Louisa and the Crystal Gazer (29 page)

“At your service, kind lady,” said the delirious maestro, trying to rise. “I have another guest coming.”

“Rest, Signor,” said Sylvia, pressing her hand against his chest so that he fell back onto the divan.

“How did Mrs. Percy find you, Meh-ki?” I asked.

“After lose job when employer die I come to Boston. Too many Chinese cooks in New York already. But I find no work, and sleep in house for people with no money, no work. Bad house. Many rats. Mrs. Percy come one day, looking us over. ‘Quaint,’ she say, when see me. ‘Chinese woman look very good in my séance parlor. Add atmosphere.’ I did not understand what she meant, but she promise to pay my debt if I work for her.”

“And somehow she got you to talk about Canton, and your marriage to the Englishman,” I guessed.

“Talk, talk, talk,” said Meh-ki with a half smile. “Mrs. Percy talk all the time. Make me talk, too.”

“The rest is quite obvious,” I said, seeing that Meh-ki was too exhausted to continue.

“Tell us anyway,” said Sylvia, frowning.

“Well, when Meh-ki let Mrs. Percy know she had been married to an Englishman, Mrs. Percy did her research,” I said. “She discovered that William Phips, the so-called hero of Canton, had returned to Boston and married an heiress, making him a bigamist, and that the heiress had died a short while ago, making him very, very wealthy. Luckily for her—rather ill-luckily, as it turned out—Mr. Phips lived right here in Boston. So she sent him an invitation to the séance.”

“And threatened to expose him,” Cobban guessed.

“A tragedy is made up of so many strange coincidences,” I said, when a sleeping Meh-ki had been carried out. I sipped the rest of the sherry in the glass we had given her. It was warm and sweet and strength returned to me, for I, too, was exhausted now that the danger was over, now that Lizzie was again safe and Meh-ki’s long years of danger and torment were behind her and Mrs. Percy’s murderer had been revealed.

“What coincidences?” asked Sylvia, now going to Lizzie and pressing her hand to her forehead. “Have you a fever, Elizabeth?”

“Where has my angel gone?” muttered Signor Massimo, looking wildly about.

“I’m well, Sylvia. Thanks to Louisa.” Lizzie beamed at me, pale but radiant.

“It was your sister who put you in such danger,” I said ruefully.

“No, it was that very strange woman, Mrs. Percy,” said Lizzie. “I never liked her, Louy, even though I never met her.”

“Yoo-hoo!” A woman’s lilting soprano voice floated up the stairs. “The door is open! Is anyone at home?”

“Yoo-hoo, darling!” called back the maestro in a weak voice. Light steps climbed the stairs. A pretty face framed with dark curls peeked in at us.

“I am here for supper,” said the great soprano Maria Venturi. Her great black eyes took in the maestro, lolling on the divan with a bandage pressed to his head. “Am I to think it has been canceled?”

“W
E GRANT THAT
human life is mean; but what is the ground of this uneasiness of ours, of this old discontent?” Mr. Emerson had asked me one afternoon years before, when he first spoke of the universal mind and of the connections between all of humanity. “Louisa, dear, what is the universal sense of want and ignorance, but the fine innuendo by which the soul makes its enormous claim? Within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty.”

On a sunny winter afternoon three days after the events in Signor Massimo’s home, I sat in a circle of friendship and felt the soul of the whole, now that the crimes had been revealed and several culprits brought to justice. We were again at MacIntyre’s Inn on Boylston.

Lizzie, was there, dear, sweet Lizzie, and Sylvia and Cobban, and Mr. Barnum. We laughed easily among ourselves and goodwill flowed.

Fellowship, I thought to myself, looking with joy at the
friends gathered there. Surrounded by dear ones is when I best understand what Mr. Emerson was trying to teach me about our connectedness.

“You said, that dreadful day, that a tragedy was made up of so many coincidences,” said Sylvia, peering intently at me. “What did you mean, Louy?” Sylvia was outfitted once again in her expensive silks and laces rather than cotton and wool; the bright green-and-pink outfit suited her fair complexion, and the choice of clothing, I thought, suited her impulse to honesty. She was no drudge, and could never be, not even to please a lover.

“The first coincidence,” I said, “was that after so many years, Meh-ki would find employment with a woman who would try to earn money off of Meh-ki’s misfortune. It’s clear that Mrs. Percy emotionally forced that strange personal history out of Meh-ki and decided to make Mr. Phips pay for it. Pay in a material, not a moral manner,” I clarified.

