Ancient Spirits (Daisy Gumm Majesty Books) (3 page)

I took the hand she held out to me. “Thank you for coming, Emmaline.”

She shook her head, looking close to tears herself. “I couldn’t stay away.”

Miss Emmaline Castleton had lost the man she loved during the war, too. Only his life had been temporarily saved by—of all unlikely creatures—a German soldier. But that’s another story I won’t tell here. I just wanted you to know that, however disparate our circumstances, the war had leveled social barriers between Miss Castleton and me.

“I understand,” I said honestly.

“I know you do.” She heaved a sigh. “But I suppose I’d best be getting along. Please come to me if there’s anything at all I can do for you.” With a shake of her head, she said, “Although I don’t know what that might be. I certainly can’t erase the past.”

“None of us can,” I said, appreciating her a lot in that moment.

As Emmaline Castleton maneuvered through the crowd toward the front door, Jeanette said, “Who was that, Daisy?”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. I forgot to introduce you.”

“Never mind that. But who was she? She looked . . . rich.”

I almost chuckled. “She is. Very. That was Emmaline Castleton.”

Jeanette’s eyes went wide. “Castleton of the . . .”

“Yes. Emmaline Castleton of the Castletons.”

“My goodness. I didn’t know you knew each other.”

“Yes. Well, we met not long ago and under . . .” I paused. I really didn’t want to go into it all there and then. “Well, it was kind of a surprise to meet her. But she’s very nice.”

“She must be,” said Jeanette
dubiously

How was I ever going to get over Billy’s death? Had Emmaline Castleton managed to overcome the death of her own love, Stephen Allison, who’d died in Flanders about the same time Billy was wounded? Does one ever truly “get over” the death of the love of one’s life? I wanted to ask someone how long the exquisite pain would last and wished I’d asked Emmaline when I’d had the opportunity. Would the intense agony subside one day, leaving me merely aching inwardly? Unfortunately, the only person whom I knew had lost a marriage partner was Sam Rotondo, and I didn’t feel comfortable asking him questions like that. Well, Aunt Vi’s husband had died years ago. Maybe I’d ask her. But no. She’d also lost her only son in the war, and I didn’t want to bring that awful memory to her mind again.

Oddly enough, Sam plunked himself on the sofa next to me so that I was sandwiched between him and Jeanette. Even more oddly, he said very softly in my ear, “You’re going to hurt for a long time, Daisy. You’ll feel like somebody’s ripped out your heart and stamped all over it for weeks and weeks. Maybe months. Hell, maybe even years. Eventually you’ll stop hurting as much as you do right now.”

I turned to gape at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’ve been through it.”

His words gave me pause. “Yes. I know you have. You know exactly what I’m feeling right now, don’t you?”

“Definitely. You’ll never stop . . . missing him, but you won’t feel this bad forever.”

“Thank you, Sam,” I said, meaning it sincerely. “I was pondering the answer to that exact question just now. How long will I hurt this badly, I mean.”

To my utter astonishment, his face flushed. Sam Rotondo. A man whom I hadn’t believed possessed a single human emotion until quite recently.

“Well, I know what it’s like. When I lost Margaret, I . . . well, it was hard to go on, I guess is what I mean. But you do what you have to do in this world, I reckon.”

“I reckon.” Which meant I’d have to get back to raising the dead for rich people eventually. At that particular moment, I couldn’t bear the thought.

“But take your time. You’re not hurting for money, are you? Because if you are—”

“No!” I hadn’t meant to say the word so loudly. Sam’s eyebrows lowered into a V over his nose. “I’m sorry, Sam. But we’re not hurting for money. Thank God,” I added, both because I meant it and because it was the truth.

He maintained a stony silence for a few moments. I heard bits of conversation wafting around us: soft, dignified, subdued. No laughter anywhere in the room. When Billy and I first began “courting”—I believe that’s the appropriate word, even though I’d known I’d marry him when I was four years old—there had always been laughter and good humor wherever we were. How times changed.

