Genteel Spirits (Daisy Gumm Majesty Books) (40 page)

In a southern drawl copied
precisely
from
that of
Mrs. Winkworth herself, and in a tone an octave or two
lower
than my normal speaking voice, I had the colonel say, “I know who has been writing
the
letters that are causing
so
much distress
for
someone present at this table. Such behavior is
disgraceful
and must cease at once.” I swear, the colonel had more authority in his voice than even I knew I possessed.
Probably Mrs. Hanratty’s dog-obedience classes had helped me there.
“Writing letters like that is beneath
contempt and
all human dignity and
won’t be tolerated by those of us who are on the Other Side
.
We spirits believe
perpetrating such
actions sh
ow an abysmal lack of gratitude and
respect,
are inappropriate, and are, to be blunt, shameful. If the letters don’t stop, untoward misery will ensue
for their writer and those close to the writer
. I can guarantee it.
” I didn’t want Lola
to
go guess who I was talking about, and I certainly didn’t let on that the letter-writer was present at the séance. All I wanted to do was
to
let Lola know that the letters would stop coming,
and to scare Mrs. Winkworth so much that she’d stop sending them
.

I went on in that vein for another few minutes until I heard soft, gulping sobs coming from the other end of the table—from Lurlene Winkworth
, in actual fact—so I had Rolly return. He
added his strong disapprobation
of anonymous letter-wri
ters
to that of the colonel. Then, in order to give Mrs. Winkworth time to get her emotions under control,
I had
him
say
a few words of endearment to me. W
hat the heck,
why not?
When
I deemed the old lady was in possession of her dignity, I slumped in my chair as a signal tha
t my spirit control had left me
and
that
I was limp from the exhaustion of having had my body possessed by various ghosts.
I
t worked.

The lights went on a moment or two later, and I saw
through my slitted eyes
that Monty was supporting his grandmother as she rose from the table on what I
presumed
to be wobbly legs. As well they should wobble, darn it!

It was Harold who joined me at the head of the table, ostensibly to give me support as I rose to my own supposedly wobbly legs. He whispered in my ear as he did
so, “Well done, Daisy! I swear
you scared the pants off the old
woman
!”

“Lordy, I hope not,” said I, also whispering.

Harold didn’t dare laugh, but I heard a suppressed chuckle. “You scared her, anyway. I have a feeling Lola doesn’t have to worry about getting any more letters, and neither does Monty. That
bit
you had the colonel spout about ingratitude and beneath-the-dignity-of and so forth was perf
ect.

“Thank you, Harold,” I said modestly. “I did my best.”

Monty came rushing up to us then. I presume he’d deposited his grandmother in the front parlor or somewhere else appropriate.

“Daisy!” he said.

Harold shushed him, so he repeated in a whisper, “Daisy! You were magnificent! Have you ever considered taking up acting as a profession.”

“Hell, Monty, she already acts as a profession. You saw and heard her yourself.”

Trying to suppress his
own
laughter, Monty agreed with him. “But you
succeeded
. I know you did. You frightened the socks off
Gran
. I’m sure there will be no more letters.”

“Better her socks than her pants,” I muttered.

“Beg pardon?” queried Monty.

Harold said, “Never mind.”

Supposedly supported by the two men—séances
being
theoretically
very hard on the séance-giver—I, too, slowly ma
de my way into the front parlor, only to see Mrs. Winkworth downing what looked to me like a gl
ass of whiskey. My, my. And she
was
a genteel southern lady. I didn’t know genteel southern ladies imbibed
distilled spirits
, especially
in tho
se days of what was supposed to be Prohibition, not that you’d know it
to judge by
the Hollywoodland folks and their bootleggers.

Harold and Monty
sat me down
gently into a chair across the room from Mrs. Winkworth. I was
seemingly
recovering my wits after having performed a
difficult and
valuable service but, naturally, Lola de la Monica never thought of anybody but herself. She came barreling
over
to me even before I’d made myself comfortable, much less had a chance to recover my
purportedly
scattered sensibilities. Because I resented her selfishness, I put the back of a white, beautifully manicured hand to my forehead and groaned softly.

Lola didn’t care about anyone’s sensibilities but her own, and she fell at my feet and grabbed my hand from my forehead. “Oh, Daisy! Oh, how can I ever thank you? You did it
all
for me, didn’t you?
I
know
you did
it for me
!
” And she began to weep all over my beautiful black
silk
evening gown.

Monty, bless him, came over and carried her off. I noticed that Dr. Fellowes was looking upon Lola’s performance with disdain, and I was glad he’d finally come to his senses. I just hoped Gladys wouldn’t find Monty’s gallantry enough to wrest her affections away from Dr. Fellowes and back to
the actor
. When I glanced in their direction, she appeared as disdainful as Dr. Fellowes, perhaps because she disapproved of séances or Lola or both, but at least it didn’t look as though she aimed to leave Dr. Fellowes’s side to assist Monty with Lola.

By the time I wended my way home from the Winkworth estate that night, I felt almost good for a change. I was almost positive Granny Winkworth would produce no more poisoned-pen letters, and I was guardedly optimistic that Lola would continue to behave herself for the duration of the shoot, which was scheduled to end early the next week. What’s more, Billy and I could take Spike to dog-obedience training school tomorrow! That was definitely something to look forward to.

