The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Murder

by Rachel McMillan

  Jem turned her head over her shoulder in Ray’s direction. He was now leaning against a pole, his unfathomable black eyes focused on his scrap of folded paper. Her heart beat at ten times its normal pace. She couldn’t think of one remotely sane or useful thing to say.

  I know your secrets, her mind screamed. I have your journal and I know your beautiful words and that you see the city as I do. I know you miss your first home, but I’m so glad the boat brought you here. To our city, to my city.

  Before she could think better of it, she ran lightly back to where Ray stood watching them. She leaned in and kissed his right cheek.

  He felt her butterfly lips on the day-old stubble at his jawline. She stepped back, almost tripping. He stood unwaveringly still, blinking in surprise and confusion.

  Jem wanted him to smile, wanted to carry his smile with her, tuck it in her pocket and keep it there to pull out when she needed. So she smiled—broad and wide, in hopes that he would mirror it. She waited, counted a few beats that felt a slight century, and almost despaired of her foolishness.

  Then she saw the smile in his eyes. Her heart felt light and she turned on her heel to catch up with Merinda.

  CHAPTER TEN

  There is some inherent intelligence in her face. A spark constantly lit behind her eyes. She is two steps ahead of you and has already looked you over… Perhaps the greatest mystery is why no young man has snatched either of these girls from their spinster lives and transplanted them into the realm of domesticity. Swapping propriety for adventure, Herringford and Watts are more preoccupied in their current investigations than in securing husbands, a fact that may make you working ladies, bachelor girls, and shoppies stand up and salute.

  The Hogtown Herald

  Jem whistled as Merinda appeared at the breakfast table the next morning far earlier than she had ever seen her. Merinda was clad in a gray cotton dress. She scratched at her collar and announced her intention to play the part of an out-of-work girl from the Ward at Spenser’s garment workplace.

  After breakfast, Merinda followed Jem through her usual morning commute. But while Jem alighted at Queen and Yonge and crossed the street to Spenser’s, Merinda stayed on a little farther north to Gerrard.

  At the garment workplace, Merinda was led into a dank, overcrowded room that at one point must have been a parlor but had fallen into grave disarray. Several women were already bent over their piecework. None smiled or looked up. Few talked, and when they did they kept it a whisper. The forewoman showed her where to hang her coat and place her luncheon bucket. A few women silently inched over to allow her room on a crowded bench. Merinda smiled her thanks, but no one said anything. Instead, she was handed a large pile of soft cloth. Silk.

  “You brought your thread and needles?” the forewoman asked. In this regard, Merinda was prepared. She nodded. “And a thimble?” She nodded again. The forewoman continued: “Get a start on these. We keep ten percent of what we sell to cover supplies.” She acknowledged the cloth folded in Merinda’s lap. “I see that face. Don’t worry: You can buy your fill of it. Mr. Spenser provides it to his ladies at cost.”

  At cost or not, this was a sham, Merinda thought. Women had to pay from their meager salary to provide their own needle and thread, and they were also docked for their fabric—a fabric of a quality far more dear than they could ever afford.

  Merinda set to her work. She was a quick learner and watched the perfunctory motions of the women around her. The dingy light through the curtains made it difficult to see the delicate stitches without squinting. She saw several women with crude spectacles and pince-nez.

  “Sight is the first thing to go,” one of the girls told her. Another girl, who couldn’t have been fifteen yet, warned her that bone stiffness and arthritis would eventually set in.

  Merinda concentrated on her cloth, wanting to act the part as authentically as possible. She followed the sewing pattern, despite her awareness that there had to be a dozen different ways to cut corners for the same result. Instead, she sewed the desired detail into each shirtwaist. Some ladies around her had beautiful scalloped pieces. She was happy with her plain stitches.

  Stealing a glance up now and then, Merinda saw harsh worry lines blighting the girls’ faces. Worse still, she saw the callused redness of misshapen fingers. These women worked hard and long hours. They were far more poorly dressed than she was, and she was wearing something third-hand from the trunk. She wondered if they knew anything but twelve-hour shifts and poor pay.

  She stitched and threaded and observed. She wove and tangled and spun and spindled. When her lunch break came, she ate on her own, fingering the edge of her shirt and playing with the crust of her sandwich before giving the entire thing to a slack-jawed young Asian woman whose eyes were foggy with hunger.

  Then she was back at it. She learned nothing other than the mechanics of a twill stich. At the end of the day, Merinda reached into her pocket and tossed the forewoman enough money to pay for a week’s worth of thread for each girl. She had barely survived one shift at this menial and horrible job—how could these women piece and stitch for sixty-five hours a week?

  As they stepped into the cold air together, Merinda longed for the warmth she would enjoy by her hearth. But she was painfully aware that these other women would return to barely habitable living situations where they would now be expected to care for their families.

  Few spoke English, but she spoke to those who did, asking them about Fiona and Grace, and asserting that she was familiar with the latter from the King Edward laundry. No one wanted to talk about the Morality Squad, though, even in the light way Merinda cast out the line. The Corktown girls? The seamstresses had apparently learned from the tragedy of those murders and were playing it safe. A few admitted to a few trips to the dance hall on Elm. But they cautioned Merinda to keep her hem to regulation length and to ensure she had a male escort.

  Merinda was too angry to take the streetcar. She walked instead, wanting to vent her frustration and stretch her cramped muscles.

  It took a full city block before she spotted the slight figure close behind her. Merinda turned and made out the pale features of the girl who had eaten her lunch. Poor waif.

  Merinda offered a companionable smile. “What can I do for you?” Merinda ruffled in her bag for money.

  “I know who you are,” the girl said.

  “Do you?”

