by Vicki Delany
“I’m sorry, son,” Sterling said, keeping his voice low. “She’s been arrested. I’m sure we can…”
“How could you? How could you let that happen?” Angus shouted. It seemed to Sterling that every man in the saloon turned and stared at him with accusing eyes. Mrs. MacGillivray hurried out of the back room at the sound of her son’s raised voice.
Sterling wanted to explain, but Angus, trying to hide tears that had sprung into his eyes, hurried back to Miss Witherspoon’s table. Ignoring her young assistant, that lady waved Sterling and Mann over to join them. She was momentarily between appointments and was anxious to get an interview with a real Mountie. Sterling told her that he couldn’t discuss police business with a reporter. “A writer,” she corrected.
Mr. Mann brought over a round of drinks, including lemonade for Miss Witherspoon and Angus, and the moment she heard his thick German accent, Miss Witherspoon insisted he sit down and be interviewed about the immigrant experience.
Sterling clung to his single whisky all night, thoroughly uncomfortable under Angus’s reproachful looks.
At midnight, Miss Witherspoon gathered up her writing materials, and a relieved Sterling went to gather up Mr. Mann, who’d wandered into the back rooms. He found the man standing against the wall in the gambling hall, staring wideeyed at the quantity of money passing across the tables.
“Fools,” was all he could say when Sterling told him it was time to leave.
Somehow they managed to collect Mouse O’Brien on the way out the door. Mouse had a silly smile on his face and took Miss Witherspoon’s arm as she chattered like a chickadee about all the material she’d gathered. Angus stared at his feet in a thorough sulk. Mann mumbled to himself and finally spat out: “Crazy mens to waste much money. But they makes good business. Good for Juergen.”
They deposited Miss Witherspoon at the door of her hotel. Mr. Mann said his goodnights with old-world charm. After a rather drawn-out farewell to Miss Witherspoon, Mouse slapped Sterling on the back and suggested they return to the Savoy: it was time for the dancing. Sterling knew he’d missed his chance of talking privately with Angus, so he excused himself and headed back to barracks, thoroughly despondent.
* * *
The stage show ended at midnight, as it always did. The girls streamed backstage to change out of their costumes, the benches were pushed up against the walls to clear the big room, and percentage girls moved out of the shadows onto the floor. The waiters ran up and down the stairs leading to the private boxes, bearing full bottles of champagne and carrying away empties. The orchestra leader called out, “Grab your partners for a long, slow, juicy waltz,” and swung into a tune that resembled a waltz only in that it could generously be described as music.
I went backstage in search of Irene. Her last performance, the one that closed the show every night, consisted of a languid, sensuous dance performed in yards and yards of multi-coloured chiffon. The Savoy doesn’t provide the dancers with their costumes, other than the odd accessory they tearfully insist that they need: Irene had lugged all that chiffon over the Chilkoot. It was worth the trouble—the men absolutely loved it, and the dance made a great ending to the show. The audience always leaned closer to the stage hoping that, just this once, the last bit of chiffon would float free.
The dressing room was tiny, scarcely larger than Mrs. Saunderson’s kitchen, packed with women in every stage of dress and undress. The air was thick with cheap scent, heavily applied over drying sweat. The women tossed clothes all over the place, either in search of comfortable going-home shoes or their sauciest blouse. Some of the stage performers were finished for the evening, and some, those who needed or wanted the money, would stay behind to join the percentage girls in dancing with the customers for a dollar a minute. Not that they kept the dollar, of course. They got a quarter of that, the musicians got another quarter, and Ray and I pocketed the rest.
Irene dropped the black and red gown over her head. Ellie laid the neatly folded cloud of chiffon aside and helped with the fastenings running down Irene’s back.
“Wonderful show, Irene,” I said. She took a deep breath to pull her diaphragm in a fraction and give Ellie a bit more room to work.
“I wonder if I might have a word with you. In private,” I said.
“We’ve had enough words of late, Mrs. MacGillivray,” Irene replied, not bothering to look at me. The girls stopped what they were doing to stare at this incredible breach of manners and good sense—I am the boss, after all.
