The White Feather Murders

by Rachel McMillan

  Jasper opened his mouth to say something, closed it, and then turned on his heel.

  How could he possibly focus when he was employed by a force that would see women incarcerated for merely walking after dark or possessing too short a hem? Lars was an easy target. Keep whoever was really responsible out of the limelight and frame a helpless immigrant. Lars was the physical emblem of all that was wrong with the supposed streams of justice jutting through what Montague thought was Toronto’s otherwise perfect sphere.

  Jasper asked Kirk for access to the holding cells and for the junior officer’s keys.

  Through the bars he saw Lars, his shoulders hunched, staring at his scuffed shoes.

  “Tipton said you are on their watch for roughing men up in the Ward,” Jasper said as Lars turned his head to look at him through the cell door.

  Lars shook his head. “That’s not how it is.”

  “Can you tell me how it is?”

  “You know how they are. Those brutes. Like Forbes.* They rough up girls and drag them away. The other night I heard a noise and went outside, thinking it was just a raccoon in the rubbish, but it was a man in a mask, and he was picking up things to throw at windows. I stopped him. One of Montague’s plainclothes men saw me wrestling him.” Lars stopped a moment. Then he said, meditatively, “I didn’t think I had done anything wrong. Nothing that any citizen wouldn’t have thought appropriate.” He looked up at Jasper, obviously hoping for his approval.

  Jasper was silent, jangling the keys he had acquired from the officer. It would be so easy to open the cell door and let Lars free. That would be justice. That would be right. Yet his conscience ticked a little. In his heart of hearts he knew this man was no more guilty of a crime than Jasper himself. Yet, Jasper always followed code. Jasper obeyed orders. Jasper knew that to obey the laws and the higher order of justice was his duty. In this case, that meant following Tipton’s orders.

  “I would have done the same,” he admitted after a moment. “I wish I could do more for you. I promise I will try.”

  Leaving Lars with a genuine though uncertain promise to work toward his release, Jasper felt deflated as he ascended the stairs from the holding cells.

  “Care for lunch?” Russell asked, intercepting Jasper on his way back to his desk.

  “Certainly.” Jasper failed to understand this man. Russell St. Clair had been such a needed addition to the baseball team, and Jasper had been eager to welcome a man of similar age and rank to his division. Yet St. Clair harbored prejudiced views that continued to shock him.

  At the Victoria Room across from the station, St. Clair settled into his pork chop with a relish. Jasper stared out the window next to him and watched the bustle of Yonge Street.

  “I have to ask,” Jasper said after a long sip of lemonade. “Why are you so averse to Toronto welcoming an immigrant population?”

  “Don’t you see it, Jasper?” Russell said after a swallow. “They’ll take our jobs. They’ll bring their kind here. To Toronto. They’ll stir the pot and see to it that war comes here much as to countries overseas.”

  “Or, alternatively, they will keep living peacefully and try to eke out a new life for themselves and their families, thankful to have made it so far from the heart of the conflict!”

  “There is violence in the Ward. You know that as well as I.”

  “There is violence everywhere, perhaps most exacerbated by people who are hungry and driven to anger.”

  St. Clair dragged the tines of his fork over the checkered tablecloth. “That fellow Milbrook? Maybe he made a promise he couldn’t keep. He was their man. Their advocate. If they didn’t like what he failed to give them, they saw him dead.”

  “They?”

  “Jasper, it doesn’t suit you to be facetious.”

  “Russell, there is so much good we can do. Tipton is very much…”—Jasper mulled over his words carefully—“aligned with Montague. But we can make sure there is a balance in the station. From officers who try to see the truth for what it is beyond any prejudice or assumptions.”

  Russell laughed. “I’m not the idealistic sort.”

  “Then why are you a policeman?”

  “I like to think I am cleaning up our world.”

  “By allowing innocent men to be incarcerated?” Jasper leaned forward. “Lars Hult is as guilty of that crime as you or I. You know that!”

  Russell shrugged. “I wish I could have your blind faith in people.”

