Gold Digger: A Klondike Mystery

by Vicki Delany

“Mrs.? That’s no badge of honour to me, but it serves its purpose, on occasion. Isn’t this a touch melodramatic, Margaret?”

  She moved the knife a few inches away from my throat and stepped to one side so I could see her. Her bushy grey eyebrows were drawn together in determination. With every hair on her head scraped back, forced into a severe bun, and the front of her calico dress ironed flat, devoid of a single wrinkle, Margaret reminded me of my childhood governess, who had tolerated me at best and hated me at worst. But at least she’d never drawn a knife on me.

  “Sit down, over here.” Margaret gestured to a small, but sturdy, bush, hiding under a rocky overhang. “And don’t believe I won’t slit your aristocratic throat if I have to.”

  “I believe you, Margaret. But this is all a bit theatrical, wouldn’t you agree? I’m assuming you killed Jack Ireland. So? I most certainly don’t care. I should thank you for seeing the bastard dispatched to his reward.”

  “Shut up and sit down.” I kept talking. At times it is what I do best. “Margaret, I don’t see why you’ve involved me in this sordid mess.” I started to walk backwards, one tiny inch at a time. The boulder lay behind me. The crowded safety of town beyond that. I might be able to scale the rock in one magnificent leap. But then again, Her Majesty Queen Victoria might swoop down from the heavens and carry me to safety.

  “If you put that silly knife away,” I said, “we can both go home.”

  It was, sadly, not a silly knife, but a good kitchen knife, sharpened to a fine point; no doubt used to slice up sides of raw meat.

  As well as the late, unmourned, Mr. Jack Ireland.

  “Don’t you ever listen to yourself, you arrogant woman? You as much as told me that you wouldn’t let it rest as long as your precious dance hall is threatened. I made a mistake; I’ll admit it. Please stop moving.” She grabbed the front of my dress and almost jerked me off my feet. The knife touched the bottom of my chin, gentle as a lover. And as dangerous as some lovers I have known. “I intended to drag his body out into the back alley, but it was too heavy. I should’ve thought of that earlier.”

  “Never mind all that. We can come to some sort of arrangement, I’m sure.” I stepped backwards. The knife sliced down my chest, through the bodice of my best day dress. Thick red blood, glistening in the light of the setting sun, blossomed from the wound like one of Margaret’s beautiful mountain wildflowers.

  The white blouse fell open and pain shot through my chest.

  “Sit down, Mrs. MacGillivray. I do not want to kill you, but don’t doubt that I will if I have to.” The sight of the ripped blouse spilling lace and my life’s blood in a gentle trickle, shocked me as much, if not more, than the pain.

  While I stared stupidly at my chest, Margaret whipped out one foot, wrapped it around my ankle and twisted. I collapsed.

  Like me, Margaret spoke well. But she had some history behind her. Also like me.

  A rock jabbed into my side, delivering a lightning bolt of pain. I ignored it, curled forward, and tensed to launch myself back upright.

  Margaret’s foot caught me under the chin with enough force to snap my head back. Before I could recover my senses, she reached out with the knife and sliced it across my cheek.

  “The next cut will be to your throat. Move back. There.” She gestured, and I wiggled backwards until my back touched the single tree still clinging to this patch of hillside. It wasn’t a tree, really, more of a sapling. Strange that it had been overlooked in the mad lust for lumber. I touched my face; the spot burned like fire. I looked at my fingers—wet, red and sticky. Blood from the cut in my chest soaked the front of my dress.

  Another dress ruined. My hat, the one that I worried made me look old, lay in the mud, the once jaunty feather squashed flat.

  “Hold your hands out.” Margaret pulled a length of rope from the depths of her dress. She truly had played me for a fool. While I had stood outside her front door, admiring the summer evening and watching a pack of children tormenting a dog, she had gathered everything she needed. How had I become so soft?

  I eyed the knife and the cold eyes behind it and held out my hands, my fingers streaked with my own blood. She looped the rope around my wrists then wrapped it around the tree, and me, several times. It was a long, thick rope. She yanked on the end, and I gasped as it bit into my chest.

  “The high-and-mighty Mrs. MacGillivray brought low.”

