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FINE SPIRITS
By Alice Duncan
Book #2 in the “Spirits” series.
Fine Spirits
Copyright © 2003 by Alice Duncan
All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
Published 2003 by Kensington Publishing Co.
A Zebra Book
Smashwords Edition March 15, 2010
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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Chapter One
First off, it must be clearly understood by one and all that I’m not a priest. I think you need to be a Catholic or an Episcopalian, not to mention a member of male gender, in order to become a priest, and I’m none of those things. I’m female, and my family has always attended the First Methodist Episcopal Church, North, on the corner of Marengo Avenue and Colorado Street, in the fair city of Pasadena, California.
Therefore, when Mrs. Griselda Bissel (relict of the late Mr. Francis Bissel, and as rich as Croesus but nowhere near as regal) called me on the telephone at my own modest family home on South Marengo Avenue in Pasadena from her mansion on Foothill Boulevard in Altadena and asked me a rather startling question, I hesitated. The reason I did so is that, as stated above, I am not a priest. In point of fact, I’m a spiritualist medium; but more about that later.
My name is Daisy Gumm Majesty. Most people who know me think Daisy is short for Desdemona, but it’s not. When I was ten years old and first started playing around with various forms of spiritualism (to wit, at the time, an old Ouija board), I decided Daisy was too pedestrian a name for a spiritualist. I opted to become Desdemona. It stuck, although no one calls me anything but Daisy unless they don’t know me.
As mentioned, I am a spiritualist by trade, and it’s a darned good one. Mind you, I wouldn’t object to being supported by my husband Billy. However, since the Great War Billy’s been confined to a wheelchair. His war experience, which occurred shortly after we were wed, has affected our lives and our marriage tremendously. Not to mention catastrophically.
I’m not complaining. Many lives were altered far more tragically than ours. My own aunt Viola lost her only son, which left a gaping hole in her life that will never be filled. Losing a child has got to be worse than having a crippled husband.
Still, I sometimes got the feeling that Billy believed he’d have been better off if the Huns had killed him outright instead of leaving him in the pitiful condition that passed, after the war, for his life. Truth to tell, sometimes I thought so, too.
No matter how much I loved him, and I did, life was hard for both of us because of his terrible injuries and the pain and depression they engendered, also in both of us. They call it “shell-shock” in soldiers. I don’t know if there’s a name for what the shell-shocked soldiers’ wives suffered from, but I had a bad case of it, whatever it was.
Billy hated how I earned our living, even though I hauled in more money than if I were to work as, say, a clerk at Nash’s Department Store or as a housemaid in a rich person’s home. There were lots of rich people in Pasadena back then. The only reason my family lived there was because the rich folks needed people to work for them, and we were they. The workers, that is to say.
We (Billy and I) lived in a bungalow on South Marengo Avenue which we’d bought primarily by using the proceeds from my spiritualist business, so you’d think he’d have been more appreciative of my efforts. He wasn’t. He hated it that I earned the money in our marriage, even though his inability to do so wasn’t his fault or mine.
The fault lay with the be-damned Kaiser and his miserable soldiers who gassed Billy out of his foxhole in France, then shot him when he tried to crawl to safety. When Billy finally came home to me, he was more dead than alive and crippled for life. Which just goes to prove (if anyone doesn’t know it already) how fair life is, which is not at all.
My parents, Joe and Peggy Gumm, lived with us, as did my aunt Viola Gumm, the one who lost the son and who was widely acknowledged to be the best cook in Pasadena, if not the entire United States. Aunt Vi worked as a cook for Mrs. Madeline Kincaid, who owned a gigantic mansion on Orange Grove Boulevard, but we got to eat her cooking, too, which meant that my entire life at the time wasn’t a total wreck; just the marriage part.
Anyhow, when the telephone in the kitchen jangled on that dreary late-November day in 1920, Billy and I were alone in the house. Ma had gone to her job at the Hotel Marengo, where she was head bookkeeper. Aunt Vi had gone to work at Mrs. Kincaid’s place. I had no idea where Pa was. He had been a chauffeur for rich Hollywood actors, directors, and producers and the like, but heart problems had kept him idle for a couple of years. Still, he was a sociable man, and he enjoyed visiting friends. Pa had never met a stranger, so his sources for fraternizing were plentiful.
Our telephone number was Colorado 13, and the ring was ours, as defined by the length and number of rings. In 1920, even in so sophisticated a place as Pasadena, most of us shared the telephone wire with several other families. These “party” lines were good for the telephone company, I guess, but they could be hard on those of us who shared the wire.
One woman in particular on our party line was a dedicated pain in the neck, a snoop, and a gossip. She always tried to remain on the wire during my own personal telephone calls. In a way I couldn’t blame her, since my calls were unquestionably more interesting than hers, if only because my calls usually featured people wanting me to summon up their dead relatives for a chat and things like that.
I recognized her voice as soon as I picked up the receiver. “Mrs. Barrow?” I always tried to be polite, even when I wanted to shout at her. “This call is for me, I believe. That was our ring.”
“Daisy? Daisy Majesty? Is that you?” It was Mrs. Bissel. I could tell it was she because I heard her pack of dachshunds baying in the background. Any time anyone talked to Mrs. Bissel over the telephone, the hounds barked a backup accompaniment to the conversation. Mrs. Bissel claimed her dogs were like children in that regard: as soon as your attention swerved away from them, they started acting up.
“Yes. How do you do, Mrs. Bissel. One moment please.” I sucked in air and told myself to be calm. “Mrs. Barrow, hang up your telephone now. I won’t be long.”
Mrs. Barrow said, “Humph,” in an indignant voice and slammed her receiver in the cradle. You’d have thought I’d recommended she go outdoors and shoot herself–a suggestion that had occurred to me more than once, but which I’d not offered the unmitigated magpie thus far. I believe this consideration shows a good deal of restraint on my part.
