Gold Digger: A Klondike Mystery

by Vicki Delany

  Footsteps, one pair light, cautious, one heavy, full of authority, sounded on the stairs. “That’s the doctor now,” Ruby said. “You go, Mrs. MacGillivray. I’ll stay with Irene.”

  “Good evening, Doctor. I have to close up now. I’ll settle your bill tomorrow.” I swept past him and out of the room.

  On a Saturday night in Dawson, Yukon Territory, everything shut down at two minutes to midnight for the Lord’s Day. Up and down Front Street, the gambling wheels slowed to a halt, hands of cards (no matter how good they were) landed face down on the green table, bottles of whisky were fastened shut, and dancing girls pulled off dancing shoes to release cramped toes with a contented sigh. Men left the dance hall, passed through the gaming rooms, and walked out of the saloon like an army of ghosts, picking up silent recruits as they went. No one argued, no one begged for one more spin of the wheel or one more round of drinks. There was no point in offering a bribe to the orchestra to keep playing or to the dealer to keep dealing or to the bartender to keep pouring.

  As was my custom, I walked behind the exiting crowds, starting at the back of the dance hall, making sure that no dead-to-the-world-drunk got left behind, or that no Englishman or American unfamiliar with the laws of the Territory would try to stay one minute past midnight.

  On this night, the men were particularly polite. “Lovely evening, Mrs. Fiona,” they said, doffing their caps. “Such a pleasant night. See you Monday.” Or, “You look particularly beautiful tonight, Mrs. MacGillivray. That shawl certainly becomes you.” Barney, the old drunk, winked so broadly that I wondered if his face might collapse under the effort.

  It didn’t, but I turned to see Constable Richard Sterling standing behind me.

  “Peaceful night, Mrs. MacGillivray,” he said. “Everyone filing out like they did leaving my father’s church after a sermon about the Hell that he says so eagerly awaits most of them.”

  “Didn’t know you had a father, Constable. Don’t they churn you fellows out of Mountie school like sausages, all in a neat row?”

  “A bar in the Prairie town where I had my first posting had a lot of trouble one night,” he said. “They tried to hide it from us, but it was hard to keep the secret after the troublemakers torched the place.”

  “Nice quiet night, eh, Constable?” The fellow who dressed like an Indian fighter shouted at us as he made his way to the door, barely held up by his friends. “Pretty boring, ain’t it?” He and his mates all sort of collapsed into the middle together, thus supporting each other and keeping themselves upright at the same time.

  “Don’t talk ta the coppers,” one of the friends muttered as he tripped over a loose floorboard.

  Sterling raised one dark eyebrow and looked down at me. “It was quite the mess, burned lumber and scorched furniture everywhere. Fortunately no one was hurt, but the smell of shattered whisky bottles and the end of someone’s dreams lingered over the town for weeks.”

  “Fascinating story. You must tell me more. When I have time. If you’ll excuse me, Constable?”

  The yellow patches gleamed in his brown eyes, but he said nothing further.

  That wasn’t the first time trouble had accompanied Jack Ireland into my place. But tonight I was sure I’d seen the last of him—he’d hit the most popular dance hall girl in the Yukon in full sight of a packed hall. He was finished as a newspaperman here; once word spread of what had happened, no one in town would talk to him.

  He’d be on the next steamboat out of town. Guaranteed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The rare smell of frying bacon, sausages and fresh eggs wafted through the house, and Angus climbed eagerly out of bed. They were getting heartily sick of bacon, one of the staples of both the trail and the winter of near-starvation, but eggs were a rare, expensive treat. Anyone arriving late at the Sunday breakfast table would find himself eating the scraps, if he were lucky enough to have been left some.

  Angus scooped a handful of cold water from the basin that rested on the table beside his bed, splashed it on his face, hastily pulled on trousers and a shirt and made his way to the outhouse.

  When he returned, Mr. Mann was sitting at the table watching Mrs. Mann crack eggs into the huge, battered frying pan. A glass of pure white milk waited at his place.

  “Only three places set? Where’s Ma?”

