Louisa and the Crystal Gazer

by Anna Maclean

  Or was he? Had Eddie Nichols avoided a second capture, and was now upstairs, going through his stepsister’s possessions, taking anything of value he could discover? Mrs. Percy would have had hiding places, of course, for her good jewels. All women did. Perhaps he knew those places.

  A noise, something between a cough and a curse, sounded beneath my feet from under the floorboards of the hall. A cellar. I held my breath for a long while, aware of him below. I did not wish him to be aware of me. When I moved, it was as slowly as in a dream. Candle wax dripped on my hand and I pressed my lips closed against the pain.

  There was a door behind the stairs. It was slightly ajar and I could see a gleam of lamplight underneath it.

  Moving even more slowly than before, I made my way down the stairs one step at a time. The sixth step squeaked as soon as I put my foot on it.

  Quiet was no longer necessary. We were aware of each other. I moved quickly down the stairs, wishing I had thought to bring a fire iron with me, or even a large pot from the kitchen, for I realized I was completely defenseless and moving toward a person who might be a murderer.

  Or it’s just a thief, or even one of Mrs. Percy’s clients come out of curiosity, I reassured myself. Just a thief, I thought. A thief would be interested in this place, for at the bottom of the stairs I saw that Mrs. Percy’s cellar was a bare dirt floor with several impressions in the dirt, as if things had been buried, and the walls were dry stone without mortar, easily removed and replaced. A single rustic wooden door separated two parts of the cellar; the other section, I supposed, was for coal.

  Before I could see more, the cellar went dark. The lamp the other person carried had been extinguished and I was alone in the dim circle of light provided by my single candle. Not alone. I heard someone breathing behind me. Pain, a sensation of falling a great distance. And for a great while, nothing.

  WHEN I CAME to, I was in complete and total darkness without even my candle to comfort me. I sat up and stretched my arms before me. There was a wall just two feet away. I turned and stretched the other way. Another wall, this time perhaps three feet away. And so I turned in a circle, my panic growing as I realized I was locked into a space that was only five feet long by four feet wide. The ceiling grazed my head, and scratchy cobwebs fell onto my face.

  Where was my candle? Wherever I had been felled, still on the ground, I supposed, for it was quite clear by smears of stiffened mud on my clothing and the ache in my wrists that I had been dragged to this place.

  The door was at my right side; I found the latch, pulled and twisted it. The latch moved freely, but the door did not budge. I kicked the door. It held steady. I flung myself at it. It did not even shake on its hinges.

  Slowly, I ordered myself. Breathe slowly. Think of sweetgrass blowing in the breeze. Think of my special hiding place when I was a child, an ancient wagon wheel half buried in a Concord meadow that I could lean my back against and stare up into the huge blue sky, as curious free-flying birds swooped overhead. Space is infinite, and a silly wooden door could not cut me off from the world that easily.

  But reader, I was terrified! I knew cellars of this kind, so thick-walled that I could scream and shout for weeks without a passerby hearing. And I knew doors of this sort, old and ancient but cut from hardwood thicker than a man’s wrist, a door meant to last for generations. No one would think to come looking for me here, since no one knew I had come.

  Think. What are your resources? I quizzed myself. Lucifers. The matches were still in my pocket. You may light one. Just one. Conserve them.

  I lit the match. The room was even smaller than I had thought; my measurements had been optimistic. I could take no more than two strides in either direction. The ceiling beams were thick, the stone walls completely intact. Panic made me dizzy. The match burned my fingertips and then went out.

  My head ached. There was a bump growing under my hair where I had been hit in the attack. What had he hit me with? That does not matter, I told myself. All that matters is to find a way out.

  But I knew there was none.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Showman Confesses

  HOW MANY HOURS passed? Strange that without light one can still feel the passing of time, the day’s tingling shift from afternoon to evening, that lugubrious march into the dusky hour that a French tutor once described as “the hour between dog and wolf.”

  Strange that one can be overwhelmed by the worst panic imaginable, and still remember that there is such a thing as time.

