The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Murder

by Rachel McMillan

  Jem smiled and looked away briefly. “Mrs. Malone—my housekeeper—laundered and pressed it. I hope you don’t mind. The smell. It’s lavender. It’s my favorite and… ” She broke off. Ducked her head. “What was in the pocket?”

  “My notebook. A diary of sorts.”

  “Mrs. Malone would’ve emptied the pockets before laundering.”

  “Of-of course.” he said, a quick response while the severity of the loss hit him. It couldn’t cover what he felt at the sudden loss of words gone forever. His last day in Italy. His first day in Toronto. The sights and smells. The slow, arduous task of learning English. He exhaled and ran his hand over his face. Abominable luck. At least…yes, the pocket watch was still there. “Thank you,” he said heavily.

  She smiled at him again. Gave him another long look and turned toward the door.

  “Wait! Wait a moment!” He liked the way the light played off her high cheekbones when she turned her head over her shoulder. “I want my interview. How did a woman like you end up a lady investigator?”

  “All women have secrets, Mr. DeLuca.”

  Ray began to think in poetry.* This Jemima Watts, she was soft. Her curls were milk chocolate. Her eyes were the persistent kiss of waves on the shore at dusk, their light like sun spilling over water. He loved the way she wrinkled her nose, the way her smile tugged into a solitary dimple in her right cheek.

  “You’re staring at me again,” said Jem.

  “Well, yes,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed the other night that you were so beautiful. And now I am forced to wonder about my reporter’s powers of observation.”

  “Mr. DeLuca, you’re a good flatterer.”

  “Believe me, I’m not trying.”

  “He’s not.” Ray had forgotten that Skip existed until he spoke. “He doesn’t flatter.”

  Ray growled. “Go back to your typesetting!† Fretta!”

  Skip laughed.

  Jem wrinkled her nose. “I should go.”

  “It’s been a pleasure, Miss Watts.”

  He hugged his coat to his chest and brought the sleeve to his nose.

  Lavender.

  The Ward was a maze, and Jem and Merinda’s goals of finding lost items or reuniting mothers with their truant offspring were daunting. But at least, Jem decided, their recent days had been free of corpses. She still hadn’t shaken the sight of the statue-still woman splayed on the carpet of the Elgin Theatre.

  The Globe and Mail and the Daily Telegraph had stopped running pieces on the Corktown Murders. The Star and the other dailies were focused on politics and the new idea for a subway train station. The newsies outside Spenser’s were raising a cacophony about the rising rate of immigration in the Ward, rampant crime, and Tertius Montague’s new laws regarding females.

  Merinda seemed immune to the news around her. Instead, she was elated at their new enterprise. When she wasn’t carefully studying her Sherlock Holmes stories she was rereading M.C. Wheaton’s Guide to the Criminal and Commonplace—frequently quoting whole pages of it at a time whenever Jem returned from her shift. She’d also commissioned a carpenter to make a larger Herringford and Watts: Lady Detectives sign for the doorway. But they were far from household names, except in the Ward, where their pro bono service was on the lips of every lady in a predicament.

  Business was steady,** so Jem balanced her shifts at Spenser’s with her need to dash home to aid Merinda. Tippy was generally so preoccupied with the packages that Jem could slip away unnoticed before the five o’clock bell.

  The trunk coughed up a deerstalker. Somehow Merinda had acquired a Toronto police uniform of a size much smaller than would fit Jasper, and it came into play as well.

  “And look!” Merinda made her newly printed calling cards rain down on the Persian carpet. “We are authentic detectives. I have schooled Mrs. Malone in proper client protocol. She will lead the client into the sitting room to wait. We’ll put magazines and leaflets there. Then we’ll receive our clients just like Holmes and Watson.”

  Merinda was no Holmes and Jem was no Watson, but that didn’t keep them from trying. They found lost items and reunited cousins. They learned that Susan’s husband had gambled away their savings, that Drusilla had a long-lost brother named Frank, and that Anne had tricked Martha to get a better job. They discovered that Freida had sabotaged Esther’s workstation, and they returned little Tommy to his mother’s eager arms. They bandied with suffragettes and parleyed with petty thieves.