  “Your mother left a note,” Mrs. Mann replied. “She wasn’t feeling well and asked me to leave her sleep this morning.”

  “But she’ll miss her eggs!”

  Mr. Mann slurped his coffee and leaned back to allow his wife to place a brimming plate in front of him. Bacon fried to a crisp, the plump sausages she called wurst, eggs with cheerful yellow centres and pure white edges. Plus two thick slices of fried bread.

  “And the milk. She was looking forward to having real milk in her coffee today. She won’t mind if I wake her.”

  “You shush and eat.” Mrs. Mann began preparing another plate, one containing almost as much food as Mr. Mann had been given. She tossed a generous hunk of bread into the pan. It sizzled and spat and drank up the grease.

  Angus downed his entire glass of milk without pausing for breath.

  “I’ll make your mother’s breakfast later,” Mrs. Mann said.

  “If I’m late, I don’t get no breakfast.”

  “Yous don’t pay for your breakfast, boy,” Mr. Mann said.

  “You don’t get any breakfast, Angus.” Fiona stood in the doorway. The hair on her head poked into the air, and dark circles emphasized the tired droop to her eyes. She wore her red dressing gown, the one with a bold gold Chinese dragon streaking across the back, and she hugged it closely to her thin frame.

  “You go back to bed, Mrs. MacGillivray,” Mrs. Mann ordered. “You don’t look at all well.”

  “I’m fine, thank you. It’s hard to sleep when your cooking smells so wonderful.” She planted a kiss on the top of Angus’s head and took her seat.

  Mrs. Mann handed him his plate, and Angus dove in head first.

  The landlady poured a cup of coffee. “Milk’s on the table.”

  “Milk,” Fiona repeated. “Real milk?”

  “Inside the udders of a cow only yesterday.” Fiona lifted the blue pitcher and held it under her nose. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

  Angus laughed. “You don’t smell milk, Mother. You pour it into your coffee and drink it.”

  “Sometimes you have to stop and appreciate the moment.” Her tired eyes crinkled up at the edges, and the dark circles faded.

  Mrs. Mann placed another sausage in the pan and sat at the table with her own coffee while it cooked.

  “My red silk dress, the best one, with the lace skirt panel, was ruined last night,” Fiona said. “I’ll give it to you after breakfast. Perhaps you can cut it up and salvage some of the lace or the plumes.”

  “I can repair,” Mrs. Mann said.

  “Not this time, I’m afraid. It’s beyond saving.”

  “What happened?” Angus’s fork chased down a liquid patch of egg yolk with a hunk of fried bread.

  “A man fell down, far too enthusiastic on the dance floor. I tried to help him stand up, and he was bleeding from a bad crack on his forehead. Blood stains, you can’t wash them out, not once they’ve dried. And then he grabbed at me to steady himself and ripped the dress right down the front. It’s fit for nothing but rags.”

  “Gee, that’s too bad.” Angus scraped the tines of his fork across his empty plate, trying to gather up every last bit of egg and grease. “That was great, Mrs. M. Any more?”

  “No.” The landlady went back to the stove and tossed bacon into the pan.

  “I’m sure Mrs. Mann and I won’t be able to manage to eat all of that bread.” Fiona nodded towards a tower beside the stove, awaiting its bath in bacon and sausage fat. The landlady always prepared extra for Angus, although she never admitted it.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Mann, that smells like heaven.” Fiona picked up her fork. Mrs. Mann served them both and sat down.
The frying pan popped and sizzled with grease and a new batch of bread.

  “Hurry, woman,” Mr. Mann said. “Church time.”

  She popped a slice of sausage into her mouth. “Plenty of time, dear. Plenty of time. But as you’ve finished already, perhaps you’ll fetch some water from the well.”

  Mr. Mann grunted, but he picked up the bucket and went out.

  Angus’s mother hid a smile behind a piece of toast and scraped her bacon onto his plate.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mr. Mann doesn’t like me much, and he clearly doesn’t approve of me. But then I’ve run into a great many men in my life who don’t like or approve of me. As well as those who like me very much but absolutely don’t approve of me: they’re the worst sort. But the Manns like the money I bring in, and they appreciate the extras, like this morning’s milk, which I provide for us all. Mrs. Mann seems begrudgingly fond of me, as if she’d rather not be but can’t quite help herself, and they both care for Angus a great deal. Angus simply likes everyone. So we all live together in some degree of contentment.

