Louisa and the Crystal Gazer (16 page)

Having witnessed the display of temper with which this woman treated a minor discrepancy of table service, I decided against mentioning that her new cook might be needed for inquiries into a murder investigation. I told a very small lie.

“I think I may have met her before and wish to determine if so,” I said. “She made a wonderful salad of noodles and I would like the recipe.”

“I know the salad! She is preparing it for me. Well, I think that is not a difficulty. This way, Miss Alcott. I will show you to the kitchen myself.” I followed behind Mrs. Wilkinson’s wide, swaying green skirts, through a narrow tunnel downstairs, and then into a kitchen the size of the entire ground floor of our little cottage in Walpole.

“We are busy, as you see,” said haughty Mrs. Wilkinson. “Dances are so much effort, but they must be given, I suppose; else how will good society continue?”

Busy indeed. A dozen people worked at various chores, basting meats, chopping vegetables, whipping cream for cakes, piling meringues for baking. The noise was deafening, for the cooks shouted back and forth at one another as they worked, and so did not notice our approach.

In the far corner, kneading a large ball of dough, was a small woman I believed was the cook I had seen so very briefly at Mrs. Percy’s house. She was in a brown plaid woolsey dress, not a blue tunic and trousers, yet her face with its large upturned dark eyes was familiar.

She must have felt my eyes on her. She looked up, her serene expression turning to horror.

S
HE REMEMBERS ME
from Mrs. Percy’s house, I thought. Too late, I noticed the door, immediately at her back.

“What is her name?” I asked Mrs. Wilkinson.

“I can’t remember. Some outlandish thing, Meh-ki, I think. Why? I assure you, Miss Alcott—”

“Meh-ki!” I called. “Please. I just want to speak with you.” I forced my way past the salad cook, past a woman balling melon (melon! in the middle of winter!), the pastry chef who was twisting dough into swans’ necks, the meat roaster who was larding chickens, toward that back corner, toward Mrs. Percy’s former cook. Meh-ki watched me, knife now in hand, noodle paste forgotten, the terror in her eyes increasing every second.

“Meh-ki!” I called again. Next to me a pan clattered to the ground; I had bumped into a wooden dish rack. There were groans, curses, white-aproned bodies throwing themselves in my way as they scurried to pick up pans and pots.

Meh-ki gave me one last look, then was out the door.

I followed, but she ran down the lane next to the house and out into the busy, congested street, freeing herself of apron and kitchen cap as she ran; now she was just one of many women dressed in winter brown, rushing off to somewhere else because there was a hint of snow in the air. Except that Meh-ki hurried for other reasons. I lost sight of her.

Where would she go?

Mrs. Wilkinson was furious, so furious she actually stamped her foot. The other workers in the kitchen, already restored to order, looked down or giggled into their sleeves when I returned to offer an apology and a very limited explanation that I wished to ask Meh-ki a question or two about an earlier employer.

“The noodle salad was to be the centerpiece of the buffet! What am I to do now? What if she doesn’t return?” Mrs. Wilkinson roared, her only concern the impression her midnight feast might make.

“Put the melon balls in the center,” I suggested. “Father always says fruit is the masterpiece of a meal.”

“Does he? Does he?” Mrs. Wilkinson grew thoughtful and clapped her hands together beneath her chin. Father’s name carried the weight of authority in this household. “It is unusual, fruit in the center. Perhaps, perhaps.”

I left Mrs. Wilkinson’s after Mrs. O’Connor promised that she would send me a note when, and if, she saw Meh-ki again.

That afternoon I again visited Suzie Dear in jail, accompanied by Sylvia. Guilt tensed my shoulders, for I was making little progress with Reverend Ezra’s shirts, and he had
wished them done before Christmas; certainly if he knew the circumstances—a woman murdered, a killer loose in Boston—he would understand? Even if he did not, this mystery seemed much more important to me than his wardrobe. What was not less important to me, though, were the presents I had to purchase for my family in Walpole, Christmas presents that could not be purchased if I did not receive payment from the reverend. Lizzie’s portfolio sat in Mr. Crowell’s window, waiting.

“You are muttering to yourself, Louy,” said Sylvia, following behind me up the darkened stairway of the city jail. “Whatever is the matter?”

“The reverend’s shirts,” I said. “However will I get them finished, with mediums being murdered and jewelry stolen and cooks fleeing before me?”

