Genteel Spirits (Daisy Gumm Majesty Books) by Duncan Alice

Author:Duncan, Alice [Duncan, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2012-08-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Extricating myself from Lola’s grip, which felt like a steel trap, I opened the door and peered out to see if Lola had managed to squash Gladys’s nose, break her eyeglasses, or mangle any other body part by her precipitate action.

She hadn’t. Gladys didn’t look any too happy, but she appeared intact. I said, “Sorry, Gladys. Just try to remember whom you’re dealing with.”

“How,” she asked tartly, “could I ever forget?” And she turned on her heel and went back downstairs to resume playing bridge. I envied her, even though I didn’t know how to play bridge.

“It’s happened again!” Lola shrieked at my back. “Why do you delay matters to deal with that peasant?”

I turned and stared at her for a moment. I’m sure I appeared as incredulous as I felt. “Peasant?” I asked at last. “Gladys Pennywhistle is no peasant, Miss de la Monica. I believe your status as a moving-picture star has skewed your view of the world. To the spirits in the Great Beyond and to God Almighty, Gladys is every bit as important as you and I are. Besides,” I added after thinking about it for a moment, “where would the world be without the peasants? They’re the ones who do the work to put food on all our tables, don’t forget.”

“Fah!” she cried, waving my philosophy about peasants and Gladys away with a delicate hand. “It’s happened again!”

“What’s happened again?”

Never blow up at a client. That was my motto, and I stuck to it through thick and thin—and this was getting pretty darned thick. But I had my own personal powers, by gum, and Lola needed them. She didn’t know I was a fake. In actual fact, she believed in my powers to communicate with spirits. In plain English, in other words, the woman was as stupid as a baked brick.

Reaching behind her, she snatched something off her dressing table and presented it to me with the same delicate hand with which she’d waved away the majority of the earth’s inhabitants. “Read this.”

Oh, dear. Another letter. I knew it even before I took the thing from her hand and scanned it. By that time, I could have recited it without going to the bother of reading it, since the letter-writer evidently had only one thing to say to his or her recipients:

CHANGE YOUR WICKED WAYS OR TRAGEDY WILL STRIKE!

Same newsprint. Same inked-in exclamation point.

“Well, whoever’s sending these is definitely not a spirit,” I said. “Do you mind if I keep this? I’d like to compare it to the other ones.”

Lola opened her beautiful eyes wide. “The other ones? Do you mean to say I’m not the only victim of this vicious person’s malice?”

To tell the truth, I was impressed with her phrasing. She was so dim-witted, I hadn’t expected such a coherent sentence from her. I was also as stupid as she, blast it. Monty and Harold would skin me alive if I let on to Lola that Monty was receiving letters, too.

“I mean the other one,” I said in a world-weary tone that I hoped conveyed conviction.

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