Unsettled Spirits

by Alice Duncan

  Miranda (I think) licked her lips and glanced again at her sister. "Um... Anything we say here will be confidential, won't it?"

  "Of course. My business is always conducted with the utmost confidentiality." Unless one of the girls confessed to murder. I didn't point that out, either.

  They again exchanged glances. I was getting a trifle bored with the both of them.

  My boredom ceased instantly when Millicent (I think) said, "Can you tell us if our mother killed our father?" Then they both shrank back in their chairs and looked as if they wished she hadn't said that.

  Although my mind boggled, my spiritualist's pose didn't alter one iota. I was a consummate professional, I tell you. "You believe that to be a possibility?" I asked as I reached for my crystal ball. I'd used the cards with the customer before these two.

  "No," said one.

  "Not really," said the other.

  Another exchange of glances, and then one of them blurted out, "But Father was so awful to Mother and the rest of us, I wish she had!"

  Two heads bowed as if they'd both confessed to unmentionable crimes. Interesting. And what they'd just said also explained why they hadn't reacted a whole lot to my condolences. Shoot. Even his children had hated the man!

  "Try to calm down, Miranda and Millicent. I'm sure your mother would never have done such a thing, but please allow me to consult my crystal ball. It can tell us the truth."

  "You mean who killed him?" one of them asked.

  "Perhaps not precisely who, but it will be able to tell me if your mother was the culprit."

  "Oh." They commenced looking frightened some more.

  Therefore, after making several mystical passes with my hands over the crystal ball, I pretended to stare therein, and said, "'Tis murky."

  "What does that mean?"

  "The spirits have to settle before I can read what they want to tell me," I said softly and, I hope, mystically.

  "Oh."

  So they sat and stared at me as I pretended to consult the innards of my crystal ball. Its innards were the same as its outards: glass. But I'd never tell anyone that. However, I studied it closely for the sake of my clients, and then pasted on a mysterious half-smile. "You need not worry," I said in my best, most purring spiritualist's voice. "Your mother is innocent."

  A couple of expelled breaths from the two Underhill girls ruffled the deep crimson cloth with which Harold had covered my table. As one, they reached into a pocket each and pulled out a dollar. I considered and rejected telling them that one dollar for the two of them would suffice, mainly because they were helping the Pasadena Humane Society.

  "Thank you," came a duet of voices as Miranda and Millicent (or maybe they were Millicent and Miranda) rose from their chairs, smiling. I was glad to have helped them smile, although I don't know if I'd lied to them. I doubted it. Mrs. Underhill didn't seem like the poisoning kind of female—and I'd met a couple.

  I was about to get up and search for Harold in order to give him the over-full money bowl cluttering up my tent, but another person appeared at the tent door. This person, too, looked haggard and unhappy, and stood there, wringing her hands for a second or two before approaching my table.

  Mrs. Underhill. Dressed, unless I missed my guess, as Alice in Wonderland. Interesting choice.

  "Mrs. Majesty?" She licked her lips and continued wringing her hands.

  "Yes, Mrs. Underhill. Please let me extend my condolene she was in a blue gown, a frilly apron, with her hair tied back by a blue ribbon. Interesting mourning garb.

  She stopped wringing her hands and flung one arm up in the air in a gesture of dismissal. "Yes. Thank you. However, as you've probably heard by this time, Grover wasn't a nice man. In fact, I can't think of anyone who is actually mourning his loss, least of all those of us whom he browbeat in the family or at his chemical company." As I blinked in astonishment at her, she wiped her brow. "Oh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I'm just so... rattled."

  "I'm awfully sorry. Won't you take a chair?" I gestured at the two chairs in front of my table. "How may I help you?"

  She lurched forward and dashed to a chair, where she more or less wilted, assumed a seat, and commenced burying her head in the hands she'd lately been wringing. My goodness. I'd expected to have fun at this party, but I hadn't anticipated it would be so fascinating.

  After a second or two of convulsive shoulder-heaving, Mrs. Underhill dropped her hands and revealed a face as pale as mine generally was, and eyes that had black circles underneath them. The poor woman was clearly upset, if not about her husband's demise, then about something that was of deep import to her.