After trying and failing to repress a sigh, I spoke to Mrs. Bissel again. “How do you do, Mrs. Bissel?”
“What? Oh, I’m well, thank you. Or . . . No, I’m not well.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
All right, I’m going to say something now that may be perceived as mean-spirited by some. But the fact is that every now and then, when I was dealing with rich matrons who’d never been forced to do a day’s work in their lives, who had all the time in the world not to do it in, and who forgot that the rest of us weren’t so lucky, I became a trifle irritable. In fact, I occasionally became downright short-tempered, although I exercised extreme self-control and never let it show.
Those of us who have had to work for a living most of our lives don’t have time to dither. Darned near every single one of the wealthy women who availed themselves of my spiritualistic services in those days were ditherers. Usually this didn’t bother me. That day it did, mainly because Billy and I had been quarreling. Again.
“Actually, it’s not that I’m ill,” Mrs. Bissel went on. “It’s something else.” Her voice dropped to a sepulchral whisper on the something else part of this speech.
This time I was successful in suppressing my sigh. In the time it would take her to tell me her problem, I’d probably have been able to sweep the kitchen and vacuum-clean the living room rug—or resume bickering with Billy. But instead of doing something useful, I had to stand in the kitchen with the telephone’s ear piece jammed against my head, the black mouthpiece sticking out of the wall, and listen to a woman who wasn’t accustomed to thinking think. Can you tell I was in a really bad mood?
“I’m glad you’re not ill,” I said pleasantly. I was always pleasant to the clients, even those whom I’d rather strangle. To be fair, Mrs. Bissel wasn’t one of my imaginary stranglees. She, although daffy, silly, and a general waster of my time, was a very nice lady.
Besides, I had designs on one of her dogs. Her female dachshund, Lucille, had, with the help of her male companion Lancelot, just given birth to four of the most adorable puppies I’d ever seen in my life. They were black with little tan spots over their eyes, tan feet and muzzles, and were as shiny as the seals I’d seen in the Griffith Park Zoo in Los Angeles. I wanted one. What’s more, I suspected that Mrs. Bissel would be willing to trade one of the pups for a séance if I worked on her just right.
Mainly I wanted the dog for Billy. He often got lonely and angry when I left home to work as a spiritualist. Since he claimed it was what I did, rather than the fact that I had to work at all, that bothered him, I was supposed to understand that he wouldn’t have cared if I’d left him every day to work at Nash’s or as a typist for an attorney or done something else “normal.”
I didn’t buy it. I think he’d have hated my having to earn our living no matter how I did it. In a way I could understand his attitude. Until the war, Billy had never been one to sit idle and let others do for him. He’d done all sorts of things to earn money before he became a soldier, he was a whiz at automobile mechanics, and he’d had a job waiting for him at Hull Motor Company after the war . . . if he’d still been healthy and whole.
It was hard on his masculine pride to be unable to work. Heck, it was hard on me, too, although in my case pride had nothing to do with it. I hoped that a dog, especially one as sweet and funny-looking as one of those dachshund pups, would keep him company. At that point I was willing to try anything to make Billy happy. Well, except give up my work, because I couldn’t afford to do that.
“It’s something else,” said Mrs. Bissel, still sounding as if she were buried in a tomb and attempting to communicate with a living entity, or vice versa.
“Ah,” I said mysteriously. Sounding mysterious had become second nature to me years earlier.
“It’s because my house is haunted.”
That took me aback, which was unusual, given my line of work. “Um, I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, Daisy!” Mrs. Bissel wailed. Being fair again, I must confess that Mrs. Bissel didn’t wail at me very often. Mrs. Kincaid, my aunt Vi’s employer and one of my very best customers, was a first-class wailer, but Mrs. Bissel generally remained calm when speaking to me. “My house is being haunted! By a spirit. Or a ghost. I don’t know what it is, but it’s belowstairs, and the servants are all terrified, and so am I, and I don’t know what to do about it, so I called you. I need you to get rid of the spirit—or maybe it’s a ghost—that’s haunting my house!”
Ah-ha. Very interesting. As I mentioned earlier, however, I’m not a priest. The fact of the matter is that I’m no sort of ministerially sanctioned exorcist. To tell the absolute, unvarnished truth, I don’t even believe in spirits, or hants, or ghosts of any variety. I use them for my work, which is mainly conducting séances and pretending to chat with folks raised from the Great Beyond with the help of my spiritual control, a Scottish fellow named Rolly, but I don’t believe in them.
I told Mrs. Bissel the part about my not being an exorcist. “Um, as much as I’d love to be of service to you, Mrs. Bissel, I don’t think I’m the one to help you. Don’t you need a priest to conduct an exorcism of your house? I’m not a priest.”
“Of course you’re not! But I trust you, Daisy. You’re the only one I trust to do the job properly.”
This flattering declaration sailed through the telephone wire and landed in my ear even though I’d just told her I was not equipped to do the job at all, much less properly. Rich people have always confounded me. “Er, I’m not sure, Mrs. Bissel. I’ve never done anything like ridding a house of a spirit—”
“Or a ghost,” she supplied.
Right. “—before.”
“Nonsense. You speak to the spirits all the time. You understand how to communicate with them. You can persuade them to do what you want them to do. I’m sure you can do something to rid my home of this one tiny little demon. You have the gift, Daisy. Everyone knows it. This thing ghost hasn’t been there long, and it’s just the one little spirit. Unless it’s a ghost. Well, you know, it probably doesn’t matter.”
Not to me, it didn’t. It could have been a wart hog, and it wouldn’t have mattered to me, although a wart hog would probably be easier to get rid of than a spirit. Or ghost.
