Excerpt from the Globe and Mail
After a trolley ride and a sticky stroll, Jem entered the familiar King Street surroundings, wherein Merinda sat across from a thin young woman, whose pasty complexion was striped with greasy strands from a disheveled chignon. Jem smoothed her trousers and removed her hat. The girls’ growing popularity had made it surprisingly acceptable to be seen in male garb even in daylight. As the muggy August heat showed no prospect of dissipating, Jem was happy for the excuse to trade corsets and stays for cotton shirts and loose-fitting pants.
“Ah, Jem!” Merinda said brightly the moment her friend crossed the Persian carpet to sink into her usual chair. “This is Miss Heidi Mueller.” Merinda waved at her guest as Jem sank into her usual chair. “Miss Mueller, my partner, Mrs. Jemima DeLuca.”
“I’ve lived in Canada my whole life,” Miss Mueller said after Mrs. Malone set the tea service in front of them, a timid tremor rippling through her voice, her eyes wavering between Merinda and Jem. “My family too. Horrible words have been painted on the sides of houses. At the Community Center. Even churches. The police will not help. We are going to war, and it will become even harder.” She shook her head. “A young woman, my neighbor, was admitted to the hospital when she was hit by a rock thrown through the window.”
Jem gasped.
Merinda cursed under her breath. Then she said, “And what do you think Jem and I can do?”
“Find him. Find this person who is bullying my brother and who beat him behind Spenser’s. He works in the shipping department. Find the person who is terrorizing us every night! There are boys in the Ward who are just coming home from late shifts, and he waits for them.”
“It won’t be just one person,” Jem theorized sadly. “These petty acts of vandalism will be nearly impossible to trace.”
“They have to start somewhere, and if you can find this man, you can find the others. They are most likely working in a group. Like the Morality Squad.* They want to drive us out of our home!” She shook her head. “This is not my war. We have nothing to do with it. We don’t have any relatives left. We are Canadians.”
Jem and Merinda exchanged a look. Merinda shrugged helplessly. “Have you seen anyone around your home?”
“It’s always too dark. My father has been waiting up, but whoever it is skulks around in the shadows and throws things. There’s no one else who will help us. You are famous. You assisted with that big case in Chicago. Everyone wants to be you. My little sister wears a hat just like yours, Miss Herringford.”
Merinda cleared her throat. “I can try to look into the matter. Do you know of anyone else who has experienced trouble at Spenser’s?”
“A few of the lads have been roughed up. Usually at the end of the shift. Please do what you can.”
Merinda called for Mrs. Malone, and Miss Mueller thanked them profusely with a sad smile.
Once the front door clicked and Miss Mueller was on her way, Merinda kicked at the floor with her heel. “Hopeless!” She flopped back into her arm chair. “It will only get worse, and I suspect Chief Tipton will pay little attention to any complaints.”
“Then it will be up to Jasper to ensure that these poor people have someone to turn to.”
“I think he will try, but I doubt he’ll have much support from the station. I met one of the new fellows, Russell St. Clair, and his views were quite antagonistic toward… well, everything.”
“The fellow Jasper plays with on the baseball team? He’s talked so much about him.”
“He failed to impress me,” Merinda said, deciding to keep St. Clair’s obvious disdain toward Ray to herself.
“Well, we have to do something,” Jem said, fingering the small retainer Miss Mueller had placed in her hand.
“Fancy a drive?” Merinda brightened.
The girls climbed into Merinda’s Cadillac roadster, Jem still unaccustomed to the jolts as Merinda slowly sputtered the vehicle into gear. Merinda never did anything slowly or calmly, thus her steering left a lot to be desired. She swerved and skidded, barely missing a streetcar and then a horse and buggy, and finally deposited the vehicle at Queen Street. From there Jem and Merinda walked the last two blocks to the back of Spenser’s, where the warehouse and delivery area were conveniently attached to the back of the grand department store.