  Repeatedly I reached out in the dark and touched those dank walls, willing them to move away from me, though they did not. Repeatedly I put my hand to my breast and willed my heart to cease racing, and it did not. Repeatedly I forced my imagination, my inner eyes, to “see” the huge horizon over Boston Harbor, to feel the largeness of that place and the freedom of the birds in the sky following the fishing fleet, but I could not. The large, open skies of my childhood in Concord had instilled in me a dislike of closed spaces; now that dislike had turned to fear. My breath came only with difficulty, as if I had run a great distance, and I grew light-headed.

  By the hour of the wolf I had consumed the half dozen toffees from my pocket, not because I was hungry but because the activity of unwrapping paper and chewing distracted me for a few seconds. By the hour of the wolf I had hoarsened my throat from shouting, and bloodied my fists by banging against that stubborn, relentless wooden door. And I was no closer to freedom.

  I forced myself to whistle for comfort, knowing that Lizzie would not mind that my promise to her had been broken for this purpose. Lizzie. How I longed to see her, and Auntie Bond, and Sylvia. Even Cobban. His freckles had started to become endearing, though I did wish he could be weaned from that passion for bold plaids. Maybe Sylvia could convince him to venture into the more visually pleasing lands of gray flannel or blue wool stripes. The thought of Sylvia’s romance lightened me, but a moment later I felt the walls move closer once again.

  My stomach rattled; my head ached. My eyes would tear, even though I sternly warned myself that self-pity would be more useful when I was out of the mess, not while I was still in it. I needed my wits about me.

  To do what? the child in me yelled back. I can’t break down the door. I can’t make myself heard to a passerby. What exactly can those fine wits accomplish? I wanted Marmee’s strong, comforting arms about me. I realized I might never see her again, and the thought made me shout with anger and disbelief!

  “Hello?”

  The voice was thin, distant. Had I really heard it?

  I shouted again. This time I was rewarded with the sound of a board creaking overhead.

  “Down here!” I shouted, hoping to be heard through the thick, tightly fitted floorboards. More footsteps overhead, then silence.

  Tears started again. Had I not been heard? Was I abandoned?

  No! Minutes later I heard shouting again, much closer. A man’s voice, in the cellar. “Hello!” it called. “Where are you?”

  “Behind the door!” I yelled back, pressing my mouth close to the grimy door, the better to be heard.

  “Hold tight! I’m coming!”

  Oh, bless Constable Cobban and his plaids and freckles, for by then I had recognized his voice! A minute more, the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor, the latch lifting, the door groaning open, and a flood of light from Cobban’s lamp.

  “Miss Louisa!” he said, distress plain on his open face. “What has happened? What are you doing here?”

  “Help me upstairs, and I will explain,” I said, for at that moment more than anything I wanted fresh air, openness, a view of the sky, or at least of the stars in the sky if it was even later than I thought.

  “You were locked in? The door must have fallen shut behind you,” he said. “Terrible coincidence, terrible. The slamming of the door must have loosened that rafter.” He pointed out a thick beam, the wood that had barred my door so effectively that he had had to drag it away to free me.
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  Coincidence? I did not think so. Leaning heavily on the young man’s shoulders, almost swooning I am afraid I must admit, I made my way out of that dark and damp place with him, back upstairs, to the front porch, to air and light.

  It was not yet dark. I had been imprisoned only an hour or two, though I had thought it was many hours. A setting sun cast slanting beams against white snow-covered trees, passing black carriages, the red scarf of a little boy dashing home, and the spotted fur of the dog that ran loyally beside him. The world glittered as I inhaled so deeply my shoulders lifted and my chin tucked; how wonderful to breathe fresh air! How beautiful the late-winter afternoon was!

  “I am a little afraid of close spaces,” I said to Cobban. “And that space was very close,” I answered in response to his question of whether I was quite ill or not.

  “How did you come to be there?” He tenderly brushed cellar dust from my sleeve. I began to see what Sylvia saw when she looked at him, or at least to appreciate his friendly freckles a little more than I had.

