The White Feather Murders

by Rachel McMillan

  She kicked over a box, stood on it, and then extended her arm to flick at the object with her walking stick, dislodging it.

  A white feather floated down.

  * It is worth mentioning that Jasper wasn’t trying very hard to lose her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There is never real freedom in this new life. It is just another type of bondage. Worries creep incessantly. If you are not worried about securing passage, then you are worried about where your next meal will come from. If you are not worried about finding employment, then the roof starts to leak. If you are finally settled, then you and your family are the brunt of the scowls and yells of masses that would see you back where you came from. There is no freedom in this our new promised land. Rather, just the promise of nagging worry.

  An excerpt from the Hogtown Herald

  What kind of trouble are you dragging us into?” Ray asked, looking up from a desk full of paper as Skip McCoy rambled into the Hog.

  “They just wanted to question me.” Skip shrugged. “Not my fault. I was doing my job.” He retreated to his desk and finagled with his camera.

  “Was it damaged?” Ray asked, remembering the jostle from earlier in the evening.

  “Just the plate,” Skip said, not looking at Ray.

  “Good. But your job was to capture the mood of a city going to war, not to skulk near Bay Street and Horace Milbrook and arouse police suspicion,” Ray continued.

  “I don’t know what you’re accusing me of, Mr. DeLuca, but the police found nothing they could use to hold me. They arrested the perpetrator. Some lumbering Swede.”

  Ray wanted to continue the conversation, but McCormick broke in, throwing his arms around frantically. His globed forehead bore a shiny sheen of sweat. “Why are we always behind?”

  He kicked the press.

  “Because every piece of equipment here is from the past century,” Ray said sourly. Try as he might to focus on his boss, his eyes involuntarily sought out Skip in the small working space of the dusty Hog.

  Ray raked his fingers through his hair. He was frustrated and tired.

  He sank down in front of his Underwood, ignoring Skip’s rants about how Ray should be more supportive of him and McCormick cursing the fate that had dealt them the hand of a second-rate newspaper. Ray worked on an article about the sights and sounds of the evening. The war. The cheers. The interminable wait as the clock ticked incessantly onward. The crowds and music and fervor. The Armories, now doubtless overrun with eager men willing to throw themselves into the fray.

  But while his fingers tapped almost with a mind of their own, his brain spiraled back to Horace Milbrook, slumped in his automobile with that eerie white feather atop his chest. That symbol of cowardice was from the war against the Boers years before.

  Ray ripped a half empty page from the Underwood and fed a fresh one in its place.

  Milbrook wasn’t a coward. Milbrook was one of the few men who had boldly and loudly spoken against Montague’s brand of corruption. He came this close to winning the previous term by exposing Montague’s campaign platform in its use of misappropriated funds.

  Ray wrote and wrote and wrote. When he looked up, McCormick was there, arms folded and watching him.

  “DeLuca?”

  Ray passed him the article. “I can draft up something about the war now, but we are running this first.”

  “You run this, and Montague will shut us down. He’s been threatening it for years.”

  “Montague was getting scared. His term is up again, and he knows this war will come with its own brand of pressure and expectation. Milbrook was gaining on him. I am willing to bet that Montague hired one of his cronies to—”

  “Anytime anyone is murdered in this city, you think Tertius Montague is behind it!” McCormick interrupted. “You’re never right.”

  “It may not be his hand that clasps the knife or pulls the trigger, but we have the opportunity to say something. Change something. The city is rattled. This can be a platform for real action. Fear. Commotion. Violence. That’s all we’ve been seeing, and a murder just upsets people more. Scared people are angry people, McCormick.”

  “I won’t run it,” the editor said, at least humoring Ray by flicking his eyes over the piece before shoving it back.

  “McCormick, with all due respect—”

  His boss stopped him with a raised hand. “I’ve always given you free rein, DeLuca, but not this time. We have a real opportunity to expand our readership. They don’t want more of your political spiels on Montague. They want patriotism and a community coming together.”