I continued to waver, mainly because I knew that whatever had taken up residence in Mrs. Bissel’s basement, it wasn’t anything I could tackle with a clear conscience, with or without help from the fictitious Rolly, and might even be dangerous. I supposed a lunatic or an escaped criminal could have decided to hide out there, although that seemed almost as far-fetched as a haunting.
Then I recalled the puppies. My resolution not to become involved in this affair started to totter a bit. Billy is always telling me that what I do for a living is wicked and evil and bad for my overall moral constitution. I guess my vacillating in this instance might be considered proof of his contention, although I’m usually an upstanding Christian woman who tries her best to be good. I even sing alto in our church choir, for crumb’s sake.
I took a deep breath and thought fast. “Well . . . The thing is, Mrs. Bissel, that I can’t guarantee results. As I’ve already told you, I’ve never done anything like this before. I may have to experiment.” That was putting it mildly. “I’m almost sure it would take more than one visit.”
“Of course. That would be fine, dear. Come as often as you like. I only want you to try. I’m sure you can do it.”
It was nice to have a cheering section, although I couldn’t help but wish mine was closer to home. In actual fact, it would have been nice if Billy, who was at the time sitting in his wheelchair in the living room and probably fuming because I’d run off in the middle of a fight, appreciated me. Ah, well.
“I’m not so sure,” I told her bluntly because it was the truth, and also because I didn’t want her to hate me once I’d failed to do the job. “I can but try my best. The spirits are often stubborn. They come from a plane far removed from our own, and have their own ways—ways that transcend our mortal ken—you know.” I’d become so accustomed to speaking such folderol that this ludicrous speech danced off my tongue like a prima ballerina.
“I know it, dear. That’s why I want you.”
Still I hesitated, and not merely because I knew I could no more rid a house of a ghost than I could speak Mandarin Chinese. My hesitation this time centered around my automobile, a 1909 Model T Ford that didn’t take kindly to climbing hills. Mrs. Bissel lived on the corner of Foothill Boulevard and Maiden Lane in Altadena. That was way uphill from our house on South Marengo Avenue in Pasadena.
Of course I could always take a red car. The electric railroad (we just called them the red cars) went uphill and down on a regular schedule, and there was a stop right at the corner of Lake and Foothill. From the red-car stop, I would only have to walk one short block to get to Mrs. Bissel’s house.
The other reason for my hesitation sat in the living room, just waiting to hear about this call so he could rip my character and morals apart some more.
Poor Billy. I really did love him desperately. It’s only that he’d come back to me from that awful war in such terrible shape, and neither of us knew how to cope with his new self. He was in almost constant pain and had to take morphine more and more often to keep his suffering under control. His lungs had been ruined by the Kaiser’s mustard gas. He was, in short, a wreck of himself. He hated being crippled.
When we married in 1917, we’d known each other all our lives. I’d expected to stay married to the happy-go-lucky, cheerful, true-blue Billy Majesty who had looked so handsome in his soldier’s uniform on the day of our wedding. I hadn’t anticipated living the rest of my life with the wreck the Germans had made of him: the ravaged, heartsick, shell-shocked, debilitated Billy.
It broke my heart every day that I saw him in his present state. It broke his, too, but his unhappiness took the form of rage and helplessness, both of which he unleashed on me, and I really don’t think I deserved it. He didn’t deserve it, either.
To make a long story short, there was no easy answer to the problem of Billy or of our marriage. My insides ached almost all the time because of it.
“Um, I’m not sure, Mrs. Bissel . . .” I let my voice trail off, not for effect but because I was honestly struggling with my conscience about accepting a job I knew darned well I couldn’t do.
“Oh, but Daisy, you must! You’re the only one I trust.”
Yeah, yeah, she’d said that before. Her trust didn’t alter the fact that I wasn’t fit to do the job. I was no kind of exorcist. Nor was I, if her problem was rats or mice or cats or opossums, an exterminator.
I made up my mind. “Very well, I’ll do my best, although I can’t guarantee results.”
A long sigh on the other end of the wire almost blew my eardrums out. “Oh, thank you, Daisy. I’m sure you will prevail against this spirit. Or ghost.”
“Thank you.” I wished I was as sure as she was.
“And if you think it would be better, you may stay here for the duration of the job. That would spare you traveling back and forth if it takes more than one session to get rid of the spirit. Or ghost.”
Oh, boy, wouldn’t Billy love that? “Thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Bissel, but I think I hadn’t better stay at your house. My husband, you know . . .” Again, I allowed my voice to trail off, this time on purpose. Everyone knew about poor Billy. I felt like a traitor to him when I had a sudden, piercing urge to take Mrs. Bissel up on her offer to live at her place for a while. I could have used a good rest.
Mrs. Bissel sounded guilty when next she spoke. Her guilt made mine rear its ugly face and stick its tongue out at me. Billy was right about one thing: I did use my well-honed spiritualist act to manipulate people. If that was wicked and evil, I guess I was.
“Of course, Daisy dear. I shouldn’t have asked. You have such burdens to bear for such a young thing.”
Darned right, I did. Heck, I’d only turned twenty the day before, yet I was supporting a whole family. Well, with the help of my mother and my aunt, but gosh, you’d think Billy would respect my situation at least as much as silly Mrs. Bissel.
I knew better than to expect it. After I’d made an appointment for a first visit that afternoon and hung up the telephone receiver (leaving Mrs. Barrow free to talk all afternoon with whomever she chose), I returned to our living room. Sure enough, Billy sat in his wheelchair, glowering, looking as if he was spoiling for a fight. I tilted my head a little and gazed at him, wondering if I looked as hopeless and helpless as I felt.
“Who was that?” he demanded.
“Mrs. Bissel. She’s the one with the frankfurter dogs.”
