The laundry room was cramped and its smell almost unbearable. Frowning women strained over great vats, their backs hunched and their muscles straining. Merinda and Jem shuddered.
The oldest woman stepped forward. “Who are you? How did you get down here?” The rest of the workers, at a stern glance from the forewoman, resumed stirring the large, misty pots, focusing with tired eyes.
“Your security was otherwise engaged,” Merinda said.
“You can’t be down here.” She was a robust woman with coarse red skin. She planted her fists on her hips while narrowing her beady eyes.
“My name is Merinda Herringford, and this is my associate, Jemima Watts. We are here on behalf of a client.”
The forewoman thrust her face toward them. “You’re women!” A wave of babble and laughter rippled among the other workers, but she ignored them. “What do you mean, a client?”
Merinda extracted a card and held it up. “We’re consulting detectives.”
The woman wiped her bulky hands on her apron and inspected it. “Can’t read.”
“ ‘Merinda Herringford and Jemima Watts, detectives for consultation,’ ” Merinda recited.
“Are you really detectives?” The question came from a woman in the corner, chestnut hair tumbling from her cap.
“Yes, indeed.”
“Who is your client?” asked the forewoman.
“I cannot divulge that information publicly,” said Merinda regally.
“I think… ” the girl said, but then she shot a sheepish look at the growling forewoman. “Please? I think I know what this is about.”
“Oh, go ahead. Anything to get them out of my sight. You have five minutes.” She clapped her meaty hands. “Girls, back to work!”
Jem and Merinda walked down the gray corridor in the company of the young woman.
“You’re Brigid,” said Jem. “Tippy’s sister. You’ve been receiving the letters.”
“Yes. Yes, I have. Tippy told you?”
“We work together,” Jem said.
“Just like you worked with Grace Kennedy,” Merinda put in. “Did you know her well?”
Brigid was silent.
“If you know anything about what happened to her… ”
“I don’t,” said Brigid. “I swear I don’t know a thing. I barely knew her. Just to say hello.”
“Whoever’s sending these letters seems to think otherwise,” said Merinda. “Do you know why she was at Mayor Montague’s fundraising party on the night she died? It wasn’t, perhaps, the most usual place for a girl from the hotel laundry to turn up.”
“Quiet,” said Brigid. “Not here. We can’t talk here. Can you meet me at my boardinghouse later? It’s in Corktown. Just off Parliament Street. Sunday afternoon, perhaps?”
“Of course,” said Jem, scrawling the address on the back of a card. “We’ll talk then. And I promise we’ll do our best to keep you safe.”
“I can’t pay you,” Brigid said. “There’s nothing extra after the bit I send home to my dad.”
“We won’t worry about that,” Merinda said kindly, and they deposited her back at the laundry and waved goodnight.
Merinda and Jem wound their way through the corridor, back the way they’d come. They were nearly at the door when Jem grabbed her friend’s wrist. They stilled in the darkness.
Something was moving with them.
“It’s probably just some night janitor or a rat,” Merinda said, marching bravely on.
Jem stopped her again. “The footfall matches ours!” she whispered frantically.
They breathed a sigh of relief as they approached the exit, speedily sprinting up the stairs, shouldering the heavily metal door and exhaling in the night air.
A few steps on the pavement and Jem’s senses were again pricked with the eerie suspicion that they were being followed. She whipped her head over her shoulder, but the noise and the whisper of a shadow that tickled the hairs at the back of her head had vanished.
They crossed the bustling traffic at Yonge and headed home, accustomed to the sound of horses neighing and trolleys skidding on tracks. A few reckless automobiles swerved under the bright electric marquees.
But Jem couldn’t shake the feeling that the city was watching them.
* The astute reader will observe that when Merinda Herringford claims an adventure will be a cakewalk, it rarely turns out to be so.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The first guide to honing your deductive skills is to let the world fall away. You should be trained, like a bloodhound on the scent, to keep your eyes on the prize and allow nothing in your periphery.
