The White Feather Murders

by Rachel McMillan

  Later, Jasper found Merinda where he expected her. Her glazed eyes were surveying the damaged roadster. Thanks to the proximity of the hospital to the station and the help of Officer Kirk, she had gained entry to the police garage.

  “Leave us now, please,” Jasper said to Kirk, who gave a perfunctory bow and turned back toward the station.

  The garage behind Station One was a rudimentary affair with only a few police cars and a row of motorbicycles. Merinda’s roadster, surprisingly sleek and shiny under the suspended electric light, was intact for the most part, save for the passenger door and seat.

  “You’ve been crying.”

  “Ray DeLuca hates me,” she said, running her finger over the detailing.

  “Oh.”

  “Oh,” she mimicked him. “It’s my fault her life was almost ended?”

  “There’s nothing to say, Merinda.”

  “You’re not the first person to say that to me,” she said sourly. “DeLuca…” She paused and bit her lip.

  Jasper poked his thumb at a crinkle of remaining glass in the windshield, while Merinda crossed her arms and stared vacantly at the worst of the damage. She stepped closer when she caught the slightest shape of something just under the dashboard. Extracting her small magnifying glass, she leaned forward. An instant later, she held up a white feather.

  “He’s our Moriarty,” Merinda said, stepping back so her arm brushed with Jasper’s. “And this is his symbol. Another one of these feathers.”

  “We don’t know who he is.”

  “Well, whoever he is, he’s tied to Montague.”

  “Merinda, you and DeLuca always rush to convict Montague.”

  “But we’re right, aren’t we? Maybe he was trying to stop us.” She worked her teeth over her bottom lip. “Maybe he assumed we would discover Waverley was connected to Spenser and—”

  Jasper took her elbow. “Merinda, you’re making very little sense. Stop thinking about your case for one second. You can’t just shelve tonight like a book in your library. You’ve had a horrendous experience. Devastating and…” he paused, his eyes silently pleading with her. “I want you to talk to me. To actually talk to me. About Jem. About what you are feeling.”

  She circumvented him and rounded the roadster. She glared from the other side of the lowered covering. “I am not shelving anything.”

  He cleared his throat. “You are trying to methodically work through something you aren’t in any way ready to process yet.”

  “Every time I close my eyes I see it again and again. That automobile smashing into the side and almost killing Jemima. I thought she was dead.” Merinda shook her head. “It’s my fault, Jasper, and DeLuca will never speak to me again. He’ll never let her come over or come on a case, and that’s my fault too. He’ll never forgive me. He hates me. I have never seen him talk to a living soul like that.”

  “He’s upset and scared, Merinda. He’ll come around.”

  Merinda shrugged off his words of reassurance. “It’s personal now. I never cared if Montague was promenading us around as some emblem of the strength of women needed for the home front or railing against me with threats of St. Jerome’s Reformatory for Incorrigible Females. But I care now. It was the passenger side, Jasper!” She flung her hand emphatically near the decimated door. “Whoever did this knew that was Jemima’s spot. They did this intentionally!” Merinda rubbed at her temples. “Whoever it was knew… How did they even know where we were and where we were going?”

  “It can’t have been personal to Jem, Merinda,” Jasper said softly. “How would the driver know where you were going to swerve? If he meant to harm Jemima or tamper with your steering, he would maybe have hit your side instead.” Jasper ran his hand over his face. “It was someone who wanted to hurt both of you.” He ruminated a moment as silence settled around them. “It could be someone out to hurt DeLuca. The same fellow who threw a rock through the window?”

  Merinda mulled this a moment. “It could be…” She blinked a few times under the suspended light. “I was paying attention to the road,” she said forlornly, leaning against the mangled, misshapen metal.

  “And yet Jem could very well have been killed,” Jasper said, following her eyes over the damage.

  “It was so pointed. Someone wanted to kill us.”

  “What kind of automobile was he driving?”

  “It looked very much like mine, but it was green. It stands to reason it would have the same level of damage, at least to the front lights.” She came back around the car and followed his finger to a scratch near the dashboard. “Look! There’s just the slightest bit of glass and paint embedded just so.”