I swallowed my sharp retort, reminding myself that I was here to beg a favour. “Perhaps we could talk once the rest of the ladies have left. If you have a few minutes.” I glared around the room. Everyone returned to what they were doing in a flurry of hair, fabric and chatter.
Eventually the dressing room was empty save for Irene and me.
“So,” she said, “talk.”
“I didn’t ask the police to interrogate you, Irene. Don’t blame me if your friendships are causing you difficulty.” This wasn’t the friendly, just-us-girls tone I’d planned to take.
She turned her back to me and looked at herself in the room’s single cracked mirror. Her shoulders drooped under the rich silk. “Sorry, Mrs. MacGillivray. Everything’s getting me down these days.”
If I were the motherly sort, I would have hugged her. Instead I said, “I would appreciate an introduction to your dressmaker. The clothes you’ve been wearing lately are truly lovely.”
Irene ran a red satin ribbon through her fingers. “I’ve been most fortunate,” she said to her reflection.
I agreed.
“A lady’s dressmaker is somewhat like a lady’s lover. Not something one wishes to share.” Still trying to be the actress, Irene had discarded her middle-American accent in favour of one she obviously considered to be more snobbish. Mine. It was a poor imitation.
I considered pretending I didn’t care one way or the other. I could dress in the cast-off clothes of a miner who’d hadn’t been to town for a year, and I’d still be the most beautiful woman in Dawson. But I wouldn’t feel like I was. “Very well. Thirty per cent on drinks.”
Irene turned from the mirror with a smug expression . Most unattractive. “Thirty per cent it is, then. Starting tonight.” She hitched up her skirts as if she were back on the farm and about to go feed the hogs. “You’ve met her already. Maggie. For thirty per cent, I’ll even take you to her store.”
I remembered the sign: Dresmakers Shop. Where I’d first seen Irene with Maggie.
“I know where it is.”
“If you walk through the door, Maggie’ll show you right back out of it. She thinks you’re a stuck-up aristocratic English bitch who doesn’t have any business being in America. Of course, I don’t agree with her.”
Of course not.
“I’ll meet you outside the store at four tomorrow afternoon, shall I?” she said, trying not to smile too broadly. “Thirty per cent, Maggie will be pleased.”
Irene left in a swirl of black and red silk and cheap perfume.
Let her enjoy a day or two of feeling smug; I’d find a way to get my own back. Once my new clothes were hanging in my wardrobe.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It had been a bad day at Mr. Mann’s store. Everyone was in a foul temper at having to slog their way through the mud that filled the streets after yesterday’s rain. A woman had been examining a pair of men’s long underwear when her child tripped and fell face first into the mud. The woman hadn’t even bothered to put the garment back on the table but dropped it into the muck as she yanked the child up by one arm and gave him a good swipe across the bottom. Mr.
Mann insisted she pay for the underwear that would now need cleaning—it hadn’t helped that the child had stomped across it in his attempt to avoid his mother’s blows—and the woman refused.
“Weren’t even clean to begin with,” she said. “You wants clean,” Mr. Mann said, “go to San Francisco.
Buy or give me a dollar for cleani
ng.”
“A dollar! Never!” the woman shrieked. She grabbed her mud-encrusted offspring and stalked away, German curses following her.
Angus pulled the offending garment out of the mud and held it outstretched between thumb and forefinger. “What should I do with this, sir?”
“Take to Mrs. Mann for zee laundry.” Mr. Mann checked his pocket watch. “Time to leave.”
Meaning that it was one o’clock, and Angus’s shift was over.
“All right if I take that pot, sir?” Angus asked, nodding towards a big iron cooking pot sitting half under the table.
“Why?”
Angus held up the underwear in explanation. The woman had been right—they hadn’t been at all clean even before their encounter with the street.
And so Angus carried a pair of dripping, muddy longjohns home in an iron pot with a broken handle.