“What did she want? A séance?” He sneered.
I was used to it. “Not this time. She wants me to rid her basement of a spirit. Unless it’s a ghost.”
“She what?”
Every now and then, when my life and job got truly bizarre, Billy’s anger evaporated into surprise. That’s what happened this time. I hoped it would last.
I sighed and sat on our comfy old sofa and put my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands. I was wearing one of my most comfortable wrappers, a pink-and-white checked one that probably clashed with my dark red hair, but I didn’t care. I dressed up for my work; at home I relaxed—except when clients came over for a palm-reading or to consult the Ouija board or to participate in a session of table-turning. “She claims a spirit or ghost has taken up residence in her basement, and she wants me to get rid of it for her.”
“You’ve suddenly turned into a—what do they call it? A minister who gets rid of ghosts?”
“An exorcist. Yeah, I guess so. Mrs. Bissel claims she doesn’t want a priest. She wants me.”
“Good God, Daisy, your business is crazy. And you’re crazy to take a job like that. It’s bad enough that you pretend to raise dead people’s ghosts and gab at them for money. This is going too damned far.”
I gazed at my husband and felt like crying. We Gumms are made of sturdy stuff, though, and I didn’t. “You tell her that, then. I told her, and she chose not to believe me. I told her I wasn’t qualified to do the job and almost certainly wouldn’t succeed. She wants me to try it anyway.”
Billy shook his head in amazement. I knew exactly how he felt, because I’d been feeling the same way ever since Mrs. Bissel ignored everything I’d tried to tell her and begged me to take a job for which I was totally and admittedly unqualified.
“Rich people are strange, Billy.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Do you want to fight with me some more, or can I change clothes and go up to Mrs. Bissel’s house and study her basement?”
His lips straightened into a flat line, and he glared at me for several seconds before he gave it up. “Aw, Daisy, you know I don’t want to fight with you.” He’d have sighed, but his lungs wouldn’t let him.
Sometimes I hurt for my poor husband so much it was all I could do to keep from screaming at God for letting something like this happen to so good a man as my Billy. I still felt like crying—and still didn’t. “I don’t want to fight with you, either, Billy. I love you.”
His smile went lopsided. “Do you?”
I moved from the couch to his chair and threw my arms around him. “I love you more than anything, Billy Majesty, and you know it.”
His arms went around my waist and I sank down onto his lap, wishing we could have a real marriage. I knew Billy would have made a wonderful father, had the Germans allowed him to come home to me a whole man. Too late for that now. As much as I tried not to, and as much as I knew the feeling to be irrational, I hated the Germans.
“I just wish you didn’t have to do what you do, Daisy. That’s all.”
Darn it, he was so unfair about my job! I didn’t want to spoil the mood, so I murmured, “I know it, Billy. I’m sorry.”
And, after a short round of smooches, which was as much love-making as we were able to accomplish thanks to the damned Germans, I went off, drooping, to change into my spiritualist costume and catch a red car up to Altadena so I could pretend to exorcize a spirit (or ghost) from an addle-pated rich lady’s basement.
Merciful heavens, but my life seemed strange sometimes.
Chapter Two
Even though my mood was as gloomy as the weather, I looked swell when I was through transforming myself from a simple, everyday, housewife into a spiritualist medium. I’d recently had my hair bobbed at the barber shop Billy and Pa frequented, and the new hair-do suited me fine. I’d resisted cutting my hair for a long time because I was afraid people wouldn’t accept a spiritualist with short hair. However, since I almost always wore hats when I worked, it probably didn’t matter much.
So far, nobody seemed to be appalled by my short hair. Only a couple of years earlier, if a woman cut her hair short, the whole world thought she was a lady of the night or a Bolshevist or something else equally awful. Not anymore. Nowadays, even prim and proper ladies were getting their hair shingled—and not at hair salons, either. Rich and snooty ladies went to barbershops, just as I’d done.
As an added bonus, the bob was easy to care for. All I had to do was wet my hair, comb it out, make finger waves that lay flat against my cheeks, and my hair was “done” for the day. Not only was it easy to care for, but I have thick, heavy hair, and when the barber cut most of it off, I felt at first as if I was going to float up into the sky, I was so lightheaded.
I kissed Billy as I walked to the front door. “I’ll be back as soon as I can be.”
He looked up at me and gave a half-hearted smile. “You look beautiful, Daisy.”
“Thanks, sweetheart.” I was wearing a black wool dress that I’d sewn on Ma’s White side-pedal rotary sewing machine. The dress had a long waist that tied with a sash on the side of my hip. I also wore black stockings and pretty black leather short-heeled shoes that tied over my arches, and I carried a black handbag. I topped it all off with a black cloche hat I’d remade from last year’s model. When I threw on my black wool coat (which I’d also made myself), I looked as if I was going to a funeral. That suited me fine, because it worked both for the job I was headed toward, as well as my mood. “Wish me luck.”
As I might have expected, that was the wrong thing to say. Some days, everything I said was wrong, and if I kept my mouth shut that was wrong, too.
Billy frowned. “I can’t do that, Daisy. You’re lying to people, and I can’t wish you luck doing it. Not with a clear conscience.”
“I didn’t lie to Mrs. Bissel,” I protested, stung. “I told her I couldn’t do this job. She wants me to try anyway.”
He shook his head in disgust. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Maybe to you,” I said, my voice hard.
Before we could tangle further, I left the house. I had to stand on the front porch and take several deep breaths to make sure I wouldn’t cry. The day was as gray outside as I felt inside, and I wondered if I should have taken an umbrella with me. Because I couldn’t bear going back into the house and facing Billy again, I decided to heck with an umbrella, and began walking the few short blocks to Colorado Street where I could catch a red car.