Even better,
the house was dark when I got home
, so I didn’t have to confront Sam Rotondo.

* * * * *

The Pasanita Dog Obedience Training School proved to be as much fun on Saturday morning as it ever was. Hamlet, the great Dane, had not merely the small Tommy to guide and hold him, but Tommy’s father also participated in the Dane’s training. Too bad Shakespeare’s Hamlet didn’t have Mrs. Hanratty to guide his actions, or the stage might have been littered with
several
fewer corpses at the end of the last act.

Fluffy the poodle continued to train her owner, Mrs. Hinkledorn, much to Mrs. Hanratty’s displeasure, but it didn’t look to me as if anything was going to change in that department any time soon.

Spike performed magnificently. Billy, Pa and I had spent a good deal of Friday evening before
dinner
practicing with him, and he would obey any one of us instantly. That morning at breakfast, I think Pa had even taught him to sneeze when he said, “geshundheit,” although I still had to test that theory for accuracy. But it so happene
d that Spike had sneezed, and Pa had said, “geshundheit
” and thrown him a piece of toast. Spike had sneeze
d
again,
again Pa had said “geshundheit
” and again thrown him a piece of toast.

Which just goes to show that if one seizes an opportunity, great things can happen. It was pure chance that had caused Spike to have a sneezing fit that morning, and also pure chance that Pa had said “geshundheit” and given him toast. We didn’t have
long enough
to
find out
if that particular bit of training would stick in Spike’s head
because we had to get to Brookside Park
, but my money was on Spike. He’d do pretty much anything for food, even sneeze. I aimed to teach him to add, subtract, multiply and divide next.

Not that I was a whiz at mathematics, as you might have gathered by
some of my
earlier statements, but Mrs. Hanratty had demonstrated
how her dog
Theodore—
a bulldog
named after the late Theodore Roosevelt because they looked vaguely alike—could do simple math tricks. It isn’t too difficult to train a dog to do anything once you get the hang of it.

Anyhow, class was a pleasure, as it always was. The June day was perfectly glorious, Brookside Park gorgeous, and I enjoyed being around Mrs. Hanratty and all those dogs. Dogs are ever so much easier to get along with than people as a rule.
You
can’t fool a dog with such idiocies as séances and tarot cards or Ouija boards. Dogs know a good person when they meet one, and they can smell a rotter a mile away. That’s my theory, anyway. It was nice to be around creatures who didn’t believe in anything but what they could see, hear, taste and smell. You wouldn’t find a dog trying to communicate with its dead relations; that was for sure.

The rest of that day went well. Billy actually condescended to go for a walk with Spike and me, although he refused to try to walk.

“There’s no point to it, Daisy. My legs just don’t support me any longer, and my lungs can’t take it.”

I wanted to argue, to tell him that if he put a little effort into walking, he might surprise himself, but I held my tongue. Life with Billy had become easier in the last few months, but that was only because he seemed to have given up on himself. I wasn’t about to try bullying him. I’d already talked to everyone I could think of who might help with his problems, from Johnny Buckingham to Dr. Benjamin to Sam Rotondo, and there didn’t seem to be much more I could do for Billy than be agreeable.

So we went for a nice walk, down Marengo, waving at the neighbors as we passed, Spike trotting obediently at heel as I pushed Billy’s chair. Pa went with us as far as the
corner, where aimed to turn. He walked a block farther to
the
little grocery store on
the next
corner, then he
aimed to detour
into the store to see what goodies he might find. His mother, my grandma Gumm, had sent him a recipe for Boston brown bread, and I had a feeling we’d be having baked beans again sometime soon, this time with the official bread to go along with them. Pa said I’d love the stuff. I didn’t argue. I liked most food.

“It’s a nice day,” said Billy at one point.

His words surprised me. Generally when we went out into the world, he griped and grumbled because he couldn’t get up and enjoy it. I didn’t trust this mood of his. Then again, what did I know? “It’s about perfect. Hope it doesn’t get too hot.”

“I doubt that it will. September’s when it gets really hot around here.”

“Too true. I remember the first day of school was always the hottest day of the year, and we had to bring a hundred pounds of books home with us to show the folks.”

Billy chuckled. I stared at the top of his head, which was covered with a soft cap, and prayed silently that this acquiescent mood of Billy’s didn’t mean anything awful.
Then I took myself to task for being dramatic. What could it mean? My mind skipped back a few months to the stash of morphine syrup I’d discovered in our closet, but my heart gave a giant spasm, and I told myself I’d been hanging around Lola de la Monica too much. Billy was only becoming resigned to his fate. That was all.

I wished I believed it.

At any rate, we walked around the entire block and when we got back home, Aunt Vi had prepared lunch for us: chopped chicken sandwiches and a mixed fruit salad—rich folks called this type of thing a fruit compote—t
o go with it,
and
chocolate cookies for dessert. Yum.

The following day, the entire family
walked
to church on the corner of Marengo and Colorado. As I sang the alto part of our anthem for the day,
O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing
—which is the first hymn in all Methodist hymnals, by the way, although I don’t know why except that it was written by Charles Wesley, but
then again
so many hymns were—I looked at my family. They always sat toward the front, so that Billy’s wheelchair wouldn’t get in the way of the departing throng when the service ended and everyone headed to Fellowship Hall for food. We Methodists like our food. I understand Baptists do, too.