas. I dropped the subject, which was one that only frustrated me.

  Billy smiled at me, and I tried not to think his smile a sinister portent.

  Bother. I was truly good at making mountains of molehills, wasn’t I?

  However, my mood had improved a good deal from the prior week, now that I knew this would be the end of my durance vile and that Mrs. Winkworth had been dissuaded from writing any more horrible letters to her grandson and Lola de la Monica. I could almost understand somebody wanting to give Lola a good one—or even two or three, for that matter—but I still thought the old lady was a miserable specimen for trying to frighten the grandson who had done so much for her. Monty was much more forgiving than I when it came to his grandmother.

  Sam awaited me with arms crossed over his chest when I parked the Chevrolet at the Winkworth place. I tried to maintain my almost-good mood from plummeting into my sensible shoes. Well, they were about as sensible as I could get away with and maintain my act as spiritualist extraordinaire. At least they had low heels, so I wouldn’t be forever getting them stuck in the dirt.

  I have a funny anecdote about high-heeled shoes, and it has nothing to do with my story. However, whenever we saw
mushrooms growing in either the front lawn or the back lawn, Ma, Vi and I went out in our highest heels and walked around on the grass, stamping heavily. This was supposed to aerate the soil and prevent fungi from growing, according to an article Ma read somewhere. I doubt that the article had advocated puncturing the soil with high-heeled shoes, but what the heck. It worked, so we did it.

  That day, however, my shoes were low and comfortable, and the rest of me aimed to be as relaxed as possible, too. I figured calm shouldn’t be too difficult a thing to accomplish, what with Lola’s worries put to rest and Sam unable to arrest Mrs. Winkworth.

  Bracing myself, I left the Chevrolet, the door to which Sam had thoughtfully opened for me. Only I don’t think he meant only to be polite. He wanted answers, and it was up to me to give them to him.

  “Well?” he demanded before we’d even greeted each other. “Did it work?”

  “Good morning to you, too, Sam,” I said.

  “Good morning. Did the séance work? Will the old lady write any more letters?”

  Understanding that I’d get no politeness from this quarter, I answered his question. “Yes, the séance worked beautifully, and no, she won’t write any more letters. What’s even better is that Lola was at the séance, and she’s sure I conducted it for her own benefit. She wept all over my silk skirt in gratitude, in fact.”

  Sam shuddered. “Good God.”

  “All part of the job,” I told him.

  “I like my job better than yours.”

  “You’d be lousy at mine.”

  “Probably.”

  “I’d be lousy at yours.”

  “I know.”

  Gee, I’d aimed to rile him with my comment, but he must have been so relieved to have the problem of the poisoned-pen letters cleared up, he didn’t take exception. Mildly astonished, I walked at his side as we headed for the dressing-room house. “Do you know when the filming on this picture is scheduled to end?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

  “Wednesday,” Sam said.

  “You must be glad it’s almost over.”

  “I am.” He shook his head and began muttering about wasting the taxpayers’ money on frivolities like moving pictures and things like that.

  I let him rant. His indignation was well-earned, as far as I could ascertain. It did seem rather excessive to have a detective and two uniformed policemen at a picture set for weeks on end. I’d begun to disbelieve the studio’s claim about Germans wanting to steal Dr. Fellowes’s invention as much as Sam did.

  Boy did we get that one wrong! As we approached the dressing-room house—which was still pretending to be an old southern plantation—we heard the uproar.

  “What the devil is going on?” Sam asked.

  It was a rhetorical question, of course, since I’d just arrived at the Winkworth estate and didn’t know any more than he did. So I said, “Beats me,” and we hurried our steps.

  Poor John Bohnert was throwing a fit almost equal to those pitched by Lola de la Monica when we finally got the set.

  “I can’t believe the damned thing was stolen from a gated estate!” he bellowed in his best directorial voice. “It’s insane!”

  The two uniformed policemen appeared as puzzled as John. One of them spotted Sam and me and ran over to us.

  “What’s going on?” Sam asked, his aura of authority having taken full command of him.

  The uniform, the same Thomas Doan who’d approached my automobile on my very first day at the picture shoot, said, “Somebody stole Dr. Fellowes’s invention.”

  “Somebody what?” Sam roared.

  I decided this was a job for the police and not a spiritualist, so I sneaked away to where I saw Harold, Lillian and Gladys standing in a clump. I didn’t see Dr. Fellowes anywhere. I expect he was tearing his hair out someplace else.

  “Did someone really steal Dr. Fellowes’s invention?” I asked the trio as I approached.

  “Sure did,” said Harold. “Unless the studio’s done it as a publicity stunt.”

  “Would they do that?” I asked, appalled.

  Harold tilted his head to one side. “I honestly don’t know. I wouldn’t put too much past the publicity folks.”

  “Well, if they did, they ought to be arrested,” said Gladys. “Poor Homer is beside himself.”