It didn’t take more than forty-five minutes for the red car to get to Foothill Boulevard and Lake Avenue. There was still no hint of rain—and no hint of sunshine. The orange groves that still took up a lot of Pasadena land looked as if they didn’t enjoy the gray weather any more than I did, and every time the red car chugged its passengers past a weeping willow, I felt as though it was weeping for me. The air was thick and cold, and I hugged my coat around me in the car, feeling miserable and oppressed and generally lousy. Not even the appreciative glances I got from the conductor and several of my fellow passengers cheered me. I wanted my husband to value me, not a bunch of strangers.
When we came to the end of the line and I got off the car, I noticed the conductor staring at me as if he was worried about me. “Is anything the matter, Miss?”
“Not a thing,” I lied. “But thanks for asking.” I gave him a quick smile to let him know I was fine, even though I wasn’t, and commenced walking briskly to Mrs. Bissel’s mansion.
As mansions go, Mrs. Bissel’s was kind of small. I mean, Mrs. Kincaid’s mansion on Orange Grove Boulevard had a huge iron fence around it, an electrically operated gate, and a man to guard it. I don’t know how many acres of prime Pasadena property Mrs. Kincaid owned, but she had an entire orange grove in her back yard.
In contrast, you could walk right up to Mrs. Bissel’s front door from the street. Of course, it was a long walk. She owned all the property from her house on the corner of Maiden Lane and Foothill to Lake Avenue, and everything behind her house as far as a street called Las Flores. She owned a hunk of land. I guess it didn’t look as impressive as Mrs. Kincaid’s property because there was no iron fence surrounding it.
The house itself was smaller than the Kincaid mansion, too, although it was still huge. It was a three-storied, stucco, beige-colored house with brown trim. A balcony on the second floor looked out over the big, rolling lawn in front. Mrs. Bissel’s back yard featured a circular drive surrounding a monkey-puzzle tree she’d imported from Australia.
Behind the tree, on the other side of the circular drive from the house, Mrs. Bissel had a rose garden that looked and smelled wonderful during the summertime. Some stairs led from the rose garden up to a little picnic area where Mrs. Bissel entertained friends during the warm months.
That day I was glad I didn’t have to go through the back door, because I’m sure looking at the bare, brown rose garden and the empty picnic area would only make me feel worse, if such a thing was possible.
Mrs. Bissel also owned a couple of horses, both of which were grazing in the field between her house and Lake Avenue that day. I blessed her for those horses. They looked so pretty, and I desperately needed something pleasant in my life just then. One of them was brown and the other had brown-and-white spots, and I could imagine red Indians riding them across the plains in a Zane Grey novel. I didn’t know what variety of horse they were, although I knew they must have had better pedigrees than our own old horse, Brownie, who lived in back of our house, and who was getting lazier and more cantankerous with each passing day.
Heck, they had better pedigrees than Billy and me, if anybody cared to check. Whatever their ancestry, those horses looked swell, and watching them made me feel a tiny bit better, although not much.
The lawn in front of the Bissel place had three sloping hills on it. Her front porch ran the entire width of the house. The grass was green and well tended, although it was getting a little yellow because it was that time of year. A row of bird of paradise had been planted in a garden running the length of the porch, and there were a bunch of rosebushes in front of the bird of paradise.
Nothing was blooming on that depressing fall day, but the rolling lawn still looked pretty. Fortunately for my shoes, there was a concrete walkway running from the street to the porch, so my heels didn’t get stuck in the dirt on my way to the house.
As soon as I neared the doorbell and even before I pressed it, I heard Mrs. Bissel’s herd of wild dachshunds indoors go into their announcement act. They cheered me up even more than the sight of the gorgeous horses in the field had.
I don’t know what it is about dachshunds. They’re so short and funny looking, yet they think they’re such tough cookies. Perhaps I identified with them because I felt so puny and yet acted so tough myself. Who knows? Probably Dr. Freud could tell me, but I don’t speak German and never want to, so his diagnosis wouldn’t help me much.
Mrs. Bissel didn’t have a butler, as did Mrs. Kincaid. She did, however, have a live-in housekeeper and a couple of housemaids. It was one of the maids, Ginger Sullivan, who opened the door to me. I knew Ginger from school.
I grinned at her, but she didn’t grin back. I considered this reaction strange, since Ginger and I had always been friendly. “Hi, Ginger. How are you?” I could hardly hear myself for all the barking.
Evidently Ginger was accustomed to the dogs, because she didn’t seem fazed in the slightest. “Scared to death,” she said flatly, opening the door and allowing me entry and several of the dogs outlet. “This place is haunted. I hope you can get rid of it, Daisy, because I’m about to quit.”
“Golly, Ginger, I didn’t know it was so bad.”
She shivered. I knew she wasn’t faking it, either, because I saw the gooseflesh on her arms when she rubbed them. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
Now, this was an ominous declaration, for certain. It wasn’t good for anyone, including Ginger and me. Jobs weren’t as easy to come by as they had been before the war, and the whole country had sunk into a depression. Ginger wouldn’t be talking about quitting her job for no good reason, because there was no guarantee that she’d be able to find another one.
As for me, I could almost imagine Mrs. Bissel being frightened about nothing, but if Ginger confirmed her employer’s estimation of the basement situation, it meant there truly was something down there. And I was expected to get rid of it. I wondered if Pa or Billy had a gun somewhere. Not that I knew how to shoot a gun, but still . . .
I’d have liked to ask Ginger some questions, but Mrs. Bissel emerged into the huge entry hall from the front room, her arms outstretched, managing somehow to avoid stepping on any of the dogs frolicking at her feet and mine. She was clad in a shocking maroon day dress (shocking because it was such a vibrant color for so large a woman). She looked like an ambulatory purple whale. If I ever get fat, I’m sticking to basic black.