  No matter how long I tried to make it last, I finally reached the end of the pot of coffee. I could make more, of course. I’m not incompetent, although I have pretended to be so at times. But the remainder of the valuable milk, now resting in the cool, dark place under the floorboards Mrs. Mann used as her larder, would have to serve us tomorrow as well.

  It looked as if it might turn out to be a lovely day. The sky was a brilliant blue, with the depth of colour of an enormous sapphire that once passed through my hands. (Very quickly, I might add, the stone being far too distinctive to hang onto for long.) You rarely see that colour in England, and since arriving in Canada I have become extremely fond of it. Today, there were no clouds, not even a wisp hovering behind the hills that hid the jagged rim of the distant mountains to the east.

  “How would you like to go for a walk?” I asked my son. He smiled at me. My heart stopped beating for the briefest of moments as I considered what a handsome young man I had produced.

  “That would be fun, Mother. We could head down the river. There’ll be plenty of ducks and geese around at this time of year. We might even be able to find some eggs, if it’s not too late. Ron says that the moose come out of the mountains to drink, and you can get real close to them. John O’Leary saw a bear, just the other day, not far from town. The mosquitoes are bad, though, so you should wear gloves and cover the back of your neck with a shawl or something. Mother?”

  My admiration of my son turned to horror at the very thought of stepping foot into the bush. The moment we arrived in Dawson, and I shakily disembarked from the boat that had dumped us here onto, if not firm ground, at least mushy swamp, I swore I’d never leave civilization again. “I meant shall we go for a walk into town. See who’s about and listen to the gossip.”

  “I’d rather not,” he said, “if you don’t mind.”

  “Perhaps you can find one of your friends to go down to the river with you.”

  He kissed me on the cheek. “Enjoy your walk, Mother.”

  If I didn’t love my son so much, I would curse the fates for not giving me a daughter. A dainty girl to dress in pretty, frothy gowns and tie her fair hair in ringlets and ribbons and to parade through town to the admiration of all. I smiled at the thought, realizing that the daughter I dreamed of was the complete opposite of the girl I myself had been. When my parents were alive, and we lived on Bestford, the great Scottish estate, I’d run almost as wild as Angus did today. Until they corralled me for daily lessons in the big house, at any rate. I suppose what I would like most would be to have a daughter who didn’t have to fight her way through the world. Who didn’t have to live by her wits and the variety of skills she learned in the fen and the schoolroom and the streets. And in the bedroom.

  Angus tripped over something in the hall. “Damn.”

  “Angus!”

  “Sorry, Mother.” I laughed, full of love of my son and rinsed my tin mug in the cold, slimy water in the bucket on the wooden plank that served as a sink.

  I dressed carefully in my best walking dress. It had a sage green skirt of practical cotton teamed with a white blouse with leg-of-mutton sleeves and green ribbons. I pulled a wide black belt firmly around my waist, took a deep breath, tugged at the belt one more time, and put on my hat. An ostrich feather in a green somewhere between that of the skirt and that of the ribbon bobbed high above the whole contraption.

  A bright sunny day, following upon a day or two without rain, had gone a long way towards drying up the streets. Ladies kept to the boardwalk and duckboards, but gentlemen dared to walk down the centre of the road, and horses and wagons managed to get through without too much of a struggle.

  I made my way south on York Street towards the river, enjoying the warm caress of the sun on my face and the sound of the soft wind rustling through my ostrich feather. Many of the serious gamblers and dance hall girls leave town on a Sunday morning, taking boats downriver to the United States, where anything goes and there are no sternfaced, broad-brimmed-hatted Mounties to enforce the Lord’s Day Act. Thus for one day a week the town takes on a façade of boring respectability.