  Jasper extracted a pair of tweezers from his front pocket and removed the evidence, which he placed on a handkerchief.

  Merinda shook her head. “He knew exactly where we were and in which direction we were headed.”

  Jem was finding it difficult to rest in her hospital bed. She couldn’t get rid of the disturbing images inside her brain. Every time she closed her eyes, the automobile flung her forward again.

  She was overcome with guilt and sadness and worry. It was enough that she hated herself at the moment. She had almost left Hamish without a mother. She could hate herself, yes. But if he did?

  When she heard the door click and Ray’s footfall, she readied herself.

  He looked worse than she assumed she did. He was extremely pale, and matted hair fell over bleary eyes. Then his expression softened, seeing her, his whole body seeming to exhale. He scraped a chair across the bleached tile to her bedside and gazed at her silently.

  A nurse held up a hand, indicating he had five minutes. Ray, who hadn’t taken his eyes from Jem, didn’t see.

  “I-I’m very sorry,” Jem said after a moment, her own eyes barely seeing the edge of bed sheet she was wringing. “I recognize you probably feel you have the right to tell me that something like this was bound to happen. That I threw myself carelessly into a situation and came so close to…” A lump filled her throat, and she blinked away the tears stinging her eyes.

  “You got into an automobile,” Ray said softly. “Something you have done numerous times before.”

  Jem nodded, her eyes frozen on her fingers. His voice certainly didn’t sound angry, but she didn’t trust what his face would betray. “You must be so disappointed in me. When bad things happen, you always tell me it’s a close call and I should spend more time thinking about our family.”

  “Jem—”

  “I know it doesn’t make it right, but I hate myself for what might have happened. There is nothing you could say that would make me unhappier than I already am.”

  “The doctor said you should feel better in a fortnight.” Ray’s voice was quiet. “You just need to take things slowly for a little while. You will be fine.”

  Jem shook her head, her curls sweeping across her tear-stained cheeks. “But it could have been different.”

  She waited for him to reach out and touch her—but he didn’t. She read this as a sign. She concluded it was because she had thrown her life in danger’s way again, and that the cost, this time, was too much for him. He was imagining how her choices may have left him alone with Hamish. Without her. When Merinda and Jem first started into danger, she had only to worry about a lifetime of abandoned teacups and suitors. Her husband and son were new risks.

  Jem finally looked at him and watched his heartbreak in his eyes. She could hear his watch ticking in his pocket. It was the only interruption to their silence. “I want adventure,” she said sheepishly after a moment. He didn’t say anything in response. Ray DeLuca without words, in any language, was something Jem wasn’t used to. She studied him a moment under the harsh light. “Ray?”

  “I know, and yet… Jem…” He struggled for words he never found.

  “You should go,” she finally said. “Or the nurse will come and make you leave.”

  He nodded. He moved at last to touch her, but she turned suddenly, and he stole his hand
away.

  “I didn’t mean to flinch, Ray. I’m sorry.” She reached for his hand, but it was already in his pocket.

  “No. No. Not your fault. Take care, Jem.”

  He brushed her forehead with his lips while she kept her eyes on her fingers gripping the starched white sheet.

  Then the ticking of his watch and the sound of his footsteps were gone, and she was left quite alone.

  Ray’s hand shook so fiercely that its involuntary movement shot a spasm up his arm. He dug his knuckles into his palm. He couldn’t physically plaster himself to a rickety iron chair in the cold corridor of the women’s ward for the night, so he set off from St. Michael’s and wove through pedestrian traffic and blinking lights. When he passed the Elgin Theatre, he looked up a moment. Atop it sat the secret Winter Garden. Their place. His memories with his Jem.

  For she was his—until a missing rooster or cat, or a jaunt with Merinda to Massachusetts, or disguised as Silent Jim amid barrels of explosives in a Chicago warehouse.