  "I'm sorry," said she, passing a hand over her eyes.

  "No need to apologize," I said, meaning it. "You and your family have been through entirely too much in recent days."

  She gave a moan and a sigh together and said, "You have no idea."

  "May I help you somehow?" I asked, wanting to hear what she had to say. Her daughters had floored me. Maybe this woman wanted to know if they'd done in their father. That would sort of cancel all three of them, as far as I was concerned, at least in regard to Mr. Underhill's murder.

  "I don't know." Mrs. Underhill commenced chewing on a knuckle of her white glove, realized what she'd done when she saw lip rouge stains on same, and slammed both of her hands into her lap. "Anything I ask you will be in confidence, won't it? I mean, you don't tell people what happens in your spiritualist sessions, do you?"

  "Of course, I don't," I said in a voice pitched to soothe rattled nerves. "If I blabbed, I'd be out of business in no time at all." I gave her a smile, which she didn't return.

  "Good. That's good."

  A spate of silence then reigned in the tent as Mrs. Underhill scanned her surroundings trying to discern, unless I missed my guess, if anyone else could hear what was going on in it. She ultimately decided no one could.

  Then she blurted out, "Did my son, Barrett, kill his father?"

  Merciful heavens, as Aunt Vi sometimes says.

  Chapter 13

  "You think your son killed his father?" Incredulity, thy name was Daisy Gumm Majesty, at least just then it was.

  "No. No, no, no!" Mrs. Underhill said vehemently, albeit softly. "But Grover was so awful to Barrett, and Barrett was trying so very hard to rescue the chemical plant from Grover's mismanagement." She sat thinking for a minute and then said, "Of course, I wouldn't really blame anyone who worked at the plant for killing Grover. He was a horrid man." She'd been staring at her hands in her lap, but she lifted her eyes and gazed pleadingly at me. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Majesty. I must sound like an undutiful and unfeeling wife, but it was the truth. Grover was a monster of cruelty to almost everyone he knew. Unless they were richer than he." She uttered the last sentence with something of a sneer, and I remembered Emmaline Castleton saying just about the same thing.

  "Oh, dear," I said, unable to think of anything to the purpose to utter.

  "And then there were his women," muttered Mrs. Underhill in a bitter undertone.

  Goodness gracious sakes alive. Emmaline Castleton hadn't said that about Mr. Underhill. My eyes opened wide. "His women? You mean he had... uh... affairs of the heart with other women?"

  "Affairs of the heart?" cried Mrs. Underhill, still bitter. "Grover Underhill had no heart. But he liked to conquer other people, and he could be charming to women who didn't know him well. Huh. Most of them found out quickly enough what a monster he was."

  "Merciful heavens. I had no idea."

  "Of course not. No one except those of us who knew him knew about his women, although most of the people who were close to him knew him to be an ogre. His other women were generally shocked when they found out he didn't aim to divorce me and marry them." She sneered a bit.

  "Oh." I honestly couldn't think of anything else to say, which is an unusual condition for the generally voluble me. My state of uncharacteristic muteness didn't matter, because Mrs. Underhill continued without my help.

 
"Grover was always a stingy, cruel man, but these last two years were worse than ever. They were awful. I don't know if he was sick or just decided not to pretend he wasn't a devil any longer, but it was almost as if he were trying to drive his business into the ground and make people hate him. I... I don't know what was wrong with him." She sniffled and withdrew a hankie from one of Alice in Wonderland's pockets. Wiping her eyes, she said, "But please tell me Barrett didn't kill him. Please."

  Fiddlesticks. Another plea for absolution for a person about whom I knew nothing. Of course, I couldn't offer absolution even if I knew the entire Underhill clan, not being a priest or anything.

  However, that had never stopped me before, and it didn't stop me then. I said, "Let me consult the crystal for you, Mrs. Underhill. I'm sure we can discover some answers." Liar. But never mind that.

  After a few mystical passes with my dainty spiritualist's hands—I made sure always to wear gloves when gardening, and I kept my nails manicured to perfection, buffing them almost every night unless I forgot—I stared into the crystal ball as if I could actually see something in it. I felt tension radiating from poor Mrs. Underhill, so I didn't keep her waiting long.