Having previously been employed in the mailroom, Jem was familiar with the layout of the store and knew where the entrance to the delivery area was. They wove behind delivery vans with the department store logo brandished on the side.
What met them at the mouth of the loading area was a surprising commotion of policemen and medics.
Merinda and Jem made out a tall figure commanding the situation with a firm voice and stern direction. Jasper. They sidled nearer to him.
“You can’t be here!” Russell St. Clair bellowed, skeptically eyeing Merinda.
“Fiddlesticks. We’re on retainer for a case.” Merinda lifted up on her tiptoes, attempting to see around St. Clair’s prepossessing frame.
“I don’t care whatever lost kitten or cigarette case is keeping you employed,” St. Clair hissed. “This is a murder scene!”
“Murder?” Jem said.
Jasper pivoted toward them with a grimace. “Hans Mueller. Eighteen years old. Waste of life.” He looked to the ground. “Bludgeoned on the head. No weapon we’ve seen thus far.”
Jem and Merinda looked at the figure on the stretcher, shrouded with a white sheet. Merinda swept her bowler off and over her heart. Jem followed suit.
“Hans Mueller,” Jem said sadly. “That poor boy!”
Merinda turned to Jasper, her brow furrowed. “His sister just hired us to find out who was bullying her brother and vandalizing her house. Not a half an hour ago she was in our sitting room afraid for him.”
While St. Clair surveyed the scene, Jasper took Jem’s elbow and Merinda’s elbow, steering them to a quieter space in a brick alleyway to the right of the loading bay.
“I hate that St. Clair,” Merinda muttered, seething.
“He’s doing his job. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Jasper, Miss Mueller told us her family has gone to the police,” Jem said. “And they have done nothing to stop this brutality. Her brother went home beaten the other night. Now—”
“And it’s not just the Muellers, Jasper,” Merinda tripped in. “Heidi said a neighbor is in the hospital because some brute threw a rock through the window, injuring her as she sat unsuspecting in her home.”
A shadow crossed Jasper’s face. “I know.” He shook his head. “But Tipton was given orders from Montague to stay away from Ward troubles. They feel that, with the war announcement, things will reach a breaking point, and all of this petty violence will eventually play itself out. He doesn’t feel it worth our resources to, and I quote, ‘Skulk around the Ward at night.’”
“But that’s horrible!” Jem said. “Who is to protect these innocent people?”
“This girl’s brother was murdered. You think Henry Tipton is going to care about some little Kraut boy”—Merinda wrinkled her nose as she used the derivative term—“who worked in the loading area of a department store?” She shook her head. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Neither do I. The prevailing theory at the station is that as of this evening we will be at war against the Muellers and any other family from the enemy powers aligning with Germany. To them, Merinda, this young man is our enemy.” Jasper exhaled. “It took a murder for us to finally be given leave to look into whatever prejudice is plaguing these people. But even then, I know I am on a short leash.”
“They’re just trying to make a life here,” Merinda said, waving her arm toward the coroner, who was leaning over the limp body. “Like DeLuca is and half the people we know and help are!”
“I know that.” Jasper sounded exasperated.
Merinda’s eyes darted back to the scene. The young man’s body was being moved into the back of a van for transport to the morgue. “Do som
ething, Jasper,” she entreated.
“I’ll try, Merinda. But I have to follow orders.”
“Not when the orders are daft!”
“Has the family been notified?” Jem asked, trying to imagine what it would be like to receive such hopeless news and blinking away the horror of it.
“No.” Jasper scratched his neck. “I was just about to get Officer Kirk to take St. Clair and me to their home.”
“Tell Miss Mueller we will persevere even if the police won’t,” Merinda instructed.
He nodded.
Merinda pulled Jem from the alleyway and back toward the loading bay. Any work that had been stalled on account of the discovery of the corpse had resumed. Once the ambulance and police automobiles backed away, leaving but a few officers in their wake while St. Clair and Jasper went to notify the family, more vehicles trundled in. Large vans and trucks with crates full of bounty.