  And now…

  He muttered half in English and half in Italian all of the things he wanted to say to her. The words fell, unfettered, onto the shine of the pavement.

  When he arrived at King Street to collect Hamish, Mrs. Malone’s concern showed on her face.

  “She’ll be all right.” He did a frankly horrible job of reassuring the landlady, running his left hand over his face while his right clenched in a balled fist. He dug his nails deeper and deeper until he broke the skin.

  “Good.”

  “Is Hamish asleep?”

  Mrs. Malone nodded. “He’s just in here.” She led him to the sitting room before promising tea and sandwiches despite his protests he would be unable to consume either.

  Hamish was asleep on the sofa, with a pillow under him and a quilt over him that Ray tugged more tightly to his little chin. Hamish stirred a little at his touch and almost roused completely when Ray pressed his lips to his forehead, just under the fringe of curls.

  Mrs. Malone returned then with a plate of lemon sandwiches and tea.

  Ray sipped slowly, and then he said, “May I use your telephone?” Several moments later, he returned to the sitting room and Mrs. Malone’s watchful eye.

  “All right there?” she asked kindly.

  “I always kept Jem’s parents’ telephone number in my notebook.” He smiled ruefully.

  “How did they take the news?”

  “Her mother has agreed to take Hamish for a little while.”*

  Mrs. Malone brightened. “Jemima has long wanted to reconcile with her parents.”

  Ray nodded. “They are not ready to meet me, or so they say, but I hope you will extend your hospitality to Hamish until Jem’s mother can collect him tomorrow?”

  “Of course.”

  Ray gave Hamish one last kiss before scooping up a few sandwiches and tucking them into a napkin, slurping one last sip of his tea, and turning toward the door.

  His brain advised him to set out on the familiar course home, but his feet took him instead over the cobblestones to the Hog. Ray stood a moment outside the door. When he opened it, what would he do? Pace? Kick things? Smash his typewriter to smithereens? His wife was lying in a hospital bed. If the doctor hadn’t walked him through the extent of her injuries—a bruised rib and a gash on the head, both likely to heal in the next week and definitely within a fortnight—he might have thought her dead.

  He tried to reassure himself that she was alive and Hamish would be safe in London, a city not three hours away from him. But it was little use. The night could have ended very differently. Not the fact that he had never seen her so unhappy. The light in her voice and eyes were gone, and she just stared forward. That was worse to him than any bandage. He couldn’t help but think, She has done it again! Gone and thrown herself into action at the behest of Merinda without thought to her family or safety.

  The rational part of himself knew it was just an unfortunate incident in an automobile. Just as he had reassured her in hospital. But he was certain that automobile ride wasn’t just a simple trip to Spenser’s or to tea.

  Ray jiggled open the lock of the old office door and made his way to his desk. He scraped his chair across the grainy floor and opened his drawer, extracting the half-written piece he had worked on about Milbrook’s murder. He had always championed Milbrook and had never shied away from speaking his mind, even when it came to pointing the blame at some of the higher echelons of Toronto society. And while McCormick threatened that Ray’s persistence in making enemies in high places would see them shut down, Ray had always been able to counter his editor’s wariness with readership. People needed to hear the truth.

  His thumb absently stroked the side of Tuesday night’s almost article. He knew how to jerk the press into gear. He knew how to lay the type. He knew where the newsies lined up to dole out their coins for their bundles, and he knew where Merinda’s urchins, Kat and Mouse, were most likely to bellow whatever headline he gave them without question or thought.

  Montague and his puppets may well be responsible for planting white feathers and running his Jemima off the road.

  Assessing his lukewarm words of the previous evening and finding them wanting, he scrunched them up and threw them into the wastebasket. But the theme ran rampant through his brain.

  A fresh page. A pulse so fast he thought his heart might leap out of his chest. Fingers that sped over the Underwood before his brain could keep up.

  By the time Merinda arrived home, Ray’s dishes had been cleared and Hamish had been transferred to Merinda’s own quarters. Mrs. Malone provided a pot and a strainer for Merinda’s Turkish coffee but said little about Ray’s mood.

