Genteel Spirits (Daisy Gumm Majesty Books) (2 page)

Oh, and there was still Sam Rotondo. Sam, a detective with the Pasadena Police Department, was Billy’s best friend. Sometimes I considered Sam my worst enemy, because he’d entangled me in one or two of his cases. And it’s not true
, whatever Sam says,
that said entanglement was all my fault. How could I have known the police would raid that speakeasy? Or that a crook had infiltrated the cooking class
I taught at the Salvation Army?
Of course, the fact that I, Daisy Gumm Majesty, who
not only could but did
burn water, was teaching the class
in the first place
might have been considered some sort of crime, but it wasn’t the sort Sam Rotondo would ordinarily care about.

Sam and I didn’t exactly get along together, if you haven’t already figured that out for yourself. But Sam is neither here nor there—although I preferred him there. Unfortunately, he could generally be found in my very own living room, playing gin rummy with Billy and Pa. I was the only one in the family who didn’t adore Sam Rotondo. Ma, Vi, Billy and Pa thought he was great. Even Spike, who had
once perpetrated an indignity
on one of his big, fat policemanly shoes as a puppy, liked Sam by that time. Oh, well.

P
robably the most exciting thing that happened in my fair
city
of Pasadena
in 1922
was
that
Mr. Montgomery “Monty” Mountjoy, an actor darned near as handsome as Rudolph Valentino, bought his elderly
, genteel,
southern grandmother, Mrs.
Beauregard “Lurlene”
Winkworth, a fabulous home on San Pasqual Street. Both the
Pasadena Star News
and the
Evening Herald
had a field day with that
tidbit of information
.
Supposedly, Mrs. Winkworth, while from an old and distinguished
South Carolina
family, had fallen on hard times, and her grandson had rescued her in
fine
heroic fashion
, thus cementing his
gallant
image as an icon off as well as on the silver screen
.

For the most part, Pasadena was a moral, not to say stuffy, community, where motion-picture people weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms. This was especially true in light of the
William Desmond
Taylor
affair and the constant news of drug and alcohol consumption among the members of the picture community.
All
this consumption was being carried out
in the days of Prohibition
, too
. Huh.

Mind you, I doubted if anyone really knew anything against Mr. Mountjoy, although the press had tagged him as a gay blade and something of a Lothario for some
months
.
The gossip columnists also claimed his fame a
nd fortune had gone to his head
and
that
he was in danger
of becoming positively decadent
in the manner of, say, Nero or Caligula or
another
one of those old Roman guys who bathed in wine and killed people for fun
, in spite of having rescued his elderly grandmother from the clutches of poverty
.

I, however, Daisy Gumm Majesty, understood that the press often got things wrong. In actual fact, Harold Kincaid, my
aforesaid
best friend, was a costumier for a
motion-
picture studio in Los Angeles, and he
had
told me
more than once that
the studios actually hired people to make up fake backgrounds and personalities for their “stars.” Harold had
also
informed
me that Monty Mountjoy was
in reality
a
kindhearted and
relatively sober-sided gent who liked to read
books
and listen to classical music on his radio
or gramophone
most evenings.
What’s more, according to Harold,
when
Mr. Mountjoy
did go
out
on the town
and was seen with a young woman from the pictures, the outing was invariably arranged by his studio.

Gee, you’d think I’d become cynical, knowing all this stuff, wouldn’t you? But I wasn’t. I could still be swept away by a well-made picture, just like everyone else in America.
Heck, probably the whole world was watching moving pictures by that time.
Besides, I earned my living pretending to talk to dead people
for
people
with more money than sense
. If that hadn’t made me cynical by 1922,
after I’d been doing it for eleven years,
I don’t suppose anything could.

In any case, all of the above doesn’t have anything to do with the story I’m about to relate. Well, some of it does, but I’ll get to that later.

You see, Billy,
Vi and I were sitting at the kitchen table one
Friday
morning, eating the delicious breakfast Vi had made—have I mentioned that Vi cooks for us as well as Mrs. Pinkerton? Well, she does. And a good thing, too, since neither Ma nor I could cook for anything—when the telephone rang. Vi looked at me. Billy lowered the newspaper he’d been reading and looked at me
, too
. I sighed, got up from the table, and went to the far
kitchen
wall to pick up the receiver.

“I thought Mrs. Pinkerton was out of town,” Billy
muttered
under his breath. Billy didn’t appreciate having his restful mornings interrupted by the shrill ringing of the telephone. I
couldn’t fault
him
for that
. I also wondered who could be calling, since early-morning
telephone
calls generally came from Mrs. Pinkerton
when she was in particular distress
, and I was pretty sure she was riding a camel in Egypt at the moment.

“Gumm-Majesty residence,” I said into the receiver
, as I
almost always
did
.
“Mrs. Majesty speaking.”

“I need to speak with Mrs. Desdemona Majesty, please.”