  “You needn’t insult me, Margaret. You might think I’m of no importance, but you can be sure that the officers of the law, as well as the prominent citizens of this town, will be looking for me before the sun sets.”

  “Probably,” she said, pulling a large, well-mended, but clean handkerchief from her skirt pocket. A bit of blood, my blood, had splashed onto the front of her dress and the cuffs of her right sleeve. Not enough blood, unfortunately, that anyone would have reason to think she’d been doing anything more dangerous than preparing meat for her husband’s evening meal.

  “Tell me the story, Margaret.” I tested my bonds. Tight, very tight. But if she would forget about that handkerchief, my healthy voice would have help arriving the moment she disappeared. “What was Jack Ireland to you?”

  “My Sam was a hero in the War Between the States.” She touched the edge of her knife. A spot of blood blossomed on the pad of her index finger. She licked it, her eyes still fixed on mine. And I knew she was mad.

  “Jack Ireland, he was a bastard, he was. Made his name supposedly as a war correspondent. Liar and storyteller more likely. He was there when Sam saved that soldier, the way I told you. But Sam was captured by the Yankees, damn them all to hell.”

  I briefly enjoyed the image of Constable Sterling taking Margaret into custody for swearing.

  “After the war, not long after Sam had returned home, returned to me, it happened that Ireland was in town one day when Sam came in with one of his cousins. He was broken, Sam was, a proud, strong, kind man broken in that camp. Damaged, torn up by what the war and the Yankees had done to him. But Ireland had heard that Sam’s family had money. Had. That’s the word. Before the war, the North Carolina branch of the Collins family had land and wealth, plenty of slaves, and good fortune. After the long years of the war and then the Union soldiers passing through, they were left with nothing but a patch of dirt on which to grow cabbage and turnips. But Ireland wanted money. Pay him off, he told Sam, or he’d tell his newspaper that he’d been there, at Gettysburg, and saw Sam throw the other soldier into harm’s way and then try to run away.”

  “How awful for you! You fought him, of course.”

  “Are you really that stupid, Mrs. MacGillivray? Or do you just pretend to be? I suppose some men like it when women act the simpering idiot. There is only one way to fight a man like Ireland. But Sam said he’d seen too much killing, and he wouldn’t do what had to be done. So we left North Carolina and went to California. Life was good there, for a few years, but the economy collapsed, and Sam could only get rough work. Then he found himself out of work altogether, so we decided to come to the Klondike. Only to find Jack Ireland, the source of all of our troubles, waiting for us. I’d never met the fellow, until the day he died, but Sam told me he’d come into the Savoy and wanted to take pictures of Sam and write about him for his paper. I knew it wouldn’t be long before Ireland remembered Gettysburg, if he hadn’t already, and North Carolina, and tried to blackmail us again. I did what should have been done thirty years ago.”

  Sam must have recognized Ireland as soon as the newspaperman first walked up to the bar of the Savoy, which would explain why he’d been on edge whenever

  Ireland was around. But Ireland hadn’t given Sam a flicker of recognition. Jack Ireland had moved on, and the long years had passed. But Margaret, poor tormented Margaret, hadn’t been able to forget. It must have eaten at her soul, all these long years, and finally, seeing Ireland, even unwittingly, bothering Sam, had driven her over the edge of sanity.

  “The Mounties will take your story into account,” I sai
d. “Now if you’ll untie me, we can go back to town and…”

  Margaret stuffed her white cotton handkerchief into my open mouth. “You talk too much. There’s a boat leaving just after midnight. Sam and I’ll be on it. If you free yourself by then, you can come after us. If you free yourself later, we’ll be safely on our way. And if you never manage to free yourself, well, that’s the way the game is played, isn’t it, Mrs. MacGillivray? I hear there are bears and wolves in these woods, and plenty of smaller animals. But you have friends in Dawson, don’t you? Powerful friends, I believe you said. They’ll find you before morning, I’m sure. I’ll leave your legs free, so you can kick if a bear approaches.”

  Margaret Collins tucked her knife into the waistband of her skirt and folded her cardigan neatly over it. Ireland’s blood had soaked the stage—a good deal must have splashed onto her dress. And yet she faced me in the street, Jack Ireland’s blood concealed by her heavy coat, and made polite conversation while I thought she must be very hot.

