A few men dipped into their pockets and the ladies their handbags, fishing out coins that Jem acknowledged in a deep voice. Her hat started looking rather full, inspiring her to wonder if she had chosen the wrong career as a Spenser’s department store mailroom girl.
Certainly the upper echelons of society in front of her, glistening and ornamented, could spare the change they tossed into her overturned hat. Nonetheless, Jem’s conscience pricked her, and she decided she would put the spoils in the St. James poor box at the end of the evening.
Finally, most of the crowd was inside, and golden-hued beams of warmth spilled through the ornate doorframes. Jem had little to do then but watch the clouds—which were looking more ominous every minute—and hope to be spared a downpour. She sat clinking the change in her cap and wondering what Sherlock Holmes would do.
Observation: The polished handle of a walking stick. The scuff on a shoe. A woman wringing her hands as she looks up, besotted, at the man beside her. A man casting a longing glance at his friend’s companion while another woman, dour and severe, settles her gloved hand into the crook of his arm.
The muffled cello section of a Bach piece slipped through the broad doors, and Jem thought of Merinda inside. Thus a half hour elapsed with Jem sitting and shivering, jangling her coins and watching for anything suspicious or interesting. Couples began meandering outside to take in the night air, dresses and coattails brushing side by side. Snatches of music followed them.
Jem was in the process of moving the most recent collection of change from her hat to her breast pocket when she noticed someone crouched at her level. His black hair was just barely contained by the circumference of a ratty old bowler, and decidedly charcoal eyes were piercing her straight on.
“Excuse me.”
Was he addressing her? She growled something inaudible in a lower octave of voice and then added a quick yes, hoping it sounded masculine. Unfortunately, it came out squeaking and high, and she slapped her palm over her mouth.
“Have you been sitting here long?”
Jem nodded. Shook her head. And fairly gaped as he sat down beside her.
“Isn’t this the way? The rich inside at a charity ball, dolling out twenty-five dollars a ticket to aid the illustrious Tertius Montague, while mostly tripping over you, poor fellow, right in front of their noses.”
Jem wanted to protest but was afraid her voice would betray her even further. Instead she glared at the man, hoping her disguise would stand the test of such close proximity. His black eyes looked everywhere, as if drinking in the whole scene at once.
“I want you to know,” he was saying, “that I advocate for charity, yes, but I also want to give a voice to people like you! People who are just ordinary, under the noses of the upper crust who pass callously by. People who”—he examined her thoroughly, closely—“people who… ” The man clapped his hands on his knees. “Santo cielo!”
“Shhh!”
He laughed. “You’re a woman!”
“I’m not a woman!” Jem sounded very, very much like a woman.
“There are places for people like you. Safe places. Get you off the street. Do you want to get arrested?” He clapped his hands on his knees again and fidgeted in his coat pocket to retrieve a notebook and pencil stub. “Ray DeLuca of the Hogtown Herald.” He extended his free hand.
The Hogtown Herald. Jem recognized the name of the biweekly rag, commonly called the Hog, which was filled with this fellow’s muckraking exposés on the city’s lack of social justice and reform. When she didn’t take his hand, he grabbed hers anyway and shook it hard. She noticed his nails: They were coal black, as black as his eyes and hair. “I’m trying to get the perspective of the street people. Especially in contrast to big parties like this.”
“Oh, rats!”
“Do you find that you make more money with that disguise?”
“I am not a woman!”
“I don’t believe you!” He reached up and yanked off her hat, and a pile of brown hair fell around her shoulders. “You’re the oddest hobo I’ve ever met. If we could just get that grime off your face. Now, Miss… Miss… ”
Jem buried her face in her hands. This was awful. “Watts.”
“Excuse me? You’re muttering.”
“Miss Jemima Watts.”
“Ready for your interview, Miss Watts?”
“No!” Jem leapt to her feet, almost leaving her pants behind. She hitched her fingers into the belt loops, pulled them high over her bloomers, and strode away.
Ray jumped up and followed. “Oh, come now, Miss Watts. I need a story, and you need something to distract you from the fact that it is going to pour down rain any second.”
