Louisa and the Crystal Gazer (6 page)

“Are you writing a story, Louy?” Lizzie sat up in her little bed and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Her lace sleep cap was askew.

“Yes, dearest,” I said, putting down my pen and going to her. “It is still early. Why don’t you sleep longer?” She looked pale. I put my hand to her forehead. It was warm. “Spend the entire day in bed,” I suggested. “Travel has exhausted you.” I tucked the covers around her and closed the curtains to dim the light. I would write downstairs, in Auntie Bond’s dining room. So down I took my pen and inkwell and pages and carefully laid them over a mat of thick newspapers, to protect the fine polished table.

Martha, Auntie Bond’s housemaid, came in. She was an efficient woman of some forty years, round in shape and cheerful in manner. Moreover, she had acquired this position through my mother, who a year before had helped find employment for some of Boston’s unemployed women. “Up so early! I’ll get you some coffee and porridge, Miss Louisa,” she said with great enthusiasm, and before I could say, “No, thank you,” she headed to her kitchen and returned a minute later with a tray for me.

“Eat up,” said Martha, standing over me with hands on hips. I pushed my story aside and ate. Later I would ask Auntie Bond if I might clear a space in the attic for my worktable. Perhaps, reader, it sounded inconvenient, but the thought cheered me. I had my sweetest sister with me, friends about me, and a voice whispering that new story to me. Attics are fine places to work, and the days would pass quickly. I, who had joined the first séance with great reluctance, now eagerly anticipated the second, to satisfy my growing curiosity about Mrs. Agatha Percy.

Two days after Lizzie’s arrival, when I knew she had settled in and was happily practicing an étude in Auntie Bond’s piano room, I left the pile of shirtsleeves in my workbasket and my new story on my desk in the attic (Auntie Bond had
cleared out an old nanny’s room for my use) and took an afternoon off to do some research on the art and performance of crystal gazing. I visited the public library and the private Atheneum. I stopped for a long chat with the woman who sold greenhouse carnations at Constitution Wharf. I visited with a Mrs. McGillicuddy who had been born in County Cork and now ran a day home for children whose mothers worked in the mills. When I returned home, many hours later, I wrote up my notes and thought and thought.

Seven days after the first séance with Mrs. Percy, Sylvia and Lizzie and I were at MacIntyre’s Inn on Boylston Street, enjoying warm glasses of eggnog—without brandy, of course—and waiting for our plates of haddock to arrive. Mr. Phineas T. Barnum was with us, having sent a note earlier in the day reiterating his invitation to an early dinner before our second séance.

Lizzie was impressed by MacIntyre’s white tablecloths, ornate gas lamps, and black-uniformed waiters, and she ate with her elbows tucked closely at her side, rarely even looking up.

“More raisin bread?” Sylvia asked Lizzie, passing the plate to her.

“It is fine,” said Lizzie, timidly taking a second piece. “More like cake.”

“My daughter, Caroline, also prefers cake to bread,” said Mr. Barnum. “We shall order a fine layer cake for dessert, with a cream frosting,” he boomed. “You remind me of her, Miss Lizzie. Quiet, but quick-witted.”

“You miss your family,” I said. “It must be difficult, traveling as much as you do.”

“It is, but Charity is a fine mother and helpmate, when her
health is good. A father must provide for his children, and my business requires that I wander the world seeking its marvels.” He buttered a piece of bread and ate it in three bites, as do men who are often in a great hurry.

“Is that why you wandered into Mrs. Percy’s parlor, seeking marvels?” I asked.

He looked in much better spirits than when we first met in Mrs. Percy’s waiting room, where he had seemed to me somehow devastated, despite his shiny brassiness of behavior. In fact, this afternoon he looked robust and overly splendid, dressed in a bright suit with an even brighter tie, with many diamond rings glittering on his fingers, and checked spats over his shoes. He looked, well, like what he was: a showman who adored attention and intended to get it. He had been snapping at waiters and winking at the coat-check girl since his arrival, and he spoke in a large voice, as if trying to fill an auditorium. He had even gone to the trouble to arrive late and make an entrance. Father would not have approved of this; nor did I.

He did not answer my question and instead distracted us by asking Lizzie if she preferred lemon or strawberry ice, as his other daughter, Pauline, favored lemon. Our fish arrived, and for the next hour we ate well while Mr. Barnum, between generous mouthfuls, entertained us with highly amusing tales of his travels through Europe with General Tom Thumb, describing how Queen Victoria had set the diminutive man on her knees next to her lapdogs, and how King Louis Philippe of France let Tom Thumb, in his miniature carriage, lead a royal procession down the Champs-Élysées. Mr. Barnum was a fine storyteller. He and Father had qualities in common
after all, the strength of their voices and their insistence on being heard among them.

When the plates were cleared and Lizzie was finishing her second piece of cake, Mr. Barnum cleared his throat and gave me a long look.

“Well, Miss Louisa, you seem an extraordinary young person of quick intelligence. What did you make of Mrs. Percy’s séance?”

I put down my teacup and returned his long look.