  Ray opened his mouth to protest further, but then he resigned himself to a nod. The sooner he finished up, the sooner he could see Hamish, smell his hair, and let his son seek out his father’s face with his little fingers. The sooner he could fall into bed. Ray fed his previous sheet of paper back into his Underwood and tapped out his firsthand account of the evening’s commotion.

  Jem retrieved Hamish from Mrs. Malone, asking the cab driver to wait while Merinda’s kindly housekeeper enjoyed one last caress of his cherubic cheek before he was transferred to Jem’s arms and subsequently to the taxi. Hamish was fast asleep as King Street swooshed by. The cabbie attempted to speak of the events of the night, but Jem was distracted until they neared the edge of Cabbagetown, one patch of neighborhood sewed up in the quilt of Toronto. The driver swerved over to the curb at her direction and parked outside of her townhouse.

  “Thank you,” she said, reaching into her handbag and offering payment, which the driver declined.

  “Something’s not quite right, ma’am,” he said, squinting through the window.

  “I am quite sure it’s just some raccoons or kids. If you think—”

  The driver held up a restraining hand and asked Jem to wait. He exited the vehicle, leaving Jem puzzled as she hoisted Hamish to a more comfortable position in her arms. He returned a moment later and opened the door to the backseat. “Your front window has been smashed.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  Jem slowly stepped out of the vehicle and pressed Hamish closer to her shoulder.

  “Would you like to go somewhere safer?”

  Jem shook her head. “No. I should be here when my husband gets home. Would… would you mind accompanying me to the porch while I take a quick look around?”

  The cabbie nodded. “You just wait here on the walk while I go inside and make sure it’s all clear.”

  Jem thanked him profusely, pressing her house key into his hand. She watched him walk up to the porch and strike a match on his shoe and hold it up. She caught its flicker through the now noticeably jagged opening of the window as he made his way through the front room and into the hallway.

  He returned moments later, assuring her he had checked the back door and upstairs, and there was nothing to be frightened of.

  “Maybe some kids playing a prank.”

  Jem pressed cash into his hand. “I wish I had more.”

  He gave it back. “No charge tonight. You just get this little fellow to bed safely, and for your sake I hope your young man returns soon.”

  Jem nodded and bid him good night, walking up the porch steps gingerly and then edging through the still-open door. She set Hamish on the sofa while she turned on the gas. She walked toward the jeweled crystal of the glass shards catching the wink of the flittering streetlight outside. Spotting something out of the corner of her eye not too far from her latest knitting disaster, she knelt to pick it up. It was the rock responsible for the desecration of the window pane. She clutched it without looking at the note affixed to the bottom, preferring to wait until Ray arrived.

  She returned to the sofa and tucked a quilt around Hamish. Then she skittered at every sound while huddled at the edge of a chair. Her little boy’s even breathing was the one comfort she had while the cloudy night spilled in through the broken window.

  When she heard footsteps coming up the walk and a ratt
le at the door, her heart clenched in her chest, and she instinctively moved to grab her son.

  “Jem!” Ray’s voice met her even before he did, calling frantically from the hallway. “Jemima, what happened?” He surveyed the room and the damage to the window before standing beside her, searching her face before peering down at Hamish and running a finger over his cheek. “Are you hurt?”

  Jem shook her head. “We arrived home after it was done, and… oh, Ray! It scared me so! Hamish plays by that window. We haven’t ever had any trouble here. Not with the neighbors.”

  “Times are changing,” Ray said in a low voice.

  “I found this.” She pressed the rock into his hand.

  Ray examined it, and she watched his eyes darken at the note on the bottom.

  “I’ve been called worse.” He shrugged. “And with European politics at a tipping point, people’s prejudices are raging even hotter. Tonight almost certainly pitted us at war.” He ran a hand over his face, flushed with the heat and anger Jem knew was bottled underneath his level tone. “But there’s a very big difference between someone picking a fight in the Ward or a flophouse and someone smashing our window. I can take care of myself. But…” he swallowed. He reached out and touched one of the curls licking Hamish’s neck.

