Louisa and the Crystal Gazer (11 page)

The docks were busy that afternoon. There was some ice in the harbor, and the commercial vessels had weighed anchor farther out, so that an entire fleet of smaller boats rowed back and forth, loading and unloading. The sailors and dockworkers rushed to and fro, and the women who gathered in places where the laborers sought amusement had themselves gathered in taprooms and coffee shops for gossip and talk of the town.

I did not like to think of Suzie Dear in such a place as the Sailors’ Arms. She was young. She still had choices ahead of her that could lead to a happier and healthier life.

“She lay low yesterday,” Cobban said. “But she’ll be hungry by now, and feeling less worried about it all. She’ll be out
and about and probably wearing some of Mrs. Percy’s jewelry on herself, if I’ve got this right.”

He had it right. We found Suzie in the fourth taproom, sitting at a little table, surrounded by other women at various ages and stages of their lives. Two looked as young and pretty as Suzie, with smooth faces, thick hair, and slender arms. Three were middle-aged and already thickened and wrinkled; a sixth woman was in her fifties, white-haired, slack-jawed, dressed in little more than rags. They could have served as a Currier illustration of the downfall of woman.

Suzie Dear giggled when she looked up and saw us. “Some tea, ladies and gentlemen?” she asked, and then almost fell off her chair, so hard did she laugh. Her hair had come undone and fell over her eyes and shoulders in riotous black curls. Her companions fell into similar bundles of mirth. There were several empty gin bottles on the crumb-strewn table.

“None today, thank you,” I said, though I knew she was laughing at me and all those she deemed respectable, predictable, fussy, and boring. It did hurt my feelings a little, but I remembered the times that I and my sisters had secretly laughed at some very pompous matron or a tut-tutting gentleman.

“Miss Dear,” I said gently, “could we speak in private for a moment?”

Constable Cobban had no such niceties in mind. “Stand up,” he ordered. “Put your coat on.”

Suzie fell into another fit of the giggles and did not stop laughing until Cobban pulled her from her chair. Standing now, she struggled into a much-worn woolen coat with a ragged fur collar, her heavy gold and silver bracelets clattering
and clinking. I recognized those bracelets. Mrs. Percy had worn them.

The collar of Suzie’s coat rolled under, and Cobban reached up to straighten it.

“Here, now!” shrieked one of Suzie’s companions, and the others began to shout and push in protest. For a moment I feared there might be a riot, but the publican, seeing what was up, shouted, “Drinks on the house!” and Suzie’s friends fled her to seize their free glasses at the bar.

“Am I under arrest, then?” asked Suzie Dear in a small voice. She sucked her bottom lip.

“You are,” Cobban said.

“S
HE GAVE ME
the bracelets,” Suzie insisted. “They was gifts.” She lifted her hands before her face and rattled the gold and silver bangles on her wrists.

Suzie had sobered up fairly quickly once she was placed behind bars in the Boston jailhouse. This was a gloomy place of which I had more than a passing acquaintance, but I won’t go into those details now, patient reader. Suffice to say that I already knew that in Suzie’s cell the walls were unadorned except of graffiti, the floors bare except for stains I chose not to speculate about, and that the only window was so high up on the wall that even on tiptoe Suzie would not obtain a view of the streets below. Moreover, even that very high window was barred, so wherever light entered the room—from the gas lamp in the hall, or the sunset outside the window—it entered in thin, guilty strips. A more doleful place I’d yet to find, except for the city morgue, several floors beneath our feet. Mrs.
Percy, downstairs, would probably happily change places with Suzie, if she had a choice. She didn’t.

“Not according to Mrs. Percy’s brother, Mr. Nichols, they weren’t gifts,” Cobban said. He sat next to me in a straight-backed chair, looking in at Suzie through the bars.

“Mr. Nichols? Pggh.” Suzie screwed up her mouth and spit onto the floor. “That’s what I thinks of him.”

“You should use the cuspidor,” said Sylvia, pointing to a bucket in the corner. Suzie ignored her.

“The feeling is probably mutual, since you murdered his sister and absconded with her cash and jewels,” Cobban said.

“I didn’t murder no one, and didn’t ab…absco…make off with the goods. Not I. I learned my lesson last year.”

When Constable Cobban had half pulled, half pushed Suzie Dear into the building, another constable, sitting at a desk and reading the afternoon newspaper, had looked up and winked at her.

