Louisa and the Crystal Gazer Read online

  Two days after Lizzie’s arrival, when I knew she had settled in and was happily practicing an étude in Auntie Bond’s piano room, I left the pile of shirtsleeves in my workbasket and my new story on my desk in the attic (Auntie Bond had cleared out an old nanny’s room for my use) and took an afternoon off to do some research on the art and performance of crystal gazing. I visited the public library and the private Atheneum. I stopped for a long chat with the woman who sold greenhouse carnations at Constitution Wharf. I visited with a Mrs. McGillicuddy who had been born in County Cork and now ran a day home for children whose mothers worked in the mills. When I returned home, many hours later, I wrote up my notes and thought and thought.

  Seven days after the first séance with Mrs. Percy, Sylvia and Lizzie and I were at MacIntyre’s Inn on Boylston Street, enjoying warm glasses of eggnog—without brandy, of course—and waiting for our plates of haddock to arrive. Mr. Phineas T. Barnum was with us, having sent a note earlier in the day reiterating his invitation to an early dinner before our second séance.

  Lizzie was impressed by MacIntyre’s white tablecloths, ornate gas lamps, and black-uniformed waiters, and she ate with her elbows tucked closely at her side, rarely even looking up.

  “More raisin bread?” Sylvia asked Lizzie, passing the plate to her.

  “It is fine,” said Lizzie, timidly taking a second piece. “More like cake.”

  “My daughter, Caroline, also prefers cake to bread,” said Mr. Barnum. “We shall order a fine layer cake for dessert, with a cream frosting,” he boomed. “You remind me of her, Miss Lizzie. Quiet, but quick-witted.”

  “You miss your family,” I said. “It must be difficult, traveling as much as you do.”

  “It is, but Charity is a fine mother and helpmate, when her health is good. A father must provide for his children, and my business requires that I wander the world seeking its marvels.” He buttered a piece of bread and ate it in three bites, as do men who are often in a great hurry.

  “Is that why you wandered into Mrs. Percy’s parlor, seeking marvels?” I asked.

  He looked in much better spirits than when we first met in Mrs. Percy’s waiting room, where he had seemed to me somehow devastated, despite his shiny brassiness of behavior. In fact, this afternoon he looked robust and overly splendid, dressed in a bright suit with an even brighter tie, with many diamond rings glittering on his fingers, and checked spats over his shoes. He looked, well, like what he was: a showman who adored attention and intended to get it. He had been snapping at waiters and winking at the coat-check girl since his arrival, and he spoke in a large voice, as if trying to fill an auditorium. He had even gone to the trouble to arrive late and make an entrance. Father would not have approved of this; nor did I.

  He did not answer my question and instead distracted us by asking Lizzie if she preferred lemon or strawberry ice, as his other daughter, Pauline, favored lemon. Our fish arrived, and for the next hour we ate well while Mr. Barnum, between generous mouthfuls, entertained us with highly amusing tales of his travels through Europe with General Tom Thumb, describing how Queen Victoria had set the diminutive man on her knees next to her lapdogs, and how King Louis Philippe of France let Tom Thumb, in his miniature carriage, lead a royal procession down the Champs-Élysées. Mr. Barnum was a fine storyteller. He and Father had qualities in common after all, the strength of their voices and their insistence on being heard among them.

  When the plates were cleared and Lizzie was finishing her second piece of cake, Mr. Barnum cleared his throat and gave me a long look.

  “Well, Miss Louisa, you seem an extraordinary young person of quick intelligence. What did you make of Mrs. Percy’s séance?”

  I put down my teacup and returned his long look.

  “I think the trumpet was a clever touch, though easily seen through. It appeared, and then disappeared again, through a hinged panel in the ceiling,” I said.

  “No!” protested Sylvia. “Really, Louy, you think you are so clever. Even if there was a hinged panel, someone must be upstairs to pull the lever or whatever, and Mrs. Percy never left the room.”

  “Of course,” I said. “That is one of Suzie’s chores, I assume.”

  Sylvia’s mouth opened into a perfectly round O of surprise.

  “And the phantom I recognized, despite the white powder and gauze,” Mr. Barnum said. “It was Fannie Adelon, a dancer from the Old State Theatre. She can do a bit of juggling as well. She must be down on her luck, participating in such a charade.”

