Louisa and the Crystal Gazer

by Anna Maclean

  “Mrs. O’Connor be abed,” said the girl who opened the door at number seventy-two. She eyed me in an unfriendly manner. “Did that Mrs. Wilkinson send you?”

  “No. I’ll go straight up,” I said. “We’re old friends.” This was only half-true. Marmee had found work for Mrs. O’Connor on several occasions, and I hoped that Marmee’s good actions would assure me at least a wary welcome.

  “Miss Louisa! Something wrong with your mama?” was the first thing Mrs. O’Connor said, sitting up in bed, her eyes wide with alarm, when I opened her door at the top of three flights of stairs and went in.

  “No, she is well,” I said. “But I am in great need of a favor. Will you help me?”

  Mrs. O’Connor put on a ragged bed jacket and straightened her sleeping cap over her unnaturally red hair. She pulled a fraying rope at the side of the bed, and I heard a bell chime somewhere in the depths of the boardinghouse.

  “Can’t do no cooking for you,” she said. “Mrs. Wilkinson is giving a ball and has hired everyone this side of the Great Divide. I’m making the breads and cakes.” Mrs. O’Connor looked pleased with herself. “I can be a few more minutes late, though. I’ll just stick the yeast dough closer to the fire to make it rise faster, so we can have a nice chat. What ails you that Mother O’Connor can help with?” Her brogue was thick and warm and her smile, when she gave it, huge, but Mrs. O’Connor was nobody’s fool, and I knew I must tread lightly, for once offended she never forgave.

  “I have some questions about Mrs. Agatha Percy,” I said, pulling a chair over to the side of her bed, since she showed little inclination to rise. I couldn’t blame her. There was no fire in the room, and crystals of ice shone inside the curtainless windows; I kept my coat on, and my muffler.

  Mrs. O’Connor let out a laugh that was more like a snort, and snapped her fingers. “That biddy!” she exclaimed with great disgust. “Louisa, my girl, don’t waste your dimes on that old girl. She’s a fraud through and through.”

  “That is a harsh judgment,” I said.

  Mrs. O’Connor snorted again like a horse that has a pebble wedged between shoe and sensitive foot. “Did she use a crystal ball? Yes? That proves it. No self-respecting ghost would show up in a ball. They die to be free, not to be captured in a body once again. You see, Louisa, only frauds—and newcomer frauds at that—use the ball. Your Mrs. Percy learned her ‘art’ [another snort, dear reader] at the theater in one of those plays, perhaps ‘The Ghost of Windham Falls.’ That was making the rounds again a couple of years ago, I think, and wherever it plays a whole stew of crystal gazers rises up like weeds in the pumpkin patch. No, the only spirits Mrs. Percy talks with come from a bottle.”

  That had been Constable Cobban’s assessment as well, but I did not mention that to Mrs. O’Connor, who had no great fondness for the law.

  There was a loud rap at the door, and a disheveled girl came in carrying a tray. “Tea,” she said. “I’ll leave it here. I don’t come in no further.” She put the tray on the floor, caught the penny that Mrs. O’Connor tossed her, and slammed the door shut again.

  “Shall I pour?” I asked.

  “Do, sweetie,” said Mrs. O’Connor. “And tell me more about Mrs. Percy.”

  I poured tea and picked black specks out of the sugar jar before sweetening our cups. “She wrote messages from the spirits,” I said. “And a trumpet came down from the ceiling.”

  “One of the messages was from a dead father,” Mrs. O’Connor said. “There’s always a message from a dead father in such rooms and circumstances.”

  “This was a little more specific,” I said. “The message was from my friend’s dead father, and the message was that she should marry.”

  “This is serious, then. Your Mrs. Percy may be a fraud, but she is no amateur. She is a prep artist. Pass a bit of that bread over, Louisa, with jam, please. Help yourself, dear. Plenty for two.” But there wasn’t plenty, so I spread thin yellow preserves on the stale crust and gave it to Mrs. O’Connor.

  “What is a prep artist?” I asked.

