“Oh, Jem, it was awful. Jones!”
“Jones? That young officer? What happened?”
“In… in a… They blew up a car. Jasper’s car! He had only gotten out of it moments before… they… ”
“The anarchists?” Jem’s grip on Merinda’s hands tightened as she read between the lines. “They blew up a police automobile?”
Merinda nodded. “I was so close to the blast, and then… then… ” Merinda ran her hand over her eyes. “Oh, Jem, I have never seen Jasper like that. He found me and reamed me to high heaven. He told me it was my fault Jones was dead.”
“How can it be your fault?” Jem asked gently.
“He was angry about that interview I gave for Skip’s article, and he had Jones stay late on his shift and… I didn’t get it all because he was so furious. I have never seen him so angry.”
“He was just in shock,” Jem soothed as Merinda tightened her own grip on her hands. “He was scared and in shock. Such an ordeal.”
Before she could console her further, the doorbell chimed and Mrs. Malone admitted Benny Citrone.
Jem watched Merinda spring to her own chair by the mantel, wipe at her eyes, and flounce her hair as Benny was relieved of his coat and hat.
“I heard about that young officer,” he blurted. “I am so very disheartened. I went right to the scene when I heard about it, but by then most of the remains of the car had been cleared and the police were very stringent as to who got close to the damage.”
“Any sign of Jonathan?” Jem asked as Mrs. Malone set the tea service down with a warm smile.
Benny shook his head. “If you knew Jonathan”—he looked from one to the other, his eyes pleading—“you would know that this isn’t like him. Just to end life like this? He couldn’t even take a slingshot to a squirrel in a tree. Not for random sport. I can’t imagine him waiting and wanting to see the needless deaths of so many people.”
“Don’t be daft, Benny,” Merinda said cuttingly.
“Merinda!” Jem was appalled. “My apologies, Benny. Merinda is quite shaken.”
“No! I am seeing clearly,” said Merinda. “Benny, your cousin is an assassin. A young friend of ours was killed today. Officer Jones. It could have been Jasper that his horrible bomb blasted, and I think you are still under the delusion that Jonathan has fallen in with the wrong crowd. This is more than hanging out with the boys who smoke in the dormitories and get detention. This is murder, and it hit a little too close to home tonight.”
“I hoped that maybe there was some mistake. Maybe there was something that didn’t add up and that Jon… ” He couldn’t finish his cousin’s name. He rose slowly. “I came to let you know I had attended the scene and could find nothing of Jonathan there. I suppose that makes me more hopeful than before. There is a slight chance that all of my assumptions are incorrect and he is not a part of tonight’s devastation.” With nothing left to say, he took his leave.
The next time the doorbell chimed, it was Jasper. Jem’s heart broke at his mournful, white pallor and soot-stained face and hands. She dragged him into the sitting room.
“Jasper, I am so awfully sorry.”
Jem noticed that Jasper had trouble looking at Merinda, who was studying the empty hearth with consternation across her face.
“Would you like something to eat? Some tea?”
Jasper shook his head. “I came to tell Merinda that they don’t think there was a specific police target for the blast. That we theorize this particular automobile was chosen because it was parked in plain view and that J-Jones”—he tripped on the name—“had accidentally left the passenger door unlocked, making it even easier for them to enter and rearrange the wires.” He continued while looking at Jem and never once glancing in Merinda’s direction. “The wiring was such that it should have exploded the moment the door on the right was open, but it was faulty.” Jasper wiped his hand over his face. “I asked Jones to drive me there. He had just left his shift, and I didn’t want to be responsible for the automobile for the entire day. If she”—he nodded in Merinda’s direction—“hadn’t said what she said, I wouldn’t have impulsively dashed after her.”