  Boy, I’d like to see that. Imagine it: two Homer Felloweses. The mind boggled. “I’m really sorry. I guess they actually did need the police.”

  “Not that the police helped in this case,” said Lillian.

  I glanced over to see Sam, who looked as if he was really steaming. Officer Doan appeared cowed, and his fellow uniform was cringing. Sam in a rage was something to avoid if at all possible. “I’m sure that’s exactly what Detective Rotondo is explaining to his men right this minute.”

  “Glad I’m not a policeman,” said Lillian.

  “Me, too.”

  We all heard John Bohnert holler, “But we can’t shut down production! We’re already behind! Damn it, at least let us shoot inside the house!”

  “Oh, Lord,” muttered Harold. “First Lola, and now this.”

  “Speaking of Lola . . .”

  “She’s not being any trouble,” said Gladys. She added, “So far.”

  “It’s true,” said Harold. “The séance calmed her down a whole lot.”

  “Well, I’m glad for that, at least.”

  We watched Sam and the policemen argue with John Bohnert for another little while, and then John snatched his tweed cap from his head and flung it to the ground. He said, “Fine, then. Do your damned search.” He raised his gaze to heaven, from whence, evidently, cameth no help. “This picture will never get finished!”

  “You can start filming again after my men have searched this house. If we don’t come up with anything here, we’ll search the rest of the grounds and the other houses. I’ve got to make a telephone call right now.” Sam clearly didn’t care about the picture shoot. His detectival instincts were finally being called into play, and he was in his element. “I can’t see how anyone could have got a piece of equipment that large out of this place without anyone noticing. It’s probably just been stored in the wrong place or something.”

  “My men don’t store equipment in the wrong places,” said John angrily.

  Sam said, “Huh,” and turned to give directions to Officer Doan and his cohort.

  I said stupidly, “I guess they’re going to search the place.”

  “Hope they find the invention,” said Harold. “I’ve got to plan costuming for another picture and can’t be spending much more time here. Besides, Mother and Algie are returning next weekend, and I aim to host a welcome-home party for them. I have to plan that, too.”

  “It’ll be nice to see your mother again,” I said politely, not really meaning it. Mind you, Mrs. Pinkerton was by far my very best client but she tended to panic over trifles, and I was forever being called to drop everything and rush to her mansion to read tarot cards or manipulate the Ouija board or something. Although I needed the work, life had been quite peaceful during her absence—well, except for the last couple of weeks.

  * * * * *

  The missing-invention problem turned out to be a tempest in a teapot after all, and Sam turned out to be right. Dr. Fellowes’s precious machine was found to have been packed in a case meant to house some other piece of equipment. Don’t ask me what, because I don’t know. Anyhow, John’s precious schedule was only delayed another hour or so while the police conducted their ultimately successful search of the premises.

  Lola didn’t throw a tantrum all day long.

  Nor did she throw one the next day or the next. Thus it was that I learned something, now that everyone seemed to be behaving themselves: motion-picture making was a big, fat bore, just as Harold had told me it was. In fact, Sam and I played gin rummy during that final Wednesday. I’d asked Billy if he wanted to come to the set to see how pictures were made but he declined, saying Sam had told him all about it and he could be
bored at home quite nicely and didn’t care to go out to accomplish the same state of ennui. I couldn’t blame him.

  On Thursday and Friday of that week, I was happy—no. Elated—to stay home with my husband and father while Ma was at work and Aunt Vi returned to the Pinkerton place to prepare for the homecoming of the happy couple.

  The entire family and Sam, too, went to the Pasanita Dog Obedience Training School’s last class on Saturday. That evening we were all going to dine with Monty Mountjoy—Monty had invited Sam as a thank-you for not arresting his grandmother—at the Hotel Castleton, and I was excited about both the anticipated evening’s entertainment and that day’s obedience class.

  Mrs. Hanratty had already explained to us that we were going to show off everything our dogs were supposed to have learned during the six weeks of class. I was almost certain that Spike would show up the competition, but you never knew how these things would turn out. Maybe he’d get nervous. Maybe I’d get nervous. Actually, the latter was more probable than the former, Spike being a most confident doggie, even if he was shorter than most of his fellow students.

  There were about forty dogs all in all, and Mrs. Hanratty called out commands to us humans, which we then conveyed to our pets. We went one by one into the center ring, and darned if Spike didn’t perform to absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve ever been as proud of anything as I was of Spike that day. After our last event—sit, stay, walk away, come, heel, sit; which sounds more complicated than it was—Spike’s entire fan club and even some of the other watchers applauded, making both Spike and me very happy.

  “That was perfect, Daisy,” Billy told me, looking happier than I’d seen him in months, if not years.

  “How’d you get him to do all that stuff?” asked Sam. When I squinted at him, he appeared honestly interested, so I acquitted him of being sarcastic.