“I am familiar enough with Mrs. Percy’s perfidy, having been a victim of it myself,” said Mr. Barnum. He seemed in a pleasant humor, despite the unhappy occurrences of the past weeks, despite the betrayals and the bankruptcy and the public humiliation that bankruptcy brought. “I count myself fortunate, though. Tomorrow I leave for home, to return to Charity and my daughters. I’ll start all over again and build another fortune. Having done it once, I know how to do it again. Champagne!” he called to a passing waiter.

“At three in the afternoon?” asked Cobban. That young man, as usual, wore his terribly bright plaid and a very serious face; if Sylvia could make him more lighthearted, he would benefit, I thought.

“A charming idea, champagne,” said Sylvia with a slight reproof in her tone. “I approve.”

“So do I!” said Lizzie with delight.

We had much to celebrate. Mr. Phips was in jail awaiting his time in court to answer for his cruel past as well as the untimely death of his once-friend, Mrs. Percy. Also in jail once again, Cobban had announced just moments before, was wily Edward Nichols, charged with fraud against Mr. Barnum. Mr. Barnum and I were reunited in friendship now that I knew he need not be feared—not as a homicidal maniac, in any case. The universal mind had prevailed and all the connections had been discovered, restoring me to friendship with a man I had previously and wrongly suspected.

Dishes and cutlery rattled in the background; outside the window a group of carolers had gathered and were beginning “Silent Night,” and the afternoon was a very happy one.

“I’ll need new attractions,” Mr. Barnum said. “I hear you are an expert seamstress, my dear.” He turned to Lizzie. “Have you ever considered, say, participating in a stitching contest, perhaps one or two or three other seamstresses before an audience, a kind of marathon of sewing? Always on the lookout for anything that might bring in a paying customer. Happily, there is always more wheat than there is chaff, and people always want to be entertained. I could bill you as ‘The Musical Seamstress.’ Is there any chance you could sew with one hand and play piano with the other? Do you speak any foreign languages?”

Lizzie and I exchanged glances and understanding smiles.

“Mr. Barnum, you are not aware of the circumstances
that brought Lizzie to my rooms in Boston in the first place,” I said gently. “A relative had planned an afternoon party in her honor and Lizzie fled!”

“I am shy, sir,” explained Lizzie.

“Ah, yes, most true gentlewomen are,” he said, and looked at her with true affection. Reaching over the plate of raisin bread, he patted her hand. “My own dear Charity cannot bear a crowd. Forgive my impertinence.”

“There is nothing to forgive, if you’ll just order me a second piece of mince pie,” requested Lizzie.

“More pie, please,” the showman loudly called. “Hogwash, just bring out the whole thing!” Voices buzzed around us and I heard, “Say, isn’t that…” and “That’s Bar…” The recognition made him beam for a moment; then he lowered his voice and spoke as Mr. Barnum, a man wounded by fate but resilient. “I’ve five dollars in my pocket and a loving family waiting for me. I am a rich man,” he said to us in a private tone.

When the pie had been delivered and the champagne poured, Cobban seemed to recall something and turned to me. “You said, Miss Louisa, that was the first coincidence. What were the others?” he asked.

“The other important one, of course, was that Mrs. O’Connor had been hired by Mrs. Wilkinson, who had also just employed Meh-ki. Were it not for that, we might never have found Meh-ki.”

“Believe me, that is not such a strange coincidence,” spoke up Sylvia, the wealthy heiress. “Households always need extra hands for the holidays, and neither Mrs. O’Connor nor Meh-ki is the type to fade into the Bostonian background.
And of course, Mrs. Wilkinson is a competitive soul who hires anyone, just anyone who is available in December, to create that huge Christmas buffet of hers. She pays the highest wages, at least in December.”

We all fell silent for a moment, enjoying the champagne—such a rare treat for me!—and the company. Outside, the carolers were now singing “The First Noel,” and sun shone on the white snow piled around the streetlamps, imbuing the late afternoon with a fairy-tale quality. I was quite, quite content.

I had received letters from Walpole that morning, from Father and Marmee and Abby and Uncle Benjamin, and they were all well and enjoying the holidays. My gifts to them had arrived and had been put on the table, in readiness for opening on Christmas morning. I would not be with them, but they were in my heart, would always be, no matter what changes time wrought.

