Read Fine Spirits [Spirits 02] Online
Authors: Alice Duncan
In fact, the only thing I was sure of was that no spirit or ghost inhabited Mrs. Bissel's basement because such things didn't exist. That struck me as kind of funny, although not funny enough to laugh about.
With a sigh, I left the bedroom, closed the door, inspected the other room, found the same nothing that had been there the day before, and went over to the two women huddled together at the foot of the staircase. As I did so, I tried to think of something worthwhile to do to resolve the situation. No luck.
“Did you discover anything, Daisy?” Mrs. Bissel had her hands clasped in a tight, white-knuckled knot at her waist.
“I sure hope so,” said Mrs. Cummings, who patted Mrs. Bissel on the shoulder in a comforting gesture. The two women treated each other as friends, rather than as mistress and servant. I approved of this egalitarian state of affairs. Not that anyone cares what I thought.
“I'm not sure,” I said in my most mystical spiritualist voice. “Would you mind going upstairs and leaving me here alone for a few minutes?”
Mrs. Cummings's eyes darned near popped out of her head. “No!”
Mrs. Bissel gasped. “Oh, but Daisy, it's not safe! Please don't stay down here by yourself. Anything might happen.”
True. Even I wasn't altogether happy about the prospect of being left alone in her basement. But I knew darned well that if her so-called spirit was Marianne Wagner, I'd never be able to roust her out unless I was by myself down there. Alone, I might be able to persuade her to come out of hiding. The idea of returning her to her parents didn't appeal to me much, but heck, she couldn't live in a basement for the rest of her life, could she?
I said, “Please. I am accustomed to dealing with the spirits. They can be extremely elusive.” And if
that
wasn't true, I didn't know what was. In actual fact, they were so elusive, I'd never encountered one in my life.
“Well . . .” Mrs. Bissel was still doubtful.
Mrs. Cummings, on the other hand, had no doubts at all. “I think you're crazy, Daisy Majesty.”
I offered the two women one of my best, gently gracious smiles. “Recall, please, that I'm familiar with the ways of the Other Side. The spirits won't appear unless they feel comfortable. They don't care to have strangers around them.”
“You're more of a stranger than we are,” Mrs. Cummings pointed out, darn her.
“Perhaps in this case, but in the overall scheme of things, I deal with spirits every day.” I attempted to look modestly competent. Try it sometime. It's not easy, especially when you want to holler at an unbeliever.
Mrs. Bissel and Mrs. Cummings gazed at each other for a few seconds. Then Mrs. Cummings shrugged. Mrs. Bissel let out a huge breath, as if she'd been waiting for approval from her housekeeper. “Yes. I see what you mean, Daisy. We'll just wait at the top of the staircase. Please call out if you need help, dear.”
“I will.”
Boy, I could just imagine
that
scenario. Everybody in the entire household was afraid to go down to the basement even when nothing was wrong. I visualized how they'd panic if the spirit (or ghost) decided to do something horrid to my personal self. They'd probably rush around until they found Henry and send him down and by that time, I'd be dead.
I told myself not to think about such a possibility.
Once I was sure Mrs. Bissel and Mrs. Cummings were out of the way and the door was shut, I inspected it to see if I could lock it from within. I couldn't. After contemplating the situation for a moment or two, I decided it might be better this way. If, say, a mountain lion should happen to leap out at me from a ceiling rafter, at least I wouldn't have to fight to unlock the door to the kitchen--if I managed to get that far.
Not exactly a comforting thought, even though it was slightly better than death by spiritual possession. I'd much prefer Marianne Wagner to a mountain lion or a crazed ghost.
Descending the basement staircase once more, I pondered how to begin inducing a reluctant and assuredly scared-to-death runaway girl to show herself. No serviceable thoughts struck me, so I opted to start with her name.
“Marianne? Marianne Wagner? Are you here?” I pitched my voice to its most comforting, mediumistic tone.
Nothing. Not even a rustle of skirts or an indrawn breath.
I tried again. “Marianne, if you're hiding down here, please show yourself. I only want to help you.” Because I'd met her father and disliked him, I decided it wouldn't hurt to add, “I won't tell your father.” My conscience told me I'd just lied to the girl, but I told my conscience to shut up and be still.
Nothing.
“Marianne? Marianne, are you here?”
More nothing.
“If you're afraid to show yourself, please don't be. I won't hurt you.”
Yet more nothing.
I elaborated, feeling increasingly stupid, “Nobody will hurt you.”
Nobody answered, either. Bother. Either it wasn't Marianne, or she wasn't there, or she was too frightened to let her presence be known, even to me, who was relatively harmless.
On the few times I'd seen Marianne, she'd struck me as a girl who was afraid of her own shadow. If she'd somehow drummed up enough courage to flee her home, she might have exhausted her modest stock of gumption. I could envision her in my mind's eye, huddled somewhere--say on a rafter or behind the furnace--terrified, shaking with apprehension, too appalled by her own mutinous behavior to reveal herself to me.
I stayed down there for another ten minutes or so, trying every persuasive word I could think of to lure the basement-dweller out of her (or his; I still didn't know if it was Marianne) lair. The result of my persuasion was a whole lot more of absolutely nothing.
Darn it, how could I earn a puppy if the person in the basement wouldn't cooperate with me and come out of hiding? Feeling a good deal less than sure of myself, I gave up for the day.
We Gumms are tenacious cusses, however, and I determined to keep trying. If I went down there alone for several days running and talked to Marianne, I might manage to crack her resistance. Or she might just up and get sick of me. Marianne couldn't possibly be as stubborn as I was, mainly because she'd never done anything the least little bit outré before in her life, and I earned my living at it.
