The White Feather Murders

by Rachel McMillan

  “Clearly I am known to you.” Merinda said, giving his hand a quick shake. “But you must meet the lovely Jem’s husband,” she said pointedly, tugging Ray into clearer view.

  “Ray DeLuca,” Ray said pleasantly, extending his hand.

  Russell St. Clair blinked. “DeLuca. Of the Hogtown Herald?”

  “The very same.”

  “Surely you are in jest.” Russell turned to Merinda. “It’s my understanding that Miss Jemima Watts is, like you, a bachelor girl detective.”

  “Miss Jemima Watts is actually Mrs. Jemima DeLuca,” Jasper supplied.

  “But—”

  “Upon Jem’s nuptials, I made an executive decision—” Merinda began.

  “One of many,” Ray interrupted under his breath.

  “I made the decision,” Merinda resumed, “that our clients would be more familiar with Herringford and Watts. Besides, we’d already had the sign made.”

  St. Clair looked to Ray. “And how did a muckraking reporter find himself so fortunate as to wed such a beautiful woman?”

  Ray laughed softly. “I am sure I do not know.”

  “Nonsense,” Jasper said. “Ray is the best fellow in the world. In fact—”

  “Listen, Jasper,” Russell cut in, clearly uninterested in Jasper’s appraisal of Ray. “I only came by to see if you wanted to grab a bite of lunch. Kirk told me I might find you here.”

  “I must be off,” Ray said with a tip of his bowler. “Nice to meet you, Mr. St. Clair.”

  “Constable,” St. Clair coldly corrected.

  “Constable St. Clair.” Ray enunciated the title carefully before turning back to his friends. “Jasper, Merinda, shall we plan on meeting near the northwest corner of City Hall tonight?”

  “Half past six?” Merinda asked.

  “Half past six,” Ray agreed, swerving in the direction of Cabbagetown and his home on Parliament Street.

  “So that was Ray DeLuca,” St. Clair said, watching his retreating figure.

  “Shall we go to the Wellington?” Jasper didn’t respond to his colleague’s comment, but rather pointed to the restaurant directly across from City Hall.

  A short stroll later, they were settled in the diner, and over messy corned beef, Jasper and Russell bored Merinda with talk of baseball and the policeman’s pennant. Not one to feign interest where she had none, Merinda leaned her chin on her hand and watched the usual lunchtime rush filter in. After droning on about plays and scores, and waxing loquaciously about the details of his recent transfer, Russell drew Merinda’s attention back by harping on his perception of Toronto’s real problem.

  “Germans and Italians,” he said with a pronounced thwack of his hand on the table, sparing his company from the racist slurs Merinda was sure he usually used in conjunction with his diatribes. “You watch.” St. Clair’s voice was almost a hiss. “They will turn on us so quickly. Staying true to their sordid motherlands and all that nonsense.” He looked at Jasper. “You think this DeLuca is a friend of yours. He’ll use that paper to drum up support to overthrow law and order. I guarantee it.” He took a big bite of his sandwich.

  Merinda snorted. “You have no idea what you are talking about, Mr. St. Clair. When the anarchists were blowing up trolleys in the city not two years ago, DeLuca was using his influence to stop the exuberance for anarchy from spreading in the Ward.”

  “He saved my life,” Jasper said, his water goblet poised in his hand. “There’s enough corruption in our own department without focusing on perceived and unfounded prejudice against people like Ray DeLuca.” Jasper took a sip before saying, “Really, St. Clair, I love having a new mate on the squad, but I don’t agree with your views.”

  Russell looked at Merinda. “Surely you, a forward-looking woman, can see the tidal wave that will overtake us the moment Britain declares war.”

  Merinda almost squawked a laugh. “Tidal wave? I think war will offer more opportunities for women! Why, just last week the Globe ran a piece on how women will be allowed to participate in target practice! I have waited my entire life to shoot a rifle!”

  “She has,” Jasper affirmed, stabbing a bite of coleslaw.

  “And your beautiful friend will join you?” St. Clair asked, his eyebrows raised as if attempting to envision what Herringford and Watts might look like handling rifles.

  “She will.” Merinda nodded.