  Jem felt sick, looking at the slight sparkle on the carpet even as she tried not to. She’d have to put a mat down. Or keep Hamish from the windows. “I can’t imagine anyone on our street resorting to violence. Maybe someone is angry at you for something you printed.”

  Ray shook his head. “It’s more than that. It will be worst in the Ward. It’s the war. People are ignorant and scared.”

  “You’re Canadian!” Jem countered. “You’ve lived here for years.”

  “Am I? I don’t know what I am.” He scratched the back of his neck. “The enemy, maybe.”

  “It could be an angry Hog reader,” Jem repeated. “You are not the enemy.”

  “I don’t care if people come at me with words, Jem. But a missile through the window?”

  “Your job has always had an element of danger to it,” she said slowly. “That’s the risk that—”

  “I take, Jem. The risk I take. I won’t risk you or my little boy.”

  “So what are you going to do?” she asked after a long silence interrupted only by the persistent ticking of the clock in the hallway.

  He shook his head. “Hope that the man who did this got all of his anger out of his system. I think you should gather your things. You and Hamish should go to King Street for a while.”

  Jem shook her head. “That’s just giving in to them, Ray. We won’t run away. We’ve done nothing.”

  They stared at each other silently a moment. “I want you to go, Jem.”

  “And I say I am staying. We do all of this together.”

  “Jemima, you do not need to help me fight for my right to live here.”

  “Nonsense! I took the risk as well. I took your name. We stay together.” With that pronouncement, she kissed her baby lightly on the cheek. “I am taking Hamish to bed.”

  Ray followed her in the direction of the stairwell a few paces before turning to the window. There wasn’t much he could do at the moment, save to grab a knitted quilt from the sofa and maneuver it over the shattered glass in a makeshift barrier from the outside elements. It was a ratty solution, and one that wouldn’t even deter a curious raccoon.

  Upstairs, Hamish snuggled softly and gently breathing in his crib, Jem waited for Ray’s pacing in the front hall to desist. Much later, while her eyes remained open in the dark, she saw his shadow cross the room and heard his usual nightly routine. Thereafter, he gathered her up and tucked his chin into her shoulder blade.

  They lay there silently a few moments, Jem certain she could feel Ray’s open eyes on her back.

  “I’m a little afraid to go to sleep tonight.” She broke their silence. “I don’t know what kind of world I will wake up to in the morning. War breaks out. People riot in the street. Milbrook is dead behind the wheel of his car. This poor Mueller girl hires us just as her brother is killed for nothing other than his family’s origins. Our front window.” She turned to study his face in the darkness but could make out little of his expression. “I moved to Toronto because I wanted something more. I moved here because I always thought the city connoted freedom! It’s one thing Merinda and I share.” Jem cupped her husband’s chin. “It’s one reason why I fell in love with you. This city is our anchor, Ray. It’s what makes you tick like that old pocket watch I love so much.”

  “Canada just has to give these lads going off to war something worth fighting for.”

  Jem shook her head. “Montague and whatever corruption will happen surrounding the next election. The horrid conditions of the Ward. How can our city guarantee that? I know you have your voice. I know you have the Cartiers. And Merinda and I have tried our best to help women who have nowhere else to go.” She bit her lip. “I guess I’m wondering if it has been worth it. If it is enough.”

  Ray felt for her hand in the pitch-black and squeezed it. “It’s too late to have such deep thoughts, Jem. It’s been a…” Jem could almost hear the wheels in his mind turning, her sense of hearing heightened in the dark, “… harrowing day.”

  “I don’t want you to lessen what I am feeling just because it’s been a harrowing day,” Jem said, sighing.