  They got little sleep and made no money whatsoever. But they learned, through it all, that they possessed genuine talent as a sleuthing team. Merinda had a natural knack for deduction and Jem had a way of placating Merinda, of putting their clients at ease, and of acting as an intermediary as Merinda bounded around with poor manners. She was so far beyond the conventions of proper female behavior that bystanders were downright appalled—until they found themselves thanking the girls for work done on their behalf.

  But no matter how busy they got, neither Jem nor Merinda could shake the image of the two dead girls, nor the photographs of the mourning families that Ray DeLuca had run in the Hog.

  Ray DeLuca, indeed, seemed the only remaining way to glean any information, not only on the Corktown Murders, but also on the plight of women pursued by Mayor Montague’s indefatigable Morality Squad. While the other papers preferred to trumpet Montague’s benevolence, DeLuca and his paper seemed more carefully attuned to what was happening on the periphery. Montague’s band was cracking down harder than ever on enforcing laws curtailing women’s freedoms. Women were warned not to set foot alone on the city streets as the sun ducked away and autumn drew colder.

  Merinda was particularly keen on observing the bylines of one Gavin Crawley, star reporter at the Globe and one of the Morality Squad’s most vocal advocates. Crawley was a striking contrast to DeLuca. His paper was conservative, well-respected, and, to many Torontonians, the only one worth consulting. But it turned Merinda’s stomach to read his diatribes on “female incorrigibility” and his ongoing belief that unmarried women were filtering into the city to entice respectable men.

  Merinda and Jem knew from their investigations in the Ward that these sentiments were making conditions difficult on honest workingwomen. How could they stay indoors after dark when night fell before they were released from their shifts? How could they get home without a cloud of suspicion falling on them for being out at night? Many walked together in huddled groups, looking around like agitated bunnies as they skittered to streetcars or dashed across streets to reach their homes.

  Such were Jem’s musings as she walked home from Spenser’s one evening. The days were growing colder, and it was with a sense of relief that she found herself back at King Street. She hung up her coat and scarf and retreated to the sitting room, where Merinda sat with a fresh pot of tea—and Tippy.

  “Tippy?” said Jem, brushing the snowflakes out of her hair. “I didn’t know you were coming for dinner tonight. Why didn’t you tell me? We could have walked together.”

  Merinda was all business. “Jem, Tippy tells me that her sister, Brigid, might know something about the Corktown Murders.”

  Jem stared. That someone she’d worked beside for so long might have a connection with those murders was upsetting. “Tippy? Is this true?”

  Tippy shrugged shyly. “Brigid’s been getting strange notes from an anonymous source. And I… well, I worry that she might be the next target.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me at work?” Jem asked, sharing a look with Merinda.

  “I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. But when I saw your ad… ” Tippy trembled. “Well, I thought maybe you could help.”

  Merinda stood and paced in front of the fire. “You knew Fiona and Grace,” Merinda murmured thoughtfully.

  “We all lived in the same boardinghouse. And Grace worked with my sister. With Brigid.”

  “Where?”

  “The King Edward hotel. In the laundry.” Tippy reached into her handbag and extra
cted a sheet of paper. Upon it were several threats, formed in cut-and-paste fashion from what appeared to be an assortment of periodicals.

  “How curious!” Merinda exclaimed.

  “I want them to stop,” Tippy said. “Brigid’s scared. I’m scared. Whoever is sending these knows where we work and where we live.” A tear pricked her green eye and started a slow descent down her pale, freckled cheek.

  Jem offered Tippy a handkerchief. “Now, now, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll get this all sorted.”

  Merinda growled. “Stop your sniveling, Tippy. And Jem, stop encouraging her! Take your handkerchief back! Now, Tippy, how many letters has your sister received?”

  “A dozen,” Tippy said. “This is the most recent one, but here: I’ve brought them all.” She extracted a small stack of letters from her bag.