He deposited the underwear in the laundry shed and exchanged a brief greeting with Mrs. Mann before going in search of lunch. Mrs. Mann was so busy without help in the laundry, she hadn’t had time to prepare a cooked meal. Instead she’d left him half a loaf of bread, a tin of sardines, and a can of peaches in syrup. Angus struggled to open the fish with the little metal key that came attached to the tin and thought of Mary. The only way he could help her would to be to find out who was responsible for Chloe’s death. Between working at the store in the morning and helping Miss Witherspoon all afternoon and into the night, he barely had enough time for sleep, never mind trying to do the police’s job for them. Perhaps he could interest Miss Witherspoon in helping him find the killer. She was looking for a good story, wasn’t she? Pleased with his idea, Angus munched on his bread and sardines. His mother would have a few words to say if she could see him eating like a common labourer, standing over the bucket on the wooden plank that served as a sink. But his mother wasn’t here, was she?
Promptly at two o’clock, he arrived at the Richmond. A man sat slumped in the single chair in the lobby, his legs stretched out in front of him. His hands were neatly folded over the bowler hat in his lap, and his head drooped forward. He was asleep, but he looked uncomfortable. The desk clerk was nowhere to be seen.
Angus stepped forward to check on the fellow and see if he needed anything. With a start, he recognized the scarf wrapped around the man’s neck as belonging to Tom Jannis, whom he’d last seen beating up an old Indian in the street. With a sniff of disapproval, so like his mother’s he would have been embarrassed to know it, Angus went upstairs to the ladies’ suite.
Miss Witherspoon was standing at the window when Miss Forester opened the door. His employer turned to him with a toothy smile. “I simply cannot believe the state of those streets, my dear. I have dressed in my oldest skirt and put on my sturdiest boots.” She lifted her skirt a fraction to demonstrate. “And I simply cannot wait to get out and record this scene. Why, I saw a wagon get so stuck in the mud right outside this window, they had to completely unload it, and even at that a good half-dozen men put their backs to it before the horses could move an inch. Most exciting.” She placed her hat onto her head. “Now, Euila, you mustn’t venture out of doors with the streets in this state.”
“But Martha…” “You have plenty of paper? Good. If you need more, send the clerk for some. Euila is transcribing my notes,” Miss Witherspoon explained, stabbing a lethal-looking hatpin through her hat. “Shall we go?”
The desk clerk gave them a bored glance as they descended the stairs.
“I say,” Miss Witherspoon said, “is that man all right?”
Angus and the clerk looked at the man snoozing in the
lobby chair. The clerk shrugged and returned to his ledger.
“Hotel guest. He can sleep it off there if he’s too drunk to
make it up to his room.”
“Perhaps he’s ill.” Miss Witherspoon took a step towards
the man in the chair.
“Leave him,” Angus said. “He’s nothing but another
drunk.”
Miss Witherspoon shook the man’s shoulder. “Sir, are you
in need of assistance?” she asked in her no-nonsense voice.
Very slowly, the man toppled forward. He slid off the chair,
face first, and crashed down beside Miss Witherspoon’s
practical boots.
“Good Heavens,” she said. “Angus, help me get
this man up. You, sir,” she ordered the desk clerk, “assist us.”
The clerk grimaced, but he put down his pen and left
the desk, muttering something about drunks and bossy
Englishwomen.
They stood over the man, wondering what to do now.
“Hold on a minute.” Angus dropped to his knees and lifted the scarf away from the back of the man’s neck.
Miss Witherspoon gasped and took a stumbling step backwards, her hand raised to her mouth. The clerk swore.
Blood had dripped onto the scarf, leaking from a small wound high on the neck, at the base of the skull.
Angus rolled the man onto his back. Glassy brown eyes pinched between pouches of fat stared up at him. He touched the neck. Nothing moved under his fingers.
“I’ll go for the police,” Angus said, standing up. He looked at Miss Witherspoon; she was pale and swaying on her feet. He took her arm. “Perhaps you should go,” he said to the hotel clerk. “I’ll stay here.”