“When I worked here,” Jem observed, “Tuesday was not such a large shipment day.”
They watched as large crates and barrels were unloaded and moved toward a shed on the edge of the pavement. “And this is definitely a new method of receiving goods,” Jem said, narrowing her eyes. “Usually a foreman is here to inspect them.” Merinda followed Jem’s intense gaze at the piled and opened crates being moved to a space adjacent to the warehouse.
“So this is strange?” Merinda wondered, eager for any unusual circumstances that might eventually prove helpful to the case.
Jem, focused on the deliveries, shrugged. “It has been quite some time since I worked here.”†
Merinda and Jem edged toward the side of the loading bay to take a sweep of the scene now evacuated by Russell St. Clair, Jasper, and their men, but a leftover policeman held up his baton at them, and they were forced out in the direction they came.
Upon Jasper’s instruction, Officer Kirk parked at the edge of the Ward. Jasper thought it would be faster and less disruptive if he and St. Clair walked through the small alleyways rather than lumber the automobile through, disrupting the usual bustle of the crowded tenements, cottages, lean-tos, and all manners of mercantiles and taverns. St. John’s Ward was a pocket of Toronto guarded ironically by the grand City Hall, a composite of mismatched and decrepit slums that helped newly arrived immigrants eke out some semblance of existence as they picked their way through to establish a new and better life.
Better life. The words haunted Jasper as he led St. Clair to Center Street. On either side of the upturned, gravelly road sat ramshackle houses, bound together by sagging clotheslines in a rainbow of colors. Children played with sticks and rocks and jacks while men sauntered, shoulders sunken and exhausted, their smudged faces and bearing stamped by work on the Roundhouse or the viaducts. A peddler dragged his rickety wagon full of strange and wondrous wares through the dry dirt, while an organ grinder eked out a creaking and sonorous tune nearby. Women in homespun aprons, muted brown skirts, and soiled shirtwaists hoisted dirty-faced babies on their hips.
St. Clair was visibly uncomfortable as he consulted the address he held in his hand.
“Let’s ask someone,” Jasper suggested.
St. Clair shuddered. “These people probably wouldn’t understand us.”
“Nonsense.” Jasper looked around, and his eyes settled on a familiar face. “She would.” Jasper strolled toward a rather striking Italian woman with a little boy tugging at her skirts and escorted by a tall, Nordic-looking man. “Excuse me!” Jasper called. “Viola.”‡
“Constable Forth!” Viola Valari’s face lit up. Her son, Luca, also recognizing Jasper, smiled and stretched out his small hand, which Jasper eagerly shook.
“It’s so lovely to see you,” Jasper said, formalities long dissolved between them.
“And you.” Viola smiled.
“This is my friend Constable Russell St. Clair.”
St. Clair, disinterested, mumbled something while skittishly looking about him.
“Nice to meet you, Constable St. Clair,” Viola said. She tugged on the arm of the man aside her. “This is Lars Hult.”
“Lars!” Jasper’s smile beamed with recognition. “Ray speaks of you fondly from your time together at St. Joseph’s home for working men when he was on assignment there.”
Lars pumped Jasper’s hand. “I did not know then that he was a reporter.”
“And this is your beau?” Jasper said, smiling as he looked between them.
Viola nodded and ducked her head bashfully, while Luca seemed to find interest in a nearby dog chasing a squirrel across the uneven ground.
St. Clair shot Jasper a quick look, bringing him back to the task on hand.
“Viola, might you be familiar with the Muellers?” Jasper asked.
“Yes! Sometimes Heidi minds Luca.”
He leaned in and showed her the scrawled address. “Would you be able to show us where they live?”
“Trouble?” Viola’s face darkened.
“I really can’t say, but I would very much appreciate your assistance.”
Lars pointed to a house with cement panels and sagging windows not a block away. “Just there.” He inclined his head. “They’ve had a horrible time of it.”
“Have they?” St. Clair asked pointedly, looking up and finally studying Lars as if seeing him for the first time.
