A Lesson in Love and Murder

by Rachel McMillan

  A half moment later, during which she tried to make out his features more clearly in the darkness, the overhead light buzzed and sparked.

  Benny instinctively pushed Merinda behind him, but when she looked around his broad shoulder, she made out the tawny hair and lanky frame of Skip McCoy.

  “Miss Herringford!” he squawked. “I just forgot something.” He looked back at the door he had found slightly ajar. “You broke in?”

  “DeLuca forgot something. Told me to get it.”

  It was good enough explanation for Skip, somehow, as he dashed over to his desk and began looking about. “Well, at least you didn’t trip over anything,” he said jovially.

  “My friend and I will leave you. Sorry about the door.”

  “The lock was probably broken anyway,” Skip said with a shrug.

  Merinda and Benny walked out over the cobblestones. “Thanks for seeing Jem home,” she said after a moment.

  “My absolute pleasure. Your housekeeper was more than happy to see her safely inside.”

  “We’re neither of us frail women who just topple over in crowds,” Merinda said hastily. “Just in case you were of the opinion that… ”

  “Merinda, the place was overcrowded and there was so much shoving and pushing. Your friend was injured regardless of gender. How could that possibly have any bearing on my respect for your proficiency as a detective?”

  Merinda was glad the clouds chose that very moment to shroud the brightening moon as she turned and smiled.

  She made out Jasper from afar, deep in conversation with Tipton. He was raising his voice, or what little of a voice he had left after shouting orders and spending a long hour in smoky conditions.

  Benny walked Merinda as far as the trolley station and waited until the streetcar chugged to a stop. They parted, Benny returning to his hotel and Merinda to King Street. Once seated, she pressed her forehead to the glass and watched him walk away. He had a confident stride, especially for one who confessed the city was so unfamiliar to him.

  Tipton and Jones had departed, leaving Jasper amid the debris. The last stragglers had left. And the space that had just been filled with noise was eerily silent. No casualties, thank God, but several injured and terrified people. His eyes swept around the abandoned warehouse. An hour before, it had been alive with the movement and raised voices of people stirred in conviction. Now he stood, blood stains and torn cloth and ripped papers at his feet.

  His eyes narrowed and focused, trained in to find something, anything. And they settled and focused on the slightest bit of something. Jasper knelt down. There it was. Not for the first time. A strange little knot… well what had once been a strange little knot. Not seared or singed as the same that had been found at the explosive scenes. Whoever was setting the bombs had been at the rally. Jasper may have passed the fellow. He held it out to the lone bulb sputtering overhead and then tucked it in his pocket.

  His city was a barrel of gunpowder waiting to be set off. A canon, a gun.

  He looked furtively around him. Tipton could ignore this all he wanted, Montague could focus his influence on sending his brute squad to interrupt an otherwise peaceful rally, but Jasper knew the truth. This was more than a few anarchists trying to make a point. This was imminent and purposeful death.

  Jem couldn’t quite remember how she found herself spread comfortably on the settee in Merinda’s front room, tucked in comfortably with a blanket from a nearby chair. A fuzzy memory made out Benny, that kind Mountie who had saved her from the crowd.

  She pressed the heel of her palm to her pounding head. She expected her wandering fingers would find sticky blood just congealed. Rather, they found a bandage, clean and carefully applied.

  She sat up long enough for Mrs. Malone to fuss over her while praising the resourceful young man who had seen to her medical attention, but just as she was beginning to mumble something about needing to go home, she dozed off again.

  When next she woke, it was in a scene as familiar as breathing. Light cast prisms on the Persian carpet, Mrs. Malone was busy in the kitchen getting the tea things ready, and Merinda’s footsteps bounded down the staircase, her voice raucous in her demand for Turkish coffee.

  Jem held her hand to her injured head. “Shhh!” she croaked.

  “Not dead then?” Merinda was chipper.

  Jem glanced at the clock in the corner. “Merinda, it is eight o’clock in the morning. You never rise this early!”

