A Lesson in Love and Murder

by Rachel McMillan

  “Don’t scare me like that. I thought it was something serious. Really, Jemima, you’re shaking like a rabbit.”

  “We need the money, Ray.”

  He waved his hand. “Do you know how many copies of the Hog we’ve sold in the past few weeks, my love?”*

  “There won’t always be these big stories! Besides, I don’t want big stories if they’re going to keep you busy. Even on Saturday afternoons.”

  “I’m just surprised Spenser’s kept you as long as they did. You know their policy on married women working. You only had that job dishonestly anyway.” He grinned at her. “We’re not on the street yet.”

  “We have no telephone, Ray. Some months no electricity if we can’t pay the bill. Your sister needs more and more money recently.”

  “You want me to stop supporting Viola and Luca? Leave them to starve on the street?”

  “Of course not! But I need you to help me figure out what to do. I’ve spent the whole evening thinking, and all I’ve come up with is charging more for cases and taking more cases on.”

  Ray shrugged and said lightly, “Fine. But keep it to jewelry and pocket watches. You know I hate any of the dangerous cases.”

  Jem sipped her tea. It didn’t fortify her the way she thought it would. “But we can’t live on your salary, Ray.”†

  Ray’s eyes flashed. “Jem, we’ll figure something out. Maybe by the time things become truly desperate, Viola will have come to her senses and moved back here, and I won’t need to send money over to America.”

  “Where will she live? With us?”

  “What would be so horrible about that? You’d not take my sister and her little boy in?”

  “No… no… Of course. A few weeks, perhaps, if there were no other options. Oh, it w-would… it might be nice to have them… if they had nowhere to go and… Of course I would!”

  Ray studied her a moment in their silence, and his face softened. “You’re looking pale. You’ve obviously spent too long thinking about this. Don’t worry, Jem. The longer the anarchist groups stay in Toronto, the bigger Hog readership will grow.” He smiled. “And of course my lady detectives have had something to do with the growing readership.” He ran a hand over his face and smiled. “The two of us will be fine. Always. I promise.”

  “What about the three of us?” Her eyes skipped to all four corners of the sitting room, looking anywhere but directly at him. She coughed. “You and I can scrape by, but I am telling you, we’ll have our own family soon. I know you have to keep sending money to Viola. It’s just a… ” She massaged her temples.

  If Ray’s dark complexion could pale, it did so at that moment. “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve shocked you,” Jem said. “Most people find this news happy.” She tried on a brighter voice for size. It didn’t fit. “I haven’t been feeling quite myself and was dizzy on the trolley today. Actually, a bit more than dizzy. I fainted. No, no… ” She pasted on a false smile. “The lovely old lady I toppled on was so attentive and kind. So I stopped in at the doctor, and he confirmed what I had suspected.”

  Ray froze in his chair. “I’ll just find a better job.”

  “You love your job.”

  “I love you more than a job, Jemima.”

  The clock ticked toward midnight. This conversation had gone differently in her head. She’d imagined him taking her in his arms, kissing her proudly, flitting about her with concern, making sure she didn’t exert herself, that she was rested and comfortable. Instead…

  “Oh, Jem, what did we get ourselves into?” He stretched his hand out to her. “Penniless Reporter Marries Bachelor Girl Detective! And he doesn’t even have two cents to rub together. You’d be better off if I had left you where I found you.”

  “In trousers outside the Elgin Theatre? Ray, please!” When he didn’t say anything, she feigned pleasantry, trying to mask her disappointment. “I think I’ll go to King Street for the night.” She was sure he’d break into her sentence, but he remained quiet, watching her. “Merinda sent Kat over earlier about a client,” she lied, “and I think it would do my mind good to focus on a case.” She rose.