  “She would have paid off a servant in your friend’s household to discover what the private conversations were, and the gossip—what woman is in the family way, what husband is cheating. All the sordid details.” Mrs. O’Connor smacked her lips with pleasure. “And she would have paid someone else to scour the cemeteries. You paid more than a dime, Louisa. Such creatures charge more to cover their expenses. Unlike women like me, who have no such expenses.”

  Reader, have I not mentioned that Mrs. O’Connor spoke with the dead? In fact, it was her preferred occupation, except that when the spirits spoke through Mrs. O’Connor they spoke in somewhat foul language and without any discretion, and so her clientele was ephemeral at best. The strange thing about Mrs. O’Connor was that her “spirits” were almost always correct. Once, Mrs. O’Connor channeled Marmee’s mother, who told her where a lost brooch could be found, and there it was, wedged between the stone wall and the pickle jar in Uncle Benjamin’s cellar, just as the spirit had said.

  “You said she would scour the cemeteries?” I asked.

  “Tombstones. Best source of information. Most common trick.” Mrs. O’Connor pulled a long face and deepened her normally shrill voice. “I see a woman, elderly, seventy-eight years old, looking down at you and worrying. She is speaking. I can just hear her…oh, she’s saying, ‘The way is narrow but the reward is great to he who perseveres.’ Then the target—that’s the customer, my dear—the target jumps up in joy and shouts, ‘Mother! Mother! That’s what you always used to say to us!’ And all that, Louisa, my girl, is just from one tombstone, no gossip added.”

  “I see. More tea?”

  “No, thanks. My day must begin, though this visit has been lovely. Are you going back to see this Mrs. Percy creature?”

  “I can’t, Mrs. O’Connor. She has passed over.”

  “Dead?” asked Mrs. O’Connor with perhaps more glee than was suitable. “Can you give me the names of your circle, Louisa? I’ll send them my card.”

  Why not? I thought, and wrote down on a scrap of paper the names: Miss Amelia Snodgrass, Mr. Phineas T. Barnum, Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Deeds, Mr. William Phips. I omitted Sylvia’s name. She’d already received too many messages from the dead.

  “Mr. Barnum? Himself? Oh, happy day,” said Mrs. O’Connor when I handed her the piece of paper. “I see me now in the American Museum, greeting my clientele in a room with red curtains and gas lamps! Sometimes I see the future, you know.” Mrs. O’Connor clapped her hands with joy. “Did I ever tell you how I saw Mesmer hypnotize the queen of France? He himself had to disappear first.”

  Since Mesmer had died some years before, I assumed Mrs. O’Connor was describing one of her “dreams” or “visits” in which the dead revealed things to her. “You’ll have to tell me some other day,” I said. “I have one last question, if you don’t mind, and I’ll let you get about your day’s business. What can you tell me of Amelia Snodgrass?” As a cook for the finer houses in Boston, Mrs. O’Connor had access to more information and gossip than a hundred constables could obtain, perhaps more than Pinkerton himself.

  She had a most flexible face, capable of dozens of expressions, the kind of face that would have done well for her onstage. Now Mrs. O’Connor’s bright eyes grew narrow and her mouth twisted; she looked sly. “That one,” she purred. “How I’d like to get her in my séance room. I’d tell her a thing or two. Her and her airs, and everyone belowstairs knows about those carryings-on.”

  Impatient reader! Before she could speak a further word, the door exploded open and a maidservant stood there, wet with snow and pink in the face with rage! She was from a good house; I could tell from her clothes and the thickness of her boots.

  “Missus says you are to come now,” muttered the girl. “I left my own biscuits browning in the oven, and if they burn because of your laziness I’ll…I’ll…I’ll pull out your dyed hair, I will. I’ll put ground glass in your damn raisin cakes! You and that new
Chinee cook, between the two of you I’ll lose my mind!”

  It’s rare for a woman of Mrs. O’Connor’s girth to move with such alacrity, but in less than three seconds she had risen from bed, pulled a day dress over her chemise, and begun to button boots over the stockings in which she had slept.

  “Got to move, dear girl,” she said. “As for that Amelia creature, I’ll give you one warning: Things are never as they appear, but especially with women like her! Ask about the necklace and what really happened. Ask about the friend what aren’t no gentleman.”