  “I wanted to make sure you weren’t dead,” Merinda said easily.

  Jem snorted. “Liar.”

  “Skip is interviewing me for the Hog.” Merinda bounced happily to her hearthside chair and accepted the pot and strainer Mrs. Malone set besides her. “You’ll stay for breakfast?”

  “I should get home. Ray will be worried sick.”

  “I’ll have Mrs. Malone telephone for a cab.”

  Jem accepted the offer, and a quarter of an hour later she was ascending her own walkway.

  It was colder than usual inside the house, and she noticed that neither the gas nor the fires had been lit the night before. Thinking Ray had probably fallen asleep at his desk again, she turned in the direction of the telephone, only to remember it had been cut off. But in the kitchen above the teakettle, she found a note.

  J—

  Had to go to Chicago. Viola in trouble. Finding Tony. Unsure of when I will return. Maybe stay at King Street?

  R.

  He had left no means of contact.

  She took a moment, sinking onto the settee in her little mismatched parlor, her head throbbing something fierce, her heart clutched in a tight bind she couldn’t name. Finally, she rose and went up the stairs.

  She opened a trunk and began folding in corsets and stockings, dresses and stays, shoes and trousers over the lavender scented paper, tucking clothes carefully, at once prim and lace, coarse and tweed.

  She inspected her dressing table and found that Ray’s pocket watch, a memento as valuable to her as her wedding ring, did not occupy its usual space.

  An hour later, Mrs. Malone was helping her settle into her old room. Little familiarities surrounded her—lavender in a vase, a cameo, a few dress patterns, a favorite quilt, a forgotten notebook and pen.

  Still tired from the ordeal of the evening before and her head throbbing worse than before, she enjoyed a nap in her old, comfortable bed. Upon rising, she noticed that the sun was slanting more brightly through the window, marking midday. Voices rose from the front room. She checked her hair in the mirror and readjusted the small bandage.

  In the sitting room, she found Merinda and Skip.

  “Jem! I didn’t know you were back,” Merinda cried. Skip stood and gave her a quick nod as she lowered herself to the settee. “Skip was just doing a first-rate job of an interview.”

  Jem looked between them. “I got the oddest note from Ray. He’s gone.”

  “Gone where?” Merinda asked.

  “To Chicago. Something about Viola and Tony.”

  “Chicago!” Skip repeated.

  “He’s going to find Tony. He doesn’t know when he’ll be back.”

  “Skip here will be perfecting more than his interviewing skills. Why, he’ll have several more jobs at the paper,” Merinda said lightly, even while her face shaded with concern.

  “I have to go.” Skip suddenly slapped his hands on his knees.

  “But we weren’t finished,” Merinda protested.

  “I have more than enough. Remember that it’s not just your perspective I was assigned to get. McCormick is out interviewing a few of Goldman’s followers, and I am charged with seeing Mrs. Goldman herself.”

  “How exciting,” Merinda said without even the slightest attempt to hide her disappointment.

  Jem was too deflated to even force a smile.

  “It will be in the Hog tomorrow,” Skip said, rising and tucking his notebook in his pocket. “If there is a Hog.” He shrugged into the coat Mrs. Malone provided at Merinda’s bidding. “Funn
y, you never really realize how much Mr. DeLuca does until you think of how you’ll need to do it in his absence.” He tipped his hat at Jem. “I’m sure he’ll find his way back soon.”

  Jem muttered something that almost sounded like an affirmative.

  When Skip was gone, Jem moved to the seat adjacent Merinda. “He just left a note,” she told Merinda with a sigh. “It was the sort of note he would have left for Skip or McCormick. It was so cold.”

  Merinda chewed her lip. “That isn’t like him.”

  “I know. And he never wanted me to go to the Goldman rally. He’s not vindictive enough to hold a grudge for that, though.”