“I think the trumpet was a clever touch, though easily seen through. It appeared, and then disappeared again, through a hinged panel in the ceiling,” I said.

“No!” protested Sylvia. “Really, Louy, you think you are so clever. Even if there was a hinged panel, someone must be upstairs to pull the lever or whatever, and Mrs. Percy never left the room.”

“Of course,” I said. “That is one of Suzie’s chores, I assume.”

Sylvia’s mouth opened into a perfectly round O of surprise.

“And the phantom I recognized, despite the white powder and gauze,” Mr. Barnum said. “It was Fannie Adelon, a dancer from the Old State Theatre. She can do a bit of juggling as well. She must be down on her luck, participating in such a charade.”

“No!” Sylvia protested again, her eyes wide.

“Sylvia, you didn’t believe any of that silliness, did you?” I asked, giving her a chance to redeem her credulity.

“It could not have been all silliness,” she said gloomily. “I had a message from Father.”

“The handwriting of my message,” Mr. Barnum said. “Now that was a neat trick.”

“You know a Dorcas, then?” I asked.

He paused. “I do. She was childhood nurse to a relative of mine. The relative has proven a great disappointment, and Dorcas, before she died last year, sent me several letters asking for my patience and forgiveness, on his behalf. The handwriting on the slate board was very like.” His voice sounded strained. “Women are softhearted, but business is business.” That aside was something I would consider often, after later events.

“He knew a Dorcas, and that was Dorcas’s handwriting. Does that prove nothing, Louy?” Sylvia asked determinedly.

“Of course it does,” I said. “Mrs. Percy is talented. Sylvia, you are wearing a bracelet now, are you not?”

“You see that I am,” she answered.

“On your left wrist. Because you are right-handed. Women always wear heavy jewelry on the less active hand. Mrs. Percy wore her bracelets on her left hand, and she wrote with her left hand.”

“Meaning?”

“Forgers sometimes train themselves to use the less active hand to disguise their own true handwriting. I have that on expert authority.” The flower woman at Constitution Wharf had been jailed for just that crime in her youth. Moreover, I had taught myself to write with both hands, so that I could write for longer hours without wearying, and remarked how one hand differed from the other in quality of script.

“Mrs. Percy forged Dorcas’s handwriting?” Sylvia put down her fork of cream cake and brooded.

“She is a forger,” Mr. Barnum agreed, “among other things.”

“How did she know about Lizzie’s arrival?” Sylvia demanded somewhat crossly.

Mrs. McGillicuddy of Cork had informed me about that method. “She simply asked questions,” I said. “I suspect she learned of Lizzie’s departure from Dr. Burroughs in Walpole. A simple telegraph to a conspirator in the area would have provided such information, and a woman of Mrs. Percy’s national reputation would have assistants in many places, I suspect. Even so, Sylvia, who does not expect, or at least hope for, a surprise visitor on any given day? Do you yourself await one?”

Sylvia blushed. Had she been eyeing the bachelors of Boston, casting about for a presentable young man who would enable her to fulfill her dead father’s request?

“That would mean that…”

“You don’t have to marry. Not right now. Not unless you seek merely to please Mrs. Percy, who invented that message probably after making inquiries about your mother.”

“I was on the verge of inviting Jimmy Baldwin for dinner with
Maman
, and you know how he slurps his soup and then drinks too much brandy. But if all that happened in Mrs. Percy’s parlor was…” Sylvia paused, searching for a word.

“Humbug,” supplied Mr. Barnum.

“Humbug,” said Sylvia, “then why are we returning this afternoon?”

Writers, dear readers, are often faced with questions of this nature. And there is only one answer: Because it might help my story. But those who do not aspire to live by the pen
often do not understand that simple reply, so I substitute another: “Curiosity,” I said.

“This is all very interesting, and I am disappointed with Uncle’s housekeeper, who seems to spread family news all over New England. But where is my promised third piece of cake?” spoke up Lizzie.

“Y
OU’LL NEVER CONVINCE
me it was all a sham,” insisted Sylvia when we arrived back at Arlington Street. “I have been dreaming of Father, and had conversations with him since the séance. Mrs. Percy has opened a door for me.”

“Then knock harder, so that this one may be opened,” I said when our initial rapping had gone ignored for several minutes.

“My experiences in life have convinced me that real merit does not always succeed as well as ‘humbug,’” said Mr. Barnum, taking the door knocker in his gloved hand and giving it a hard bang. “The public loves to be fooled, and the more you fool them the more they love it.”

Suzie Dear opened the door to us once again. This time she was dressed all in green, like a woodland fairy. The girl seemed to enjoy playing at dress-up. Perhaps her mistress encouraged it, to add further “atmosphere” to the séances.

“You’re early,” Suzie complained. “I ain’t dusted off the sitting room yet. Don’t you dare complain if you sneeze!”

Susie was agitated and breathless. Perhaps we had caught her napping and she had run down the stairs. Her exotic headgear, a lace mantilla rather than a maid’s cap, was askew over her curls, and a gaudy necklace was lopsided over her shoulder, as if she had risen hastily from a semireclining posture.