“I do feel guilty.” Sylvia sighed. “If I hadn’t insisted you come to the séance with me…But then, it wasn’t all my doing. I didn’t know Mrs. Percy would get herself killed. Oh, dear,” she said. “I felt better looking at your back. You should see your face, Louy.”

“Suzie,” I called when we were upstairs, and standing outside the barred door of her prison cell. She was curled up on a little cot, a dirty blanket drawn up under her chin.

“Miss Alcott?” She sat up and peered at us through sleepy eyes. Her hair tumbled about her face, and her nose was red from weeping. “Oh, you have to get me out of here, Miss Alcott! I can’t stand it, I can’t! There’s a madman next door, rants all night, and the food is something awful. And I’m so lonely!”

“For Mr. Nichols?” I asked.

“How did you know about that?” She pouted.

“I went to see him,” I said. “He was disappointed that you missed your rendezvous that morning. Suzie, you must tell us everything that happened the day that Mrs. Percy was murdered.”

“Missed me, did he?”

“Sorely,” I exaggerated.

Sylvia brought us two ladder-back chairs from the far end of the hall, and we sat facing the prisoner.

“Well, it’s like this,” Suzie began, combing her hair back with her fingers. “Mrs. Percy weren’t only a medium. She had other business interests.”

“Such as?” I prompted.

“Mr. Nichols, her stepbrother, would find jewelry, nice pieces, and since he don’t have a shop of his own, Mrs. Percy would sell them for him.”

“It’s called fencing,” I corrected. “And by find, might I assume you mean steal?”

“Not always,” said Suzie, plainly hurt. “This he bought fair and square, I know. I was with him.” She produced from under the collar of her much-rumpled dress a little locket. Half a locket, actually, half a heart.

“Mrs. Percy had other interests,” I said. “Tell me what happened that day.”

Suzie tucked her locket back into the stained lace of her dress and sat upright like a schoolgirl about to recite a lesson.

“Well, the night before I didn’t sleep well. I thought I heard voices downstairs. A man and a woman, Mrs. Percy being the woman. They were quarreling. Very angry, they were. So I put a pillow over my head and tried to go back to sleep.”

“You were accustomed to hearing voices downstairs at night,” I guessed.

“Mrs. Percy were a great one for company of the gentlemanly sort,” Suzie agreed.

“Was it by any chance her stepbrother, Mr. Nichols?” asked Sylvia, who had been listening intently.

“No. Eddie’s voice I would know. This one I wasn’t certain of. It sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it. Maybe one of her clients, the one with the curly black hair. It were a deep voice.”

Mr. Barnum, I thought. “Could you hear what they were saying?” I asked.

“Something about misdeeds, about it costing too much, from the gentleman. Mrs. Percy laughed and said he was to leave her alone, or pay.”

“And then what?”

“It got quiet. I figured they were making up. I heard the sound that Mrs. Percy’s brandy cabinet makes when it’s opened. The door squeaks. Then I heard the cook, the Chinese woman, moving around downstairs. Her bedroom is right under mine. Sometimes she gets up early to bake yeast bread, and I didn’t think nothing of it. I went back to sleep. Needed my beauty rest, you know.” She grinned. She’d had an appointment with Eddie the next day, she explained.

“Well,” she continued, “when I got up the next morning, the cook was gone and Mrs. Percy was locked into her preparation room, where she’d been sitting the night before. She fell asleep in there. Least, I thought she was asleep.” Suzie yawned. “Don’t sleep well here. Wish I had some of those sleeping powders of hers. Or maybe not,” she corrected.

“Continue with the events, please.”

“In the morning I run down, quick, to the kitchen, to get the breakfast tray for Mrs. Percy, and lordy, was that kitchen a mess! Broken plates everywhere, things spilled, and that cook up and gone. Nowhere to be found. I looked in her room, and she had taken her valise and hairbrush and left. Left me in a bad spot, she did!”

“Time’s up,” shouted a man’s voice up the stairs.

“Ten more minutes, please!” I shouted back. There was a deep muttering, a clanging of keys, but the footsteps retreated and I was allowed more time. Being Mr. Bronson Alcott’s daughter carried some weight.

“Quick, Suzie,” I said. “What more can you tell me about the cook?”

“Mrs. Percy hired her a year ago. Our other cook had just quit to get married and move to Worcester. Mrs. Percy found her in a poorhouse. Mrs. Percy goes—went—to poorhouses sometimes, just to get gossip for her séances. Kicked-out servant girls will talk on and on about their employers, you know. Reveal all sorts of things.”

“And what had Meh-ki revealed?”