  He hates me, Merinda reminded herself, pulling her knees to her chest and staring at the empty fire grate. She had long harbored a nagging and wholly unwelcome feeling that one day Jem would disappear. Jem always protested she would want to go on adventures with Merinda, and while she spent several months after Hamish was born doing little more than discussing Merinda’s cases in the comfort of the King Street parlor, she eventually began leaving the baby in the capable care of Mrs. Malone and following Merinda out once more.

  DeLuca had always been cautious but supportive, understanding the part of Jem that would always stretch beyond a happy home and hearth and into the city night.

  Merinda tented her fingers and exhaled. Was this just one more thing shifting in her world? The sitting room was covered with articles from all the dailies praising Jem and Merinda to the skies. Bowler hats were in fashion, society’s elite emblemized their enterprise, and they had been invited to numerous soirees. Yet someone had tried to run them off the road. A year ago she might have assumed it was the Morality Squad. Montague’s cronies had often attempted to stop her from tarnishing Toronto’s pristine reputation, silencing women in the bargain. Of late, it seemed the opposite, with Montague needing Jem and Merinda to establish a symbol of feminine strength and agility as war loomed.

  On the table beside her, Merinda kept a few reference books, chemistry formulas, a copy of the Strand magazine with the most recent Sherlock Holmes story, Wheaton’s Guide to the Criminal and Commonplace, and letters from Benny Citrone tied with string.† Underneath this varied pile sat a journal she had kept in her university years. It was a habit she soon lost when she settled into deductive life.

  September 10, 1905

  Ainsley Women’s College, University of Toronto.

  All of the women here are useless. They can’t string two sentences together without mentioning some silly fellow from the rugby team. “Ralph has such broad shoulders.” “Nathaniel has the sweetest dimples.” I want to throw my teacup at them.

  It’s lucky Father was able to splurge for a single room. Most of the girls share.

  I keep mostly to myself, though I have become quite chummy with Jasper Forth from Vic College. We spend hours in the labs on Saturdays doing all sorts of nifty experiments. He thinks I will make a fine doctor. I tell him I wonder
if I will make it to the end of term without storming out.

  The one girl I’ve met here who doesn’t drive me round the bend with her incessant need to speak in frippery is Jemima Watts from two doors down. She’s a pretty thing, all right, and all the boys in the dining hall trip over themselves to see her. She doesn’t seem to have a lot of interest in them.

  I met her one dinner hour when the gong tolled and I couldn’t find an empty seat. She looked up and smiled and waved me over. She didn’t expect me to talk a certain way or be a certain way. I never had to be anything but myself. What’s more, I deduced she genuinely enjoyed my company. Whatever mystery is rampant in the dormitory—a missing essay, a purloined love letter—Jemima Watts is always up to the task.

  Merinda skimmed ahead. These words had been written so long ago. Revisiting them was like reconnecting with a part of herself she barely recognized.

  Jem will follow me anywhere. Even across the quad on a pitch-dark night, though we all know Hart House is haunted.

  Merinda snapped the book shut. Jem would follow her anywhere. From the haunted quad to the darkest corners of anywhere. She needn’t fear DeLuca’s threat. And yet… something settled strangely within her. Something that underpinned her usual buoyant and brash confidence. Whereas the Merinda of yesteryear would have pinned Jem’s blind loyalty proudly on her lapel and brandished it as one might a prize ribbon, she didn’t want to revel. She didn’t want Jem to follow her anywhere if the ramification meant DeLuca’s silence and the loss of his friendly affection. She didn’t want Jem to follow her if it meant her friend faced the same staggering danger she had that very day.

  Merinda had just made up her mind to retire when she heard a knock at the door. She found Jasper on the step and motioned for him to be quiet as Mrs. Malone was asleep in the back of the house.

  He followed her into the sitting room, and they settled onto the settee. Jasper unfolded an envelope and extracted a single sheet of paper. “Every automobile owner in Toronto must register their car, as you know. You said that the automobile you saw was of a class very similar to your own?”