The clerk looked none too well either. He swallowed heavily.
“Get the Mounties,” Angus said. “They’ll be patrolling Front Street, that’s probably the closest.”
The clerk tore his eyes away from the body and looked at Angus. A ribbon of sweat ran across his upper lip, and his eyes were wild. He wasn’t much older than Angus.
“Hurry!”
The clerk managed to recover some of his senses and ran out the door. Angus could only hope he was running for the Mounties, not heading for the hills.
Like a tree felled in the forest, Miss Witherspoon gave a slight moan, swayed from side to side and crumpled slowly. Angus caught her. He looked at the dead man, stretched out across the floor. He looked at Miss Witherspoon, trying to stay on her feet. He couldn’t leave the body to take her upstairs; he couldn’t expect her to stand around while he guarded the body. He didn’t know what to do.
His mind was made up for him when a piercing scream came from behind. A lady had come in off the street and seen the empty-eyed body sprawled across the lobby. Her two companions, dance hall girls judging by their dress and the amount of rouge on their cheeks, simultaneously tried to prevent her from falling and see what was going on. The first lady hit the floor in a faint, and her friends started to scream. Men streamed in from the street, pushing and shoving to get a good look. Euila Forester hurried down the stairs, drawn by the noise.
Angus MacGillivray held Miss Witherspoon in his arms, looked pleadingly at Miss Forester, tried to hide the body from the view of passersby with his own, calculated how long it might take until the Mounties arrived, and wished his mother were here
>Chapter Twenty-Three
Most of the day passed in a state of high excitement, as I thought of little other than my appointment with the dressmaker. I decided upon the purchase of one day dress and a minimum of two evening gowns. First thing in the morning, I’d sorted through my jewellery box—sadly depleted since my glory days in London and Toronto—to consider coordinating fabric, colour and texture.
“You’re looking pleased with yourself this afternoon, Fee,” Ray said when he arrived for work.
I peeked at him through the corner of my eyes in a way that I knew to be most flirtatious. “And what is there not to be pleased about on a beautiful spring day such as this while our coffers overflow with money.” I swept my arm in an arc to indicate the entirety of our business.
“Beautiful day, it may be,” he said, eyeing my skirt, “but ye ken ye’ve got mud all across the bottom o’ that dress. Turn around, it’s no doubt splattered up the back too.”
/> My partner never did let me get away with being too cheerful. I stuck my tongue out at him.
“Not to mention that we’ve got the suspicion o’ murder hanging over our workers,” he continued.
“Oh, stop it,” I said. “Soon you’ll have me crying in my drink.” I’d been about to tell him about giving Irene thirty per cent on drinks (he is my partner, after all) but decided to hold that bit of information back, for no reason but to be difficult. It would come out soon enough. Like good partners should, Ray trusted me to keep the books, but he examined them carefully every Monday morning.
Joe Hamilton, who made an occupation out of hanging around the docks collecting news, burst through the doors. “Did you hear?” he shouted.
Every man in the saloon looked up. Joe crossed the room to the bar. “There’s been another murder,” he announced.
We all waited for further news. None was forthcoming. “Let me buy you a drink, lad,” one of my regulars offered.
“Don’t mind if I do.” Men gathered around, waiting for Joe to spit it out. Ray poured a drink, and Joe tossed it back in one swallow. He slammed the empty glass down on the bar. His benefactor gestured for Ray to serve another.
When he had the full glass clutched safely in hand, Joe took a deep breath. “Man found dead at the Richmond minutes ago.”
“What kind of news is that?” the man sneered, regretting the cost of two glasses of good whisky. “Folk dead all over town from sickness, bad food, bad drink. Bad life.”
Joe tasted his second drink with more care. “Blood all over the floor. Ladies fainted straight away soon as they saw it.”
“Where? When?” “Hotel lobby. No more than half an hour ago. The hotel clerk came tearing down Front Street shouting for a Mountie. Pissed his pants too.”
Half the men in the saloon headed for the door. “Know who the dead fellow is?” someone asked.
“Nope.”