Genteel Spirits (Daisy Gumm Majesty Books)

by Alice Duncan

  Mr. Mountjoy’s hands dropped to his lap. “Because then it will come out! And I’ll be ruined.”

  Feeling quite frustrated by that time, I lifted my own hands and said rather loudly than I probably should have, “Then what will come out? Why would you be ruined?”

  Harold and Mr. Mountjoy exchanged a speaking glance, and I began to catch on. I was shocked. Mind you, I don’t know why I should be shocked, but I was. I stammered, “Do . . . do you mean . . . ?”

  “Yes,” Harold said firmly. “That’s exactly what we mean.”

  Good Lord in heaven. Whoever would have thunk it, as one of my school chums use to say. But . . . Monty Mountjoy? The epitome of swashbuckling masculinity? A man whose reputation with women was absolutely infamous? Who was reputed to have had affairs with most of the crowned female heads of Europe, not to mention all the Hollywoodland stars of the day? That Monty Mountjoy was . . . was . . .

  “He’s a faggot,” said Harold brutally. “Just like Del and me.”

  I stared at both men in turn before I finally managed to whisper a feeble, “Oh, my.”

  * * * * *

  As you can well imagine, the séance that followed was not nearly as exciting as the revelations that preceded it. I still felt a trifle shaky when Harold and Mr. Mountjoy—who’d asked me to call him Monty, so I’ll refer to him as Monty from here on—escorted me downstairs to meet the formidable Mrs. Winkworth. Have you ever heard of an iron fist in a velvet glove? Well, I got the impression that expression described Lurlene Winkworth to a T.

  In fact, I was so impressed by her majesty that I actually curtsied when Monty introduced us. I’m not a curtsier by nature, but there was just something about that woman. She lifted a languid hand. Or perhaps she languidly lifted a hand. Whatever the proper terminology, the gesture seemed perfectly southern, I couldn’t seem to help myself, and so I curtsied.

  “It’s so good of you to come to my home this evening, Mrs. Majesty,” she said in a voice as thick as honey. Magnolia honey, I’m sure.

  “It’s a pleasure to be here, Mrs. Winkworth,” I said, maintaining my cultivated spiritualist’s voice, in spite of the previous forty-five minutes, which had nearly knocked me flat.

  “My guests will be arriving shortly. There won’t be many of them. I understand you like to work with small groups.”

  “Yes, I do. No more than eight, if at all possible.”

  “That’s wonderful. We shall have exactly eight persons present at the séance.”

  “I’m so glad. Is there any person in particular with whom you would like to communicate this evening, Mrs. Winkworth?” Stupid question, but standard if you’re in my business. “Someone who has recently crossed over, perhaps?”

  “I should be very much interested in learning about some of my forebears and how they survived the War of Northern Aggression, although I don’t particularly care which one you call up.”

  “I see.” Yet another name for the Civil War. I wondered how many southernisms there were for that brutal conflict. It was a darned good thing I’d done my homework and found out about Mrs. Winkworth’s family connections and her grandparents’ names and so forth. “I should think my spirit control will be able to satisfy some of your curiosity.”

  What I actually hoped was that the woman would be so intrigued by the few snippets of information Rolly, my spirit control, pulled out of thin air that she’d continue to hire me for séances. I know that sounds terrible, but I had to earn a living, darn it.

  Oh, by the way, I’d made up Rolly, too, when I was ten and first started fiddling with Aunt Vi’s Ouija board. As with the Desdemona part of my business, I often wished I’d named him something more elegant, but it was too late to change things now.

  “I’m so very grateful to you for coming tonight. You can’t begin to imagine how difficult my life has been since I had to leave my home and all my friends,” said Mrs. Winkworth. I saw tears standing in her eyes!

  Those tears startled me so much, I couldn’t think of another single thing to say. Her life had been difficult because her grandson had moved her from a tumble-down wreck of a former plantation in South Carolina to paradise? Good Lord. Some people didn’t realize their own luck.

  Fortunately, my tongue-tied condition didn’t matter, because a honking voice behind me bellowed, “Mrs. Majesty! It is you!”

  I whirled, which isn’t very spiritualistic behavior, but I knew that voice! “Mrs. Hanratty! How wonderful to see you here!” And it was. I was overwhelmingly grateful to see so normal a person as Pansy Hanratty in those elegant surroundings. I might even have kissed her feet if I were a person who did things like that.