  “Jemima, sit back down. I don’t want you to think I’m angry with you. It’s late and… ”

  “There was never going to be a good time, was there? With your always running off for a story and the trolley explosions and worrying about Viola and my losing a part of our income we need.” She pulled her shawl tightly around her. “It’s been weeks since we actually talked about anything. I know you’re worried about Viola. But I worry about us too. We pass each other. You come and I go. And I miss you.” Her eyes, filmed with tears, couldn’t see him anymore. “I’m going to Merinda’s to help with this client. And you can stay here and write about the trolley explosion or call your beloved sister from a dead telephone!”

  She bounded up the stairs, slammed the bedroom door shut, threw clothes fiercely into her case and slammed it shut, and then stomped back downstairs and to the front door.

  She stopped. “Rats,” she hissed. She ducked back into the sitting room, where Ray was staring blankly at the wall. “Do you have a nickel for the trolley?” she asked sheepishly.

  He grabbed her wrist gently and pulled her into his lap, tightening his arms around her a moment. “Mi dispiace, beautiful Jem.”

  “Me too,” she said with a sigh.

  “I don’t want you to go to Merinda’s like this.”

  “Ray, I just want to understand you. But I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

  “It’s my fault.” He looked at her kindly. “I try to protect you by not telling you what is happening. How I worry all the time for Viola. How my job upsets me. How I worry about you and Merinda.” He studied her intently for a moment. “And sometimes I think it would be easier if you were more like women who enjoyed working with flowers or lace. Crocheting doilies. Watering plants. But then I feel guilty. Because that’s not who you are.”

  Jem grabbed his hand. She couldn’t speak.

  “I can’t give you any of the things you deserve. We don’t even have a working telephone.” He touched her cheek. “You’re so fair and sweet, Jemima. You deserve some wonderful fairy-tale ending. I want more for you than what we have.”

  “We have something better.” She tightened her grip. “Fairy tales just end. The excitement of turning a page and not knowing what happens? That ends. You never get to see the ever-after. Don’t you see, that’s what we’re in right now! The after. It’s a beginning and a constant adventure.”

  “But we keep missing each other.” He nudged at a crack in the wood floor with his shoe.

  “We don’t need to be in the same room for us to be together. You’re everywhere in this city for me. Every time I see something interesting or fresh or new! I just want to tell you about it. I want to turn back the clock to before these anarchists came when we could talk and spend time together.”

  Ray’s eyes bored into Jem’s. “Lately, I try to cram everything into a few sentences because I am not sure when I will have a conversation with you again. And what I don’t say I keep to myself because I don’t want to upset you.”

  “But I want you to upset me if it lets me understand you a little more.”

  “And I want to know that Viola and Luca are all right so my head isn’t turned from you,” he explained.

  Jem felt lighter when she uncorked all the words that had been building inside. “I understand that. But I also fell madly in love with the man so invested in his sister’s well-being.” Her fingertips were itching to smooth his hair back from his face, so she gave in to the inclination. “I know you’re happier when she’s happy. But I need you to be happy for us.”

  He blinked at her a few times. “I am happy, but still a little… ”

  “Surprised?”

  “Yes.”

  “Unsure?”

  “Yes, that too.”

  “Excited?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “Yes.”

&nbs
p; “A little scared?”

  “Yes!”

  “Me too.” She kissed his forehead. “Let’s be all those things together.”

  She rose and smoothed her skirt.

  Ray reached into his pocket, took out a nickel, and handed it to her. “Jem, you’re forgetting something.”

  Jem shook her head. “I thought I’d make a fresh pot of tea instead.”

  * * *

  *The last few weeks had been alive with news stories, and the Hog was always first on the scene. The radicals and anarchists, the rallies and explosives were doing wonders to inflate Ray’s meager salary.

  †The astute reader may wonder as to this unconventional matrimonial setup, but with Jem’s attentiveness to Merinda’s cases and so much of Ray’s salary supporting his sister, it stands to reason that theirs would always be a union fortified by two incomes.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Deep in the Canadian wilderness, when winter is first beginning to roar in, a lantern swings, and your bedroll of scratched wool is stretched under canvas, secured by four pegs, barely covering the ice-hard terrain. Near, the smell of pine and the barrels of smoke. Cold, sure, but the landscape full of indescribable smell of promise and light and fresh, cold air. A campfire by which to remember stories or sing a few ballads of years past.

  Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson, Guide to the Canadian Wilderness

  Benfield Citrone would rather have been tracking a wounded moose. At least then he’d have a chance of finding it. Benny could use the constellations as a map, the sunlight on his cheek to signal his next turn. But Toronto was smoke and sparks, steel and progress. He preferred the rainbow fringe of the northern lights, the sound of ice crinkling under snowscapes, refreezing after a tease of thaw through the frozen span of winter. Snow was a pillow and the stars were bright, bold, frigidly clear sentinels throughout the unending sky. The rattle of the stove, the wind whining through the crevices of the cabin. The friction of his snowshoes crunching through the hills, and the unexpected beauty of a lynx or an owl, his only company, while he ate beans and drank watered coffee and remembered the past.

  Here the neon lights of overhead billboards and the pinging tunes from a nearby nickelodeon backed horns and sirens and squeals and laughter. Every sound battled for seniority, and its symphony was a dissonant clang. Benny watched the moon creep over the tall buildings and settle above the rising skyline. The day had been warm, but the evening air bit him with a sudden chill. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets as he mounted the steps to the Empire Hotel.

  Money exchanged hands—neatly folded bills and a few coins. The matron pressed a key into Benny’s outstretched palm. “Dinner is at eight, breakfast at seven. You see to your own noonday meal.”

  Once inside his small room, he scooped water trickling from the faucet and splashed it over his face, grateful he had brought his own towel. A mirror hung above the basin, and he inspected the purple circles around his eyes and the soot and dust from the moated gutters on either side of Yonge Street darkening his blond hair.

  Benfield Citrone might have been handsome had his cousin Jonathan not broken his nose with a hockey puck when he was ten. Now his chiseled features were offset by a nose that had borne the brunt of a slapdash swoosh of a stick and a puck ricocheting through the frosty air.

  He settled on the creaky bed, watching the lights of the city through the blinds. Good, sturdy springs. This was an old, worn—but clean—establishment. He’d been in worse. He reached into the pocket of his trousers and removed a creased photograph. He placed it in the edge of the mirror, and Jonathan’s handsome, open face stared out at him.

  The lads in Regina told him the best place to find investigators was in the advertisements at the back of newspapers. He’d bought one from a newsie on Yonge Street, and now he spread it open on his bed.

  The Hogtown Herald. The front page was emblazoned with theories about the trolley explosion. The headline and ensuing article brought up the possibility that the tragedy was planned and not a result of faulty wiring.

  It all seemed too familiar to Benny. He wouldn’t dwell on it. Instead, he flipped to the back and set to looking for any advertisement that might lead him to a private investigation firm.

  There—

  HERRINGFORD AND WATTS

  DETECTIVES FOR CONSULTATION AND HIRE

  REASONABLE RATES

  NO PROBLEM TOO BIG OR SMALL

  CONSULT 395 KING STREET WEST

  He tore out the ad, placed it beside the basin, and fell onto the unturned blanket, still in cotton shirt, suspenders, and pants.

  Sleep never settled around him. The rickety thrum of the streetcars clanging over the tracks and the slurred music from the tavern below did little to lull him to slumber. These noises were no substitute for the song of the crickets or the breeze tickling the grass, nor the smell of pine trees wafting in under the flap of his tent, stirred by the wind.

  The next morning he gratefully accepted the eggs, rolls, and coffee provided in the tavern before setting out to find King Street West. Despite the directions the matron had given him, he was soon certain he must be on the wrong path. How could it take so long to travel between two dots that were practically adjacent on the map? The trolley jostled along, starting and stopping, and finally, after an age, the conductor cried “Spadina! This stop Spadeeeena!” Benny hopped down, squinting through the blaring sun as he made out several similar townhouses squished together and sloping back from the sidewalk.