“Suzie, is that you? I thought they rode you out of town on a rail. How have you been?” he asked jovially.

“Go bugger yourself,” the girl had told him.

“Get her for soliciting?” the man had asked Cobban.

“No. Theft and murder.” Cobban was standing awkwardly, bent at strange angles in various places since Suzie, in her wooden-heeled boots, was trying to stomp on his feet.

“Whew!” The other man let out a long whistle. “You’re in for it, Suzie.”

“They was gifts!” she insisted a few minutes later, staring forlornly at us from behind the bars.

“You are bleeding,” I said to Cobban, gingerly touching the
long scratch Suzie had left on his face. “Perhaps you should go look to it.” He made a noise very much like a horse snorting with exhaustion at the finish line, and stood.

“I’ll go with you,” offered Sylvia. “Men are useless at that kind of thing.”

When Suzie and I were alone, I gave her a look I had learned from Marmee, and Suzie cowered.

“Tell me the truth,” I said sternly. “I will help you only if you tell the truth.”

“I am,” she whined.

“They will search your room,” I said. “Will they find more money and jewelry?”

“A little, yes, ma’am.” The whine had grown higher and shriller, and I could see she was ready to begin bawling. She coughed and sneezed and choked and wiped her nose with her ragged dress sleeve.

“Pay attention,” I said, “and tell me this. Did you kill Mrs. Percy?”

“No! I never!”

“Then who do you think did? For murdered she was.”

“I’d speak with that brother of hers, Mr. Nichols.” Suzie gave me a long glance and hiccuped.

“You appear very guilty, Miss Dear.”

“I didn’t steal all of it. Some of it really was gifts, Miss Alcott, really. Gifts.” Suzie Dear pouted, looking like a child accused of stealing cookies, not gold bracelets.

“You mean bribes. To help with the séances,” I said.

“’Twere my job,” she protested. “And a hard one, it was! I had to learn by heart ever so many signals and such, and then run up and down the stairs, back and forth, knocking on the
floor here, switching off gas lamps there. I did what Mrs. Percy told me to do. I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

Cobban and Sylvia returned, a plaster sticking to his forehead and another one to his hand, where Suzie’s grimy nails had left other marks. Sylvia looked very pleased with herself.

“Let’s leave Suzie to think about the situation,” Cobban said, extending a hand to help me from the chair. His choice of moments to practice gentlemanly behavior always left me a little confused. He was a most unpredictable young man. But he was also an officer of the law and I had no official status, so I rose from my chair.

“Do I get my supper?” Suzie called after us when we turned down the dark corridor. Our heels clicked against the bare floor, and somewhere in that cold and sinister building, in yet another locked room, a man yelled and pounded his fists against the wall.

“Theft, yes,” I commented when we had reached the stairwell. In addition to being unpredictable, Constable Cobban jumped too quickly to conclusions. “But coveting baubles does not indicate a violent nature. If so, far too many maids and manservants would be on trial for murder, and in fact it is a rarity.”

“I’ll vouch for that,” said Sylvia, who as an extraordinarily wealthy heiress had known her share of domestic disturbances and searches in the maids’ rooms.

“Moreover,” I continued, “I believe that at least some of the jewelry was given to her freely, by Mrs. Percy.”

“Some, but not all. Is that your opinion?” Cobban asked. He spoke slowly and thoughtfully. We had descended the
staircase and he had me by the elbow, as men do when they are herding women, and he was herding me toward the front door of the building.

“Did you not think yet of this, Miss Alcott? Suzie wore the stolen jewelry the same day, when you and the others arrived for the séance. She did not fear being seen in it. That would indicate she knew her mistress was already dead. And how would she have known that if she had not been herself involved in the murder?”

An excellent point. But there had to be a second answer. My woman’s instinct said that Suzie was a silly, greedy child of questionable morality but not a murderer.

“Where does this stepbrother, Mr. Nichols, reside?” I asked.

“Go back to your home and leave this matter to me,” Cobban said, hooking his thumbs in his suspenders with an air of male authority.

“His address will be in tonight’s paper, in Mrs. Percy’s obituary,” I said with, I admit it, a hint of impatience in my voice. “Are you coming, Sylvia?”

“Of course, Louy.” But she gave Cobban such a long glance over her shoulder that my heart sank. She waved good-bye to him with her fingertips, as little girls do.