Lars nodded. “All manner of vandalism. Smashed windows. Violence.” He shook his head. “A shame. And not uncommon.”
Jasper and St. Clair took their leave then, Jasper turning his head over his shoulder for one last look at Lars, Viola, and little Luca. He knew Ray would want him to relay how she and Luca looked and that they were happy and taken care of, even as they had resumed habitation in the Ward.
Moments later, Jasper straightened his shoulders and breathed a prayer for strength. The most difficult part of his job was relaying heartbreaking news.
Led by Miss Mueller into the drawing room with St. Clair at his heels, Jasper noticed the hodgepodge of furniture and fabrics decorating a clean if shabby space. A photograph of the family above the mantel caught his eye. Miss Mueller was captured well with her corn silk hair and bright eyes. Mr. and Mrs. Mueller, whom now he faced, were preserved in the photograph with a measure of strength in their postures. In present, they seemed smaller, their shoulders weighed down with an invisible burden. To the right of them in the picture Hans Mueller, the young man he had just seen shrouded in forever slumber, looked directly at the camera with an intelligent gaze and almost smile.
While Jasper was drawing the breath and courage needed to break their hearts, St. Clair spoke. “It’s probably best if we give you the news in a straightforward fashion. Your son was found dead at Spenser’s.”
Jasper, infuriated at St. Clair’s callous and cold manner of delivering the news, stepped forward to lead Mrs. Mueller to a chair.
“How?” Miss Mueller spoke, her parents rendered mute.
“Trauma to the head,” Jasper said softly.
“There may have been some altercation,” St. Clair said plainly.
“Or it may have been murder,” Jasper said, frowning at his colleague. Turning again to the young woman, he said, “Miss Mueller, you have led me to believe some people here are causing difficulties for your family.”
“I have gone to the station. I have been told that we must solve these problems by ourselves! But how can we when my brother ends up dead at his place of work?” Her bottom lip trembled.
Jasper nodded solemnly. “I know. I want to help.”
“You cannot.” She shook her head. “None of you. I have gone to the lady detectives. They will assist us. They do not have the same principles as you.”
“I am revisiting this. The chief will want to—”
“It is too late to revisit. The police do not care.”
“We will send someone to patrol,” St. Clair offered. “Every night. A policeman in uniform. So you know that we are watching.”
Heidi Mueller bit her lip. “It’s not good enough.” She t
urned to her mother and father, who were holding hands, stunned, probably not hearing the conversation wafting around them just as the carpet of their lives was tugged from under them. “It’s not good enough,” she repeated. “It won’t bring him back.”
“No,” Jasper agreed. “It won’t.”
“Nothing will bring him back, and you didn’t even try to help us!”
“You are being unreasonable, Miss Mueller,” St. Clair said.
Jasper raised a hand. “It is we who have been unreasonable. And it is too late, isn’t it?”
Heidi nodded. “Yes.”
“And nothing will bring him back.”
* The Morality Squad was a band of plainclothes detectives who had long acted as Merinda’s personal nemeses. Under orders of Mayor Tertius Montague, they had the power to arrest a woman for loitering at a street car stop or wearing a hem deemed too short or supposedly canoodling with young men.
† Jem lost her job at Spenser’s two years previously on account of her marital status.
‡ The careful reader familiar with Merinda and Jem’s earlier adventures will remember that Jasper Forth had aided Viola Valari nee DeLuca several times in the past when her brother, Ray, was on a muckraking assignment in the Don Jail and in providing her transport back to Toronto after her husband died tragically in Chicago.
CHAPTER THREE
Is there any more altruistic profession than that of detective? Amid the chaos of daily life, you are focused on the pursuit of one truth. You put others above yourself, appropriating their problem as a temporary guiding point in your life. No matter how the world may shift and creak around you, so you are set on unraveling a mystery that may shape the outcome of a person or family for years to come.
M.C. Wheaton, Guide to the Criminal and Commonplace
The White Feather Murders Page 3