  The noise was less insistent than at Yonge and Gerrard, but the workers were just as industrious. Trenches lined either side of the road, deep as moats, as men drenched by the sun worked their shovels up and under. “Toronto is going to be something,” the innkeeper had said proudly that morning. But Benny thought it was something already—something too different from the life he knew. It chafed against him, and he tugged at his collar. Finally, his eyes made out the number from the advertisement, and he slowly ascended the stairs.

  A housekeeper with a kind face and mousy hair ushered him into the foyer of a cozy townhouse, taking his hat and coat. He immediately made out sounds from beyond the open french doors of a nearby room.

  “Sorry I was late,” one voice said. “Trouble getting a streetcar this morning. Everything is on a slower schedule after the explosion.”

  The voices trailed off, and he lost them for a moment.

  “It doesn’t matter that you lost your job. You have this one.”

  “This doesn’t provide a consistently steady income.”

  The housekeeper disappeared for a moment through the open door and then returned. “They’re all ready for you, sir. I will see to tea. You just go through into the parlor.”

  Benny followed a trail of whispers through the french doors, where two women sat on either side of the fireplace.

  The first was striking, with bobbed blonde curls that framed chiseled cheeks and a strong nose. Her eyes, when they met his, were the most startling green he had ever seen.

  The other woman was traditionally pretty, with big blue eyes and chestnut tendrils tickling the sides of a porcelain face. She smiled politely even as her companion leaped to her feet. The blonde woman was wearing trousers, seen in much clearer view as she strode toward him, stretching out her hand.

  “Merinda Herringford,” she said.

  “You’re a woman!”

  Merinda Herringford’s eyes were magnetic. He kept hold of her hand as she studied him. She didn’t immediately pull away, but looked intently at him. “This is my colleague and particular friend, Jemima DeLuca.”

  “A-and where’s Watts?” Benny asked, looking at the newspaper clipping.

  “Oh, that’s me!” the brunette said in a light voice. “At least, it was. I’m married now.”

  “But your advertisement… ”

  “Yes! No problem too great or small!” Merinda said.

  “Herringford and Watts. Detectives. But you’re women!” he said again.

  “Per
ceptive. We’re also detectives.” She narrowed her eyes. “Come, have a seat and tell us what brought you so far from the Force.”

  Benny gaped. “How did you know?”

  “Your hair. It’s cut with military precision, but there’s a decided line running at the back of it, embedded just behind the ear line. Clearly not from one of the berets worn by soldiers. Rather, a Stetson. Of course, you could be a cowboy, but then you wouldn’t stand with your feet just slightly apart and your hands behind your back.”

  “A Mountie!” breathed Mrs. DeLuca, blue eyes aglow.

  Benny was visibly impressed. Perhaps this lady detective would be the solution he was looking for. “Benfield Citrone, Royal Northwest Mounted Police, late of Fort Glenbow. I’m here because my cousin knows how to blow things up.”

  Merinda clapped, while Jemima’s jaw dropped.

  Benny backtracked. “Er… perhaps that wasn’t the best way to begin.”

  “That was the perfect way to begin! You have our full attention! A Mountie with a cousin adept in explosives! How exciting!”

  Benny cleared his throat. “Well, Miss Herringford… ”

  She cut him off with a restraining hand. “No. None of that. I am Merinda. My friend is Jem, and since I cannot possibly say the name Benfield without snickering, we will need a solution for you.”

  Benny was ruffled. “Now, see here. I am named for the greatest Mountie who ever lived.* I am named for… ” But he was never given the chance to explain further as Merinda did indeed snicker. So he said, “My friends always called me Benny.”

  “Mrs. Malone!” Merinda said to the housekeeper, who had just come in with the tray. “This is our new client, Benny Citrone. Can you bring some Turkish coffee?”

  Mrs. Malone set down the tea and shortbread and returned to the kitchen at Merinda’s bidding.

  Benny used this interruption to clear his throat. “Ever since we were children, my cousin Jonathan Arnasson and I were going to be Mounties. Our grandfather fought with Sam Steele in the Boer conflict. But it started long before that.