  “It’s not faith. It’s fact. The feather found in Milbrook’s car was ivory white. You think the Ward is full of ivory white birds? They’re a special breed. The birds for layman such as us are rummy pigeons with homely colors!”

  Russell just shrugged in response and turned his attention back to his lunch. They sat in silence for several moments. Then he said, “Jasper, you are a police officer because you like to toe the line. And following Tipton’s orders and keeping this fellow for whatever reason helps us stay in the chief’s good books. In case you hadn’t noticed, our city is in a financial recession and on the brink of war. It does us well to stay gainfully employed.”

  Jasper merely exhaled in frustration. His appetite gone, he watched Mouse hawk the latest edition of the Hog beyond the windowpane. He rapped on the glass with a knuckle and she spun, a small grin lighting up her face when she recognized who it was who wanted her attention.

  He motioned her inside and set a few coins worth more than the price of the paper in her palm, accepting the Hog in their stead. She tipped her cap at him and bounded outside again.

  Russell chuckled as Jasper spread out the paper. “There’s one friendship of yours I find difficult to understand.”

  Jasper ignored him and began to read.

  When I first came to this country, I didn’t have two pennies to rub together and a sister and nephew to support. I could barely find work, and I could barely speak English. But I found solace in my belief that the strength it took to get here would somehow make it worthwhile. I still believe in our city. I still believe that the change we experience now will lead to a future that accepts us. But that doesn’t mean we have to sit by and let Montague and his men continue to see us degraded. Montague as mayor has unleashed powerful measures with his usual tinge of illegality. He molds the city into whatever shape he needs to keep it under his thumb. He doesn’t inspire loyalty. He instills fear.

  “You look serious.”

  Jasper didn’t look up. “Montague’s war tactics,” he murmured, skimming down the page. “They just give him more power to arrest and detain whom he pleases. He’s been doing this for years with his Morality Squad, but now it looks as if there will be federal support for identifying ‘enemy aliens.’”

  Russell reached across the table and pilfered the paper. He licked his index finger and peeled back a few pages. “Now this is something I am interested in reading!”

  Jasper followed Russell’s eyes over several pictures of Pelham Park, all boasting the caption S. McCoy. “Grand to live here, eh?”

  Jasper surveyed the tennis courts, the grand promenade overlooking the city, the ballroom, library, and pool. “They’re so eager to show off they even let the Hog in for an exclusive,” Jasper muttered before the conversations turned to different channels.

  When the bill came, St. Clair accepted it and paid for both meals. Jasper thanked him, but his voice was devoid of its usual good-natured tone.

  Upon their return to the station, they found Kirk attempting to sidestep Skip, who was leaning against a desk, his pen poised.

  “You sure are doing a lot of ground work,” Jasper noticed. “Where’s Ray?”

  Skip shrugged. “A quote about Waverley’s death, Forth?”

  “I’ve already said all I know,” Jasper lied, thinking of the folded piece of paper in his pocket, the one where Waverley theorized on a munitions profiteering act and the shady actions of the war agent. Jasper Forth had lied less than a handful of times in his life and subsequently wondered if those on the rec
eiving end could see right through him. Fortunately, Skip took him at his word. So Jasper added, “But I will say that his death clears Lars Hult of any suspicion.”

  McCoy raked ruddy hair off his face. “St. Clair?”

  “I am still charged with Hult’s interrogation.”

  “He’s innocent,” Jasper said grumpily. He looked at Skip. “Surely that’s a stale story for the Hog.”

  “These immigrants need to solve their problem for themselves,” St. Clair said, stabbing Skip’s notebook with his finger. “That’s a direct quote. They read your rag. Tell them we don’t have the time or resources for every brawl they interpret as a reflection of a war a million miles away.”

  “St. Clair, we just talked about—”

  “No, Jasper. You’re the one who wants to see Toronto as something good and separate everything into black and white.”

  Jasper looked between them. He was tired of this. Sick of being the only man at the station who openly took the side of people he knew were being wronged. With DeLuca silenced, these citizens would feel completely ostracized and ignored.

  He barely managed a cordial nod for Skip and St. Clair before retreating to his office.