A heavy raindrop pierced her eyelash. “Rats!”
“You said that already.” There was a smile in his heavily accented voice.
“I’m going home!”
“Home? Then you’re a fraud. You’re not a street person at all! Why is a young woman dressed like a hobo mounting the steps of the city’s most highbrow event? Are you a spy?” His black eyes twinkled.
“Let me go.”
She elbowed past him just as thunder crashed and the sky broke. Water came down in heavy sheets, and her pants finally gave way, leaving her in nothing but lace bloomers and heavy stockings. Mortified, she watched as the pants puddled around her ankles.
Ray watched with interest before remembering his gentlemanly manners and turning away. She asked him for a handkerchief, demurely accepting the one he held out and wiping the makeup off her face. The girl was trembling like an agitated bunny and so very wet. He wriggled out of his overcoat and offered it. “Here.”
She wrapped it around herself and muffled something that sounded a bit like a thank-you. Then she fell on the side of the pillar and laughed.
Merinda was bored out of her socks. Sure, the broad imitation marble columns and platinum leaves, damask wall fabric, high mirrors, and polished banister of the grand staircase were a sight to behold. Especially as Tertius Montague’s prepossessing and surprisingly calm figure appeared at the top. He made his way down while his men kept the reporters at bay. Camera bulbs flashed and sparked.
Montague raised a hand and began, slowly, to speak. “This is Toronto’s century,” he said, “and it will be a city constantly in motion.” He proceeded to speak about his plans for the theatre in which they stood. Vaudeville acts and even moving pictures. Soon, very soon, the grand opening of the Winter Garden Theatre atop the elegant Elgin would come, and he promised that it would take everyone’s breath away.
Merinda leaned against her walking stick and yawned as Montague filled the air with his boasts. Indeed, it got interesting only when a flame-haired and red-faced young man burst from behind a waiter and pushed his way through the crowd, tears in his eyes and vengeance in his voice.
“How dare you!” he screamed, persistent even as men grabbed his arms and restrained him. “Here, in the very place Fiona died! Probably by your hand.”
“Look here, you ruffian,” Montague began.
“Ruffian! Name’s Fred O’Hare. Fiona was to be my wife.”
Merinda’s eyes followed the dignitaries and officials to watch their reaction. In the corner, she noticed a man leaning lackadaisically against one of the marble columns. She recognized Gavin Crawley, reporter for the Globe and Mail. He had, she remembered, a bit of a reputation as a ladies’ man.
“You’re a murderer!” the young man was shouting. He pulled a gun from his coat pocket.
Chief of Police Henry Tipton’s voice filled the foyer. “Apprehend him, men!”
Officers surged forward and restrained the young man. He was subdued and carted off the premises. The gun was left behind.
Chief Tipton turned to look at the crowd and shook his head. “I’m sure you’ve all heard about the unfortunate young woman whose body was discovered here earlier. But there is no evidence to suggest that anyone here murdered that poor girl. Pray, let’s continue with the purpose of the evening
and our support of Montague’s campaign.”
Convenient, Merinda thought while staring at Montague’s smug smile, to have the Chief of Police on your side.
But before Montague could continue with his practiced speech, a loud commotion erupted from the direction of the powder room. Merinda quickly moved in the direction of the crowd and was there when the first panicked announcement of a corpse in the ladies’ room made its way over in terrified succession.
Merinda meandered through the milling throng out the doors, shoving past women pressing smelling salts to their noses and weeping into the coat sleeves of their gentleman companions.
She found Jem breathless, stocking-clad legs sticking out from the ends of a man’s overcoat, makeup wiped away, and hair down around her face.
“Jem! Jem! It’s a good thing we’re here! There’s another body.”
Merinda had read too many penny dreadfuls and had spent too much time with Mr. Doyle’s stories not to dash back to the scene of the crime.
To her chagrin, Merinda found it difficult to get close enough to inspect the dead girl. But the whispers erupting around her confirmed that it was, again, strangulation.