  “No!” Sylvia protested again, her eyes wide.

  “Sylvia, you didn’t believe any of that silliness, did you?” I asked, giving her a chance to redeem her credulity.

  “It could not have been all silliness,” she said gloomily. “I had a message from Father.”

  “The handwriting of my message,” Mr. Barnum said. “Now that was a neat trick.”

  “You know a Dorcas, then?” I asked.

  He paused. “I do. She was childhood nurse to a relative of mine. The relative has proven a great disappointment, and Dorcas, before she died last year, sent me several letters asking for my patience and forgiveness, on his behalf. The handwriting on the slate board was very like.” His voice sounded strained. “Women are softhearted, but business is business.” That aside was something I would consider often, after later events.

  “He knew a Dorcas, and that was Dorcas’s handwriting. Does that prove nothing, Louy?” Sylvia asked determinedly.

  “Of course it does,” I said. “Mrs. Percy is talented. Sylvia, you are wearing a bracelet now, are you not?”

  “You see that I am,” she answered.

  “On your left wrist. Because you are right-handed. Women always wear heavy jewelry on the less active hand. Mrs. Percy wore her bracelets on her left hand, and she wrote with her left hand.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Forgers sometimes train themselves to use the less active hand to disguise their own true handwriting. I have that on expert authority.” The flower woman at Constitution Wharf had been jailed for just that crime in her youth. Moreover, I had taught myself to write with both hands, so that I could write for longer hours without wearying, and remarked how one hand differed from the other in quality of script.

  “Mrs. Percy forged Dorcas’s handwriting?” Sylvia put down her fork of cream cake and brooded.

  “She is a forger,” Mr. Barnum agreed, “among other things.”

  “How did she know about Lizzie’s arrival?” Sylvia demanded somewhat crossly.

  Mrs. McGillicuddy of Cork had informed me about that method. “She simply asked questions,” I said. “I suspect she learned of Lizzie’s departure from Dr. Burroughs in Walpole. A simple telegraph to a conspirator in the area would have provided such information, and a woman of Mrs. Percy’s national reputation would have assistants in many places, I suspect. Even so, Sylvia, who does not expect, or at least hope for, a surprise visitor on any given day? Do you yourself await one?”

  Sylvia blushed. Had she been eyeing the bachelors of Boston, casting about for a presentable young man who would enable her to fulfill her dead father’s request?

  “That would mean that…”

  “You don’t have to marry. Not right now. Not unless you seek merely to please Mrs. Percy, who invented that message probably after making inquiries about your mother.”

  “I was on the verge of inviting Jimmy Baldwin for dinner with Maman, and you know how he slurps his soup and then drinks too much brandy. But if all that happened in Mrs. Percy’s parlor was…” Sylvia paused, searching for a word.

  “Humbug,” supplied Mr. Barnum.

  “Humbug,” said Sylvia, “then why are we returning this afternoon?”

  Writers, dear readers, are often faced with questions of this nature. And there is only one answer: Because it might help my story. But those who do not aspire to live by the pen often do not understand that simple reply, so I substitute another: “Curiosity,” I said.

  “
This is all very interesting, and I am disappointed with Uncle’s housekeeper, who seems to spread family news all over New England. But where is my promised third piece of cake?” spoke up Lizzie.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A Body Is Discovered

  “YOU’LL NEVER CONVINCE me it was all a sham,” insisted Sylvia when we arrived back at Arlington Street. “I have been dreaming of Father, and had conversations with him since the séance. Mrs. Percy has opened a door for me.”

  “Then knock harder, so that this one may be opened,” I said when our initial rapping had gone ignored for several minutes.

  “My experiences in life have convinced me that real merit does not always succeed as well as ‘humbug,’” said Mr. Barnum, taking the door knocker in his gloved hand and giving it a hard bang. “The public loves to be fooled, and the more you fool them the more they love it.”

  Suzie Dear opened the door to us once again. This time she was dressed all in green, like a woodland fairy. The girl seemed to enjoy playing at dress-up. Perhaps her mistress encouraged it, to add further “atmosphere” to the séances.