  She hurried over to me. “When Mother said somebody named Mrs. Majesty was going to conduct her séance, I couldn’t think of another Mrs. Majesty, Majesty being such an uncommon name, but I just couldn’t believe it was the Mrs. Majesty who belonged to Spike!”

  “I am indeed that Mrs. Majesty, and . . .” Her words finally penetrated my reeling brain. “Your . . . your mother?” I glanced back to see Mrs. Winkworth leveling a quelling glance at Mrs. Hanratty.

  “Really, Pansy,” said Mrs. Winkworth. “One would think you were born in a stable.”

  Mrs. Hanratty laughed uproariously. “Not born in one, but I darned sure was raised in one!”

  Mrs. Winkworth sighed. I could imagine what she was thinking: First Pasadena and now this. I couldn’t for the life of me feel sorry for her.

  “I’m really happy to see you here this evening, Mrs. Hanratty,” I said with feeling.

  Casting a glance of her own at her mother—it was more of a can you believe I came from that? glance than one of self-pity—Mrs. Hanratty went on, “Have you met my son?”

  My mouth opened but I didn’t have a chance to speak, which was probably just as well since Mrs. Hanratty then called out, “Monty! Come over here and meet Mrs. Majesty! She’s doing the best job of training a dachshund I’ve ever seen!”

  Monty Mountjoy was this woman’s son? And Pansy Hanratty was Lurlene Winkworth’s daughter? I swear, I think if I’d received any more surprises that evening, I might have gone ‘round the bend.

  Smiling his magnificent smile, Monty joined us in front of his grandmother’s chair. “We’ve already met, Mother. Mrs. Majesty is a good friend of Harold’s, you know.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that! My, my, it’s a small world, isn’t it?”

  “It is indeed,” said her son—Monty Mountjoy for heaven’s sake!—and bowed over my hand.

  “You should meet her dog, Monty. You’d love him. He’s a black-and-tan dachshund, and he behaves better than the damned poodle in my class!”

  I heard Mrs. Winkworth heave a small, tragic, genteel sigh behind us. I presume she didn’t approve of her daughter’s language.

  “Harold’s told me about Spike, Mother. But I thought you told me poodles were the smartest dogs in the canine world.”

  Talk about self-possession. Monty Mountjoy had tons of the stuff. Not only did he speak to his mother and me as if we were mere mortals, but he’d remembered my dog’s name was Spike! And he’d only several minutes earlier been telling me about receiving poisoned-pen letters—and why he believed he was getting them. I was really impressed. No wonder he was such a smashing hit on the silver screen.

  “Poodles are smart as whips. The poor poodle in Spike’s class—Fluffy, if you can believe it—has an owner who’s thick as a plank. You know my training methods, Monty. Train the owner, and the dog will behave itself.”

  “It worked on me,” Monty said with a wink for me. My heart fluttered violently for a moment or two, even though I already knew he didn’t care for women. You figure it out, because I sure can’t.

  Mrs. Hanratty smacked her son’s arm playfully. “It certainly did work on you!”

  I think that Pansy Hanratty had tried to spiff herself up for the evening. She wore a long green gown that looked rather like a horse blanket, although I’m sure it wasn’t supposed to. If I weren�
��t there to perform a job of work for which goggling was strictly prohibited, I might well have goggled, and not merely at Mrs. Hanratty’s outfit. But, honestly. Never, in a million years, would I have connected Mrs. Pansy Hanratty, the dog lady; to Mrs. Lurlene Winkworth, proud and elegant daughter of the South, with a capital S; much less would I have pegged the dog-loving Mrs. Hanratty as the mother of Monty Mountjoy, the man over whom women swooned in packs and droves and he, who didn’t give a fig for any of them.

  Then a shriek came from the entryway—which was arched in the Spanish style—and we all whirled around to behold Lola de la Monica in all her glory. And she definitely radiated glory.

  “Monty!” was the word she shrieked. She followed it up with, “My darling!” Then she all but flew across the front parlor’s classy Persian rug and flung herself into the arms of Monty Mountjoy, who evidently had braced himself for this event, because he didn’t even stagger.