  Merinda put up a restraining hand. “That’s not why he left, Jem. And it’s not why he didn’t put more in the note. He was in a hurry.” She rose, crossed to the bureau, and returned with the slip of paper she found at the Hog. “I went to his office after the rally. I wanted to see if there was anything about the trolley explosions that DeLuca hadn’t told us about. I knew something was wrong because his desk was all upturned. I think he must have received a call from his sister, jotted all of this down”—she pointed to the middle of the paper—“and dashed straight home to leave you a note and catch the first train.”

  “Tony infuriates me,” Jem said, snatching up the paper and staring at it. “Time and again he gets himself into trouble, and we all have to pick up the pieces.”

  “At the very least, I have you here again,” Merinda said happily. “Far easier for us to find Jonathan if we’re together.” Merinda bellowed for Turkish coffee and, when it arrived, gulped it so quickly she burned her tongue. “What do you say about joining this People’s Labor Movement?” She motioned for Jem to pick up a paper on the side table. “I struck up a conversation with a fellow after the rally last night. Not only did he know where Goldman was staying, he knew where their meetings took place. There are different levels of involvement.”

  “He gave up his secrets rather easily!” Jem said.

  “He’d had a little too much from his friend’s flask. Seemed quite delighted to find a girl wearing pants. We are just the sort they are looking for.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “A woman who bounds about after a Goldman rally in trousers with no thought for the Morality Squad? The same woman who will be willing to rejig a few wires in the pursuit of a marvelous cause.”

  “You’re not suggesting you’re going to blow things up with this fellow?”

  “No. I’m suggesting we’re going to blow things up with this fellow.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Seasons change. As soon as you get used to autumn, so winter tugs at its coattails. Life turns in and out and the forest takes on a different face. A keen eye knows to anticipate the slightest changes—the thinning of the wood before the earth dips into the cavern of a valley, the slight birdsong that mournfully ushers out summer, signaling fall. Everything around you is a sign. An omen, perhaps, that no matter how you settle into a time, a place, a person, nature is already turning the hands of the clock and precipitating its imminent future.

  Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson, Guide to the Canadian Wilderness

  Jones brought Jasper the papers every morning, and they usually sat in an untouched pile on his desk until noon. Then he would leaf through them with a sandwich and a cup of tea at his elbow. But as soon as he saw the Hog headline about the Goldman rally that morning, he shoved the open file he was perusing to the side of his desk.

  Jasper was impressed that Skip was the name on the byline. He was in and out of the action as stealthily as Ray always was. He even had a quote from Mrs. Goldman herself.

  His heart had the most inconvenient habit of jumping slightly when he heard—or read—Merinda Herringford’s name, as it did the moment it appeared in Skip’s article:

  Ms. Herringford was all too keen to speak to the virtue in Mrs. Goldman’s opinions about police corruption, believing it strikes all too close to home. “Of course there were women and families and immigrants there. She speaks for all of us in a voice and with a volume that few around here dare to use.”

  Of course, my next question was about police corruption. Ms. Herringford felt that Mrs. Goldman’s words rang all too loud and true. “Goldman speaks about the dangers of submission. To anything. Including the law, which helps propagate the myth that we can achieve any kind of social harmony. We may have police officers who would like to see the end to this uneven distribution of power, but no one ranked highly enough to do anything about it.”

  Readers will make the immediate connection to her own practice as a lady detective. “If no one else will stomp out the injustice Goldman speaks about, then yes, I am happy to do my part.”

  Jasper flung the paper aside and ran his hand through his hair, his face flushed and his eyes stinging from more than the bright lights of his station house office. He swallowed and then slowly stood, wondering why his world was turning around him. Needing air, he forced his way out of the station and onto the busy street, gulping in deep breaths.

  Then he dashed back up the front steps and bellowed for Jones.

  “I’m just off duty!” Jones said with a bright smile. “But I’m happy to start up the motorcar if you like!”

  The young cop was always eager to drive Jasper wherever he needed to go. He looked up to his superior for more than his stature, and Jasper repaid him by trusting him, giving a good word on his behalf when the chief was in hearing distance, and treating him with an equality that other officers of Jones’s rank didn’t always merit.