  “Uuummmmppppggggg,” I said. “Go to hell, Fiona.” Margaret marched down the path and scrambled over the boulder without a backward glance.

  Despite it all, I expected to see her grey head pop up and hear her give a hearty laugh at the joke she’d played on me.

  I struggled against my bonds and tried to spit out the handkerchief. Nothing moved.

  I was furious with myself at how completely she’d trapped me. Knowing she’d killed Jack Ireland, I had nevertheless walked into her home then joined her in a pleasant little nature walk. Me! Survivor of Whitechapel, Seven Dials, Belgravia, country estates in Surrey and Yorkshire, and even the Prince of Wales.

  Wouldn’t the lads in Seven Dials love to see this: Fee MacGillivray trussed up like a goose intended for Christmas lunch.

  If I survived the night, I might kill myself out of shame.

  * * *

  An animal howled in the bush, sounding close. It might have been a wolf or perhaps an escaped dog. No matter. Either one would be more than happy to come across their supper subdued and ready to be served up.

  It wasn’t important, I decided, to free my arms and body. If I could yell and scream and raise holy hell, then I might not only be able to keep the ravenous creatures of the night away, but summon help. Trying to spit out the handkerchief Margaret had stuffed into my mouth, I managed only to suck more of the cloth down my throat.

  The bushes quivered. The mosquitoes descended.

  I gave up struggling, closed my eyes, and wondered what would get me first.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  “Dinner’ll be cold if we wait any longer, young Angus.” “My ma’s always here for Sunday dinner. Let’s give her a few more minutes, please.”

  “I’ll keep her serving warm over the stove,” Mrs. Mann said, glancing anxiously at the table to where Mr. Mann sat, clutching his knife and fork, his habitual heavy frown firmly in place. “When I was boy,” he grunted, “yous late for dinner, yous not eat.”

  Mrs. Mann served up the boiled beef and cabbage. The meal was made appetizing only by the platter of freshly baked biscuits.

  Angus sat at the table and grabbed a biscuit. “It’s not like Ma to be late for Sunday dinner.”

  “I know, dear. But it’s not as if we have the telephone, like they do in the big cities. She can’t telephone us if she’s going to be late.”

  “We had a telephone in our house in Toronto,” Angus said, accepting the bowl of potatoes from Mr. Mann. “Sometimes on the holidays, Ma would let me call my friends from school who were also on the telephone. It was great fun. They say that someday every home in Canada will have a telephone.”

  “Never,” Mr. Mann rumbled. “Plaything for rich people. Not for the like of us.”

  “But just imagine. Ma could go into the post office and telephone here to tell us she’s going to be late. We’d only have to go as far as that wall to talk to her. Wouldn’t that be great?”

  Mr. Mann spoke around a mouth full of beef and cabbage. “Then my neighbour to mein store, he use telephone and complain for me not switch off light. The butcher he call me to tells mein frau should pay them bill. And you Angus, your friend call to disturb our evening eats... nothing but more bad.”

  Mrs. Mann smiled at Angus. “Many wonderful changes you’ll see in your lifetime, dear. Eat your supper. Your mother’ll be along shortly. I’m sure she simply lost track of the time. Perhaps her watch stopped. And you know she doesn’t like to be called ma.”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Mann.” Angus ate his dinner.

  He’d arranged to meet his two closest friends down by the waterfront once the boys could escape after supper, and he arrived to find them waiting. It was late, but the yellow sun still shone in the northern sky, and boats of all sizes travelled up and down the Yukon River. They stalked frogs, dug in the mud and listened to a wolf howling in the mountains behind town. Finally, the youngest boy said, “I’d best be getting home. Ma told me not to be late. See, Pa even give me his watch so’s I could tell the time.”

  Angus leaned over to have a look. It was a nice watch: shiny silver on a long chain that his friend, or most likely his father, had fastened to the inside of the boy’s pocket with a big pin.

  Well past midnight, the silver pocket-watch announced.

  A steamboat pulled out into the river. It was the tiny Mae West. Lights shone from the decks, and men and women, laughing and chattering, watched Dawson slide by. The boys waved and cheered and once the boat passed beyond sight and hearing they walked back into town where they separated to make their way home.

