Genteel Spirits (Daisy Gumm Majesty Books) (23 page)

To tell the truth, I was impressed with her phrasing. She was so dim-witted, I hadn’t expected such a coherent sentence from her. I was also
as stupid as she, blast it
. Monty and Harold would skin me
alive
if I let on to Lola that Monty was receiving letters, too.

“I mean the other one,” I said in a world-weary tone that I hoped conveyed conviction. “I have the other letter you
received
.” Recalling that her dressing room door was supposed to have had a special lock installed upon it and that a guard was supposed to have been posted at the door to said room,
and that this wasn’t her dressing room,
I asked, “How’d you get this one? Wa
s it propped against the mirror in this room
?”

If it was, Harold, Monty and I were in trouble, because it meant that someone
extremely close to the family
had means we knew nothing abou
t with which to perpetrate his or her
evil deeds.
I couldn’t
imagine who
it could be. Mrs. Hanratty would no more write poisoned-pen letters than she would fly to the moon. Gladys didn’t have enough imagination—although, as I’ve mentioned, this particular letter-writer didn’t exhibit much imagination. Homer Fellowes was an unknown quantity, but I suspected him of being too Gladys-like to perpetrate nasty letters.
And I couldn’t in a million years imagine the dignified, misplaced Mrs. Winkworth of doing anything so unrefined as writing threatening letters.

Lola
shook her sleek, dark head. “No. I discovered it had been slipped into my pocket sometime after dinner this evening.”

“
Oh?
Where’d you dine?”
Gee, maybe somebody was following her around Pasadena, which would give us an entire city’s population to work from. The notion didn’t appeal.

“Here.”

“With the Winkworths? I mean, with Mrs. Winkworth, Mrs. Hanratty and Mr. Mountjoy?”
That cut down on the possibilities, although it didn’t make me feel appreciably better.

“Yes. And that other creature.”

“What other creature?”

“That costume person. Harold.”

My temper spiked. “Harold is not a creature, any more than Gladys is a peasant!” Then I recalled my spiritualist’s motto and said more mildly, “Mr. Harold Kincaid is one of the most talented costumiers in Los Angeles. Perhaps the world.
He is also a dear friend of mine.
” I’d have liked to have set her straight about Gladys
being smart as two whips and infinitely
more intelligent
than Lola de la Monica
, too, but decided any comment about Gladys
’s
understanding
and appreciation of
algebra would only muddy waters
that were already murky
.

She sniffed. “Well, I prefer men who like women.”

“I see.” I suppressed the urge to ask her why she hung out with Monty Mountjoy if she preferred men who liked women. Every now and then I can show a modicum of good sense.
Wish I could do it more often.
However, common sense attacked me that night.
“So,” I continued, “may I keep this letter? I’d like to compare it to the other one
you received
.”

The letter having been slipped into her pocket at dinner was every bit as appalling as it having been propped against her mirror
. Clearly
someone in the Winkworth hous
ehold
, either a family member or a member of the staff
in very close contact with the family
, was writing—or cutting and pasting—the stupid letters. I didn’t know a single thing about the staff, except for Gladys, and I’d
pretty much
ruled her out.
Perhaps
I’d been too quick to do so. Fiddlesticks.

“I don’t care what you do with it,” Lola said in a high-pitched, slightly panicky voice. “I just want them to stop! Are you sure they aren’t written by the spirits?”

“Positive,” said I truthfully. “The spirits can’t write letters.”

I don’t think she believed me. She turned in a swirl of white fabric and made her way to
stand in front of
the sofa in her
sitting
room. This particular sofa
wasn’t red, but a tweedy brown
and I defy anyone, even Lola de la Monica
,
to perform a grandiose tragedy on a tweedy brown sofa. “Then let’s get on with the séance,” she said in a pouty voice. “Although I don’t know why we should be doing one if the spirits aren’t responsible for the letters.”

Suppressing yet another unseemly urge, this one to throttle the
aggravating
woman, I said sweetly, “Your inner mind is troubled. Perhaps the spirit world can guide you
toward
a path that will ease your way.”

Giving yet another abrupt, dramatic swirl, she said, “Yes! Yes, that’s true. Yes, I need inner calm. The Virgin Mary came to me, you know.”

“I know,” I said quickly, not caring to
hear
again
the nonsense about Mary having given Lola fashion instructions
.
“But the spirits with which I deal are very good at giving advice, too.” And they wouldn’t say a thing about clothing preferences; I could guarantee it.

Lola bowed her head. “Very well. Let us begin.”

I glanced around the room, endeavoring to find a good place to conduct my so-called “personal séance” for Lola. “One moment, please,” I said, lowering my voice to a becoming spiritualistic level. “First I must prepare the room.”

With big eyes—she truly had magnificent eyes—Lola watched as I
surveyed the room.
The furnishings in
her sitting
room were
as
lovely
as those in Monty’s suite
; I assume they came with the house, although I don’t know that for a fact.

Fortunately, I espied two medallion-backed chairs with a cunning little piecrust table
set
between them. Therefore, I positioned
the t
wo chairs facing each other
and left the piecrust table where it was
.
I’d come prepared with
my
cranberry-red lamp loaded with a candle. I placed the lamp on the small
t
able, lit the candle, walked to the electrical light fixture and pressed the button. The room went dark, except for that small, glowing red light between the two chairs.