Guide to the Criminal and Commonplace, M.C. Wheaton
Playing bachelor girl detective, Jem decided as she gathered up her things and prepared to head home, would be the last nail in the coffin of her romantic prospects. The closest she’d come to a man had been the many hours she’d spent reading Ray’s journal. Any hope she might have had for personal happiness was buried under bowler hats and scuffed boots.
As she hurried homeward, she became aware of a shadow behind her. Ah, her familiar follower. Ever since the night at the King Edward, she had felt this person’s presence everywhere. Something Merinda had said pricked the back of her mind. There’s a moment that hovers between fear and frustration.
She was in that moment now, and shadows appeared everywhere.
Jem tried to shrug the feeling off. Her light heels tripped over the cracks in the roughly paved street, and she made out the sound of a footfall in rhythm with her own. She sped up, and the pursuer matched her pace. She slowed down, and its cadence softened behind her.
She swooped up her skirts and made a hasty diagonal for the other side of the street, barely avoiding the path of a raging automobile. In a storefront window, she spotted a male figure, black in the falling dusk, crossing as well.
The Morality Squad. She might have known.
Jem straightened her shoulders and slowed her pace. When the footfalls neared, she swung around and faced the figure straight on.
“Are you following me?” she demanded.
The man stopped on the curb, surprised. But he didn’t speak, and his face was in shadow.
“Look,” Jem said, “I’m just off work and not far from home. It’s not even six o’clock!” She made a quick assessment of her surroundings in case she needed to make a getaway. The streetlights hissed and flickered in the settling dark, a carriage’s wheels spun in the near-frozen dirt a street over, and a few horses plodded by. Behind, on Yonge, the trolley lumbered noisily over the tracks. Familiar sounds all, but nonetheless she shivered, making her plan.
The figure stepped closer and, finally framed by light, Jem could make out his features. There was a cleft in his chin, his cheeks were finely etched, and he had silky blond hair perfectly trimmed. Jem wondered if she had seen him before.
“You’re staring at me pretty intensely,” he remarked.
“You were following me pretty closely,” she retorted. Jem attempted to study his visage as Merinda would. Trying, vainly it would seem, to impress his image upon her mind, as she was learning to do from her companion. If his features alone were an open book, she could maybe play Holmes and surmise his occupation, circumstance, and background.
Oh, fiddlesticks! It wasn’t working. She had seen, but, as Holmes chided Watson, she had not observed.
Meanwhile, his smile grew. “Quite finished?”
“Are you with the Morality Squad?”
He spread his hands innocently. “I mean no harm, Miss Watts. I was en route to your place of residence.”
So he knew her name. And where she lived. “You have need of our services?” She straightened her shoulders. They hadn’t had a male client yet.*
“You could say that.”
“And you are…?”
“Gavin Crawley. Toronto Globe and Mail.”
“The reporter?” She peered at him more closely. “That fellow with those bothersome tracts on women and mora
lity?”
He bowed. “Among other things. And I want to interview Merinda Herringford.”
“Miss Herringford granted you an interview?”
Gavin stepped back. “I confess, no. But I would like one.”
“Good luck!” Jem spun on her heel and proceeded northward.
She could sense Gavin following. He was so close behind that his sleeve brushed hers.
“Miss Watts,” he said as they walked, “I am interested in Merinda Herringford. I would like to do a story on her.”
“She will not be interested.”
“Please, if you’ll hear me out.” He pressed his hat to his chest entreatingly, and Jem stopped to face him. “Besides,” he said, “I am doing you a courtesy. I sit on Montague’s council for the Morality Squad.”
“Aha!”
“Yes, but I am not on the squad. In any event, what you and Miss Herringford are supposedly doing, gallivanting around Toronto, purporting to solve these petty crimes…Well, some see that as little less than a criminal offense.”