  Jasper’s thoughts were a flurry in the back of the automobile. Merinda was swept up by Goldman’s bellowing voice, and she didn’t hold to the same belief in God as he did. So where did she derive any sense of hope or purpose? Perhaps Skip was just taking liberties with her quotations. DeLuca was trustworthy when it came to ensuring the girls’ words were never taken out of context, but Skip might have… might have…

  Except it sounded so very much like Merinda.

  Jones steered onto busy Queen Street, swerving around the trolley track to avoid the construction he assured Jasper would slow their drive to King Street West.

  “You all right, sir?” Jones asked.

  Jasper recognized how agitated he must have seemed, shifting restlessly in the back. He kept his gaze out the window, watching pedestrians going about their day. One lithe figure walked with a purpose and stride he would recognize in any crowd.

  “Pull over,” Jasper commanded hurriedly.

  Jones swerved the automobile and slid up to the curb.

  “You head on back, and I will see myself the rest of the way.”

  “Right, sir!”

  Jasper started in pursuit of Merinda, and the moment he caught up to her, he grabbed her shoulder and spun her around.

  “Jasper!” Her eyes flickered brightly and her cheeks were ruddy with exercise. Her countenance almost made him swallow his anger.

  “Merinda, the Hog!” he called, assuming she would know exactly of what he spoke. He matched her stride then, slowed, drew her to the gate surrounding the lavish Osgoode Hall, and stopped her. The explosive set off here had done little damage compared to the Bathurst streetcar. Nonetheless, bluecoats and plainclothes officers still mingled over the manicured lawn.

  “Was it in the paper today? Skip dashed out so quickly yesterday, what with DeLuca and… ”

  “You’re proud of it!” Jasper chastised.

  “I am always proud to see my name in print.” She tossed her head. “Which you very well know. Especially when my name is next to Emma Goldman’s!”

  “I’ve never been anything but supportive of you, Merinda. I have risked humiliation from peers, have endured traffic duty as punishment for our association, have even jeopardized my job. Because I believe in you.” He noticed the smile leave her green-flecked eyes. “And I was foolish enough to think you believed in me too!”

  Merinda reached to grab his sleeve, but he stepped back. “Of cours
e I believe in you,” she said.

  “Not if you also believe what you said about Goldman. Because that undermines my entire philosophy. I thought yours too. You have to believe in something, Merinda. Are you choosing to believe that we don’t need a law to govern us?”

  “Not when the power rests in the hands of Montague and Spenser and… ”

  “Merinda, you can’t twist Goldman’s own words to match Toronto’s specific situation.”

  The ground shook around them, and before they could register what was happening, Jasper instinctively shoved Merinda down and behind him while he looked frantically about.

  Another blast! It resounded like a cannon as smoke wafted toward them. Initial, silent shock was soon replaced with shrieks, with flurries of people dashing in all directions.

  Merinda and Jasper grabbed at each other, staring stupidly for a long moment before he tugged her to her feet and told her to stay exactly where she was. Shocked, she slowly, dumbly nodded.

  He set out in the direction of the billowed smoke that sputtered flakes of debris into the surrounding air. As he trailed south looking about him, coughing at the deluge of smoke, his nose was bombarded with the tangible smell of gasoline and rubber.

  He could hear sirens as the fire brigade jangled their bells. They had been instructed to be prepared and on standby after the initial trolley explosion. Now they were fast and efficient, blasting water in the direction of the smoke. When it cleared, Jasper could make out the remains of the police automobile he had been in not five minutes before.

  Jem looked up from the newspaper at Merinda’s footfall in the front hallway.

  “I was just reading this and… ”

  She stopped when Merinda came into view, pale with tear-splotched cheeks and red-rimmed eyes.

  “Merinda!” Jem had rarely seen her friend so shaken. Merinda was actually shuddering. Jem bounded toward her and took her hands, leading her to the settee and sitting beside her.