  My impressedness index got a huge boost that night. Not only did Lola de la Monica have an accent that gave no hint of her roots—which Harold Kincaid told me all about later on in the evening—but she actually sounded kind of Spanish. She also wore an ensemble that might have been painted by Goya in one of his more amorous moods. Flowing white covered her from creamy ivory shoulders to slender ankles. Naturally, the draperies were slender enough to show off her flawless figure. No bust flattener for Miss Lola de la Monica, thank you very much. Her shoes looked like those a Flamenco dancer might wear.

  The séance went pretty well, all things considered. After I’d had Rolly chat with a couple of Mrs. Winkworth’s more grandiose forebears, including a colonel of the Confederate Army who’d died shortly after the war ended, Lola de la Monica wanted me to get in touch with the spirit of William Desmond Taylor. Her request interested me, since she was one of the women whose names had been linked with Mr. Taylor’s. The list of said women was long and illustrious and included such exalted names as Mary Miles Minter and Mabel Normand besides Miss de la Monica.

  Naturally, although I hadn’t expected to be chatting with Mr. Taylor that evening, Rolly and I pulled the matter off with élan. We also weaseled out of naming the murderer by having Mr. Taylor tell the assembled séance attendees that he hadn’t seen the face of his killer. There are always ways out of these things if you stay on your toes.

  Life is pretty darned interesting sometimes. It got even more interesting as the evening progressed, and not in a good way. In actual fact, when I drove home that night, I considered flinging myself off a high hill somewhere.

  But Daisy Gumm Majesty is no coward, whatever else she might be. Anyhow, it was a long drive to a hill from which I could fling myself that would be high enough for me to land without merely breaking an arm or a leg, which would only have laid me up and hurt a lot, so I didn’t.

  Chapter Four

  “Lola de la Monica wants you to do what?”

  Once more Billy and I sat at the kitchen table, and once more we were eating a delicious breakfast prepared for us by Aunt Vi. Pa was there, too, but he didn’t scowl at me as Billy was doing. In truth, Pa looked rather pleased to learn about his daughter’s next assignment, which didn’t really have a thing to do with spiritualism, except in the most pedestrian way. He’d already taken Spike for his walk—Pa and Spike went for a walk (with a leash) around the neighborhood every morning—but I’d slept in because I’d come home so late the night before.

  Billy had waited breakfast for me, which might have been endearing if it hadn’t signified to me yet one more indication of a decline in his overall condition. The Billy I’d married would have wolfed down his breakfast, walked with Pa and Spike, then come home and had another breakfast with me. I mean, he’d have done all that on a weekend, since he’d have been at work during the week. Before he’d gone off to war, he’d been prepared to work as an automobile mechanic at the Hull Motor Works. Mr. Hull had said the job was Billy’s as soon as the war ended. But we already know how that had turned out. At any rate, the morning after Mrs. Winkworth’s séance, I got the impression Billy was only eating because if he didn’t, I’d nag him. I also got the impression he’d been drinking rather deeply of his morphine syrup.

  Poor Billy. I honestly and truly despaired for him.

  As for me, I toyed with my food that morning. I’ve read that expression in lots of books, but my appetite wasn’t often dulled by care; hence, as I’ve already mentioned, my failure to achieve the slim and boyish figure so admired in those days. It was dulled that morning, though, with a vengeance. What’s more, my heart ached, and I positively dreaded what I’d be facing during the next few weeks.

  I repeated for my husband’s sake, “She wants me to be her spiritual guide during the filming of The Fire at Sunset. That’s the picture they’re going to shoot at Mrs. Winkworth’s place.”

  “Good God,” said Billy.

  Pa shot him a swift glance. I’m sure he was as worried about Billy as I, although he never said a single thing about his own cares or Billy’s health, bless his heart. He said, “What’s her place like, by the way? I understand it’s grand and glorious.”

  “It is both of those things, all right, and it’s beautiful, too.” I told both of the men in my life—and Spike, too, since he always sat next to the table, hoping for handouts—all about the magnificent gardens and gorgeous home belonging to Lurlene Winkworth. “I understand there are more houses on the property, too, although I don’t know how many.”

  “I swear to God,” said Billy, sounding savage, “those picture people make too much money for what they do.”