“Criminal! We’ve done nothing but help women who have no other place to turn.”
“There, there. I know that you are an upstanding and virtuous young lady. You work at Spenser’s, you come from good stock… ”
“You seem to know a lot about me, Mr. Crawley.”
“I am a reporter. This is my job.”
She turned and strode toward home. “You’re all milksop, highball rolling, money-making politician pleasers, is what you are.”
They passed under another streetlight. The man was smirking. Smirking! “You don’t hold back, do you?”
“Journalistic integrity dictates that one present the truth in the plainest fashion,” Jem said. “We need not sugarcoat the underbelly of our city, as you do. Nor must we abandon our investigation into the callous murder of two young women.”
“As opposed to the Globe?”
“The Hog still runs the Corktown piece,” she said, feeling surprisingly defensive.
“Yes, and with nothing solid about it for weeks. Speculation and muckraking. That DeLuca writes nothing you should pay attention to. There are brains in that pretty little head of yours, Miss Watts, and you wouldn’t want anything salacious in there besides.”
Jem bit her lip. Something about the man’s eyes, the way he walked, his voice even, interested her despite his condescension. But she didn’t stop walking. “I’m sorry. I’m on edge these days, and I thought you were following me.”
“Does that mean I can ‘follow’ you home?” His eyes twinkled in the moonlight. “Since we are both walking the same direction?”
Jem didn’t reply, but nor did she stop him from walking in stride with her. Soon, they reached the townhouse and Jem motioned for Gavin to follow her up the stairs. Mrs. Malone, stunned that a man other than Jasper Forth had darkened the door, smiled and hurried off for the tea things.
They found Merinda lying on her stomach, in trousers, stockinged feet in the air as she flipped through the Strand magazine, no doubt in pursuit of a new detective story.
Jem cleared her throat loudly. “Mr. Gavin Crawley,” she said, “may I present Miss Merinda Herringford.”
Gavin bowed to Merinda, smiling and waiting for her to rise, as propriety dictated. But Merinda remained on the floor. She scowled, grunted, and mumbled something Jem was glad she couldn’t hear.
Jem cleared her throat, inviting Gavin to sit in the armchair as she settled onto the sofa. Mrs. Malone arrived with the tea service, which featured assorted dainties arranged to ornament the tea. Jem pinched a fairy cake and licked the icing.
Merinda watched their guest with a clear look of annoyance. “Your tracts and your articles… ” She shook her head and dramatically outstretched crossed wrists. “Scoop me up and take me to jail, Mr. Crawley. You probably have a long list of vagrant and indecent offenses I have committed.”
“No doubt,” he said with one raised eyebrow. “However, I’m not here for that. You interest me as a reporter.” He looked between the two of them. “I would like to interview you for the Globe and Mail.”
“No,” Merinda said.
“No?” Gavin sounded amused.
“Currently the only paper I give two cents about is the Hog,” Merinda said adamantly. “They are still reporting on the Corktown Murders.”
“Not every mystery can be solved, Miss Herringford. That DeLuca fellow is all about raking the mire for speculation. No doubt it gains the Hog a few extra sales of their rag. The Globe is a little more legitimate than that.”
Merinda chuckled. “The Globe rarely reports on anything but its perception of female inadequacy and boring politics. If I grant you an interview, you will no doubt mock our endeavors.”
“That’s a little unfair, Miss Herringford.”
“Explain your sudden interest in trouser-wearing lady detectives, Mr. Crawley.”
Gavin straightened. “I want to make the city safer for women. Clean up the streets. Surely you approve of such a goal. The Morality Squad does women a favor by separating the wheat from the chaff.”
“As if a mob could do anyone a favor.”
Gavin smiled and set his teacup on the tray. “I see you are decided, madam. I shall take my leave then.”
“No,” Merinda said, “it is I who shall be leaving.” She stomped off upstairs—with an unnecessary theatricality.