Perhaps I should explain that
Desdemona
thing. You see, when I was ten years old and first pretended to
communicate through
the Ouija board Mrs. Pinkerton (then Mrs. Kincaid) gave
Aunt Vi
, people actually believed I
was
speaking
with spirits.
So I let ‘em. I mean, if people wanted to believe that sort of rubbish and I could profit therefrom, why shouldn’t I?
At any rate, that’s
when my career as a spiritualist
began
.
When I was ten years old.
Honest. It’s the truth. Shortly thereafter,
I decided Daisy was t
o
o
humdrum
a name for a genuine spiritualist. Not that I was one of those, but people thought I was, and that’s what mattered. So I selected Desdemona as my nom-de-whatever. Not
until three or four
years
after that
was I forced
by a particularly mean-spirited
English
teacher
to read
Othello
, or
I’d probably have chosen another name. I mean, who wants
to
share a name with
a
famous
fictional murderee, for heaven’s sake?

Anyhow, I said, “This is she speaking.” I did so in my
low,
smooth, soothing spiritualist voice, since I knew nobody’d be
telephoning
for “Desdemona Majesty” unless the call was work-related.

“Mrs. Majesty, my name is Gladys Pennywhistle—”

“
Gladys
?”

Silence on the
other
end of the wire.
For
good reason, as I didn’t generally shriek into the telephone receiver
and just had
.
But I was shocked. Gladys Pennywhistle and I had gone to school together ever since the first grade!

In an attempt to retrieve the moment, I said,
“I beg your pardon, Gladys, but this is Daisy. You know, Daisy Gumm?”

“Daisy?” came uncertainly through the wire. Talk about sober-sided people, Gladys was probably the premier example of the
species
. Very smart, the Gladys I knew had
absolutely
no sense of humor and took everything seriously, even when it wasn’t.
We’d never been close friends
, although we always got along well
.

“Yes. It’s Daisy. Only I’m Daisy Majesty now. Have been since 1917, in fact
, when I married Billy Majesty
, whom you may remember. He was a couple of years ahead of us in school
. My professional name is Desdemona Majesty.”

“Daisy?” she said again, as if she couldn’t believe her ears.

“I’m sorry, Gladys. I didn’t mean to startle you. But yes, I am Desdemona Majesty, and I am the spiritualist for whom you’re looking.”

I decided not to startle her further by telling her I’d made up the Desdemona part of my name.
For all she knew,
I’d been
named Desdemona at birth
and Daisy was a nickname
.

“I . . . I see.” Gladys cleared her throat. “What . . . what an interesting line of work you’re in
,
to be sure
, Daisy. I mean Desdemona
.”

“
Please call me Daisy, and it
certainly is.
How may
I help you?” I couldn’t quite imagine Gladys calling
upon a spiritualist for herself. A
lthough people do change over time, I
couldn’t reconcile the Gladys I’d known in school, and who’d actually understood and enjoyed algebra, with
a person who possessed
the
need for a spiritualist. Personally, I
’d
liked geometry until we got out of the theorem stage and had to begin using algebra again. For my money, algebra is for the birds
.
Not that it matters.

“Um . . . yes. I see. Thank you, Daisy.”

She didn’t say for what. I gave her one of my low, comforting spiritualistic “hmmms.” We spiritualists can make all sorts of gentling noises.

“Well, Daisy, you see . . .”

Poor Gladys seemed to be rather flustered. I probably shouldn’t have
screeched
at her, even though my raised voice
had been
kindly meant. I tried to help her. “Do you or
does
someone you know need my services, perhaps?”

“Yes.” There she was again: the no-nonsense, down-to-earth Gladys I’d known
for
most of my life. “You see, I work for Mrs. Lurlene Winkworth—”

“Oh, my! You
do
?” There I went again. Shoot, I was almost always more composed than this. I expect Mrs. Pinkerton having been away for so long had allowed my spiritualist mystique to rust a bit. “I beg your pardon, Gladys. I’m just surprised, is all. I mean, I just read about Mrs. Winkworth in the
Star News
. About her grandson buying her that mansion and all, I mean.”

“I . . . see.” Poor Gladys.

“I’m terribly sorry to have interrupted you again, Glad
ys. Please go on and tell me why you’re calling
.
”

She cleared her throat. Meticulous Gladys, whom I’d interrupted twice in one telephone call, and we hadn’t even got to the meat of
her call
yet. I tried to suppress my feeling of guilt.

“Yes,” she said eventually. “As I said, I work for Mrs. Lurlene Winkworth, as her private secretary.”

I almost shrieked again. I’d always figured Gladys would become a college professor or something like that. I
’d
never
once
figured her for a private secretary. Not there’s anything wrong with being a private secretary; it’s just that I couldn’t quite feature Gladys
Pennywhistle
in the role. I said, “Yes
?
” with becoming gentleness of tone.

“Mrs. Winkworth desired that I telephone you . . . as Desdemona Majesty, I mean . . . Oh, dear.”

I understood. “Please don’t be dismayed, Gladys. I’m sure you’re as surprised to find that I’ve become a spiritualist as I am to discover you’re a private secretary. By this time in my life, I expected to be married to Billy and rearing a family.” I shot a glance at my beloved, who scowled back at me, and I wished I hadn’t said that to Gladys. It wasn’t Billy’s fault we couldn’t have children. It was the
thrice-
cursed-forever K
aiser’s. Valiantly, I continued
in spite of Billy’s scowl, “And I rather expected you to go into teaching or nursing or something of that nature.”