It is love that binds a family, and that kind of binding can never be undone. All my life when I thought of Father I would remember his long, noble nose nodding over a book and his white hair, once as black and thick as Barnum’s, falling to his shoulders; and of Marmee I would remember her voice, as beautiful as a lark’s, and the gentle patience in her eyes; of Lizzie, I would remember her gentleness, her shyness, and her slender fingers always happily practicing a fingering exercise for the piano. Such memories are immune to time and death, and I knew even then that sometime in the future I would make them immortal, in a story not about jealous femme fatales or faithless lovers but about the joy of family life.

“Of course, the biggest coincidence was that Meh-ki ended up cooking for Signor Massimo,” said Lizzie.

“It appears coincidence, but I believe it was not,” I said. “I had unfortunately terrified Meh-ki when I discovered her in Mrs. Wilkinson’s kitchen. She was already afraid for her life. She had seen Mr. Phips in Mrs. Percy’s sitting room and recognized him the day of the first séance, but probably hoped, rightly at the time, that he had not seen her. But before the second séance, that evening, she heard the quarrel between Mrs. Percy and Mr. Phips. Mrs. Percy asked for money, of course, and Mr. Phips responded with violence. Meh-ki fled, fearing for her life. Imagine traveling so many miles, after so many years, only to end up yards away from the man she most dreaded.”

“But how did she end up with Signor Massimo?” asked Lizzie.

“He was a stranger,” I said, “a visitor who knew little of us and Boston and had not been reading the papers or following the gossip. She thought she could safely hide there. That’s why that was not a coincidence but an act of reason and choice.” Mr. Barnum poured me a second glass of champagne. I sipped very slowly, knowing it would be a long while before I tasted it again. Mr. Barnum had not touched his own glass. He was a teetotaler, yet he would buy champagne for the pleasure of his friends. He was that kind of person.

“The coincidence,” said Sylvia, “is that Louy won the lottery, and you ended up in Signor Massimo’s house. I suppose that Signor Massimo will not continue your lessons? Attempted murder can destroy enthusiasm for meeting strangers.”

“Oh, he has been ever so kind!” said Lizzie, who had just finished her first lesson—it had been decided that the original lesson did not count, because of the many dangerous
interruptions—with the maestro that afternoon. “He said it was a good adventure, except for the headache. It will be a good tale to tell of the Wild West when he returns to Rome. Boston has not been the western frontier for some centuries now, but I thought it rude to point that out to him.”

“Very thoughtful, very thoughtful,” said Mr. Barnum. “Shall we order a bowl of trifle as well?”

“I think there is enough on the table,” I protested, laughing.

“My dear,” he said, understanding I did not wish us to use up every penny in his pocket, “I started with nothing. I am once more nearly at the bottom of the ladder, and am about to begin in the world again. The situation is disheartening, but I have energy and hope.”

“You do not know how disheartening it is to face a pile of sewing,” spoke up Lizzie. “We still have half a dozen spring shirts to sew, Louy. Oh, if only we could afford a sewing machine!”

“A sewing machine,” mused Mr. Barnum. “I suspect many women will be wanting one of the new contraptions.” He thoughtfully scratched his chin. (And now, dear reader, I must jump forward two months into the future, when I received a note from my friend Mr. Barnum, telling us that he had purchased the Wheeler & Wilson Sewing Machine Company and moved it into his bankrupt clock factory in Bridgeport. The note was attached to a foot-pedaled sewing machine wrapped in a bright red bow with a card for Lizzie. Uncle Benjamin, who kept up with his club gossip, reported that Mr. Barnum was expected to earn back his fortune, and more, with the new factory. He did. But still in the distant
future was the venture that would make him famous for all time: Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, The Greatest Show on Earth!)

Let us return, dear reader, to MacIntyre’s Inn on Boylston. I remember the crumb of raisin cake that fell onto Mr. Barnum’s cravat and stayed there the length of that long and happy meal and how, when he finally brushed it away, his eyes gleamed as if he were still a boy not to be dismayed by crumbs or bankruptcy.

“Louy, what was not coincidence in these strange events?” protested Sylvia.

“Very little, as it turns out,” I said. “Perhaps the one true coincidence occurred years before, when William Phips, son of a stable hand, met August Pincher, who showed him a portrait of the girl he loved. Phips, covetous by nature, as are most criminals, decided to take the girl and the fortune for himself, not for love but for greed and pride.”