Shaken Spirits (A Daisy Gumm Majesty Mystery, Book 13): Historical Mystery

by Alice Duncan

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “I know I don’t need to do it. But I’ve got a lot of making-up to do, and I’d appreciate it if you’d let me act like a gent, even if I’m not one. Just this once, all right?”

  I laughed, too. “Oh, all right.”

  So he did. He even carried the books I aimed to return for me.

  Twenty-Nine

  Regina Petrie was overjoyed to meet Lou Prophet.

  “Oh, I’ve read so much about your daring exploits over the years, Mr. Prophet!” she whispered when I introduced them.

  “Probably not much of the stuff you read is true,” said Prophet, putting a slight damper on Regina’s enthusiasm.

  “Perhaps not much of what’s in those dime novels is true,” I said, “but you’ve had a life filled with danger and adventure anyway. Not only that, but you’ve saved my own personal life quite frequently in recent weeks. I think you should be celebrated for that alone.”

  Prophet peered at me slanty-eyed, clearly skeptical.

  “It’s true!” I insisted. In a whisper, of course, since we were in the library.

  Her hands clasped to what would have been her bosom if she had one, Regina said, “Daisy told me! I’m so sorry so many of my family members are such ghastly people. It’s embarrassing, actually.”

  “The bad eggs aren’t your fault,” said Prophet.

  “It’s embarrassing, all the same. Oh, I do wish Robert were here. He’d love to meet you.”

  “That the gent you aim to marry? Miss Daisy told me about him. Some.”

  “Yes. He’s a wonderful man,” Regina said in a voice so sweet, it nearly gave me a toothache. Then again, I’d been married before. Regina would have to learn about marriage before she could be cynical about it. Anyhow, I thought Regina and Robert would be extremely happy together, as they wouldn’t have to face the obstacles to a happy union Billy and I had not quite overcome.

  “Is he the one with the collection of yellow-back novels?” asked Prophet. From his tone of voice, I got the impression he wasn’t a huge fan of that particular brand of literature.

  “He’s the one, all right,” I answered for Regina. If Prophet was going to grumble at someone, I wanted it to be me, because Regina didn’t deserve any grumbles. “He’s a great fellow, Mr. Prophet. He, Sam and my father fixed my radio so I could listen to it without having to put on those clumsy headphones.”

  “Yeah? What’s a radio?”

  “You’ve never listened to a radio-signal receiving set?”

  “Is that one of those things you turn on and music comes out of it? Like a piano, only smaller and without the keys?”

  “That’s it all right.” Dear me. Guess I’d have to entertain Mr. Prophet with my radio. Not that I used it a whole lot. Heck, maybe I’d give it to him.

  But no. That wouldn’t be fair to Pa, who liked to listen to sporting games on it. As for me, I wasn’t a big sports fanatic. I’d be happy if people began producing more radio dramas, though. Now that would be fun listening while I plied my—actually, my mother’s—side-pedal White sewing machine. Hmm. The noise of the sewing machine might drown out the radio. Well, I’d figure something out. Providing the radio people ever did begin producing more radio plays.

  Why am I talking about radio plays?

  Regina brought me back to the here and now by reaching under her desk and withdrawing three books from the shelf there. “But look what I have for you, Daisy!”

  “They look like books to me,” Prophet observed.

  “They are books,” I said, smiling at his naïve pronouncement. Naivety and Lou Prophet didn’t seem to go together, at least in my—ahem—book. Sorry about that. “Regina saves all the best ones for me when they first get catalogued.”

  “That’s right nice of you, Miss Petrie.”

  “I’ll be so glad when I don’t have that name anymore,” said Regina with a small shudder. “Anyhow, I think you’ll like this one. It’s The Green Bay Tree, by Louis Bromfield. It’s not a detective story, but I found it fascinating. This is Mr. Bromfield’s very first novel, and he’s such a good story-teller.“She picked up the second book and held it to her already-mentioned non-bosom. I knew, because I’d helped modernize her, that Regina actually possessed a bosom, but I’ve already deplored what women were supposed to look like in 1925. In an almost reverential whisper, she said, “It’s by Baroness Orczy.”