  Merinda’s nose scrunched up as she read. The notes spoke to Brigid’s close relationship with Fiona and Grace and warned her to keep her mouth shut, not to ask any questions.

  “She always receives them at work?” Merinda asked.

  “Just before the end of the day.”

  Merinda smiled. “I know exactly what to do.”

  Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Malone escorted Tippy out and Merinda paced again before throwing herself in her chair in front of the fire, pressing her fingers to her temples. “I think we have finally been hired to solve the Corktown Murders!” she said elatedly. “And it’s about time.”

  “Is that what you’ve been hoping for?” Jem asked. “I still don’t think we’re experienced enough for that case.”

  Merinda wasn’t listening. “When you have eliminated the impossible,” she said, chewing her lip, “whatever is left, however improbable… ”

  “Must be the truth.”

  * Ray’s poetry was terrible. A strange hybrid of Wordsworth and Tennyson that went on at length about nature.

  † The Hogtown Herald was skeletally staffed. Skip was a bit of a genius jack-of-all-trades who picked things up rather quickly. Since Ray had met him he had easily been able to work his way around a press as well as take and process all of their photographs. When Ray asked, impressed, where he had picked up so many skills, Skip always replied, “Oh, here and there” with a shrug.

  ** If non-paying investigations could be called business.

  CHAPTER SIX

  One cannot expect that everything will be tied up in a neat knot. Life’s greater mysteries and the turn of fortune’s wheel work outside the realm of human ability. Try to succeed, but allow yourself moments of weakness. Focus on the art of acceptance when it doesn’t all come together in the way you had planned.

  Guide to the Criminal and Commonplace, M.C. Wheaton

  DeLuca!” McCormick was a bass drum as he entered the office. The rotund, owl-faced editor threw his coat on his desk, his face stormy.

  Ray reclined in his chair, chewing the end of his pencil. “Sir?”

  “The state of the Hog!”

  Was it a question or a statement? “The state of the Hog… is good?”

  “That’s the answer I pay you for?”

  “That and my penny-dreadful rehashing of popular events.”

  “I’m tired of this Corktown Murder story. We need something like the Don Jail piece. If we don’t get it, the Hog goes under. As soon as you blink you’ll be back where I found you—hunched over, two years away from rheumatoid arthritis, digging railway tunnels near the Roundhouse.”

  Ray was unfazed. “The Corktown Murders are important. And as of yet unsolved. Montague’s theatre. Montague’s maid.”

  “People have forgotten those stories, man. The Hog is the only paper still splashing them about.” McCormick barreled forward. “We’re becoming a laughingstock. Believe it or not, I still strive toward respectability.”

  “I know. And that’s why it’s important we continue to follow the story. It sets us apart.”

  “Too far apart. People think we’re crazy. Still chasing after threads. You never lay off Montague. And people are complaining.”

  Ray leaned forward with interest. “Who is complaining?”

  “Chief Tipton, for one. He has asked me to desist. As has the Toronto Council. They have threatened to shut us down.”

  Ray blinked. Then blinked again. “For speculating? For reminding people of the little evidence we have on these unsolved murders?”

  “It’s giving Montague a bad name, this ‘speculation,’ as you call it. It’s hitting too close to home, I wager, and he has powerful allies. Do you want to come in here one morning and find our printing presses at the bottom of Lake Ontario?”

  “Of course not.” Ray ran a hand through his hair. “But we’ve invested a lot in this story.”

  “And Montague has invested a lot in his Morality Squad,” said McCormick. “Lay off the women’s thing.”

  “The women’s thing?” Ray was incredulous. “These families never see their daughters again, McCormick. What if it was my sister?”

  “This isn’t about you, DeLuca.”

  “Sir, you hired me because I was the only one willing to get into the mire of the city and exhume its dirt. Well, that’s what I am doing, still, when no one else will.”

  “Fine. Well done. And now I need an article that won’t step on people’s toes,” said McCormick. He removed his glasses and wiped the lenses on his shirt. “We lay off Montague for a while and we get back in his good books. That’s why you’re going to go see what’s going on in that housing project of his in the Ward. St. Joseph’s, I think it’s called.”