  “You’re early,” Suzie complained. “I ain’t dusted off the sitting room yet. Don’t you dare complain if you sneeze!”

  Susie was agitated and breathless. Perhaps we had caught her napping and she had run down the stairs. Her exotic headgear, a lace mantilla rather than a maid’s cap, was askew over her curls, and a gaudy necklace was lopsided over her shoulder, as if she had risen hastily from a semireclining posture.

  Reluctantly Suzie led us down the dark hall, her feet in their high-heeled boots leaving wet imprints on the parquet floor. Now why, I thought, are her boots wet, if she has been napping?

  In the waiting room, which seemed as dusty as she had promised, she turned and glared at Lizzie. “Who are you, miss?” she rudely demanded.

  “Miss Alcott’s sister,” said Lizzie in a trembling voice.

  “Don’t have no notice to set a chair for you in the circle,” Suzie said crossly. “Did you send a card asking to be invited?”

  “She did not.” I spoke up. “Since Mrs. Percy herself predicted my sister’s arrival last week, I did not think she would object to Lizzie’s attendance.” I was feeling very uncomfortable. Things were not as they should be, and that was saying a lot, since things are never as they should be in a crystal gazer’s sitting room.

  “Not allowed,” Suzie insisted. “No invitation, she can’t join the circle. She’ll have to wait here.” The maid crossed her arms over her chest and glared.

  Mr. Barnum and I exchanged glances. Mrs. Percy could not “prepare” for unexpected participants by garnering the gossip—the newspaper announcements of births, deaths, and betrothals, the private household information purchased from upstairs maids and laundresses—that was the lifeblood of her business. So, Lizzie would be excluded.

  “I don’t mind,” said my sister. “Really, I don’t, Louisa. There are some finger exercises I want to practice, and I do feel a little queasy after all that cake. I will wait here.”

  “Haruumph,” said Mr. Barnum, his silvery side-whiskers twitching.

  Another thought occurred to me. At our first séance, Mrs. Percy had given a similar glare to Amelia Snodgrass and demanded, “There is no one here for you. Why have you come?” Had Miss Snodgrass also arrived uninvited? And if so, why had Suzie allowed her into the séance room?

  “Even so,” I protested, “please ask your Mrs. Percy if she might let my sister sit with us.” I made my voice imperious, imitating Marmee’s tone when she had to deal with factory owners who fired a girl for getting in the family way, or a cook who beat the scullery help, for Marmee knew how and when such a tone is useful.

  Suzie’s glare faltered and she murmured, “Yes, miss.”

  She returned just moments later, so quickly, in fact, that I wondered if she had really spoken to Mrs. Percy at all, or just pretended to. “Mrs. Percy said no,” she grumbled. “Told you she would.” Suzie had grown pale as well as rude, and she trembled.

  Lizzie would be content, but I felt as queasy as if I had also eaten three pieces of cake, thinking of timid Lizzie alone for an hour in this very strange house.

  Some minutes after we arrived, Mr. Phips was shown into the sitting room.

  “Aha, Miss Louisa,” he greeted me warmly. “We return for more messages from the dear departed. Most amusing, most amusing.” He handed his hat and coat to Suzie, who bobbed a curtsy and left us again, after giving me a long glare.

  “Nasty weather,” said Mr. Phips, striding to the fire that Suzie had reluctantly lit for us in the grate and chafing his hands.

  “You should have seen the snow blow over the Scottish moors, sir,” said Mr. Barnum in his booming voice. “When I traveled there with Tom Thumb it snowed to beat the band. Almost buried us, the general’s carriage being no more than three feet high. I dug him out myself. He was so cold he had rolled up into a snowball.”

  I understood by then that Mr. Barnum was as much an admirer of fiction as myself, and often “extended” his stories with hyperbole and even a little fantasy.

  “I remember newspaper accounts of your travels in Europe,” said Mr. Phips, carefully smoothing a crease in his lapel. “Wasn’t it Scotland that taxed you four thousand dollars for income even though you didn’t live there?”

  “They got five hundred, the robbers,” Mr. Barnum said. He seemed disinclined to tell more stories after that and paced nervously.