“You’ll go back to your regular line of work?” Sam asked eventually. He didn’t approve of what I did for a living any more than Billy had. No surprise there, since the police department tried to keep “fortune-tellers” off the street. But I wasn’t a fortune-teller. I was a spiritualist medium, and there’s a big difference. Neither Sam nor Billy could ever be made to acknowledge the difference, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist.

I didn’t want to think about work, even though I would have to go back to it eventually. Still had to help support my folks and Vi, and my income was greater than anyone else’s in the family. So, yes, I’d go back to work. But I didn’t want to talk about it then.

Nevertheless, I said, “Yes. It’s what I do best.”

“Huh.”

“Don’t ‘huh’ me, Sam Rotondo. You know it’s my work. And it helps people.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if you decide to talk to Billy, let me know, will you? I have a few things to say to him.”

He got up and walked toward the dining room, leaving me gawking after him.

Chapter Three

For some reason, I couldn’t get myself to climb out of the pit of depression that seemed to engulf me. I really tried to do so. Honest.

After about a month or so, I decided I was fit enough to return to work whether I wanted to or not—and I did not. Anyhow, Mrs. Pinkerton had been calling me daily for a week or more, ostensibly asking about my state of mind and health, but I knew she was teetering on the edge of hysteria and wanted me to commune with the spirits for her. I’d known her more than half my life, after all.

So one day, after toying with some oatmeal—not my favorite breakfast at the best of times because it made me feel kind of sick to my stomach
, even when I was feeling perky—the phone rang, it was Mrs. Pinkerton, and I gave up dawdling.

“How are you doing, Daisy?” she asked. She started off all of her telephone calls that way.

Always before I’d said something like, “I’m still feeling pretty blue, but I’ll be up and around again pretty soon.” Darned if I was going to let her dictate my life, even though she’d been my best and most dependable client for years. That day, something inside me seemed to tilt sideways, and I decided what the heck. Nothing else seemed to be taking me out of my melancholy; might as well work.

Therefore, I said, my voice sounding dull to my own ears, “I’m still not feeling awfully chipper, but I’m ready to get back to work if you need me, Missus Pinkerton.”

Her sigh over the telephone wire nearly blew my eardrum out. “Oh, Daisy!” cried she. “I’m so very glad you feel well enough to work again!”

“Is something the matter?” I asked politely. My policy is that one should always be polite to one’s clients, no matter how stupid, foolish, insane or inane they are, and sometimes I thought Mrs. Pinkerton was all of those things. I don’t know how she managed to end up with a son like Harold Kincaid, who was a true, staunch and imminently sane friend. On the other hand, she’d also ended up with a daughter like Anastasia “Stacy” Kincaid, who was a complete and utter poop.

Mrs. Pinkerton sobbed, and I rolled my eyes. Ever since Billy’s death I’d noticed that my temper seemed to be exceptionally short. I told myself that I needed to keep a rein on it or I wouldn’t have any business left. It was good advice, if I could only follow it.

“It’s Stacy!” wailed Mrs. Pinkerton. She was a first-class wailer.

Oddly enough, I felt a little better. Stacy Kincaid had always been a stinker. About a year prior, however, she’d undergone something of a transformation, joined the Salvation Army, given up her wicked ways, stopped drinking and smoking and hanging out at speakeasies and calmed down. I’d been pretty sure the “new” Stacy would crumble eventually. That morning I wasn’t sure whether to be happy I’d been proved correct or sorry that poor Mrs. Pinkerton, an ineffectual parent if ever there was one, had to suffer through Stacy’s ghastly behavior some more.

“Um . . . I thought she was firmly ensconced in the Salvation Army,” I said, trying to lead Mrs. Pinkerton out of her perpetual state of befuddlement and onto coherent ground. This was tough going at the best of times; that day, still mourning my Billy and with a temper that felt as brittle as a dry twig, it was more difficult than usual.

“She’s slipped.” Mrs. Pinkerton spoke the two words in a melodramatic whisper.