“Sylvia,” I said gently, hooking my arm through hers, “you have been giving Constable Cobban strange looks. Can you explain why?”

“Is he not a pleasing young man?” said my friend. “His eyes are particularly fine, I think.”

“Your mother would not find him so pleasing,” I pointed out. “He has neither fortune nor family.”

“You know, Louy, I think Father would find him very agreeable. The son he never had, hardworking and intelligent. Ambitious. Father was not born with a fortune, you know. Nor did Mother have one when they married; she was rather in Amelia Snodgrass’s position, with lots of family history and connections but holes in her boots, if you see what I mean. No, Father earned his wealth. And Cobban will, too, I think.” Sylvia grew dreamy eyed.

Outdoors, in the fresh air again, I inhaled deeply, trying to clear my lungs of the foul airs that accumulate in large public buildings where people are housed in less than sanitary conditions. It was midafternoon, and my stomach was hollow with hunger. I wondered how Lizzie had amused herself after returning home from skating.

“Sylvia,” I said, “you need a new diversion to occupy your thoughts. Would you like to study music with Lizzie? Or read the new volume of Dickens? The Boston Ladies’ Lyceum is offering a series of lectures on phrenology that might interest you.”

“But I have a new interest, Louy,” she protested. “Every night I light candles and wait to speak with Father. I am learning spirit writing, so that he might write to me, as well.”

“Did you learn nothing from the events at Mrs. Percy’s?”

“I did. There are frauds out there, Louy. I will be much more careful in my next selection of a spiritualist. I will inquire more deeply into her reputation.”

“That is a lesson, at least,” I said, though I had hoped she had given up séances completely. Sylvia, though, wasn’t quite through with this phase, it seemed. “We might inquire more deeply into Mrs. Percy’s reputation to discover who and what
she really was,” I thought aloud. “Woman who are exactly as they appear to be rarely fall into such difficulties as being found murdered in their rooms.”

L
IZZIE, WHO HAD
returned home from the skating pond earlier in the day, greeted me at the door with a cup of hot tea, my house slippers, and a shawl. Just like Marmee.

“Was it exciting, Louy?” she asked. “Apprehending a murderer? Tell me all about it.”

“I would, dearest, except I don’t think we did apprehend a murderer. Come sit by the fire with me.” Oh, the dear parlor! How pleased I was to be home, to sit in the gentle glow of the hearth. Yet I could not stop thinking about the crystal gazer.

“Oh, Louy.” Lizzie sighed. “You are involved again. I can tell by the face you are making, and how you have jammed your hands into your pockets. Soon you will begin to whistle and worry. You always whistle a little when you are worried.”

“Do I? Then I shall try to break that habit.”

“You have a letter, Louy. It arrived this afternoon.”

The paper was expensive, more costly than the Alcotts could afford, and the writing had a laborious quality to it, often the sign of a person who has lived abroad and must learn to write in a manner to suit foreign eyes not accustomed to the loops and curlicues of script. The letter, when opened, revealed the sender as Mr. William Phips.

My dear young woman,
he had written.
May I call you friend? My dear friend Miss Alcott, if you have not yet read the evening papers (my dear wife always read her correspondence before the papers; I hope
you also have that prudent habit), I implore you to set aside today’s editions, for they contain horrible news, news unworthy of troubling the imagination of a fine young woman. I will tell you in brief: Mrs. Percy’s obituary has been placed in the evening edition. You are too young, my dear friend, to contemplate death and obituaries. May I call on you some afternoon? Mr. Alcott, I understand, is out of state, and I would be pleased to offer my protection.

“It is from Mr. Phips,” I said to Lizzie, who had been rocking quietly in her chair by the fire. “He would like to call upon us, for we are without a father’s protection.”

“How quaint,” said Lizzie.

“I suppose I must invite him over for tea.” I sighed. I disliked those long hours of weak tea and small talk that courtesy required, but a gesture of friendship should not be refused.

Auntie Bond, who had been in the kitchen giving instructions for our supper, came into the parlor and sat with us. How cozy we were, three women on their own, glad for a warm fire and companionship, a busy day behind us and a long winter evening before us. Auntie Bond crocheted lace doilies, Lizzie practiced finger exercises, and I stitched at the reverend’s shirts with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, disliking the work but knowing that each stitch brought me closer to the purchase of Lizzie’s music portfolio and that lottery drawing for the lessons with Signor Massimo.