Jem, still folded in the Hog reporter’s overcoat, searched the room and saw Ray DeLuca, just briefly, in much clearer light. Since he was now coatless and under the lamplight, it was easier to note how his hair shone under the decorative gas lanterns.
She wondered if he was looking for her to reclaim his coat, but he seemed preoccupied and agitated. Fortunately, the commotion over the body’s discovery meant she could slide around unnoticed despite her horrid appearance.
“They’re connected.” Merinda elbowed closer to the corpse, tugging Jem with her. “These murders. They’re connected.”
“I have to return that reporter’s coat,” said Jem. “Though I suppose if I take it off, half of Toronto will notice I have no pants on.”
Merinda gave her an inscrutable look before returning to her inspection of the hall.
Several bluecoats from the Toronto Metropolitan Police entered, parting the crowd to circle the victim. Jem and Merinda were thus left on the sidelines without the privilege Jasper had afforded them earlier that day.
Defeated, Merinda pointed toward the door and they stepped into the chill of the autumn air. Rain spattered the pavement. Merinda found what was probably the only vacant cab in a mile’s radius and whistled for it.
The wheels hissed over the damp pavement. Jem slid into the back of the automobile first, not wanting to spend one more moment with only the reporter’s coat keeping her from the wind. She would have to get it back to him somehow. Jem suspected Merinda would have a dozen or so questions about her state of undress and the events of the evening. Happy that the darkness shaded the blush that had yet to leave her face, Jem rode in silence. But Merinda’s brain was turning so quickly Jem could almost hear it.
* If female readers are under the impression that walking without moving one’s hips is easy, they are encouraged to try it sometime.
CHAPTER THREE
Never be too eager to leave the scene of a crime. It might be tempting when other parties, such as the police, arrive to pursue their own investigation, but the astute detective will stalwartly search out every last inch of the perimeter in question and not be deterred by other human activity around them.
Guide to the Criminal and Commonplace, M.C. Wheaton
COATLESS, SOAKED REPORTER PURSUES DEADBEAT, DRUNKEN BROTHER-IN-LAW HALFWAY AROUND TORONTO.
It wasn’t nearly as compelling as GIRLS DRESSED AS MEN HOVER IN DISGUISE AT CRIME SCENE, but it would have to do for now.
Back inside, Ray DeLuca hooked his thumbs in his suspenders and hoped his mind was playing tricks on him. He would swear he had seen someone he shouldn’t have.
Skip McCoy, red hair tumbling over his forehead, asked him what photographs he should attempt to take first.
“Snap it all, Skip,” Ray said absently, his eyes roaming the foyer of the theatre. Skip began to carry out his assignment, but Ray sprang down the steps and into the downpour again, giving up what might have been an interesting piece on a girl in disguise and her corpse-discovering friend—also female, he suspected, on account of the voice contradicting her dark moustaches—in exchange for the pursuit of his drunk and deadbeat brother-in-law.
MAYOR MONTAGUE AND THE CASE OF THE SECOND CORPSE, he mused as he followed Tony through the rain.
Ray stopped at a corner and blinked away the raindrops. Tony was gone. Ray crossed back to College Street, swerving between a few horse-drawn carriages and a honking automobile before he stopped for breath. He swished his bowler off his head, punched it in its oft-punched center, and ran his fingers through his black hair.
Ray desperately wanted to hop in the next cab, forget about the bed he had claimed at St. Joseph’s, and retreat to his room on Trinity Street, where he would sink into dry clothes and recount the day in his journal. But he couldn’t, not with Tony’s sudden appearance at the scene of the crime. Or so his eyes had told him.
He loped along in a slow jog, heading to the entrance to St. John’s Ward, a central neighborhood spilling over with immigrants, vagrants, run-down housing, and ill-swept streets. At the very mouth of Elizabeth Street sat the tiny ramshackle cottage his sister, Viola, and her oft-drunk husband shared.
Ray had to rap on the doorframe twice before Viola appeared in the soft lantern light of her front sitting room.
“You’re sure it was Tony?” she asked as she listened to her brother’s story, punctuated with a few colorful words in their native language.