Some of the dogs jumped up on me, digging their sharp little doggie claws into the skirt of my beautiful black dress, but I only bent down, spoke softly, and gently disengaged the claws. Not even for a lovely hand-made black wool frock would I alienate a client by hollering at her dogs.
Fortunately, Mrs. Bissel hollered at them for me, so my skirt was spared except for one tiny snag that I knew I could fix in a jiffy. She also clapped her hands, which seemed to affect the dogs. They all stood back, sat down (it was difficult to tell whether they were standing or sitting because their legs were so short) gazed up at me, and a chorus of tails swept the floor. Gee, those dogs were cunning! I really wanted one.
“Daisy’s here, Mrs. B.,” Ginger announced informally (and unnecessarily). At Mrs. Kincaid’s house, nothing was informal. Mrs. Kincaid’s butler, Featherstone, probably wore his butler suit to bed at night. I preferred Mrs. Bissel’s more relaxed standards.
“I’m so glad you could come, Daisy!” Mrs. Bissel beamed at me and gave me a small hug. “Sorry about the welcoming committee.”
“I don’t mind,” I told her honestly. “I love your dogs.” I glanced at the floor and tried to count, but the dogs kept moving around. “How many do you have now? It seems there are more than there were the last time I was here.”
Mrs. Bissel loved anyone who loved her dogs. “I have a grand total of ten glorious dachshunds at this minute, Daisy, dear. Of course, I’m counting Lucille and Lancelot’s pups in the grand total.”
“Ah.” Ten dogs. The mind boggled. At least these dogs were small. Can you imagine if they were great Danes? “I see you have some brown ones along with the black-and-tan ones, too.”
“Yes.” Mrs. Bissel sighed happily. “I bought two red dachshunds from a gentleman in Arizona and plan to breed them.” She took me by the arm and started leading me kitchenwards. “I’m hoping that one of these days, I’ll have a Westminster winner.”
Okay, here’s the thing about rich people and their dogs. Most people like dogs. I like dogs. But people who have a lot of time on their hands, and most of them are the rich ones because the rest of us have to work all the time, like to enter their dogs in dog shows. There’s a big dog show at Tournament Park in Pasadena every year, and I know Mrs. Bissel “showed” her dogs there.
I’d learned from various clients over the years that the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, held annually in New York City, was the be-all and end-all of dog shows, and the one everyone wanted to be entered into and win. If your dog earned enough points at other dog shows during the year, the dog could go to Westminster. More than one Pasadena dog owner has told me it’s an honor for dogs even to be entered into the Westminster Dog Show. I say, more power to them, especially if they’re dachshunds.
Another rich lady of my acquaintance, Mrs. Frasier, bred feisty, frenetic little dogs she called miniature pinschers. Her main goal in life was to get these miniature pinschers recognized as a legitimate breed at the Westminster Kennel Club. I’m not sure what that entailed, but it sounded strange to me. I mean, since I’d met Mrs. Frasier, I could identify a miniature pinscher when I saw one. I didn’t understand why the Westminster folks had trouble recognizing them. I could conceive of someone mistaking a miniature pinscher for a Chihuahua, but only until you looked at him more closely. Then you realized the pinscher had longer legs, less bulgy eyes, and a short, stubby tail. Both breeds were small and noisy, but they didn’t really look that much alike.
But I digress.
“Would you like a cup of tea or anything before you confront our phantom?” Mrs. Bissel asked.
“No, thank you. I’d best get to work at once.”
“Good.” This short, pithy comment came from Ginger. “The sooner the better.”
“Yes, that’s probably the best thing. But do take Daisy’s coat, Ginger. She won’t need it, I’m sure.”
“Sure thing, Mrs. B.” Ginger took my coat. The house was warm enough. “I’ll hang it in the hall closet.”
“Thank you, Ginger.” Mrs. Bissel gestured for me to follow her as Ginger went to hang up my coat. “There’s a door to the basement from the kitchen,” she told me as we walked through the huge dining room and into the pantry. The kitchen lay straight ahead. “I’ll take you downstairs from the kitchen.”
“That’s fine, Mrs. Bissel.”
“We never hear anything during the day,” she went on. “So I don’t think there’s any danger right now, although the household help have taken to going downstairs in pairs or trios because they’re all so frightened.” She glanced at me and I saw her lips quiver slightly. “So am I.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” I said. And I was. Shoot, I didn’t want to tangle with a real problem. Maybe it was just a cat. Or maybe it was a bear. Mrs. Bissel’s house was right there up against the foothills. I suppose there were bears in the foothills. Or mountain lions. I really didn’t want to meet a mountain lion face-to-fang.
I realized I was scaring myself and gave myself a mental shake.
Mrs. Bissel’s housekeeper was also her cook, I guess, because she was in the kitchen, cooking something. I knew her slightly, so I smiled and said, “Hello, Mrs. Cummings.”
“Hello, Mrs. Majesty. I sure hope you can help us.”
Golly, everybody in the whole house was spooked. Something puzzled me about all this, though. When Mrs. Bissel went to the door leading to the basement and unlocked it, I asked her about it. “What about all your dogs, Mrs. Bissel? Can’t they help you find out what’s down there? They certainly let you know when someone’s at the door. Don’t they bark at the thing in the basement?”
“That’s true, but the only doggies who sleep in the house at night are Lucille and Lancelot and their pups, and I carry them all upstairs with me when I go to bed.”
“Ah. Have you considered allowing a few of the others to sleep in the kitchen or on the service porch?”
“I’ve thought about it,” she said, “but I don’t want them going down into the basement.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“It’s not good for them to climb up and down the stairs,” said Mrs. Bissel. “Their legs are too short and their backs are too long. They might hurt themselves. Besides, I’d not risk a hair on any of their backs if the spirit or ghost turns violent.”