  On Front Street, the 25-cent waffle-bakery was struggling back to life. The elder sister stood in the street, eyeing the newly hung sign, her scorched hair shorn off almost to the scalp. I waved to her and crossed the street, carefully minding the hem of my skirts. The only bit of my ensemble, other than the mismatching green of every piece, that wouldn’t have withstood the scrutiny of a Sunday stroll in Hyde Park were my boots. No one ventured out-of-doors in Dawson without thoroughly practical footwear.

  “Mrs. MacGillivray, how nice to see you,” Miss Vanderhaege said in her strong Dutch accent.

  “I’m very sorry about your misfortune. I do hope your sister’s recovering nicely.”

  “She’s well, well.” She smiled broadly, revealing a set of teeth that reminded me of a prized stallion. “We rebuild. Open for business tomorrow.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, Miss Vanderhaege. You’ve been lucky.”

  The smile died, and the horse’s teeth disappeared behind her chapped lips. “Lucky? More lucky if the fire hadn’t happened.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, so I took my leave.

  I walked past the Savoy to check things out. From the point of view of an observer on the street, it really was nothing to get excited about, in a street of matching nothing-to-get-excited-about establishments. Our casuallyemployed watchman, who paid about as much attention to his duties as I did to his rate of pay, had deserted his post to watch the passing parade. He almost swallowed his thin cigar at the sight of me. I nodded and continued on my way. If there is a more boring job on Earth than watching over the houses of entertainment in Dawson, Yukon Territory, on a Sunday morning, I don’t want to know about it.

  I walked to the end of Front Street, down to where it curved to meet the Klondike River. That was far enough: I’d seen and, more importantly, been seen, quite enough. A book waited for me at home, Wuthering Heights by Miss Emily Bronte, which Angus had traded one of his boy’s adventures for as a gift to mark my birthday.

  Margaret Collins came scurrying down the boardwalk towards me. I nodded and stopped to pass the time of day.

  “Lovely morning, Margaret.”

  “That it is, Mrs. MacGillivray.”

  “Are you enjoying your walk?”

  “Yes, Mrs. MacGillivray.” She wore an inexpensive, unadorned straw hat and a long, full cloak fastened all the way up the front, which I thought a bit too heavy for such a warm day.

  “Since living in the Yukon, I’ve found that it’s best to appreciate every beautiful day one is granted. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I would, Mrs. MacGillivray.”

  “When I lived in London, all of society would rush to >the park to enjoy a sunny day. But I found that in Toronto, instead of enjoying what they’d been given, people complained constantly, about the heat in the summer and t
he cold in the winter.”

  “Really?” Margaret said with not the slightest bit of interest.

  What on earth was the point of trying to make polite, mindless conversation with an American anyway? They were all of them blunt to the point of being rude.

  A bustle of giggling dance hall girls swept around us. Mrs. Collins picked up her skirts and pushed past me to continue down the boardwalk, her grey head held high.

  I was crossing the street on a duckboard when I almost collided with Joey LeGrand, who was coming the other way. The duckboards were narrow, and we were thus forced to acknowledge each other’s presence. We both knew that we had absolutely no need to pretend to be polite, which I found to be much more satisfactory than the salons of London, where a lady was expected to greet her most hated enemy with joy and pleasure. Joey grunted and stood firm in the centre of the board. She was so small that I could have pushed her aside with one stiff arm. But I believe in saving my fights for the important things. I stepped into the road without batting an eyelash and sailed across the street as if such had been my intention all along.

  A minute later, Dawson’s most famous citizens, Alex Macdonald and Belinda Mulroney, approached me, deep in conversation, clearly talking about business. Those two were not keeping the Lord’s Day.

  Big Alex tipped his hat. “Quite the night last night, Mrs. MacGillivray. The Savoy is once again the talk of the town.”

  Belinda tossed me a smile. “That’s a lovely hat, Fiona.”

  I thanked her with genuine warmth, exchanged a bit of empty conversation, and continued on my way.

  And so the boring stroll continued.

  At one point I was sure I saw Graham Donohue coming towards me, but when I lifted my hand in greeting, the man spun on his heels and took off down Queen Street. I must have been mistaken. It couldn’t have been anyone I knew.