Of course, if it wasn't Marianne, whoever it was might get sick of me, too, and heave a knife at me, but I'd take the chance. I was agile. I could probably dart out of the way of a knife, providing I saw it coming and the one throwing it was kind of slow.
Darn it, I was scaring myself.
With a sigh, I walked up the stairs to the kitchen. All of Mrs. Bissel's household staff had huddled together at the door, and every one of them appeared apprehensive when I shoved the door open and stepped into the room. When they saw me, they let out a collective gasp.
Then Mrs. Bissel took a step forward. “Well? What happened, Daisy? Did it speak to you?”
I shook my head. “Nothing happened today, I'm afraid. But I'm not giving up. I'll try again tomorrow if it's all right with you, Mrs. Bissel. I did sense something down there, and I'll need to meditate upon it.” I added the last sentence because I didn't want her to give up first.
“Of course!” she cried. “I know you can do it, Daisy.”
That's more than I knew. Nevertheless, when we chatted over peanut-butter cookies and tea, I made arrangements with Mrs. Bissel to exchange my services, providing they proved successful, for the little male puppy to whom I'd taken such a shine.
I felt moderately better that afternoon than I had in the morning. As Henry motored me home, I noted with approval that the rain had stopped, the sun had come out, and even though the weather was still as cold as a witch's heart, my mood had lifted. Tomorrow I planned to bring a rodent trap to Mrs. Bissel's house. We had one in our basement on Marengo, and it couldn't hurt to set it up. I wasn't sure how I'd sneak it past Mrs. Bissel and into her basement, but I was going to catch whatever was down there or my name wasn't Daisy Gumm. I mean Daisy Majesty.
Chapter Six
I have to admit that my mind took to wandering that night at choir practice as we in the alto section were learning our part. The choir director, Mr. Floy Hostetter, became exasperated with me.
If it came to that, I was exasperated with myself. After promising myself that I wouldn't, I'd managed to conclude positively that it was Marianne Wagner in Mrs. Bissel's basement. My brain didn't seem to have room in it for consideration of another possibility.
Was this my renowned spiritualistic instinct rearing its precognitive head? No. It was because I'd managed to fix on Marianne and was worrying the poor girl in my mind, as if she were a bone and I was one of Mrs. Bissel's bull-headed dachshunds.
“Mrs. Majesty,” Mr. Hostetter said, sounding grim. “Where are you this evening?”
“What?” I jumped a little in my chair and felt guilty. “I'm sorry, Mr. Hostetter.”
“Hmmm,” he said. I knew he wanted to yell at me, but wouldn't, because we were in church. Thank heaven for that. “You failed to come in on the chorus. I fear the other altos follow your lead, so if you do the same thing on Sunday, we're going to sound ludicrously thin.”
“I'm really sorry. My mind's wandering this evening, I'm afraid.”
“I should appreciate it if you would please call it back to the here and now. We have only another half-hour to whip this hymn into shape.”
Mr. Hostetter was not sarcastic as a rule, so I knew he was genuinely peeved with me, and I regretted it. “Yes,” I said. “I'll do that.” And I tried. Unfortunately, the hymn, “I Want a Principle Within,” was one I'd always considered mind-numbingly boring, and Mrs. Bissel's basement-dwelling fugitive kept calling to me.
Her fictitious spirit or ghost
had
to be Marianne Wagner, I told myself. One would have to account for far too many coincidences for it to be anyone else. Sam Rotondo had once told me he didn't believe in coincidences, and I'd told him to tell that to Charles Dickens, but now I found myself thinking the same thing.
Even if it wasn't Marianne, I told myself, it had to be a human being down there. Skunks and mountain lions didn't eat Franco American Spaghetti. The possibility that the can might have fallen out of a trash container and rolled across the floor occurred to me only to be rejected. Even full cans of spaghetti can't open doors, and the empty one I'd found had been lying beneath the bed in a room with a closed door.
Again I considered the possibility that Ginger or Susan had snitched the spaghetti and eaten it in that bedroom so as not to get caught, but I doubted it. Mrs. Bissel was too kindhearted an employer to begrudge her housemaids enough to eat. And if her kitchen was anything like ours, there were always leftovers lying around, calling out to be eaten.
Crumb. I was driving myself crazy. And I hadn't been paying attention. Again. When I guiltily glanced up, I saw that I was driving Mr. Hostetter crazy, too, and swore to myself that I'd forget about basements and sing.
When I left choir practice to return home, we'd managed to whip “I Want a Principle Within” into submission. The hymn was still, in my estimation, as dull as dirt, but at least I'd learned my part. I have a feeling poor Mr. Hostetter was going to need to take a powder when he got home, and it was probably all my fault.
# # #
I woke up the next morning to weather well suited to hauntings. Fog had rolled in overnight, and it enveloped our little bungalow in a thick, swirly, surly-looking gray blanket, through which I couldn't even see to the street in front of the house.
When I staggered out of bed, threw on a robe, dragged myself through the kitchen, dining room, and living room, opened the door, and went outside out to get our morning newspaper, one of our neighbors, Mr. Longnecker, emerged out of the gray mist like an apparition, and nearly scared the stuffing out of me. I managed to smile and wave at him without showing that he'd startled me. Who'd hire a medium who was afraid of the fog? Nobody, that's who.
If I were a ghost, I'd have loved weather like that. Since I wasn't, it only made me feel gloomy, which was a normal state of affairs.
I
really
wanted that little dachshund puppy. If it didn't cheer Billy up, I was almost positive it would cheer me up.
With that in mind, I made short shrift of breakfast, dressed in another one of my spiritualist costumes (a gray wool dress, and my standard black shoes, hat, handbag, and coat), kissed Billy good-bye, and headed to the red car line on Colorado Street. Billy hadn't been pleased when I'd told him I was going to Mrs. Bissel's house again, which was also a normal state of affairs.