  “I’m not lessening anything, my love. I just know that sometimes you have to climb each mountain as you come to it. Then another and another. You can’t see the peak on the other side, so you concentrate all of your efforts and strength on one. You focus on one. And then you take a deep breath and see the next mountain and find the strength to climb it.” Ray exhaled.

  “Just one mountain,” Jem said softly.

  “Just one mountain,” Ray agreed.

  Jasper tossed and turned the few remaining hours of the night away. Every time he drifted into some semblance of sleep, his eyes flew open to inspect his hands. The previous night, his fingers came away red with the blood of a colleague and an ally. A fellow Cartier. A man infused with the spirit of what he hoped Toronto would be.

  When Chief Tipton had finally released him for the evening, keeping but two of the possible suspects in Milbrook’s murder, Jasper took a walk through much quieter streets. Men snaked in long lines at the Queen Street Armories to enlist, even as they were reminded that only those with previous military experience would be required this early in the endeavor. When he finally returned home, his mind alive with a million thoughts and prospects, sleep came fitfully, and dawn broke far too soon.

  Jasper returned to the station. He hoped the scalding tea he was sipping would sustain him while he looked over the messages and paperwork piled on his desk. He only looked up when Officer Kirk knocked on the door and informed him that Tipton wanted him. After Jasper crossed the corridor and walked into the chief’s large office, he noticed Russell St. Clair was already seated.

  Montague, Tipton informed them, was to hold a press conference to announce the results of an emergency council meeting the evening before.

  “New measures and protocol.” Tipton settled comfortably behind his mahogany desk. “We’ll be the first to enforce them. It’s likely Prime Minister Borden and parliament will dole out their own measures after the governor general gives the official word. That should come down the pipeline shortly. But Montague is afraid of the immigrant problem.”

  “The immigrant problem?” Jasper hedged.

  “Anyone allied with Germany. Who knows what they’re hearing from their families overseas? It could be chaos. Anything could be festering in the Ward. These people are anarchists. Not two years ago, dozens of people were killed and injured in heinous bombings.”*

  “We found that source,” Jasper said. “It was one man with a vendetta of his own. David Ross.”

  “He represents a larger problem,” Tipton said.

  “So you’re going to round up anyone with a German or Hungarian or Aust
rian surname and do what exactly?” Jasper looked to Russell to see if he mirrored his own skepticism. Instead, Russell was listening intently, nodding with the chief.

  “Precautionary measures.” Tipton poured himself a measure of whiskey. Jasper had half a mind to remind his superior it was nine thirty in the morning. Tipton swallowed and said, “Nip it in the bud before it becomes a problem.”

  “Obviously, sir, these precautionary measures should also hold for those of descent nominally involved in the conflict. Those who could go either way.”

  “Explain, St. Clair.”

  “Those of Italian descent.”

  “You can’t just mark anyone who has at one time affiliated with a country we suppose may make friends with Germany and the Central Powers!” Jasper exclaimed, looking first at Russell incredulously before darting his eyes to Tipton. “How can you possibly account for those who have married into a different nationality or who have distant relatives or who have lived in Canada more than half of their lives?”

  “St. Clair is right, Forth. Is it worth the risk? I expect you to back Montague’s enforcements one hundred percent.”

  “But you’re being—” Realizing he was on the brink of insubordination in front of his superior officer, he stopped speaking and looked down at the floor in frustration.

  “If you have something to say, Forth, by all means say it.” Tipton crooked an eyebrow.

  It took all of Jasper’s restraint not to kick his chair across the room. “No, sir. I just…” He looked around, hoping to find some tick or change in St. Clair’s face, something that would back him up. He had so many things he wanted to say but couldn’t without an ally. To add, his mother had always told him to count to ten when angry.

  That way anything said in reaction to a tense moment had time to diffuse and turn into something firm… but also hopefully kind.

  “Then I expect you’ll continue with the Milbrook case?” Tipton asked before Jasper had a chance to get to number eight in his mental count.