“Nothing that I know, but Mrs. Percy kept saying how lucky she was, that first week that Meh-ki was there. I thought she just liked the cooking. Meh-ki did tell me once that she’d been working in New York, but her employer died and she came north, hearing there was work in Boston. She seemed afraid, though, and would never say why. Almost never left the house, ’cept to go to market. Said once she was going to go back to New York as soon as she could get the money.”

“Did she have any visitors?”

“None that I knew of.”

Heavy footsteps came down the darkened hall. Keys jangled. A man with a shock of black hair falling into his eyes glared at us. “Time’s up,” he repeated. “You were to have fifteen minutes with the prisoner; that’s all. Don’t know what females are doing in a jail, anyway. Not fitting.”

“Hey! Ain’t I a lady?” Suzie protested, tossing back her dirty, uncombed hair.

“Yeah. And I’m the king of France.” He snorted.

Outside, in front of the courthouse we encountered Constable Cobban, who was returning from some errand or investigation. He tipped his cap and stopped to speak, which delighted Sylvia and pained me, for I must now tell him I had again interfered and perhaps caused some difficulty. I would have told him eventually, reader, but I had hoped for a moment of peace to gather my thoughts. Fate willed otherwise.

“Afternoon, ladies. Having a little visit with your Suzie?” He grinned at me and nodded politely at Sylvia, lifting his head up and back in an exaggerated gesture to show that he wore the muffler she had knitted for him.

“She needs a bath,” said Sylvia. “Are there facilities?”

Cobban blushed. “I’ll bring in my mother and have her attend to it, Miss Sylvia.”

“How is your mother?” I asked, delaying. I had never met this undoubtedly long-suffering woman, but I imagined her as a feminine form of her son, tall and lanky, carrot-haired and freckled.

“You are withholding,” he said. “I know that look in your eyes. They turn hazel instead of green.”

“Now that you mention it, I should report that I found
Mrs. Percy’s cook,” I said, using one booted foot to wipe snow off the other so that I would not have to meet his gaze.

“Splendid. Where might I find her?”

“Well, that is the difficulty. She saw me, and fled.”

Cobban took off his cap and slapped it in his palm; he turned in a little circle, shaking his head and muttering, probably cursing, under his breath. Temper often accompanies hair of that hue.

“That beats all,” he said. “You couldn’t have sent word to me first, before sending another suspect into hiding?”

“She was already in hiding, and there was no time to send for you,” I said firmly.

Sylvia reached up and tied more tightly the muffler about his throat. Reader, I have mentioned before that young Cobban blushed frequently, but at this touch from Sylvia he turned livid purple and then whiter than snow. Sylvia smiled at him and he began to tremble.

“All is not lost,” I said.

“Indeed it is not,” said he, looking at Sylvia.

“I refer to the matter of Mrs. Percy’s cook.” I sighed and stamped my feet, which were growing cold.

“Of course,” said Cobban, shaking himself as does a person awaking from a dream. “Explain yourself, Miss Louisa. Please.”

“We might make inquiries of Mr. Deeds.”

“Deeds?” said Sylvia and Cobban in unison.

“I learned the cook’s name today. It is Meh-ki. And Agatha Percy delivered a message to Mr. Deeds from Mickey, or we heard it as Mickey. I believe she meant Meh-ki.”

“How could she?” asked Sylvia. “Meh-ki is very much alive if you just saw her this morning.”

“As is my sister, whose arrival she announced,” I reminded my friend. “I begin to suspect that Mrs. Percy’s messages had more in them than met the eye…rather, the ear, of course.”

“We’ll pay him a little visit. Let me just go inside for a moment and tell them I’ll be away a bit longer,” said Cobban, rushing up the courthouse steps. He turned back to wave at Sylvia, as if they would be parted for years, not moments, and stumbled in the snow.

“Oh, Sylvia.” I sighed in irritation.

“I know. Isn’t it wonderful? He wore the muffler,” she whispered in delight. “I think Father will be pleased.”

“V
ERY, VERY INCONVENIENT
,” Mrs. Deeds fumed at us over her maid’s shoulder when Sylvia, Cobban, and I arrived at her doorstep half an hour later. “I am most busy, and wish to forget this sordid business with Mrs. Percy. She was a great disappointment.” Mrs. Deeds was dressed plainly in blue wool and a white cap with no necklaces, no bracelets, no jeweled rings, quite unlike my memory of her from the séance. Why this lack of adornment from a woman who prided herself on her jewels? I wondered.