Gee, what a surprise, I thought. Naturally, I didn’t say those words. I was a true professional. What I said was, “I’m so sorry. What happened?”

I noticed again that my voice seemed particularly flat and decided to try to put some animation in it, although I felt about as animated as a dead moth.

“She came home last Saturday, and she’d been drinking!”

Big deal.

I knew that wasn’t the correct thing to say and scrambled for more appropriate words. None came to mind at once, so I tutted. Tutting and saying things like, “Mmmm” and “Hmmm” and “I see” and “My goodness” can carry you a long way in the spiritualist business.

“And then,” continued Mrs. Pinkerton in a gasping whisper, “something even worse happened!”

Golly. How alarming. After not yawning with boredom, I decided to try something different after my next tut. “Have you tried speaking with Captain Buckingham? I’m sure he’d be happy to
talking to Stacy and counsel her.”

“Captain Buckingham!” Mrs. Pinkerton screeched. She whined, screeched and wailed better than anyone else I’d ever met. “But . . . but he’s with the Salvation Army!”

“Yes,” I said. “I know. It’s the Salvation Army and Captain Buckingham that led Stacy in the right direction a year ago. Don’t you think he might be of help this time, too?”

“Well . . . I just don’t know.”

It had long been my contention that if Stacy had been rescued by an Episcopalian, Mrs. Pinkerton would have been pleased as punch. The Salvation Army was beyond the pale to a woman like her, however, no many how many good deeds the organization performed. Still, I knew better than to believe Mrs. Pinkerton might actually behave in a sensible manner for once in her life. What she wanted was for me, a phony if ever there was one, to go over to her house with my tarot cards and my Ouija board and my crystal ball and predict a bright future for her pain-in-the-neck daughter, who had seemed to me to be on a crash course with destiny since the day of her birth. The absurdity of people sometimes amazes me.

Generally, while it amazed me, it didn’t annoy me. That day I wanted to reach through the telephone wire and slap Mrs. Kincaid around until she saw the light. However, my annoyance was merely one more impediment that I aimed to swallow. I had a living to earn, after all. My family needed the money I made.

“Would you like me to come over, Missus Pinkerton?” I asked sweetly, bowing to the inevitable.

“Oh, Daisy! Will you? I’d so appreciate it!”

“Of course I will.” If I were any sweeter, I’d gather flies. I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was only nine o’clock. Pa had taken Spike for a walk, Ma and Aunt Vi were at work, and I didn’t feel like rushing around for the idiot on the other end of the wire. “I’ll be able to be at your house at ten-thirty, if that’s all right with you.” If it wasn’t, she could just go hang herself.

I shook my head when that thought entered it. I really had to get my unpleasant impulses under control. Mrs. Pinkerton couldn’t help it if she’d been born rich, pampered and stupid, any more than I could help having been born into the struggling lower middle classes and with something of a brain. The fact that I empathized with bomb-throwing anarchists in those days following Billy’s death, I told myself, could be chalked up to my state of bereavement. I didn’t believe it, but I kept telling myself so anyway.

“Ten-thirty?” Mrs. Pinkerton sounded disappointed. What she wanted was for me to drop everything and rush to her house.

To heck with that. And never mind that I wasn’t doing anything in particular. I refused to rush for someone who preferred to believe in the supernatural trash I dealt out than the realities of life.

“I’m afraid that’s the earliest I can be there,” I said, still so sweet, my teeth were in danger of rotting away.

“Well, if that’s the earliest . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“It is,” I said firmly.

“Very well. Thank you, Daisy. I’m so worried, don’t you know.
I really need you to talk to Rolly for me.”

“Yes. I know.” Shoot, if I’d had a child like Stacy, I’d have been tempted to kill her long since. Or myself. Maybe the both of us. Once the Kaiser got through with Billy, however, children had been out of the question for us. One more bitter pill to swallow. I tried to comfort myself by reminding myself that if Billy and I had been able to have children, we might have had another monster like Stacy, but I didn’t believe it.

“Well, thank you, Daisy. I can’t wait to see you.”