  Tucking Mrs. O’Connor’s words and advice into a corner of my thoughts for later consideration, I turned to the glowering, red-faced woman who loomed in the doorway, waiting. “Did you say there is a new Chinese cook?” I asked.

  “There is,” she muttered. “Can’t fold a napkin decently, but at least she don’t sit in bed till noon swilling gin!” That last was directed at Mrs. O’Connor.

  “It were tea, my fine woman, and if you abuse me further I’ll quit, I will, and then what will your mistress do for the buns and scones?” Mrs. O’Connor answered.

  “I will accompany you,” I said. Mrs. Wilkinson’s maid did not look pleased, but neither did she protest.

  The Wilkinson home was one of the new mansions on Commonwealth Avenue, built in the newly revived Greek style with tall pillars, whitewashed, and with enough rooms for an army of people, not simply a family. But then, Mrs. Wilkinson was one of those matrons who desire a spacious, luxurious home and a maid for every room. Entry to this fashionable home presented a difficulty, since Mrs. O’Connor would be required to use the side entrance and I the front. Yet I did not wish to offend that good lady who had proven so helpful, so I broke yet another rule and went in by the servants’ entrance, arm in arm with Mrs. O’Connor.

  There was a row in the back rooms when we entered. The lady of the house, Mrs. Wilkinson herself, was shouting at a frightened young girl. “On the left!” Mrs. Wilkinson screeched. “Serve from the left, take from the right. Cannot you keep it straight? How can you serve at the buffet if you can’t even handle a simple breakfast table?”

  I cleared my throat.

  “Are you the florist’s assistant?” she asked, turning and looking me up and down. The maid fled.

  “I am not, Mrs. Wilkinson. I am Miss Louisa Alcott.”

  She looked at me askance and then, remembering her manners, uttered some niceties about my father, with whom she had a superficial acquaintanceship. The year before, Mr. Wilkinson had had Father give several “conversations” in their best parlor, and since then the Wilkinsons had called themselves “Friends of the Philosopher” and made much show of giving yearly donations to certain charities.

  “But you have come in through the servants’ entrance!” declared Mrs. Wilkinson, confused.

  To her apparent disapproval, I asked if I might speak with her new Chinese cook.

  “To what purpose, Miss Alcott?” she asked, now worried that I planned to steal her employee.

  Having witnessed the display of temper with which this woman treated a minor discrepancy of table service, I decided against mentioning that her new cook might be needed for inquiries into a murder investigation. I told a very small lie.

  “I think I may have met her before and wish to determine if so,” I said. “She made a wonderful salad of noodles and I would like the recipe.”

  “I know the salad! She is preparing it for me. Well, I think that is not a difficulty. This way, Miss Alcott. I will show you to the kitchen myself.” I followed behind Mrs. Wilkinson’s wide, swaying green skirts, through a narrow tunnel downstairs, and then into a kitchen the size of the entire ground floor of our little cottage in Walpole.

  “We are busy, as you see,” said haughty Mrs. Wilkinson. “Dances are so much effort, but they must be given, I suppose; else how will good society continue?”

  Busy indeed. A dozen people worked at various chores, basting meats, chopping vegetables, whipping cream for cakes, piling meringues for baking. The noise was deafening, for the cooks shouted back and forth at one another as they worked, and so did not notice our approach.

  In the far corner, kneading a large ball of dough, was a small woman I believed was the cook I had seen so very briefly at Mrs. Percy’s house. She was in a brown plaid woolsey dress, not a blue tunic and trousers, yet her face with its large upturned dark eyes was familiar.

  She must have felt my eyes on her. She looked up, her serene expression turning to horror.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A Thief Is Captured

  SHE REMEMBERS ME from Mrs. Percy’s house, I thought. Too late, I noticed the door, immediately at her back.

  “What is her name?” I asked Mrs. Wilkinson.