  “Curiosity,” I confessed, taking another deep breath, letting the cold, fresh air do a better job of revivifying me than smelling salts could. “How did you come to be here?”

  “Mr. Barnum sent an errand boy to find me. Said he had been coming home and passed Mrs. Percy’s house, and heard strange noises. Said we should investigate before the neighbors started to claim the place was haunted.”

  “Mr. Barnum?”

  “None other. You look strange again, Miss Louisa. I think I should get you home. Shall I send for Sylvia—I mean Miss Shattuck—to sit with you?” Constable Cobban was fussing, brushing snow off my shoulders, chafing my wrists, shifting his weight back and forth on his large feet as boys do when they are trying to be polite but wish to run off. His pale blue eyes shone with anxiety.

  “I am fine,” I insisted. “I’ll walk home myself and you can get about your business. First, though, you might do another check of Mrs. Percy’s house and see if anything has been disrupted or disappeared, since I am certain someone else was there before me.” Someone who had lured me downstairs and then locked me in a very small space, I did not say. Why? Obviously I was searching where one of Mrs. Percy’s acquaintances, perhaps her murderer, did not wish me to search.

  I had been warned. But who had sent that warning: the same man who arranged my freedom, Mr. Barnum? Could he wish me harm? If he were guilty of a crime, he could, my imagination answered back.

  “Before we leave, Mr. Cobban, would you do me a favor?” I asked. “Go back downstairs to that cellar, and yell at the top of your voice.”

  He sighed as men do when they think women are being flighty and moody, but did as I wished. Five minutes later he was standing beside me again on the porch, in the snow, breathing loudly from exertion.

  “I didn’t hear a sound,” I told him. Nor, then, had Mr. Barnum heard me shouting.

  MY ADVENTURE LEFT me exhausted and contented with an evening in front of the hearth at Auntie Bond’s. I took up my sewing once again, too preoccupied to worry further about the missing shirt and the lightweight quality of the fabric. I was pleased, for the time, to listen to Lizzie in the next room, playing her scales and études and practicing the old and beloved Christmas carols: “Christians Awake,” “The First Noel,” and “Angels We Have Heard on High,” for Auntie Bond had decided we would have a caroling party after the tree was up. How sweetly Lizzie played! How she made my foot tap with eagerness for the holidays to come. And how my breast ached to be finished with my sewing, collect my fee, and purchase one of the remaining portfolios in Mr. Crowell’s Music Store.

  Shadows danced about the room. The fire crackled and blazed. Lizzie played on and on as snow fell outside the window, covering the houses and street with shining fairy dust. I refused to think of Mr. Barnum. Tomorrow would be time enough. And because I put one mystery out of my thoughts, another seeped in. I knew what had to be the crime in “Agatha’s Confession,” for where there is confession there must have been a crime, and Agatha’s great sin would be inspired by the afternoon’s misadventure and one of my own deepest, darkest fears. What is claustrophobia but a fear of premature burial?

  In my story, Agatha has realized that her heart’s delight, Philip, has fallen in love with her beautiful best friend, Clara. Philip denies it; Clara is not kind, will not give him up or even cease working her charms on him, since he has proven vulnerable to her type of fickle nature and cruel beauty. Twice Clara, beautiful but frail, comes close to death, and twice Agatha helps her back to the land of the living. But when Clara continues to come between Agatha and Philip, Agatha proves she can be crueler than any simple coquette. I remembered the close darkness, reaching out my fingertips to feel the walls pressing against me.

  Abandoning the sewing once again, I took my candle up to my writing room, lifted the cap from the inkwell, flattened a sheet of paper before me, and began to write what that storyteller’s voice in my head dictated.

  Clara now lies dead in her coffin, victim to a family illness of premature disease. Agatha bends over the coffin to give her rival a final kiss.

  As I spoke, I bent to put away a lock of hair that had fallen on her cheek. In doing so, my hand touched her forehead, and a strange, quick thrill shot through me, for it was damp.

  I put my hand to her heart. Her pulse and lips were still. I touched her brow again, but my hand had wiped the slight dew from it and it felt cold as ice.