  With a sigh, I nibbled a piece of toast. “It does seem rather unfair, doesn’t it? There are people doing truly useful things in the world, and who makes the money? People who star in the pictures. Not the ones who write the scripts or the ones who make the costumes or create the cameras and stuff, but the actors, and all they have to do is look good on the screen. Heck, they don’t even have to learn lines, since the pictures are silent. For all we know, they’re reciting their grocery lists while the camera’s cranking away.”

  “I’m sure,” said Pa with judicious good will, “that there’s more to acting than merely looking good on screen.” Pa always gave everyone the benefit of the doubt.

  Recalling the prior evening, I said, “I’m not so sure about that, Pa. For instance, Lola de la Monica might look like a seductive lady of Spain, but I swear to heaven, once she forgets her audience is listening, her accent is just like Sam’s.”

  That turned out to be a good thing to say, because Billy laughed. “You’re kidding!”

  I shook my head. “Am not. When she first made her entrance—and believe me, she did make an entrance—she put on a phony Spanish accent. But once she forgot to keep up her act, she actually sounded worse than Sam.” Sam Rotondo was a native of New York City, by the by. “In fact, she sounded more like Mrs. Barrow.” Mrs. Barrow, a native of The Bronx, New York, was the nosiest of our telephone’s party-line members. She also had an accent you could cut with a knife, although I could think of other things I’d rather cut with said knife. Like her throat, for instance. But I’m being mean. Please forgive me.

  “Good heavens,” said Billy, marveling. “She sounds like a washer woman from The Bronx, and she’s making hundreds of thousands of dollars by pretending to be a Spanish femme fatale on the silver screen.” He shook his head in awe and wonder and no little disgust.

  “She’s a looker, all right,” said Pa. “Whoever would have thought her to be from back East. None of my kin look like she does.” But his expression was troubled.

  I said, “What’s the matter, Pa?” I didn’t want my father to be troubled. We all worried about his health, ever since he’d had a heart attack several years earlier, and I wanted to keep him around for as long as possible.

  “Nothing’s the matter with me,” he said. “But I sense something’s the matter with you. What is it, Daisy?”

  Perceptive, too, my father. That day I wished he wasn’t.
I heaved a largish sigh. “Oh, it’s nothing, really. But honestly, Pa, that woman is definitely what they call temperamental.”

  “Yeah?” Billy quirked an eyebrow at me. He was still grinning, so I decided to milk my first encounter with Miss de la Monica for all I was worth.

  “She actually shrieked when we were introduced. It was all I could do not to wince, and you know how little emotion we spiritualists are supposed to display.”

  Billy said, “Huh.”

  Pa said, “She shrieked, eh?”

  “Yes. She positively shrieked. And then she said, ‘Oh, my God, I need you! You simply must be my spirit guide as I endure this next wretched picture.’ ”

  “This wretched picture?” said Pa. “How much money are they paying her?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s not a wretched amount,” I answered drily.

  “She wants you to be her spirit guide? I thought that Rolly guy of yours was the spirit guide.” Billy. Not as snidely as usual.

  “He’s supposed to be, but Lola de la Monica doesn’t see it that way.”

  “Well,” said Pa with a shrug, “it’s money, and that’s the point, I guess.”

  What I wanted to do was unburden my soul to both of them. To tell them that Monty Mountjoy had hired me, against my will and better judgment, to find out who’d been writing him threatening letters, and, if the reason was the one he feared it was, to do something about it. God alone knew what I was supposed to do to dry the ink in a poisoned pen. I wanted to tell them that Lurlene Winkworth was a spoiled, rotten daughter of the south who disapproved of her own daughter, and who deplored her grandson’s line of work—kind of like Billy deplored mine, actually—even though his line of work had garnered her a home that was as close to heaven as a person could get without dying first. I wanted to tell them that Monty Mountjoy was terrified of being discovered to be one of “those” creatures whom Billy despised. Then I wanted to tell them that I didn’t want to be on the set of a moving picture, especially since Sam Rotondo was expected to be there, too. I wanted to say that Sam and I had only recently begun being civil to each other and that I had no idea what daily proximity might do to our relationship, but I doubted it was anything good. I wanted to tell them that Harold and Monty Mountjoy and Del Farrington couldn’t help being what they were, and that I thought people who considered them sinners or crazy were bigots of the very worst sort.