  “I am surprised Miss Watts… erm… Mrs. DeLuca—” (Merinda didn’t like the way he said her name) “—is not a part of this Cartier Club endeavor.”

  “When we formed the Cartier Club, little Hamish had just been born,” Jasper explained. “Jem was quite preoccupied.”

  “I keep hearing it around the station.” St. Clair shoved his empty plate away from him. “The Cartier Club.”

  “Some men and woman,” Jasper said, nodding toward Merinda, “feel Toronto has been given a great responsibility to serve those who have chosen to make it their home.” He expounded on the work of their group and its advocacy for women and immigrants, fair wages, and a desire to impart the promise of acceptance and morality of the century before. He then used the earlier meeting to give Russell a taste of what was occupying their time that very morning. Merinda was preoccupied with waving a waitress over to take her order of pie.

  “But all of what you say is what Mayor Montague has been trying to do,” St. Clair said. “That was part of the reason I was so eager for my Toronto transfer. To experience firsthand his vision for the city’s progress.”

  “But at the expense of so many!” Merinda countered, her eyes widening at the large slice of apple pie and cheddar cheese set in front of her.

  “Do you feel the same way as Merinda, Jasper?” Russell turned to the other constable, who was watching Merinda tuck into her pie with admiration.

  “I truly believe we could be making a lot more effort to find ‘the least of these’ comfort, clean lodging, and opportunity for gainful employment.”

  “But is that not what Spenser is doing with making jobs available to the newest immigrants and Montague’s homes for working men?” St. Clair asked.

  “Flophouses,” Merinda said through a mouthful.

  “The longer you stay in Toronto, Russell,” Jasper said sadly, “the more you will be privy to the abhorrent conditions and unfair wages Spenser passes off as ‘charity.’ The Cartier Club is dedicated to helping change the city’s concept of reform.”

  “But surely,” St. Clair said, beginning on a second cup of coffee, “you’re in favor of the close partnership between Mayor Montague and Chief Tipton.”

  Merinda, knowing Jasper had several thoughts on this alliance, none positive and most exclaimed in sentences that painted their relationship as one of a puppeteer and puppet, waited eagerly to see what her friend would say.

  Jasper gave him a typically diplomatic response. “Of course I believe that all leadership should work together seamlessly to ensure the success of our city’s infrastructure.”

  Merinda knew, in that moment, that while Jasper enjoyed Russell’s company and their camaraderie on the baseball field, he didn’t trust him.

  “Spoken like a true politician,” St. Clair said with a chuckle, rising and placing a few coins on the table. “I must get back to the grind.” He tipped his cap. “Miss Herringford.”

  Merinda, again interested in her pie, gave him a limp wave without looking up. After finishing their meal—Jasper reaching for the check—they strolled up Queen Street.

  “Now you can tell me what you really think,” Merinda said brightly, sensing his eyes studying her profile.

  With her chin tipped up and green eyes blazing forward, she took in the usual bustle of the day. Trolleys rumbled, quaking the ground with their speed and weight, while a lone constable directed traffic as horses and carts and automobiles flowed around him. Spenser’s customers were spilling out of the grand department store, holding their parcels and wares. Newsies hawked their headlines all about the War Ultimatum on either side of the street,
bellowing promise of a special edition on the deadline for war declaration.

  “Chaos will erupt,” Jasper said as Merinda recognized a familiar face and pressed a nickel into Kat’s palm for a copy of the Hog, whose headline declared: TORONTO ON THE BRINK.

  If Germany failed to meet the ultimatum and pull back from their invasion of France and Belgium by eleven p.m. Greenwich mean time that evening, there would be war. Toronto was a supremely British city, and Jasper and Merinda knew its population would trip over itself to help the motherland. It was all anyone had talked about all summer, and despite the ripples of excitement and fervor, Jasper couldn’t help but look ruefully at the changes erupting around him.

  “Are we going to go to war?” Merinda asked as he led her across the street.

  “The signs have been pointing that way all summer,” Jasper said gravely. “Ever since that poor chap Ferdinand.”

  “What does that mean for us?”