  I stood white and still as herself for a few moments while the old struggle raged in my breast fiercer than before.

  Fear whispered that she was not dead—pity pleaded for her lying helplessly before me—and conscience sternly bade me do the right thing, forgetful of all else. But I would not listen, for Love cried out passionately:

  “Philip is my own again. She shall not separate us anymore and rob me of the one blessing of my life.”

  I listened to the evil demon that possessed me.

  Agatha, for revenge, allows Clara to be buried alive so that Philip might once again be hers alone.

  Sitting in the attic, penning my story, I shivered with fear and delight and wrote page after page. Once my hand was wearied and stiff and the words of the story no longer came to me, I capped the inkwell once again, rose from my desk, and went down the stairs to my bed, whistling “Silent Night” quietly to myself.

  Of course, I slept not at all that night. I had been locked in and then written a cruel story, one I could never show Marmee for fear of her reaction, and my punishment for being both victim and criminal was to sit up most of the night, listening to Lizzie’s innocent, regular breathing and anticipating my meeting with Mr. Barnum, for meet with him I must.

  Too much of this business with Mrs. Percy had to do with him, and he of all people seemed to have most reason to wish her harm, for what is simple greed compared to the desire for revenge? Agatha, for revenge and to get her own way, allows a friend to be buried alive; what would Mr. Barnum do for revenge and to get his way? Holding a pillow over the forger’s face till she ceased struggling was certainly one way to end the forgeries and to obtain revenge at the same time.

  Sylvia joined me for breakfast that morning.

  “You look as if you haven’t slept a wink,” she said brightly, helping herself to a large portion of hash potatoes from the platter.

  “I haven’t. Save me some hash, will you?”

  “Grumpy, aren’t we?” said she, spreading a second helping of butter onto her toast. “I believe Mr. Cobban prefers his women filled out, so I am attempting to put on some weight. Have I succeeded, do you think?”

  I studied Sylvia and tried to remain calm. Lizzie came in just then and sat in her accustomed dining chair in front of the window so that she was lit from behind by the most enchanting pale winter morning light. That calmed me.

  “I heard, Sylvia,” said my sister. “You look fine to me, and Marmee always says that weight gained too quickly stresses the digestion.”

  “Well, I always
pay attention to Mrs. Alcott’s directives. Thank heavens. I dislike potato hash.” She pushed the potatoes to one side to make room for bacon, which was more to her liking. “I have something for you, Louy. A note from my young man.” She grinned. I could not help but smile back. It was the first time she had referred to Cobban in that intimate manner.

  “Is he now?” I asked. “Yours? And does that please you?”

  “Very much.”

  “You are not being precipitous, Sylvia?”

  She blushed prettily. “I think Father likes him. We’ve had some very pleasant conversations about young Cobban. The other day I was practicing my spirit writing, and the words on the page were quite clear when I opened my eyes again: ‘Fine boy. Fine. Future.’”

  “Well, from what I know of your long-departed father, he was as decisive as you. Didn’t he pass over the exact day his doctors said he would? Louisa, there is a message for you.” This latter comment was from Auntie Bond, who had come downstairs in her white nightcap and blue flannel housedress and robe to join us at the breakfast table.

  “Did you know Father, Miss Bond?” Sylvia asked.

  “Not well, I admit. Oh, dear. We seem to be running short of hash. Lizzie, dear, go to the kitchen and ask Cook for more, will you, dear? What was I saying? Oh, yes. Not well. But we played cards together on occasion. He was brilliant at the card table. Very decisive. Much like you, my dear.”

  Sylvia beamed. I suppose if one has never known one’s father, one must be pleased to learn there is a strong connection despite that early loss.

  “You said something about a message for me?” I reminded my aunt.

  “Ah, yes. Here it is.” She took the paper from her pocket. It was from Cobban. I hope you are feeling better, he had written. I took your advice and searched Mrs. Percy’s house again and found a wall safe we hadn’t noticed before. It was opened, and empty. You might also want to know that Mr. Nichols managed to evade the Pinkerton men sent to bring him back to Cleveland.