Which meant she was perfectly willing to risk my hair. I didn’t object. I supposed ridding houses of spirits could be viewed as an aspect of my job, although I kind of resented not being judged to be as important as a dachshund. Anyhow, she was right about their legs and backs. Someday perhaps someone could design a dachshund with an extra pair of legs in the middle. But no. That would make them look even sillier than they already do.
“They do bark sometimes in the night,” Mrs. Cummings said. She shivered, as had Ginger, and I saw that she had gooseflesh, too.
Obviously, there was something in the basement. I wasn’t happy to know it.
“I’ll go down with you,” announced Mrs. Bissel stoutly. She took a deep breath, as if to brace herself.
“Be careful,” said Mrs. Cummings.
I saw Ginger hanging back between the kitchen and the pantry, looking frightened. “Yeah,” she said. “Be careful.”
“We will be careful.”
Mrs. Bissel squared her shoulders and straightened her back, and I got the impression she felt as if she were forging onward into battle. Naturally, this made me think of Billy, and of how frightened he must have been when the Germans were shooting at him. I shook my head hard in order to rid it of the mental image of my poor husband on that bloody battlefield.
“Yes,” said I. “One must always be careful when dealing with the spirits.”
Not to mention when dealing with escaped lunatics, criminals, bears, mountain lions, or maddened house cats. I tried not to think about it.
But not thinking about it was impossible. Mrs. Bissel, tip-toeing downstairs ahead of me, clutched the banister so hard her knuckles turned white, and she pressed her back against the wall at the same time. She was a stout woman, and well corseted, but I saw her bosom quiver.
Her terror was obvious, and suddenly it irked me. If she was so darned scared of whatever was down there, why the heck didn’t she call the police instead of me? Policemen chose to risk their necks for other people’s sake, a choice I’d never made.
I tried to keep my temper in check. It had been awfully short in recent days. In fact, the last time I’d been in a good mood had been earlier in the month when I’d pushed Billy in his wheelchair down Colorado Street in Pasadena’s annual Armistice Day Parade. The cheers from the crowds as we rolled along had made us both feel as if Billy’s sacrifice had not been in vain. He’d been only one among many wheelchair-bound ex-soldiers, too, some of them missing arms, legs, and even eyes, so he didn’t feel like a freak for once.
Our life together had gone downhill fast after that. Probably the lousy weather had contributed to its downward rush. Also, I wasn’t happy that I hadn’t been able to vote in the recent election. It was an historic occasion, since it was the first national election in which women were allowed a voice.
Except me. Nobody cared about twenty-year-old me or who I’d have voted for. I’d have to wait until I was twenty-four before I could have a say in anything, darn it. The fact that my man, Harding, had won didn’t alter the fact that I hadn’t been allowed to vote.
But that was neither here nor there. At issue now was my ability to maintain my composure, and I was a mistress at that. I had to be. If I allowed my annoyance to show every time one of my clients did or said something stupid, I’d be yelling all day, every day, and nobody’d hire me anymore.
“You’ve got to get rid of this thing,” Mrs. Bissel said in a stage whisper. “We’re all so frightened.”
“I can tell.” I don’t think I sounded sarcastic. “And I’ll do my very best.”
“I’m sure you will.”
She didn’t sound sure to me. She hesitated at the foot of the stairs, still pressing her rotund self against the wall.
Because she didn’t look as if she was going to be of any use in my search of the basement, I asked, “Is there a light switch?” If she expected me to poke around in the dark, I’d have to decline the job. Not even for a dachshund puppy would I chance getting bitten by a black widow spider or a snake or a rat or anything else poisonous or rodentine.
“A light? Oh, yes. Let me pull the cord.”
She did, and the basement flooded with light. It looked like an average basement to me, although it was a lot bigger than, say, ours on Marengo. That’s because this was a mansion. “Ah,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Take as much time as you need.” Mrs. Bissel’s voice shook slightly.
I took stock of my surroundings. Mrs. Bissel’s basement was pretty nice, for a basement. It had been painted white in the recent past, and housed the family’s laundry equipment: A big wringer washing machine that looked brand new, a mangle for ironing sheets, and an ironing board upon which sat an electrical iron. I’d never used one of those before. We still had flatirons spread out on the range in our kitchen on Marengo. An electrical iron sounded like a good idea to me. I wasn’t particularly adept at the domestic arts, and I burned myself quite often on those darned flatirons.
Canned goods were stored in the basement, too, and against the far wall I saw a wine rack. Somehow, I’d never pictured Mrs. Bissel as a wine drinker, although I don’t know why not. Maybe it was her dogs. I pictured wine going with people who owned poodles, not dachshunds.
“About how long have you been bothered by noises in the basement?”
“I think it’s been two weeks now.”
“And how does the spirit manifest itself?” That sounded so silly. Still and all, something was bothering the people in the house, and if Mrs. Bissel thought it was a spirit (or ghost), so be it.
“There are bumps in the night,” Mrs. Bissel said with a shudder. “And it sounds like scraping noises sometimes. As if it were dragging chains.”
Egad. “Chains? You mean, the noises are loud?” I most especially didn’t want to encounter a criminal swinging a chain. Did they have chain gangs in California? I couldn’t remember.
“No, no. They’re soft noises. As if whatever it is was trying to be quiet.”
I’d never heard of soft-sounding chains, which was minutely encouraging. “Um, perhaps it’s not a chain, but a chair or footsteps or something along those lines.”
“Maybe. I suppose that’s possible.”
Shoot, she sounded disappointed. You’d think she’d be glad not to be threatened with chains. I didn’t argue with her. “Do any of your staff live down here, Mrs. Bissel?” Stepping away from the staircase, I steeled my nerves for an inspection.