“Can you at least let me in?” Ray shook the water out of his hair. Viola stood to one side of the cottage door. “I’m going to stay the night,” he said.
“That’s not necessary.”
“I am staying until Tony arrives. When do you expect him home? Why was he at the Elgin, Vi? What work is he doing?”
“He works odd jobs for Mayor Montague. You know that.”
Ray stepped out of his shoes and plopped onto the mismatched cushions of the sagging sofa. Viola’s home was threadbare. The wind whistled too liberally through the cracks of the roof and the rain spattered into a bucket in the middle of the sitting room, but the cottage succumbed the best it could to her domestic pride.
“Where is your coat?” Viola took her brother’s bowler hat and dabbed at it with a towel.
“I did something chivalrous and loaned it to a girl. And then I saw Tony. Somewhere I shouldn’t have seen him. This is becoming a habit.”
Viola tugged her shawl more tightly around her nightgown. “Must you stay the night, Ray? I hate it when the two of you get in a row.”
“We get in a row because I can’t stand to see him treat you the way he does.” Ray inclined his head in the direction of the cottage’s single bedroom, if one could call it that. It was a corner of the home partitioned off by a ratty blanket that offered minimal privacy from the living area and the kitchen’s sputtering stove. There, he knew, slept his nephew, Luca, a little boy who would be half-starved alongside his mother if Ray didn’t subsidize Tony’s sporadic income with some of his own.
“He’s trying.”
Ray stifled his first response. “Vi, I want to know why he is working for Mayor Montague. He certainly doesn’t work on the books. It’s common knowledge that Montague pays men under the table for performing… less than legal jobs. How else could he run half the city? One of the men at the Don Jail* told me all about it. He said… ”
“Not the Don Jail again, Ray.”
“And who knows what Tony does to scrape up his liquor money?”
“You hurt my feelings.” Viola’s long, purple-black curls fell haphazardly around her face, much as they had done when she’d been a little girl.
She looked more and more like a little girl each day, Ray thought—cornered, cajoled, and beaten down by her husband. Ray intervened as much as he could, but Viola loved Tony, so coming to fisticuffs with him resulted in
little more than black eyes and more tears for his sister.
Viola’s English was far poorer than Ray’s, and she lapsed into Italian now. She defended Tony as she always did, explaining how hard it had been for him to adjust to their new life in Canada. He hadn’t always been this way. He would be himself again someday. But even after five years in the country, these Canadian men didn’t give him a chance.
“You make your own chance here, Vi. You have to make your own chance.”
“I’m tired. You woke me up.” She clicked her tongue. “Look at you. You’re soaked to the bone. I will make you some tea.”
She moved toward the stove and put a kettle on to boil. “Here. Put this on.” She took one of Tony’s cable-knit sweaters from the clothesline strung across the ceiling over the dinner table. Ray turned his back to her, wrestled out of his soaked shirt, and settled into the warm woolen folds of Tony’s sweater.
He was much more comfortable now, especially with a cup of hot tea. He told Vi about the funny girl who had his coat. “The worst part is, I left my notebook in the pocket. It just dawned on me that I don’t have it.”
“What a strange girl.” Viola wrinkled her nose. “Going about begging.”
He didn’t want to come back around to Tony, but it was inevitable. “Then I saw Tony and I had to leave her there without explanation.”
“Did Tony see you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Good.” Viola grabbed the fabric of Ray’s sweater and tugged him closer. “I want you two to get along. Like in the old days.”
Ray tried to smile. “I worry about you.”
“I worry about you too.” She sipped tea from a cracked china cup. “When was the last time you went to confession? Father Byrne said you haven’t been ’round in weeks.”
Ray looked for something to settle his eyes on. There was a week-old copy of the Globe and Mail on the side table. The headline written by golden-boy Gavin Crawley. What with his all-Canadian pedigree and looks, British family, and inherited money, Crawley didn’t have to scrape by at a third-rate paper like Ray did. “I haven’t been to confession, no.”
The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Murder Page 3