  Angus tried not to make a sound as he tip-toed down the hall to Mrs. Mann’s kitchen in search of a bedtime snack. His mother appreciated a good sleep on a Sunday night—the only time she could get in an entire night’s rest at one stretch.

  An upside-down plate sat on the counter top. Angus lifted it. Underneath sat a single serving of potatoes, boiled beef and cabbage and two biscuits. The potatoes were dry, the beef curling around the edges.

  His ma’s dinner. She never missed her meals. Was she sick? He tapped lightly on her door. There was no answer, so he opened the door a crack. “Mother?” The bed was empty, the blanket tucked under undented pillows. “Mother?”

  His mother hadn’t come home for supper, and she wasn’t in her bed.

  Angus stood in the doorway. He could think of no reason why she wouldn’t be home at this hour on a Sunday night…Monday morning.

  He knocked on the Manns’ bedroom door. “Mrs. Mann,” he whispered. “Please, Mrs. Mann. She’s not here.”

  The door opened, and Mrs. Mann slid out into the hallway, grey hair tied in a braid, hanging down her back. Her brown nightdress was thick and plain.

  “Angus, what’s the matter?”

  “My mother. She hasn’t come home.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She didn’t eat the food you left her, and her bed hasn’t been slept in.”

  Mrs. Mann’s face twisted in something almost like embarrassment. “Angus, dear. Perhaps your mother had …uh…business matters to attend to.”

  “At this time of night? On a Sunday?”

  “In Dawson, anything is possible.” The German accent thickened as she spoke. “Come. We talk in the kitchen. Not wake Mr. Mann.”

  She stoked the stove and filled the kettle. Women always made tea when they were upset and trying to hide it. Angus’s London nanny, Francine, had constantly been putting the kettle on.

  “Do you know where my mother is, Mrs. Mann?”

  “No, dear, I don’t. Would you like a slice of cake? There might be some left.” She pulled the tin down from the shelf.

  “I’ll go looking for her,” Angus said, watching Mrs. Mann cut him a slice. The cake was sprinkled with currants which he particularly liked.

  Mrs. Mann coughed as she handed him a plate. “Perhaps your mother has found a…friend… with who to…spend…the evening.”

  “With whom,” Angus said, struggling to get the words
out around a mouthful of cake. “She’d be home by now.”

  Mrs. Mann busied herself with kettle and teapot. Her face and neck were turning a bright red.

  “It is possible, Angus, that she has…well…I mean your mother…decided that…I mean…she might… Your mother is a widowed lady. Sometimes…I have heard…that… women…ladies…” She took a deep breath and spat out the words as if they were wrapped in vinegar “…miss the company of a gentleman.”

  “Huh?”

  “Go to bed, Angus. Your mother will be home when you get up in the morning. Perhaps she found a supper more to her liking than beef and cabbage.” Mrs. Mann pulled the unboiled kettle off the hob. “Go to bed, dear.”

  “You’re sure she’s all right, Mrs. Mann?”

  “Yes, dear, I’m sure.”

  “Good night then. That was good cake. Can I have some in my lunch packet tomorrow?”

  “Of course you can, dear boy. That’s what I made it for.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Monday morning, Angus woke to a light tap on the door of his room. Ma, he thought, struggling out of a dream full of large trees and green forest, you’re back.

  “Breakfast, Angus,” Mrs. Mann shouted. “Hurry up now.”

  Angus pulled on his trousers and shirt, splashed his face with cold water from the bowl on the dresser, and checked (as he did every morning) in the mirror for the first whiskers. Nothing yet. Despairing that the signs of manhood would ever come, he stumbled down the hall and outside to the privy.

  Mrs. Mann was ladling lumpy porridge into his bowl as he came inside.

  “Is my ma…mother up yet?”

  “Haven’t heard her.”

  “I’ll get her.” Angus left the kitchen and rapped on his mother’s door. There was no answer. He knocked again and called through the thin wood.

  Mrs. Mann came into the hall, wiping her hands on her apron. “Mrs. MacGillivray, breakfast is ready.”

  She looked at Angus’s face and raised her voice. “Mrs. MacGillivray, are you all right?”