  A few minutes later, Mr. and Mrs. Deeds arrived. She was as overdressed as on the first occasion, with diamonds on her ears and wrists and ermine draped over her shoulders. Her husband seemed even meeker, constantly clearing his throat and giving his expansive wife glances that suggested he sought her opinion even before taking a deep breath.

  “Mrs. Percy keeps us waiting once again?” asked Mrs. Deeds in her shrill voice.

  “She does,” answered Mr. Phips. “Promptness does not seem to be one of her virtues.” He did not look at us but slowly removed his gloves and put them in his waistcoat pocket.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Deeds, after Suzie Dear had once again taken away coats and hats. Mrs. Deeds enthroned herself in the only remaining armchair, leaving an uncomfortable-looking ladder-back chair for Mr. Deeds. She arranged her voluminous velvet skirts and retied the lace bow at her throat. She was not wearing the heavy pearl collar she had worn the week before, the one at which Mrs. Percy had pointed and shrieked, “The necklace!” rather like a character from a Poe story…or one of my own “blood and thunders.” Women shriek often in “blood and thunders.” It is a sign of the genre.

  “Mrs. Deeds,” I greeted her. “Looking so well in that green velvet costume. I had hoped to have another glimpse of that lovely pearl necklace.”

  Mrs. Deeds compressed her mouth into a very thin line, then forced a gay smile. “It has been returned, for the time being,” she said.

  From his shadowy corner, Mr. Deeds coughed. “A fortune. A king’s ransom, that’s what Mrs. Percy was asking. Mrs. Deeds wore it on loan, and it was returned,” he spoke up in his thin, high-pitched voice.

  The necklace was owned by Mrs. Percy? How had she acquired such an expensive piece?

  “We’ll discuss it later, dear,” his wife said darkly, and then returned to her gay tone. “Miss Snodgrass is not here? Who is this newest member of our circle?” She looked with great interest at Lizzie.

  “I am not of the circle.” Lizzie spoke up. “I accompany my sister, Miss Alcott, only this far, to the waiting room.”

  “It is unfair not to include you more fully,” said shy Mr. Deeds.

  Lizzie studied her boots and did not answer.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Deeds again, “I do not suppose any of you here attended the Cotton Cotillion last evening?” Indeed, I had not. The cotton factors had too pronounced a sympathy for slavery for me to have attended such an event. But Mrs. Deeds obviously had no such moral dilemma, and proceeded to recount the prior evening—the foods on the buffe
t table, the flowers, the dances, the clothing, the speeches—in great and misery-causing detail for those of us who would have preferred to sit and wait in silence.

  Sylvia took a little book from her pocket and pretended to read. I could not help but notice the title: Reminiscences of the Summerland: My Journeys Among the Dear Departed, by Mrs. Agatha Percy. So our crystal gazer was an author, as well? I could not help but think a little more highly of her, though I wished she had been truthful enough to admit to writing romances rather than memoirs.

  Half an hour passed. Suzie Dear stuck her head in to inquire whether we needed anything. She plucked nervously at her skirt and gulped. I wouldn’t have thought it, but the brassy young woman seemed nervous and even fearful. I thought, at the time, that this change in behavior had been caused by a sharp reprimand from her mistress.

  Mrs. Deeds asked for hot tea and sandwiches, but Suzie Dear never brought them. When Mrs. Deeds asked a second time, Suzie answered, “The cook is gone.”

  “Is she, now?” asked Mr. Phips with interest. “Gone where?”

  “Wouldn’t know, sir,” said Suzie. “Somewhere else, I suppose.”

  I rose and walked down the dark hall and found the half flight of stairs leading into the kitchen, Suzie dogging my heels in angry protest. “Can’t go in there, miss!” she said, trying to block the kitchen door with her own body.

  Gently I pushed her aside and entered the kitchen. The cook had indeed gone, in the way that a fair day can be said to be gone when a storm arrives. Drawers had been pulled out and emptied on the floor; the large worktable was littered with chopped carrots, beef bones, and dirty butcher knives; a cold pot sat on a fire that had gone out. The cook had left without finishing the stew. The door that opened into the little room where the cook slept was ajar. It was a breach of privacy, I admit, but I peered inside. The bed had been rested upon, but not slept in. The pegs on the wall were bereft of garments, the drawers bare. There was not a single item to indicate a person had once inhabited this room.