  “Oh, my!” I’d have shouted hallelujah, only we were in the library and everyone would have looked at me funny. Might even have kicked me out.

  “It’s The Pimpernel and Rosemary.” Regina handed the book to me as if it were a fragile ornament.

  I clutched it to my own bosom. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! I wish the baroness would write faster.”

  “As do I,” said Regina. She sighed. “But I suppose we should be happy for what we’re given.”

  “You’re much more philosophical on the subject than I am,” I said with a small, veritably soundless, laugh.

  “And you’re going to love this last one,” said Regina, smiling hugely. And darned if she didn’t place Atavar, the Dream Dancer, by Mr. Arthur B. Reeve on her desk.

  I snatched the book up as if I expected it to run away before I could get my mitts on it. “Oh, thank you! Is this a Craig Kennedy novel?”

  “It is indeed.”

  “Who’s Craig Kennedy?” asked Mr. Prophet, befuddled.

  “He’s a detective,” I told him. “A scientific detective. Sort of like Sherlock Holmes, if you know who he is. Fictionally speaking, I mean. The Craig Kennedy books are written by a fellow named Mr. Arthur B. Reeve.”

  “Oh, yeah. I read a couple of Sherlock Holmes stories. I liked The Hound of the Baskervilles. Wouldn’t mind goin’ to England one day. Not that I have that many days left.”

  His comment jarred me. I glanced at him, noticing the many creases in his weathered face which, I have no doubt, were etched there by time and the sun and the rugged circumstances of his life. “I have a feeling you’re going to outlast all of us,” I told him, not really meaning it, but thinking he needed a boost to his morale. What with his talk about surviving the Civil War and losing the love of his life, his mood had drooped some.

  “Not likely,” he said, but he grinned at me, so I’m glad I fibbed.

  “But thanks, Regina. I’d better be getting home now. I do so appreciate the books.”

  “And I appreciate you introducing me to Mr. Prophet.” She leaned over her desk, her own hazel eyes shining through her spectacles. “It was such a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Prophet. I still want you to meet Robert.”

  “Maybe you two can come to dinner with us again one of these days,” I told her. “Mr. Prophet is taking care of the house Sam bought. It’s right across the street from ours.”

  With a lovely smile—Regina Petrie was an extremely pretty woman when she did a little work on herself—she said, “We’d both love that. And I heard about your new house. That’s so exciting! Robert and I are going to be looking for houses soon.”

  “Oh, my. Life does seem to fly by, doesn’t it?” I shook my head and glanced at Mr. Prophet, wondering if his life had seemed to fly by.

  “Doesn’t seem like it while you’re living it,” said he, answering my unspoken question. “But when you get old and look back, you tend to wonder how you got so old so fast.”

  Regina and I both laughed, although I don’t think he was kidding. Guess I’d learn for myself, providing I lived to be his age, whatever it was. He had to be in his seventies, at least.

  “And your friends start dying, too,” he said, causing both Regina and me to stop laughing. “Until it feels like you’re left all alone in the world.” He shook his head. “Never wanted to die alone, but hell, nobody else I used to know is still around to be with me at the end.”

  I might have scolded him for that “hell,” but his words so stunned me, I didn’t. What a melancholy way to look at one’s life. “You’re not alone any longer, M
r. Prophet,” I said as I carried my books to the check-out desk. “You have Sam, and you have me. In fact, you have my whole family.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I mean, yes, you do. Heck, Sam and I have a whole house for you to live in. It’s small, but it’s there, and you can use it for as long as you want.” Or for as long as he lived, but I didn’t want to say that.

  “Yeah? You talk to Sam about this?”

  “Um…Not yet, but I know he wants you there.”

  “Why? I’m not good for anything.”

  We’d reached the check-out desk, so I set my books before the library clerk manning—well, womanning—the desk. As she wrote down my library-card number on the book tickets and wrote the date I needed to return the books on the lined paper pasted inside the covers, I said, “That’s not true!” The clerk looked at me in alarm.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Not you.”

  She shrugged and went back to doing her job.