  After a few seconds of pretending, I lifted my head and smiled gently at the woman. "You have nothing to fear, Mrs. Underhill. Your son had nothing to do with his father's death."

  "Or Mrs. Franbold's?" she asked with something of a squeak.

  "Your son is not a killer," I said, hoping that would cover all possible situations and scenarios.

  She visibly sagged in the chair and let out a huff of relief. "Oh, thank God!" she whispered. Then she reached into Alice's pocket and withdrew a five-dollar bill. "Here. Please accept this for your help. You can't imagine how relieved I am."

  "But the fee for a reading is a dollar, Mrs. Underhill, and all proceeds go to the Pasadena Humane Society."

  Her mouth tightened in a grimace. "In that case, take this along with the five." And darned if she didn't stuff a ten-dollar bill and the fiver into the overfilled money bowl. "Grover was even cruel to animals."

  "Oh," I said, startled.

  She left after that, her shoulders no longer sagging. I was glad to have eased her worry, even if I had no idea if what I'd told her was the truth. Oh, well.

  Again, I lifted the money bowl and made to rise from my chair, only to be thwarted by yet another soul seeking information about the netherworld, whatever that is.

  I sat, let go of the bowl and said, "Mrs. Wright! You look... amazing."

  And she did. If you've never seen a tall, thin, extremely rich woman dressed as Mary, hauling a white poodle along behind her as her little white-as-snow lamb, you've missed out on a worthwhile spectacle. And that's not even taking into consideration that the poodle was a standard-sized one and much larger than your average lamb.

  "Thank you. Harold Kincaid helped me with this costume. And, of course, Carlotta makes a charming sheep." She smiled fondly down upon her poodle, who didn't seem quite as thrilled with the proceedings as her mistress. I'm sure Spike would have sympathized.

  "She's adorable," I said. And I guess she was, for a poodle. I preferred my dogs to look more rugged and hunter-like. Spike, for instance, was the dog for me. Although, from what I'd read, poodles were bred to be water dogs for duck hunters and so forth. Spike could do his own hunting, bless him. Well, except when he went after the neighbor's cat, Samson. Then I was more apt to curse than bless him.

  "Thank you. But I'm hoping perhaps you can help me. Mrs. Underhill told me you brought your crystal ball with you this evening, and I thought perhaps if you concentrated hard, you might see something related to Evans. I'm so worried about him. He's utterly vanished, without taking a thing with him, and I'm so afraid he's met with an accident or something. And if he did have an accident, wouldn't someone have found him by this time? His disappearance is too mysterious to bear."

  Oh, dear. Well, why not? "I can certainly use the crystal ball for that purpose, Mrs. Wright." As Mrs. Wright seated herself and her poodle, being a well-trained animal, sat obediently at her side, I asked, "Do you have any idea what Mr. Evans did during his off hours? I mean, did he frequent the cinema or go to plays or visit friends?"

  "I'm not altogether sure," said Mrs. Wright, who, like most of the rich women I knew, didn't keep tabs on her servants' recreational activities.

  "Hmm," said I, passing my hands over the crystal ball and trying to look spiritualistic. I gave up on that line of questioning, and stared into the ball. Then I blinked and stared harder. What the heck was going on in my crystal ball, which had heretofore only sat there, a prop in my farce of employment?

  "Oh, my," said I, astounded. But really. When you're accustomed to staring into a ball made of glass and seeing nothing in it but more glass, this evening the ball seemed to be performing rather oddly.

  "Oh, can you see something?" asked Mrs. Wright with much more enthusiasm than I felt at that moment.

  "Um... yes. I think so." It was giving me creeping willies, too.

  But darned if I didn't see, fogged over by something, a stand of pine and fir trees, wavering there in my stupid crystal ball! Whatever did this mean? Whatever it meant, I didn't like it. I felt rather as I had the one time in my spiritualistic career when an honest-to-God ghost had shown up at a séance. This wasn't fair. It wasn't right. It was... weird.

  "It's showing me trees," I whispered, for once not having to feign a low, purring spiritualist voice. "I... I think they may be in a forest. They're the kinds of trees that grow in the San Gabriel Mountains. Or in the foothills. You know, near Mount Lowe."