“No. They used to, but the whole place flooded in ‘15, and I moved all the servants up to the third floor. We only use the basement to store things in now, and for doing the laundry and so forth.”
“Ah. But there are still bedrooms down here, I see.” Brilliant deduction, and one based on my appraisal of the two closed doors on the far wall.
“Yes. The rooms are still here, but they aren’t used for anything. Mrs. Cummings was the last to move out. She liked living down here because it’s closer to the kitchen than the third floor.”
Sensible woman, Mrs. Cummings. “When did she move out?”
“About two months ago. She decided she didn’t like being so isolated from the rest of the household staff.”
“Ah.”
Because I knew myself to be a sensible woman and not one to be scared by ghosts, especially since they didn’t exist, and since I’d do anything to avoid acting like an idiot, Mrs. Bissel’s overt fear was making me feel better. That and the light. It was difficult to imagine anything bad happening in this bright, white, well-lighted room full of laundry products, wine, and preserved food.
Nevertheless, using my best wafting technique, I explored the basement’s nooks and crannies. There actually weren’t many of them. The room was a huge rectangle, and the two rooms on the far side were spare and clean.
Both rooms contained small, bare beds. When I stooped to glance under one of them, I found something interesting: An empty tin of Franco American Spaghetti. I picked it up and peered inside. It looked to me as if someone had scraped it clean recently, because the little bit of Italian sauce sticking to the tin’s sides was fresh. I set the empty can down on the tiny bedside table and thought hard.
Now who, wondered I, would be eating spaghetti out of a tin can in Mrs. Bissel’s basement? No answer occurred to me, and I decided to keep the empty tin to myself for the time being. If it had been Ginger who’d suffered a craving for canned spaghetti in the middle of a hard day, I didn’t want to get her into trouble for stealing food.
I also got the weird feeling that this particular room had been occupied recently, and not by a spirit or a ghost. I’m not claiming to have any sort of relationship with the Other Side, whatever that is, but I have become sensitive to feelings as part of my trade. I sensed recent occupancy of this one room. When I went to the other room, I sensed nothing but emptiness.
That being the case, I returned to the first room and did a more extensive search. There wasn’t a whole lot to search. The room was equipped with a cupboard, which was bare. Hooks on the wall had been used for the servants’ clothes and held nothing now. A wash stand, holding a pitcher and bowl, sat in a corner. The bowl had recently contained water; it was still wet on the bottom.
Mrs. Bissel’s grating whisper came to me from where she cowered at the foot of the staircase. “What do you think, Daisy? Have you found something? Do you sense anything?”
Yes, indeedy, I sensed something, all right. I sensed that somebody was using Mrs. B’s basement as a hideout, but darned if I knew who or why. “I am receiving certain vibrations,” I told Mrs. Bissel cryptically. Ridiculous, but I didn’t want to tell her about my other findings yet. For all I knew, they meant nothing.
“Oh, my goodness,” she whispered as if in awe. I was used to this reaction to my occult gibberish.
When I exited the room, I saw her sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, her bulbous maroon breasts heaving in fear. She stared at me, chewing her lip, and giving every appearance of a woman in grave distress.
To ease her worries, I offered her one of my stock of gracious smiles. Gracious smiles, along with my wafting walk, were part of my act. “There is no danger now, Mrs. Bissel. You need fear nothing in the daylight.” As for the rest of the time, darned if I could tell her anything at all.
“I’m so glad.” She expelled a gusty sigh.
I puttered around in the basement for a while longer, searching for any sign other than the empty Franco American spaghetti tin and the damp bowl that someone had been residing there. Don’t ask me why I lifted the lid of the washing machine and peered inside, because I don’t have an answer. All I know is that I did lift the lid, and I peered inside.
“Is your laundry done on one specific day of the week, Mrs. Bissel?”
“What? Laundry? Why, yes, the laundry is done on Monday. Cynthia Oversloot comes in to help Ginger every Monday.”
“Ah. And is the dirty laundry kept somewhere in particular until Monday rolls around?”
“The dirty laundry? Why, yes. The maids throw it down the laundry chute, and it lands in a basket.” She pointed to a big wicker basket set against the wall, above which a black hole loomed. “See? There’s the basket and the chute.”
“Ah.” I wafted over and saw that the basket held almost nothing, probably because today was Wednesday. “I see.”
“Why? Have you found something?
“No,” I fibbed. “I just wondered. You say no one uses the washing machine except on Mondays?”
“No. I mean, yes. No one uses it except on Mondays. Not unless there’s a special need. Say, if someone gets sick overnight or something.”
“Ah.” So why, then, was there a neatly folded sheet and blanket sitting in the washing machine? I didn’t ask Mrs. Bissel, primarily because I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have an answer for me. Also, if the sheet, blanket, damp water bowl, and spaghetti tin signified a mortal presence in her basement, and if I managed to get whoever it was to move out, I didn’t want Mrs. Bissel to know it hadn’t been a spirit. Or a ghost. I wanted to get paid, and I wanted to get paid in dachshunds.
Anyhow, I didn’t know for sure that my surmise was correct. After searching for another few minutes, I decided I’d learned all I could learn from the empty basement. “I’ll have to go home and meditate about this, Mrs. Bissel.” I made sure I sounded extremely serious and mystical. “This is a knotty problem. I doubt that there will be an easy solution.”
“I feared as much.”
For so large a woman, she could move in a sprightly manner when she chose. She popped up from the bottom step and charged up the staircase, heaving a huge breath of relief when she shoved the door open and escaped into the security of her kitchen. I wasn’t far behind her. There’s something about basements, even in the daytime, that make me feel creepy, as if there might be ugly, hairy monsters lurking down there behind, say, the mangle, ready to grab me by the ankle, yank me downstairs, run my body through the wringer, and eat my liver for lunch.