Free Louisa and the Crystal Gazer by Anna Maclean

said. “She used the drug too freely.”
    “Exactly,” said Cobban, smiling at me once again. “Opium can be a tricky business, especially if a weak heart is involved. Someday I imagine they will declare its use illegal and protect the citizenry.”
    “Weak heart?” I asked.
    “Look at her lips, her fingernails, the black shadows under her eyes. Our mutual friend, Dr. Roder, would say that not even the changes caused by death would erase the signs of a weak heart in life.”
    “You have continued a relationship with Dr. Roder?” I asked, interested. The doctor had helped us last winter, when my friend Dot was murdered.
    Cobban blushed as only a red-haired man can, turning almost purple with sudden embarrassment. “I visit his dissecting theater and lectures, yes.”
    “Have you decided to train as a physician?” This young man never ceased to surprise me.
    “No. At least, not yet. But I think a knowledge of the body would assist my work in the Boston Watch and Police.” He walked once more around the chaise where lay the body of Mrs. Percy, touching this, peering at that.
    “It seems a straightforward enough situation,” he said after several more minutes. “But where is the pipe? I wonder.”
    “Pipe?” asked Mr. Phips.
    “Mrs. Percy’s opium pipe. I don’t see it,” said Constable Cobban.
    “It must be here somewhere,” said Mr. Phips. “Shall I look for it?”
    “No. I’ll have one of my men examine the room. For now, shall we go back to the waiting room, and the others? A few more questions and we can all go home.”
    Seated once again in Mrs. Percy’s waiting room, I watched silently as Mr. Barnum tended to the fire and Lizzie served tea. Mrs. Deeds’s teeth were chattering from horror as well as the cold, Mr. Phips had descended into a stony silence, and Mr. Barnum poked at the fire too energetically, sending bursts of sparks into the room and all over Mrs. Percy’s new carpet. The door to Mrs. Percy’s preparation room had been shut once again.
    “Tell me one more time, please, why you were all here waiting?” Cobban demanded, wetting his pencil on his tongue and preparing to write in a little notebook. He was enjoying this; indeed, when I had first admitted I was there to attend a séance, his red eyebrows had shot all the way up his forehead to his hairline. Miss Alcott, sensible, frugal, daughter-of-a-philosopher Miss Alcott. Attending séances!
    “You already know,” I said patiently.
    “Sé-ance,” repeated Cobban, writing slowly. His grin widened.
    “Obviously you have had no experience with the spiritual world or you would not be quite so lighthearted,” muttered Sylvia.
    “I know spirits as well as the next fellow. Judging from the smell in there, Mrs. Percy was no stranger to spirits either—at least not the kind that can be poured,” said Cobban.
    “Oh!” Sylvia stamped her foot. Constable Cobban gave her a long, cool glance and then returned to his notes.
    “Young man, I’ve business to attend to,” protested Mr. Phips, rising. “We’ve told you everything there is to tell.”
    “Please return to your chair,” Cobban said in the same tone of voice with which I have instructed schoolchildren to sit and open their books.
    Mr. Phips sat back down.
    We had gone over the events of the afternoon several times, each time discovering some minutes later that Cobban wished us to tell them one more time. And each time another detail had been recalled. Cobban, despite that foolish grin and mocking manner, was a young man of fine intelligence and cunning.
    “You say that when Miss Amelia Snodgrass walked by, she was wearing the exact same costume as she had worn the week before?” Cobban addressed this question to Mrs. Deeds, who had watched from the window.
    “Exact.” She sniffed. Mr. Deeds, sitting next to her on the settee, patted her arm.
    “Now, the ladies present must inform me, for I am out of my depth here. But do the fair sex like to repeat their wardrobes