  Therein he paced, balled his hands into fists, and then shoved his fists deep in his pockets. The station suffocated Jasper. The clang and clack of telephones that had heretofore thrilled him were jeering and dissonant today. He flung open his door and bellowed for Kirk. “The keys to the cells, please!”

  Kirk, surprised, dislodged them from his uniform and passed them to Jasper. Jasper stomped down to the dingy basement, a solitary light swinging with the movement of his forceful steps, and unlocked the door to Lars’s cell. “You are free to go.”

  Behind him Kirk made to speak. “Sir…”

  “Quiet, Kirk. I’ll take the consequences.”

  Lars’s eyes were wide as he took a few slow steps into the corridor, eyes blinking at the sudden wash of light. “Are you sure?”

  “You’ve done nothing wrong. I figure the chief owes me one for years of exemplary service, and I am calling in that favor now.”

  “The chief will have your head, Forth,” St. Clair said as Jasper led Lars to the front of the station and opened the door wide for him. They watched Lars’s retreating back. Skip, still reclining against the counter, looked up in between spurts of writing in his notebook.

  “Is that a direct quote?” Skip asked facetiously. “Will the chief have his head?”

  “He can gladly have it.” Jasper spun on his heel and walked swiftly in the direction of his office. Something ingrained in him had shifted, and he didn’t recognize the man he saw in the reflection of the window.

  Ray DeLuca would never be pegged as someone who possessed a particularly sunny disposition. His temper flared a little too easily, and he was too often plagued with worry as to his next paycheck. In addition, he was riddled with a most inconvenient ramification from the disastrous end to an adventure in Chicago: a right hand that trembled and shook with seemingly little provocation. This symptom was exacerbated by worry or trauma, and Jem’s accident caused painful and near constant spasms rippling through the sinews of his arm.

  Reporting to the Hog to face McCormick’s inevitable wrath after a sleepless night was the furthest thing from his mind. He looked at his hand. It shuddered and shook, and even if he slowed his breath or clenched his fist, its rumbles were still felt in his upper arm.

  So he took to the streets aimlessly. Ray always thought that Toronto’s core was its heart, and there were few things as natural as winding through its veins and arteries. As they had countless times before, they led him to St. James’s. The cathedral’s golden bricks almost sparkled in the sunny light.

  “How are you faring?” Ethan Talbot asked, looking up from the brass candlestick he was polishing.

  “You’re taking on custodial duties?” Ray asked.

  “It calms me to keep this lovely world in order.”

  St. James was indeed lovely. Rays of sunshine spliced through the rainbowed vignettes on the stained glass windows, illuminating the carved statues of Jesus, the Madonna, and the cross adorning the front of the sanctuary.

  Ray settled next to Ethan in one of the polished pews, admiring the grand purple drapery, the flowers on either side of the vestibule, and the lined candles sloping from the altar.

  “Terrible few weeks, Ray.” Ethan shook his head solemnly.

  “Everything I touch is terrible,” Ray blurted out. “Everything. Tony. Viola. Jem.” He tripped over her name. “Hamish is with her parents because I can’t protect him from vandals who would see me run out of town. Jem is in the hospital because…” Ray squeezed his fist tightly, not able to finish the sentence. “I would run off and go with the men, you know. Prove that I am fighting for Canada. That I am part of this.” Ray used his left hand to gesture to his ear. “But they would never recruit me.”

  “No, they would not. Is Jemima all right?”

  “Car accident. Merinda was driving, of course. Who knows what might have happened.”

  “Ray, would you be happy doing nothing but sitting by a fire with a glass of sherry and cozy slippers?”

  “No.”

  “You can’t sit still. You need to be a part of something. So does Jemima.”

  “She is part of something. She is a mother. She is my wife.”

  “Oh, piffle. You of all people know she’s more than that. You could have married ten other women if that was what you wanted. A mother. A wife. Yes, she is those things. But she’s more. Are you just a husband and a father? Or are you also a wordsmith and an advocate?”

  Ray studied his folded hands a moment. Ink still rimmed the cuticles. “I want her to be safe.”

