Read Online Louisa and the Crystal Gazer by Anna Maclean - Free Book Online Page A

slenderness, that strange brown costume and extremely old-fashioned bonnet she had worn the week before identifying her. I thought she would come up the sidewalk and ring the bell, but she passed by the house. She kept walking, never once looking over her shoulder. She seemed in a hurry.
    How strange. From whence had she appeared?
    Fifteen more minutes passed.
    “Unacceptable,” said Mr. Barnum, rising. He reached for the bell rope next to the hearth. Suzie returned five minutes later, her hair disarranged. She was breathing with difficulty, as if she had been running.
    “Tell your mistress we await her,” said Mr. Barnum in a clipped, impatient tone of voice.
    “Yes, sir,” said Suzie, bobbing another curtsy. But she stayed in the doorway.
    “Well?” roared Mr. Barnum.
    “She ain’t feeling well, I suspect is why she’s delayed,” Suzie said. “Perhaps you all should just go home. She’ll send your money back to you, I’m sure.”
    “How not well?” I asked, standing.
    “She didn’t eat no dinner. Least, she didn’t put the tray back in the hall for me to take away,” Suzie said. “It were a good dinner, too, mashy potatoes and beef.”
    “I will go see her,” I said.
    “Can’t,” said Suzie Dear, gulping. “Her door is locked. Bolted, as well.”
    “Is there a window?” asked Mr. Barnum.
    “Yes, but never used and painted shut for all I know,” said Suzie.
    “Oh! Oh! I sense an evil presence!” shrieked Mrs. Deeds. She swooned to the floor in a heap of purple velvet and black lace.
    “Suzie, fetch water and smelling salts,” I instructed, much put out with Mrs. Deeds. Swooning is such a dreadful distraction, and I felt a tremendous urgency to see what was inside Mrs. Percy’s preparation room. After Mrs. Deeds had been revived and propped up against the red-striped paper of the hall wall, where she fanned herself vigorously and moaned repeatedly, Mr. Barnum, Mr. Phips, and I had a whispered conversation on how to proceed.
    Even as we talked, I took note of where everyone was at that moment: Mrs. Deeds sitting on the floor, her husband next to her, Lizzie standing at the end of the hall, watching us, Sylvia standing next to Lizzie, her arm about her. AndAmelia Snodgrass, missing. The hall was dark, illumined only by dim gas lamps turned low, and our shadows played eerily against the red wallpaper.
    “Which room is it?” asked Mr. Phips of Suzie, who leaned against a wall, her hand playing nervously with a little ribbon tied around her throat.
    “Last down the hall, sir,” she said, “the far corner room.”
    “I will go outside and climb in through the window,” said Mr. Phips. “If it does not open, I will break the glass.” He held up his hand and explained that the glove was thickly padded. “It will take but a moment.”
    “Call us as soon as you are inside,” I said. “Unshoot the bolt of the door.”
    Mr. Phips went out the front door and all was quiet for a long while, except for the heavy, snorting breathing of Mrs. Deeds. There was a trellis on the west side, I remembered, where that far corner room and its window would be. Perhaps Mr. Phips had to pull away rose canes. Mrs. Deeds, still fanning herself with great energy despite the swooning fit, tried to rise to her feet but could not. Perhaps, I thought with little sympathy, it was the weight of all those jewels and heavy chains.
    Eventually we heard glass shatter and heavy footsteps. The bolt shot back and Mr. Phips opened the door and we beheld Mrs. Percy’s red-wallpapered sitting room. It was stuffed with vases of peacock feathers and stands of ferns.
    Mr. Phips stood ashen-faced and trembling next to the shattered glass panes of the French door, for in his nervousness he had broken several to find the one opposite the lock.
    Behind a bamboo-and-velvet screen we found Mrs. Percy,prostrate on her chaise longue, her right arm hanging limply over the side so that her hand grazed the patterned carpet. One pillow