Lola, as might have been expected, gasped dramatically.

Then I stood back, clasped my hands together, stared at the positioning of the chairs,
and
bowed my head. Lola had nothing on me when it came to drama. I pretended to fall into a transcendent state for a moment or two, then lifted my head and
murmured
, “The spirits are ready.”

My performance seemed to have struck Lola with some kind of awe, because she whispered when she asked, “What do we do now?”

I gestured at one of the chairs. “We each take a seat.”

“Which one should I take?” Her voice was
still tiny
.

“It matters not,” I told her in sepulchral accents.

“Are you sure?”

I only gazed at her, expressionless, and she quickly sat in one of the chairs. Much more gracefully, if I do say so myself, I took the chair opposite hers, folded my hands in my lap, and bowed my head
yet once more
. “
One moment. I need to make contact with my spiritual control.”

“Aren’t we supposed to hold hands?”

Again
I lifted my head and stared at her, and she shut up. It occurred to me, irrelevantly to be sure, that I might have taken up teaching as a profession. Would my special looks make children shut up and be still as they did adults? Well, it didn’t matter
. Besides, I’d bet anything that I made more as a spiritualist than teachers made. Didn’t seem fair, but there you go
. After Lola’s mouth snapped shut, I
once more
bowed my head,
continued to hold
my hands
in my lap
and was silent.

You have to time these matters carefully. If you
remain mute
for too long, your client gets fidgety. I’d been studying
what passed for
Lola’s character for a couple of days by that time, so I timed my silence to perfection. After what probably seemed like hours to Lola, but was actually only thirty seconds or so, I lifted my head and gazed
directly
into her eyes across the cranberry lamp. Her face was quite
beautiful
in that soft pink light and, I presumed, my own face was similarly illuminated. Only I wanted to appear not
beautiful
, but mysterious. I think I carried the act off well, because Lola said not a word, but only gaped at me with what looked a good deal like
trepidation
. Perfect.

“We must hold hands now,” I told her, using my best mystical
tone
. “I shall consult with Rolly, my spirit control.
Say not a word while in his presence,
”
I warned her. “Should you interrupt communication, I will be in great
peril
.”

“How?”

“My soul could well be lost in the otherworld if anything interrupts the séance.”
I was in the middle of a séance at a speakeasy once when the coppers raided that place. Talk about peril! But Lola didn’t need to know that.

“Oh.” She sounded good and scared now.

I’d often wished I’d named my spirit control something more dignified than Rolly, but it couldn’t be helped
at this point
. Anyway, what can one expect from a ten-year-old? Fortunately for me, Mrs. Pinkerton believed his name was spelled Raleigh, so if anyone asked, that’s the way I spelled it for them.

Lola held out her shaking hands, and I took them in mine. My grip was gentle but firm, and Lola seemed to relax. I didn’t want her too relaxed. I wanted her to be impressed by this show. Therefore, I shut my eyes, breathed deeply several times, and then let my head flop forward—not too hard, since I didn’t want to damage myself.

After another several seconds—which probably seemed like eons to Lola—I spoke in my Rolly voice, a deep, richly accented Scottish voice.
Not only did my family possess a phonograph record of John Barrymore playing Macbeth, but
I’d
also
gone to first and second grades with a girl from Scotland, so I had the accent down pat.

“I’m here, my love,” said Rolly.

Lola gasped. Not an unexpected reaction, I’d learned. I squeezed her hands slightly to
keep
her from
blurting out
anything else.

Since I’d invented him, I
’d
felt it was my privilege to make him into what I wanted, and what I’d wanted when I was ten was to have a man who loved me and me alone with a love that
endured for
centuries. What’s more,
I’d decided
we’d been married in the eleventh century in Scotland
,
had five sons together,
we were soul mates,
and he’d been with me in spirit ever since. You can’t get much more loyal than that. Even better, Rolly was a magnificent specimen of a man, rather like my Billy had once been. Only Rolly hadn’t been damaged by war as had Billy.

But enough of that. On with the séance.

“Rolly,” said I in my own voice, only slightly modified to sound enigmatic—this was a show, after all—“Miss de la Monica needs peace in her life. She’s been receiving very ugly letters that have upset her so much that they’re affecting her performance on this picture.”

Lola made a noise, I think because she didn’t appreciate my words, but I rolled right along. The
nonsensical
woman was going to understand my point before I left her room. If she still insisted on delaying the shooting of the picture, it wouldn’t be my fault.

“She’s in danger of being labeled a trouble-maker by the
motion-
picture people, and
such a
reputation might well end her career. W
e need to get her set upon the right path
for the sake of her career and her many fans
.”

I heard Lola swallow hard. Good. Maybe
she
was paying
attention.

“Aye, my love, I understand,” said Rolly, bless his phony little heart. “Let me consult for a moment with my minions.”

Don’t ask me how Rolly managed to end up with minions, because I’m honestly not sure. I mean, supposedly he was a mere soldier under one of those old Scottish kings. Maybe he was a general or something. Anyhow, I don’t suppose it matters.