  “No one is safe. Not really. Not in these times, and any layer of protection over her life comes from a much higher power than yourself.”

  “Well, I hurt her. She probably thinks I am angry with her. I acted angry. I couldn’t think of one thing to say.” Ray gripped his hand more tightly. “I love her so much. You know I don’t deserve her.”

  Ethan looked at the candlestick in his hand. Then he passed it and the polishing rag to Ray with an incline of his chin. “Keep your hand doing something other than making your palm bleed.”

  Ray took the candlestick and began deftly making circles around its circumference. There was a bit of tarnish just at the floral ornamentation near the base. He put extra pressure into the task, straightening his shaky fingers so he could polish well.

  “You often come here to talk to me about what happened in Chicago.” Ethan watched Ray as he worked the cloth in a methodical, calming movement. “You should talk to her about it.”

  “She’s been through enough.”

  “She wants to share the dark as well as the light, Ray.”

  “If she wants to share anything at all.” Ray’s voice was low.

  “In the next while, spouses, friends, fathers, mothers, and children will all say things born of a world cracking at the seams. They will say things out of anger, out of hurt, and mostly out of terror. And they will cry and weep and regret their hasty words, but at heart those who truly love them know that those words are often a reflection of insecurities and fears and have very little to do with the person they are directed at.”

  “But Jem—”

  “Jem knows you love her, Ray.”

  Ray shrugged, scrubbed at the candlestick a little more, and then shrugged again. “The whole world is falling apart. Our world. The one we were just building. Me and Jem. The Cartiers. How can we possibly sew together the rift in our city if we are all drawn toward a conflict a million miles away?” He shook his head. “Without Horace Milbrook,” he added sadly, knowing Ethan had always enjoyed Milbrook’s company. “Milbrook was a sure chance that Montague’s term would end here.”

  “There is something better on our horizon.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “But I do. There’s a verse in the Old Testament in
the book of Habakkuk. ‘Wonder marvelously: for I will work a work in your days which ye will not believe, though it be told to you.’”

  Ray’s eyes skimmed the beautiful sanctuary. He always understood things better when he was here. “How can He do anything if I have no have power to change what is happening here? If my words never make it beyond a third-rate paper?”

  “Because He’s used far more unexpected vessels than a man who showed up on the very doorstep of this church penniless and with broken English. So give me my candlestick back and go find yourself a way to let the world hear you.” Talbot winked. “You’re little use to the hundreds of people in the Ward if you’re comfortably sitting here whining to me. And tell Jemima you love her. And at the very least, show her the grace of letting her into your world. This is a sacred bower.” He pointed at the high triangle of the roof with the candlestick. “But so is the space you share with her.”

  Ray was halfway across Church Street in the direction of the hospital when he noticed a tingle of relief in his upper arm. He retrieved his hand from his pocket. The palm was creviced with garish pink moons from his tight grip, but its trembling had lessened somewhat.

  Jemima was bored out of her socks. She wondered how long she could stare at the four white walls surrounding her with only a slice of sunlight finding its way through the window in the far corner. The bed had been made and she was discharged, having been kept overnight only for observation. She sat on the metal chair and ran her palms over the knees of her wrinkled trousers.

  The corridor echoed with the snoring from a bed three doors down from her own. Jemima’s impatience was growing when Ray finally arrived to collect her. And though he didn’t mention his silence of the night before and looked tired, he seemed a little more like himself.

  “Jasper has sent Kirk round with a car,” he said, taking her hand. “You are sure you are well enough to come home?”

  “I’m looking forward to it. And seeing Hamish.” She beamed at him, but his face was unreadable. His expression remained thus as they walked through the hallway, past the doctor who had attended Jem, and the nurses whose faces had crossed above her last night. When they reached the doorway of St. Michael’s, Ray’s hands, which Jem noticed had previously been balled into loose fists, were now shoved deep in his pockets. The tick of a clock nearby echoed over the linoleum and through the hollow corridors. Jem looked about her at plastic plants and uniformed orderlies, while Ray fixated on the street outside awaiting the young officer’s promised arrival.