“Jasper,” Jem said sorrowfully, “it’s horrible what happened to poor Jones, but it isn’t your fault. Nor is it Merinda’s. Nor Benny’s. Yes, yes,” she said, noting his raised eyebrow. “Benny was here before you, and he feels just as guilty. We have to be able to accept that a terrible thing happened to someone we cared about. And we should spend our energy not in anger with each other but in pursuit of a solution… before more innocent lives are taken.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A bachelor girl is not constrained by the domestic duties that take priority in the day of a married lady. With all of the additional time available to the single woman, she should spend her day in pursuit of activism and charity. Funds for missions and afternoons at orphanages or soup kitchens are some ways in which the Bachelor Girl can demonstrate a softened heart toward the needy.
Dorothea Fairfax, Handbook to Bachelor Girlhood
Staying with Merinda, Jem found it far too easy to fall back into their routine of old. It was second nature to have Merinda at the helm—bellowing for coffee, ordering more pastries, leaving her shoes and coat on the floor in the front hallway. There was a relaxation and familiarity even around Merinda’s frenetic ways. Her recent worries abated somewhat in a sitting room now awash with newspapers and periodicals. Who had time to fret about finances when bombers were on the loose? Only hours after showing Jasper to the door, they had diagrams on bomb building and every leaflet or article Kat and Mouse could find on Emma Goldman. With Jones’s untimely death, it seemed more adamant than ever that they find a solution—and Jonathan.
Now the girls sat on either side of the hearth for a short reprieve before they set out to a meeting Merinda had learned of from the intoxicated man at the rally two nights before. It was too warm for a fire, of course, and the evening stretched long and lemony outside the open window. They were quiet, considering the activities of the day. After Jasper had departed, they’d spent the late morning and early afternoon hours scouring the Ward, finding pockets of anarchists rampant in the immigrant community, Jem trying to keep pace even as her head still smarted.
“Remember the man with the funny moustache?” said Merinda. “ ‘If you cannot overthrow oppression in a great country like Canada, then the journey here is not worth the hardship.’ These men are so much like DeLuca. But he never joined them.”
“I think he always ascribes to a higher power. God. The law,” Jem said.
“You mean he submits. But look at these men. They’re saying, ‘We have a voice, even if our English is broken. We deserve a life better than the one you have doled out to us.’ ”
“You’re in a passionate mood, Merinda.”
“I understand them, Jem. I want to fling off every restriction I run into as a woman. I identify with that need to be able to find a platform and speak and yell!” She pumped her fist a little and then fell into the safety of her wingback chair. “You wouldn’t think it. A woman like me with an education and my father’s money at the drop of a hat. But I identify with them, Jem. I want my independence and my voice too.”
Jem watched Merinda even as her mind trailed back to the house in Cabbagetown. Ray often promised to get his friend Lars to fix the window in their bedroom. It never quite closed shut. When she reminded him, he’d wave a hand and say he had forgotten. But with the baby coming, they’d need to fix the window once and for all, or else that cold wind would whistle through.
She sat up suddenly, wondering why her thoughts had drifted to the window.
“I know that, Merinda. But some of what they do is dangerous.”
“If people aren’t going to listen to you any other way, sometimes you have to speak louder than words.”
The pen is mightier than the sword. It was something Ray said quite often when flurrying about in his journal or reading over a draft of a column for the H
og.
The girls studied the pamphlets given them at the rally, not wanting to miss any details that could connect the dots between the People’s Labor Movement, the trolley explosions, and Jonathan Arnasson.
“M.C. Wheaton says that as important as chasing after a mystery are the hours spent planning and mapping out your steps.” Merinda clapped her hands. “We’re in the planning stages!” Jem found it difficult to focus as she droned on about this and that and whether they should telephone their friend Nicholas Haliburton in the States for information on Goldman’s rallies there. Kat and Mouse had supplied recent Globe articles on the Detroit and Calgary bombings.*
“It’s just as Benny said.” Merinda said happily, slapping an open newspaper. “Precise. No one might even expect they were anything but accidents.” She bounced a little in her chair. “It stands to reason that this Jonathan—no matter his criminal tendencies—would prove quite efficient at whatever task came to hand.”