This left Jem, hands folded in her lap, trying to scrape up some propriety. No matter who this man was or what he said, Jem fell back on her upbringing. He was their guest and deserved a polite reception. “Well… ” she said, hoping to break the tension.
“I’m very sorry,” Crawley said.
Jem was suddenly aware of the way the firelight played across his strong features. He could have been a magazine ad man with a tennis racket slung over his shoulder, sporting the latest boating shoes and a straw hat. “Don’t be, Mr. Crawley. I suppose I have no right to ask this, but is there anything I can say to get you to refrain from printing Merinda’s behavior in the Globe? I can see the headline now: Belligerent Lady Detectives Scoff Gentleman Reporter.”
“Actually, Miss Watts,” Crawley said, his smile widening, “there is something you can say.”
“Oh, do tell!”
“Say you’ll join me for dinner on Thursday evening.”
M.C. Wheaton said that one must always prepare for an unanticipated turn of events. This was one rapid turn, Jem thought, even as she blushed and accepted the invitation.
Thursday evening came, and Jem approved of Gavin’s pleated pinstripes and brushed bowler, the fresh carnation in his buttonhole, and the shine of his spats. She could tell by the line of his suit and his attention to collar and crease that he was a step ahead of the men’s department at Spenser’s. He looked good on her arm, with his height and his broad rower’s shoulders.
The conversation, on the other hand, was like the engine on one of those propeller boats. It started and sputtered, started again, and came to a screeching halt before hiccupping into a decent pace.
Probably that was her fault, Jem thought. Such a well-known personality as Gavin could hardly fail to be a sparkling conversationalist. Probably he would never want to see her again.
But on Sunday morning, Gavin attended St. James with her.
“Come with me,” Jem pleaded to Merinda as she pulled her gloves over her wrists. “He’ll be here in a moment, and people will talk if they see me walk in alone with him. There’ll be all sorts of gossip.”
But Merinda just gave a heavy sigh and repeated what she’d said many times before: God was a mystery she didn’t particularly care to solve, and while Jem might be interested in seeing through a glass darkly, she preferred to grapple with facts. “Besides,” she reminded Jem, “we’re meeting Brigid after lunch, and I want time to look at those letters again before we do.”
As Jem had expected, her entry into the sanctuary on Gavin’s arm provoked a wave of hushed conversation throughout the pews. You see, Mild
red! she imagined men saying to their wives. That Watts girl isn’t so strange after all!
It must be confessed that with the Globe and Mail’s star reporter sitting proudly next to her and the congregation whispering behind her, Jem heard very little of the sermon.
On Sunday afternoon—delightfully devoid of Gavin, or so Merinda said—they disembarked the trolley at Trinity and strolled into the mouth of Corktown. Brigid’s boardinghouse, when they presented themselves in front of it, was found to be rundown and gray—a damp old building that seemed to suck all the light from the air. As the afternoon was fine, Brigid suggested going for a walk rather than talking indoors.
“I worked for Montague for just a summer,” Brigid explained as they strolled. “While I was there, Fiona started and she was so pretty and young and hopeful. She did me good.”
“It must be very hard on you,” Jem said, “all that has happened.”
“My family thought someone must be intent on hurting girls from Corktown. You know, Fee and I liked to go out to the dances at Elm Street. We enjoyed ourselves. Maybe it was someone from there. Morality police and all that.”
“The Morality Squad doesn’t usually kill people,” Jem said.
“And you’re not reckless,” Merinda added.
“No,” Brigid insisted. “We never were. We stuck together and walked home together. We kept our arms covered and our skirts to regulation.”
Merinda pursed her lips. “Was Fiona walking out with a young man?”
“I think she was. But she wouldn’t tell me about him. At first, she was humming all the time and slipping off. It seemed like she’d found a good thing. But her mood changed and she became sad all the time. I asked her about this man and she said there was no one. One night… just before… ” She broke off. “You know… just before… ”
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