  "Oh, my goodness," said Mrs. Wright after I'd been waving my hands for a second or two and wondering what in Hades was going on with my heretofore unremarkable crystal ball. "I do believe I recall him hiking to Mount Lowe a couple of times. I know the lodge burned down, but I think he enjoyed the hike."

  Interesting. Mount Lowe was a definite hike from the Wrights' mansion, but if a person were determined to hike in the foothills, he could take a red car to the end of the line in Altadena and then walk to Mount Lowe and even visit the Mount Lowe Observatory if he were so inclined. "Do you know if Mr. Evans had an interest in astronomy?" I asked conversationally.

  "I don't know," said Mrs. Wright.

  I ventured another question, "Is the railroad up to Mount Lowe still in operation?"

  "Hmm. I'm not sure. I don't think so."

  "Well," said I, "the ball is definitely showing me fir and pine trees." I squinted harder into my crystal ball, hoping in that way to make it behave. Didn't work. "Um... I think I see some kind of structure among the trees."

  "Oh, dear!" Mrs. Wright clapped a hand over her mouth. "Do you think Evans is lost in the foothills somewhere?"

  "I don't know. I need silence for this communication." I hoped she wouldn't take offense.

  She didn't seem to. She sat there still as a carved decoy duck for another several seconds as I stared in total mystification into my crystal ball. The image of swaying trees didn't resolve into anything clearer, nor did the structure stuck in amongst them. After I'd stared for what seemed like forever, both trees and structure faded into the glass until all that was left was, well, glass. I allowed my hands to fall to my lap and gazed at Mrs. Wright. "It didn't show me anything else, I'm afraid."

  "Oh, dear. I do wish the ball had been clearer."

  "I do, too," I said in heartfelt sympathy.

  "But perhaps that will give us a place to start. If poor Evans is lost in the forest... Well, I'm not sure what to do."

  "Get in touch with the Altadena Sheriff's Station?" I suggested. "And maybe the park rangers? I imagine the Altadena Sheriff's Station knows how to get in touch with the rangers. They'll probably do it for you."

  "Good idea." Mrs. Wright stood abruptly, her poodle with her, stuffed a twenty-dollar bill into the money bowl, and said, "Thank you so much, Mrs. Majesty. I think I know what to do from here. Come along, Carlotta." She and Carlotta, the extre
mely tall little-lamb poodle, exited the tent.

  As for me, I sat in my chair, staring at my crystal ball in disbelief and unhappiness. Darn it, I hated when things I depended on went crazy on me!

  A large gray hippopotamus appeared at the entrance to the tent mere seconds later. I glanced up at the vision and said, "Harold," in a weak voice.

  Harold hurried over to me and plunked himself into a chair. "What's the matter, Daisy? Did another ghost appear? Good God, look at the money you're raking in! I'd better take that off your hands."

  Ignoring the first part of his comment, I said, "Yes. People have been giving more than a dollar for my expertise the last couple of times. I kept trying to get up and take the bowl of money to you, but people persisted in interrupting me."

  "I'll take it." Harold lifted a big canvas sack and emptied my over-full money bowl into it. Then he peered more closely at me. "Why do you look as if someone just hit you with a brick?"

  After heaving a cleansing breath, I admitted, "I actually saw something besides glass in the crystal ball."

  Harold's eyebrows lifted. "Oh? What did you see?"

  "Trees. Pines and firs. Waving in a breeze, I guess, and with some sort of building with them. Unless it was a mysterious crystal-ball fog."

  "Why the devil would you see trees?"

  I shrugged. "Mrs. Wright asked me where her missing butler was. I stared into the crystal ball and saw trees. I don't understand it either." I gazed with a plea for understanding at Harold. "Honestly, Harold, all I usually see in the blasted ball is glass."

  "I think you need a snack, Daisy. You're hallucinating."

  "Am not."

  "Are too."

  We might have gone on that way indefinitely, but another person entered the tent, this one dressed as a horse, which was almost appropriate. "Daisy!" honked Mrs. Pansy Hanratty, one of my favorite people in the world. She always sounded as if she were speaking into a hollow tube or something.