“And what makes you think that?” Jem asked.
Merinda cleared her throat. “On account of his being related to Benny who, as we have learned, excels quite readily at nearly everything. Why, look at how he patched up your head the other night.”
“Just because someone in a family is proficient at something… ”
“I deduced, Jem.” Merinda said shortly. “Just… just from the way he talked about him. Another proficiency! He expresses himself quite well. Relays all facts in the most interesting way and with quite confident voice and manner.”
Jem rolled her eyes, slowly rose, and crossed the Persian carpet to the bureau. She dramatically opened their well-worn copy of M.C. Wheaton’s Guide to the Criminal and Commonplace and read aloud: “The first rule of deduction is to never, under any circumstances, develop romantic feelings toward your client. They are not only extremely unprofessional, but they make it impossible to clearly deduce all of the facts at hand, nor assess with a clear head and a cool eye the data needed in pursuit of a resolution to your mystery.”
Jem finished, cleared her throat, and stabbed Merinda with a knowing eye.
“Oh, hush up!” Merinda said.
The short stroll from Jem’s own house to the meeting place was punctuated by Merinda’s unending praise of Benny. Jem stifled a smile. They had little knowledge of Citrone, but the few dropped bread crumbs seemed to be all Merinda needed to expound on his indomitable skills.
“If Sherlock Holmes met Jack London,” Merinda said to Jem “That would be Benny Citrone.” Merinda had recovered some of her indefatigable spirit, and Jem smiled with the jaunty breeze and mellow sky. Jem started to ask her how she had made all of these assumptions so quickly, but stopped herself, knowing that Merinda would respond with something about her keen powers of observation.
Jem breathed in the mingling scents and sounds around her, brightening with her unadulterated love of the city. She drank in the townhouses standing sentry and the overgrown gardens. A familiar tapestry: children skipping over unpaved roads in a squealing game of stick hockey, women looking lovingly under the canopies of their prams, men pushing wheelbarrows or hoeing at uneven earth. Jem would raise a family here. She had become more aware now of women whose arms held tiny bundles with eyes peering out and around, whose children shyly tugged at their skirts. This would be her soon, trying to make a life and a home amid uncertain conditions, sputtering streetlights, and the chugging progress of their upturned city, construction dusting and gutting every corner.
The trolley incidents had resulted in a strange kind of leftover friction. It thrummed through the streets, tripped over the messy thresholds and beyond the gaslights, and settled over the work-worn faces of the immigrants.
The People’s Labor Movement had more supporters than ever, extending the excitement of Emma Goldman’s words. They held office at a dingy and inconspicuous teahouse, only called so because its front sported mismatched pots and chipped cups. But the beaded strings partitioning off the back room led to a dank, mildewed meeting place.
An Asian woman with overrouged cheeks smiled with gapped teeth. Jem and Merinda gave their sweetest smiles as they were ushered into a room rank with the smell of incense and cheap cigars.
It was a fine thing that Jem’s surname remained Watts in her association with Merinda Herringford. The anarchist group they infiltrated would not have taken kindly to a woman associated with Ray DeLuca, a man they had several times attempted to press into their group and services to no avail. She heard Ray’s name several times as pamphlets and leaflets were distributed, most of them in languages she couldn’t read.
The meeting commenced when a man named David Ross was introduced and took the center floor.
“You’re here for our common goal!” His voice was a bellow. “To put Goldman’s words into action. We submit to no man. We will, however, submit to our common cause. Toronto is held under the power of men who would feast and remain fat while we starve in the gutter at their feet—hungry, tired, and weak. Our friends in America, like us, are joined by the conviction of Mrs. Goldman’s booming voice, and friends, they need us if they are to ripple a sound that will be heard across our great nations.