  “I can’t remember. Some outlandish thing, Meh-ki, I think. Why? I assure you, Miss Alcott—”

  “Meh-ki!” I called. “Please. I just want to speak with you.” I forced my way past the salad cook, past a woman balling melon (melon! in the middle of winter!), the pastry chef who was twisting dough into swans’ necks, the meat roaster who was larding chickens, toward that back corner, toward Mrs. Percy’s former cook. Meh-ki watched me, knife now in hand, noodle paste forgotten, the terror in her eyes increasing every second.

  “Meh-ki!” I called again. Next to me a pan clattered to the ground; I had bumped into a wooden dish rack. There were groans, curses, white-aproned bodies throwing themselves in my way as they scurried to pick up pans and pots.

  Meh-ki gave me one last look, then was out the door.

  I followed, but she ran down the lane next to the house and out into the busy, congested street, freeing herself of apron and kitchen cap as she ran; now she was just one of many women dressed in winter brown, rushing off to somewhere else because there was a hint of snow in the air. Except that Meh-ki hurried for other reasons. I lost sight of her.

  Where would she go?

  Mrs. Wilkinson was furious, so furious she actually stamped her foot. The other workers in the kitchen, already restored to order, looked down or giggled into their sleeves when I returned to offer an apology and a very limited explanation that I wished to ask Meh-ki a question or two about an earlier employer.

  “The noodle salad was to be the centerpiece of the buffet! What am I to do now? What if she doesn’t return?” Mrs. Wilkinson roared, her only concern the impression her midnight feast might make.

  “Put the melon balls in the center,” I suggested. “Father always says fruit is the masterpiece of a meal.”

  “Does he? Does he?” Mrs. Wilkinson grew thoughtful and clapped her hands together beneath her chin. Father’s name carried the weight of authority in this household. “It is unusual, fruit in the center. Perhaps, perhaps.”

  I left Mrs. Wilkinson’s after Mrs. O’Connor promised that she would send me a note when, and if, she saw Meh-ki again.

  That afternoon I again visited Suzie Dear in jail, accompanied by Sylvia. Guilt tensed my shoulders, for I was making little progress with Reverend Ezra’s shirts, and he had wished them done before Christmas; certainly if he knew the circumstances—a woman murdered, a killer loose in Boston—he would understand? Even if he did not, this mystery seemed much more important to me than his wardrobe. What was not less important to me, though, were the presents I had to purchase for my family in Walpole, Christmas presents that could not be purchased if I did not receive payment from the reverend. Lizzie’s portfolio sat in Mr. Crowell’s window, waiting.

  “You are muttering to yourself, Louy,” said Sylvia, following behind me up the darkened stairway of the city jail. “Whatever is the matter?”

  “The reverend’s shirts,” I said. “However will I get them finished, with mediums being murdered and jewelry stolen and cooks fleeing before me?”

  “I do feel guilty.” Sylvia sighed. “If I hadn’t insisted you come to the séance with me…But then, it wasn’t all my doing. I didn’t know Mrs. Percy would get herself killed. Oh, dear,” she said. “I felt better looking at your
back. You should see your face, Louy.”

  “Suzie,” I called when we were upstairs, and standing outside the barred door of her prison cell. She was curled up on a little cot, a dirty blanket drawn up under her chin.

  “Miss Alcott?” She sat up and peered at us through sleepy eyes. Her hair tumbled about her face, and her nose was red from weeping. “Oh, you have to get me out of here, Miss Alcott! I can’t stand it, I can’t! There’s a madman next door, rants all night, and the food is something awful. And I’m so lonely!”

  “For Mr. Nichols?” I asked.

  “How did you know about that?” She pouted.

  “I went to see him,” I said. “He was disappointed that you missed your rendezvous that morning. Suzie, you must tell us everything that happened the day that Mrs. Percy was murdered.”

  “Missed me, did he?”

  “Sorely,” I exaggerated.

  Sylvia brought us two ladder-back chairs from the far end of the hall, and we sat facing the prisoner.

  “Well, it’s like this,” Suzie began, combing her hair back with her fingers. “Mrs. Percy weren’t only a medium. She had other business interests.”

  “Such as?” I prompted.

  “Mr. Nichols, her stepbrother, would find jewelry, nice pieces, and since he don’t have a shop of his own, Mrs. Percy would sell them for him.”