  “I can’t rightly be sure. But we have to make certain that if we go to war for England, we have done all we can to make our world worth fighting for—”

  “A Toronto worth fighting for?” Merinda interpreted.

  Jasper nodded. “I love this city, as do you. But we’re fighting our own battle. How can we expect to give our all to a conflict a world away when we can’t keep men like Montague and Tipton from waging battle against the people trying so hard to make a life here? Women, immigrants…”

  “That fiend Russell St. Clair isn’t helping,” Merinda said drily.

  Jasper couldn’t disagree. “I saw a different side of him today.”

  They walked without speaking for a few moments. Then Merinda broke a settling silence. “Things are changing, aren’t they?”

  “That’s all you’ve ever wanted, Merinda. Change.”

  “I love change!” She recovered. “But I fear it all the same.”

  “Fear? This from a woman who begged her parents for a roadster that could out-speed most of the automobiles in Toronto!”

  “Is this your asking for a ride back to the station, Constable Forth?”

  Jasper laughed while Merinda tugged him in a slight detour from their stroll, backtracking to Elm Street and to where her car was parked.

  “I cannot believe your parents bought you an automobile,” Jasper said as he again admired the sheened veneer. He opened the passenger door and slid in. “Did they never hear about your reckless adventures on a police motor bicycle?” He winked.‡

  Merinda pressed the heel of her brogan to the pedal, and they drove off into the afternoon.

  “TORONTO ON THE BRINK.”

  Jemima DeLuca read the Hog aloud to Hamish, who was watching her with interest, his knees under him and his bright blue eyes looking up at her, comprehending little but enamored with the rise and fall of her voice and her animated expressions. Jem set down the paper, leaned forward, and kissed the fourteen-month-old on the forehead, directly under the fringe of his black curls. Hamish responded by grabbing one of her fingers in his pudgy fingers and holding on tightly, babbling about something in a language that was sounding decidedly more like English by the day.

  They turned simultaneously at the jangle of keys in the door. Ray walked in the parlor a moment later, swept his hat off his head, and ruffled his hair. “Hot out there,” he said, leaning down to kiss Jem before swooping up Hamish and kissing him. “Reading the paper, I see,” he said to Hamish, who reached up to grab his father’s nose.

  Ray sat his son down near the window, where the boy occupied himself with blocks before lifting himself up, balancing with a hold on the window sill, and watching the bustle in the heart of Cabbagetown.

  Ray joined Jem on the sofa and stole another kiss. “How are you?”

  “Hot and bored,” Jem said, fingering a sticky errant curl at her neck. “How was the meeting?”

  The eagerness in her eyes told Ray exactly how much she hated being left out of the Cartier Club. Since Hamish’s birth, she had adapted to numerous limitations. While she relied on Mrs. Malone and Jasper’s mother to take Hamish while she assisted on Merinda’s cases, Ray could see that a part of her wanted to be a part of their enterprises. She was pulled in two directions, much as he had long been when still responsible for financially supporting his sister, Viola, while beginning to build a life with Jem. Though the tragic consequences of a case in Chicago resulted in Viola becoming estranged from him, he was able to fill his days (and some late nights) with the Hog and his nonworking hours with his beautiful wife and too-fast-growing son. He sensed Jem wanted to find a bit more balance. A long convalescence after Hamish was born, the inevitable sleepless nights, and constant care a baby required made certain that it was several months before she was able to resume her detective adventures with Merinda.

  “Dr. Alexander is doing some wonderful work with hygiene, especially in children’s tuberculosis prevention.” His eyes drifted toward Hamish, who was talking and pointing at something through the window. Ray couldn’t understand him, but he knew his son’s mind was working a mile a minute as he took in every sound and sight of the street.

  “I bet everyone was talking of the war.”

  Ray nodded. The war unsettled him. He wanted to keep to lighter topics. “Alexander Waverley has hired new reporters to compensate for the men he feels will enlist.”

  “So he feels that the war is a certainty?”

  “Most everyone does, my love.”

  “Then perhaps he has a job for you.” Jem brightened. “Did you tell him you would not be eligible to enlist?”

  Ray nodded. “I did but…” He shrugged. “It’s no use.”