  “Well, I ain’t,” said Prophet. “Old, feeble, one-legged fellow who doesn’t belong in this world we got today.”

  “Oh, piffle! Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You have not merely my entire family on your side, but you have the Buckinghams and the whole Pasadena Police Department!”

  “Now there’s a scary thought.” Prophet scratched a stubbly cheek.

  “Anyway, stop telling me you’re worthless and worn out. You might feel worn out, but you’ve done yeoman’s service these past few weeks, and I’m not going to let you go. So there.”

  “Guess that’s tellin’ me, huh?”

  “Yes. It is.” I turned and smiled sweetly at him. “Will you please carry my books to the motorcar?”

  With a shrug, Prophet picked up my three books.

  Then I had another thought. “But wait!” I was still whispering, by the way.

  “Fer what?”

  “I want to look up pictures of firearms. When you and Pa were talking about guns the other day, I realized I don’t know a single, solitary thing about them. I want to look at some pictures.”

  “Yeah? Where you going to find pictures of firearms?”

  “This,” I said sternly, “is a library. Libraries have everything.”

  “Do they now?” He didn’t sound convinced.

  “Yes.”

  “You aiming to shoot one or just look at ’em?”

  “Just look. I wouldn’t want to handle one. They’re far too dangerous.”

  I didn’t precisely see him do it, but I know he rolled his eyes. Just like Sam, Lou Prophet. Well, not just like him, but close enough.

  Regina was surprised to see the two of us show up at her desk again. When I asked her about books with pictures of firearms in them, she led us to the reference room and to the shelf holding books classified in the 600s.

  “I think they’re in six twenty-three,” said she, running a manicured fingernail along the row of books. “Ah, yes. Here you go. This one has photographs of various firearms in it. It’s a reference book, so you can’t check it out, but you may look at it all you want.”

  “Thank you!”

  Mr. Prophet, still acting like a gentleman, took the heavy tome from the shelf and lugged it over to a table, where he set it down gently. No plopping of books for Mr. Lou Prophet. I approved.

  We sat in chairs next to each other, and he opened the book. “What are you lookin’ for? Or do you know?”

  “I don’t really know, I guess. I just kind of wondered what kinds of guns you old-west-type fellows used to use.”

  “Used to use?”

  “Use, I mean.”

  I heard him chuckle under his breath, and he opened the book.

  Holy cow, until that moment I didn’t have a single, solitary clue how many different kinds of firearms existed in the world. And to think Mr. Prophet used to use several of the lethal weapons depicted on the pages of that book gave me a tiny—an almost non-existent—shiver of uneasiness. The man next to whom I sat that day in the staid and conservative Pasadena Public Library used to…well, kill men for a living. Sobering thought.

  Mr. Prophet, however, was far from a sober-sides as he turned the pages of that book and pointed out all the firearms he’d used in his colorful career. He was nearly gleeful when he indicated a couple of those deadly monsters.

  “This here’s a Winchester ’73. That’s the one I used on that sumbitch in the rosebushes. This here one,” he said, pointing at another picture, “was my favorite for a long time, though. My coach gun.”

  “Coach gun?” I said in a feeble voice.

  “Yeah. Shotgun messengers on stagecoaches used ’em. Sawed-off, twelve-gauge Richards shotgun. Loved that gut-shredder.”

  “Gut-shredder?” My voice had become feebler.

  “Tears up a man real good. Wore it on a leather lanyard around my neck. Best barn-blaster I ever used.”

  I didn’t even ask what a barn-blaster was, figuring the name to be self-explanatory, as had been the gut-shredder. I’d have to remember those for my dictionary of the old west, though.

  Mr. Prophet and I went through the whole book, Prophet explaining darned near every one of the guns depicted therein. I guess I already knew the firearms industry was big, given the way human beings had always been unable to get along, but I didn’t know it was that big. Almost made me afraid to walk to the Chevrolet.

  But no. I had Mr. Lou Prophet to protect me. He might be old, and he might have only one leg remaining to him, but he’d proved himself over and over since I’d met him. It seemed like longer than three or four weeks. It seemed almost like a lifetime.