“Like my own, yours is a fledgling nation, just beginning to find her identity, and she cannot afford to wallow under the power of men who see a vision that would keep anyone—immigrants, children, the sick, or the poor—from their fair chance at survival. Equality! A common social goal is our collective aspiration! And we are not alone. Friends, I beseech you to follow our cause. Right now, droves of our brothers are inspired by former President Theodore Roosevelt. At an upcoming convention in Chicago, he will attempt to win followers with his new Progressive Party. Roosevelt stands for resilience. Not two months ago, in the same big city he tasted defeat and President Taft won the day.”
Ross expounded on the failed attempts at an uprising of any sort during the American Democratic and Republican conventions of the early summer. Supporters of each candidate had pressed for change, but the time had not been right for the upheaval that was coming. “The time is coming to shake the future,” Ross said passionately.
At that, Merinda interrupted.† “Why should we care so much about what change is happening in America when clearly our own city is sinking under the weight of Montague’s corruption?”
Ross picked up his theme more loudly. “Because you look to their freedom. You are colonials in service of our Queen. When the British sparked a fight over in South Africa, you blindly went. America is its own country now. They had no need to join a fight that wasn’t their own. You can learn a few lessons from your friends.” He stopped for water, and when he picked up again, it was about Roosevelt.
“Our American brothers are using Roosevelt’s platform as a means to elevate our voice and our cause. When history records this season of change, Roosevelt’s name will be on every page. The men who will rally to him are the men we need for our cause. Roosevelt is a man of battle and precision—of pomp and circumstance. But he is also a man who is rough around the edges, without the smooth finesse of his former friend and now rival. He is the perfect man for the moment.”
Merinda thought Ross a man at odds—a man who was so aligned with Goldman but so amused by Roosevelt? What kind of anarchist was he? She confronted him again and again while the other members of the audience snickered at her boldness and he entertained her with a skeptical eye and his head cocked to the side. Jem covered her mouth with her handkerchief so as not to blurt a laugh as Merinda surmised, “So because we’re a fledgling country without our own agenda, we are throwing our support to the People’s Labor Movement in Chicago to blast the convention with this Roosevelt?”
Ross raised an eyebrow. “You certainly have us all figured out already.”
“I am playing devil’s advocate,” Merinda said smoothly. “A cause with innocent blood on its hands?”
“None of the great change in the world is ever purchased without blood,” Ross said smoothly. “Not unless completely necessary. We
will barge in”—he used his outstretched hands to measure an imaginary canvas—“with words and precision. If we need to make a blast, we will, but only in pursuit of our cause falling on ears that will listen and take heed to our growing movement.”
Minutes ticked on and Ross’s voice ebbed and flowed. He spared a moment in Merinda’s direction now and then, but she remained silent. Finally, he finished. Merinda and Jem waited for an opportunity to speak privately with him.
“I must confess to being impressed by you.” He took Merinda’s hand and shook it with strength. His grip on Jem’s own hand was gentler.
“We’re here because we are interested. And because our association can be far more than merely symbolic.”
“How do you mean?”
“You need your best people in Chicago, and we”—she waved between Jem and herself—“are your best people.”
“You’re women.” He focused on Jem appreciatively.
“That we are,” Jem said.
“There’s a lot going on in Chicago,” Ross said, scratching his chin. “It’s dangerous work even for a man. Nonetheless, my men and I mean to seize this opportunity and make the convention our platform. Roosevelt will never forget that moment as long as he lives.”
Merinda wondered if Jonathan would be there. According to Benny and the papers, he seemed to follow this ideology. Perhaps Ross intended to blow up a few trolleys in Chicago. If they went, she could stop them before it happened. The wheels in her head sped as the drumbeat of her heart thrummed.
“Will Jonathan Arnasson be among your group in Chicago?” Merinda blurted. Ross didn’t immediately answer, but Merinda saw a slight flicker in his eyes.
“We’re no strangers to dangerous business,” Jem interjected. “We’re lady detectives, and we have had international clients.”‡
A Lesson in Love and Murder Page 7