  Ray smirked. “Ten steps ahead of you. Moved in already. St. Joseph’s is a flophouse.”

  The side of McCormick’s mouth threatened to tilt into an approving smile, but he quickly ironed it out. “It’s a workingmen’s hotel.” McCormick coughed, not meeting Ray’s gaze. “Montague’s made affordable housing a priority, and we’re going to applaud him for it. Just get it done, will you?”

  Ray didn’t bother to respond as McCormick walked away. He slumped on his slat of a desk and rubbed his temples. An investigative piece that Montague wouldn’t find irksome. Should he try to paint St. Joseph’s as something other than the flophouse that he knew, from his own time there, it actually was?

  Blinking his bleary eyes into focus, he noticed an advertisement mock-up on the side of his desk. It was the advert for Herringford and Watts. The smell of lavender leaped to his mind, though his coat was across the room.

  Ray became more curious about those ladies the more he heard about them. And heard about them he had. Just last week, as he’d crossed from Viola’s cottage back to University Avenue, he’d overheard an exchange between ladies hanging out their laundry near the open water well in the Ward.

  “They don’t charge nearly as much as the man my husband mentioned,” one had chirped.

  “Sometimes they don’t charge at all!” said another.

  Ray had inched closer, removing his hat.

  “That can’t be,” said a woman bouncing a baby on her hip.

  “Lucy got their card from Mary, who got it from one of the girls at the shirtwaist factory!”

  “Women belong in the home,” said a woman with a sour voice, “not galloping around Toronto in pants! Sticking their noses where only the police should be.”

  “The police can’t help! Ah, but women have intuition! They can understand and sympathize. I don’t want some police detective investigating my private business.”

  “The tall blonde one canvasses at Simcoe Street,” a woman said conspiratorially. “Makes sure that if you step off the train, you leave with all of your possessions. Last week, they found that one of the track workers was pocketing goods from the luggage compartments. She caught him, gave him a piece of her mind, and dragged him over to a traffic cop.”

  This anecdote in particular had coaxed a smile up the side of Ray’s face.

  “The handsome traffic cop,” added another. “The one on the King beat!”

  The stories had trickled
and tripped over each other. Now, snapped out of his memories, Ray turned the advertisement over in his fingers. McCormick wanted a new story? Fine. He was going to make those bachelor girls the talk of Toronto.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Detective work brings out the best and worst of every person, place, and thing one can imagine. An opulent building may be exposed as a den of iniquity. Beneath the elegant façade of a wealthy aristocrat may beat the black heart of a killer.

  Guide to the Criminal and Commonplace, M.C. Wheaton

  Cracker jacks, Jem, this will be a cakewalk!”*

  The girls were on their way to the King Edward Hotel, where they intended to pay Brigid a visit. Merinda fastened a small magnifying glass to the front pocket of her shirtwaist as Jem noted the wonders Mrs. Malone had worked on her previously overlarge trousers. As Merinda donned a tweed jacket and grabbed a walking stick that doubled as a sort of crowbar, Jem decided that rubber-soled ankle boots were far preferable to the fashionable heels she had to wear at Spenser’s.

  There was no threat of rain that night, so they walked—two men, or so they seemed—in companionable silence to the opulent hotel.

  Merinda whistled as they neared Yonge on the west side of the hotel. The King Edward took up half a block. The grand establishment was a fixed point in the kaleidoscope of the city.

  “We’ll sneak in the back,” Merinda told Jem as they arrived and stared up at the big blue banners, Union Jack flags, and awnings announcing, in gold monogrammed glory, the regal respectability of the place. “Head straight to the basement and the laundry. And if anyone asks, we’re lost tourists.”

  The security guard at the back entrance was flirting with a scullery maid and didn’t see them creep by. A few bare light bulbs dangled from solitary cords. The smell of bleach was almost tangible. Perspiration pricked the backs of their bare necks, hair tucked safely into their bowlers. They heard the gentle hums, ticks, and clicks of the underwirings of the hotel.