  He was definitely part of the family now, whether he wanted to be or not. Daisy Gumm Majesty—or Daisy Gumm Rotondo—wouldn’t allow this rough, elderly man to die alone, darn it.

  I hoped I could convince Sam and my family to look upon the matter as I did. Being persuasive by nature—some people might call me pushy, but I’m really only determined—I was sure I’d win them all over.

  Heck, for all I knew, they were already won. Wouldn’t surprise me.

  Thirty

  On Wednesday morning, Sam and Lou Prophet showed up at our door in time for breakfast. Vi had left some of her spectacularly delicious cinnamon rolls and some cooked sausage patties in the warming oven. She didn’t trust me to cook the sausage patties. For good reason, although I’d bet Pa could have cooked them without burning down the house.

  I was so glad Sam had bought the house across the street. If he hadn’t, the two of us might have starved to death. Or been burned up in a tragic house fire.

  “Your aunt sure is a good cook,” said Prophet as he dug into his cinnamon roll.

  He’d taken my suggestion to spread butter on it. I know, I know. Butter makes people fat. It would take a whole lot more than a couple of buttered cinnamon rolls to fatten up Mr. Lou Prophet.

  After Sam had swallowed a bite of sausage, he said, “Vi is the best cook in Pasadena. I have it on good authority.”

  “Your own taste buds,” I said, grinning at him.

  “And other people’s, too,” he said, smiling back.

  “Including mine,” said Pa, who was extremely happy to have Vi living with us for reasons already specified.

  “It’s a grand thing to have a good cook in the family,” said Prophet. “Can I have another one of those rolls, Miss Daisy? Haven’t had anything so tasty in…well, hours. Dinner last night was damned…I mean darned good, too.”

  It kind of tickled me that he tried not to swear around me.

  Sam helped me clean up the breakfast dishes, while Pa and Mr. Prophet retired to the living room. After putting the last dish away, Sam and I joined the other two men there, and I sat on the piano bench. “Do you fellows mind if I practice Sunday’s anthem?”

  “Not at all,” said Pa.

  “What’s an anthem, when it comes to church?” asked Prophet, sounding genuinely interested.

  “Beats me,” said Sam. Big help.

  “It’s a hymn that highlights wha
t the sermon will be about. At Christmas, we sing Christmas carols. Same with Lent, although most Lenten hymns are slow and sad. I prefer the Easter hymns, which celebrate the resurrection.”

  After a moment of silence, Prophet said, “You’ll have to tell me more about this stuff sometime. I still don’t understand it much.”

  “Nobody does,” said Sam.

  Pa said nothing, but his smile was wide.

  Men.

  I tried again. “What I meant was that there are different holidays—or events—every year and the church…acknowledges them in music. If you see what I mean. Like, Christmas is the birth of Jesus, so we sing Christmas carols. Good Friday is when he died on the cross, so we sing sad hymns. Easter is when he arose from the dead, so we sing joyful songs.”

  “Never saw nobody do that,” Prophet observed. “Rise from the dead, I mean. I’ve seen a fair share of dead people, too.”

  With a smile of my own, I said, “I haven’t, either. But I’m a good Methodist girl, so I go along with what my church says I should do.”

  “What’s coming up on Sunday,” asked Pa.

  “We’re getting close to Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, so we’re going to sing ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ this coming Sunday.”

  Prophet grunted. “Think I’ll stay home for that one.”

  Sam laughed. “Don’t blame you. Lincoln’s not one of your favorite presidents, I gather.”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, I think he was wonderful,” I told my audience. “Really, Mr. Prophet, the south’s way of life depended on slavery, and I think slavery is wrong.”

  “Does it say that in the Bible?” asked Prophet.

  He would. “Actually, no, it doesn’t, but let’s not get in to that at the moment.”

  “Right,” said Prophet in a voice that, if captured, would have scattered little, sharp splinters all over the place.

  I still disapproved of slavery, no matter what the Bible doesn’t say about it. However, deciding not to argue, I said, “It’s more exciting if there’s a drum opening, but I can’t play the drums, so it’ll be the piano for me.”