  Jem grabbed Ray’s hand. “Don’t give up your one dream, Ray DeLuca. The world is changing. Indeed—” she reached for the discarded edition of the Hog and held it up to him. “A rather brilliant piece in the Hogtown Herald believes that Toronto is on the brink! I choose to believe we are on the brink of something exciting, and one of the many changes will see people being able to step into worlds they have dared not go to before. Maybe a Hogtown Herald reporter finding employment at the Globe and Mail! Once and for all.”

  Ray gave her a half smile. “He offered Martha Kingston a job even before me.”

  “That must have stung,” Jem said with a click of her tongue.

  “It did, but—” A knock at the door interrupted him. He rose to answer it.

  A moment later, Ray ushered Mouse into the sitting room. The girl first ruffled Hamish’s curls, much to his delight, before turning to Ray and Jem.

  “Telegram, Mrs. DeLuca.”

  “You can call me Jem, Mouse.”

  Ray pressed a coin into Mouse’s hand for her trouble while Jem read the telegram.

  “Client at King Street,” she said as Ray returned from seeing Mouse out the door. “I suppose I will just follow Merinda to City Hall this evening.” Jem stood and went to the hall mirror, where she affixed a cap to her curls.

  “What about Hamish?” Ray asked as the baby ran to him, holding up one of his blocks for Ray’s approval. Ray DeLuca’s usual half-moon smile always surrendered fully when Hamish was in view, and it spread wide now.

  Jem turned in the archway separating the front hallway and the parlor. “I’ll arrange for Mrs. Malone to mind him.”

  “Mrs. Malone has been minding him quite a lot lately, Jemima,” Ray said, still smiling at Hamish and passing the block back to him, only to have Hamish toddle to the window again, find another, and present it in a similar fashion.

  “Ray, I don’t want to bring him tonight. It will be crowded with people, and he might get tired or scared and flustered.”

  “Nor do you want to stay and mind him.”

  “Do you?”

  “You know I have to be there in case McCormick needs me for a last-minute assignment.” Though Ray had an independent streak at work that often found him butting heads with his boss, Oliver McCormick, he wouldn’t dream of missing the opportunity of the biggest story of the year.

  �
��You told me you had done what you can, and that you wouldn’t be required at the office until after the event so long as Skip was there.”

  “I am just saying—”

  “Ray, you knew from the moment Hamish was born that I would be taking care of him while still assisting Merinda.”

  “I know, and you have done a lot of assisting.”

  “You never expected me to stay at home.”

  “Jem…”

  Jem strode over to Ray, brushed his hair back from his forehead, and kissed his head. “You know I will take care of him. No harm will come to Hamish. He is the most important thing in my life other than you, you frustrating man. But I also want to enjoy the fact that the city has finally embraced us! That our celebrity is keeping the Morality Squad off our heels! That Merinda and I can wear trousers and hats freely as a sort of uniform rather than a deterrent from pursuit.”

  “You want both.”

  Jem nodded. “As long as Hamish is safe with Mrs. Malone, I will be dashing off to assist Merinda!” She brushed her lips over his before turning to Hamish, who was in the midst of selecting another block. “Goodbye, duckling!” she said, picking Hamish up and kissing him on both cheeks. “I will see you this evening.”

  “When the world ends,” Ray added drily.

  * Montague’s respect of Pelham was greatest when the affluent war hero contributed to City Hall’s coffers. If Pelham had suggested his cook be the war agent, Merinda would not have been surprised if he were offered the job.

  † The astute reader will recall these escapades as part of a previous adventure recorded as A Lesson in Love and Murder.

  ‡ This adventure is mentioned in the case entitled Of Dubious and Questionable Memory.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jemima Watts and Merinda Herringford’s celebrity is on the rise. At a baseball game at Hanlan Point Thursday last, it was not uncommon to see women in trousers and caps in broad daylight nodding to the lady detectives or pumping their hands in solidarity. When I asked one woman whether she was reproached for her scandalous attire, she shook her head. “Every woman wants to be them. They are the face of Toronto, and it is changing so fast!” First it is trousers in the street and women detectives. Next, the vote or public office? Time only will tell…