  The girl gave a shrill whistle, and another girl of the same height and size materialized, seemingly out of thin air. This one had features not as pronouncedly Asian as her young companion, but there was a similarity in their size and stature.

  “I’m Kat. She’s Mouse.”

  Merinda shook each offered hand. “And I am—”

  “You’re Merinda Herringford,” Kat said. “You’re that lady detective.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Word on the street is that you’re trying to find who killed those poor Irish girls.”

  “That would be correct.”

  Kat and Mouse shared a smile. “You’re going to need help,” Kat said.

  “I have help.” Merinda was amused. “I have my associate, Jemima.”

  “Jemima can’t sneak in and around like we can.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Mouse and I know the city like the backs of our hands. You want something done, we do it.”

  “When you’re not sewing shirtwaists?” Merinda raised an eyebrow at Kat, while Mouse remained silent.

  “I needed extra coin. But now I have you.”

  Merinda mulled a moment. It would be helpful to have someone track Montague. Someone to keep an eye on that Forbes fellow from the Morality Squad. To report anything out of the ordinary in the city. “You can be my eyes and ears,” she said, understanding.

  Kat and Mouse nodded in unison. “Exactly.”

  Merinda introduced Kat and Mouse to Jem as their Baker Street Irregulars. She provided them with a few wardrobe changes, pleased that their sh
ort, flat figures allowed them to easily pass as boys. She set them off to trail Gavin Crawley and Tertius Montague, to watch the headlines, and to let them know what was said about Corktown. They also were invaluable for running errands and messages—especially to Ray in the Ward or at the Hog office—so that Merinda and Jem could focus more on the Corktown case.

  Jasper was still miffed to be off the case in which Jem and Merinda were invested. “I know I can’t work it any longer,” he said one night as he and Merinda sat at dinner and Jem worked late. “But I’m at a loss as to why Station One has let it go completely.”

  The wheels in Merinda’s head turned. “Where are most of the Morality Squad constables from?”

  “The ones that aren’t plainclothes are from Station One.” Jasper turned and smiled at Mrs. Malone as she spooned more soup from the tureen. “Thank you!”

  Merinda nodded at this information. “Is it usual for someone of your rank and record to be punished with traffic duty for so long, just for letting two girls close to a crime scene?”

  Jasper shook his head slowly. “Lieutenant Riley told me it wasn’t from him. It came from Chief Tipton. He’s bearing down hard these days. My supervisor fought for me. I know he did.”

  Merinda chewed this for a moment, then tore off a piece of roll. “Jasper, did it ever occur to you that they may not want the murders solved?”

  “Nonsense, Merinda. I have to trust my superiors and respect Chief Tipton’s decision. Anyway, it does me good to work the King beat, you know. Keeps my head from getting too big.”

  Merinda bit her lip to stifle a snicker. “Jasper, you’re already the most humble man I know. You know something has to be going on over there. Chief Tipton just closes the door on the Corktown Murders? What if Tipton is in Montague’s pocket? He kills these girls and they remove their best detective from the squad. Don’t blush, Jasper, it’s unbecoming.”

  “I have more faith in the Toronto Police than that, Merinda. Why would I work for someone who was so obliviously corrupt?”

  Merinda didn’t want to speculate. All she knew was that it seemed the newspapers were all too eager to move onto far more mundane headlines, like the cooling weather or a looming transit strike, and that the Toronto Police were not in any great hurry to solve the case of two deceased girls. Indeed, the only person who seemed to want to solve the case was her!

  That evening, Gavin Crawley was to take Jem to The House with Closed Shutters, which was playing over at the Harmonium. He’d planned to pick her up from work, and he arrived at Spenser’s with a wink and a smile.

  “Gavin,” Jem said, “may I present Tippy Carr?”

  Tippy’s cheeks were bright red. She must have found him as handsome as most women did.

  Gavin gave a short laugh. “Odd name.”

  “It’s short for Tabitha,” Tippy said, her eyes down at her lap.

  Jem looked from one to the other. Did she imagine it, or did a kind of strange energy spark between them? But before she could ponder it, Gavin was taking Jem’s arm and escorting her the few blocks to the Harmonium.

  The moving picture show was about a woman who posed as a man and fought in the war. How ironic, Jem thought. Before she’d met Merinda, such a getup as the actress wore in the movie would have seemed preposterous to Jem. Now, sitting beside Gavin in the dark and recalling her most recent trouser-clad adventure, she was surprised at how much her life had changed. Not only her life but also her worldview. Little surprised her anymore.

  “Can you imagine?” Jem gushed after the picture was finished and they went for a soda and ice cream on Wellington Street. “A woman soldier!”

  “It’s improper!” Gavin said.

  “She saves her brother! Sacrifices herself!” Jem’s hands flew to her heart. With Gavin by her side and the fizzy soda bubbling at her nose, she could barely contain her euphoria. “Merinda would love that story.”

  Gavin took a pin to her balloon. “You know I don’t approve of your living with Merinda Herringford.”

  “She’s my best friend,” Jem offered simply, slurping through her straw.

  “You should be married by now.”

  The soda spurted through her nose, fizzing her nostrils. She coughed. “E-excuse me?”

  “You know you should. Pretty girl like you.”

  He spoke of marriage as if it were easy, or as if he’d said only, “You should have a cat by now.” Gavin buried the words under his usual string of compliments, but the aftertaste remained. Before, on lonely nights, she would trace similar words in a romantic novel with her finger, wishing someday, somewhere someone would say them to her. Why, then, did they fall as flat as the fizzed-out soda she was absently twirling with her straw?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lately, I have taken to walking by St. James on the way home. The first time I slipped in I felt immediately that I was somewhere I shouldn’t have been. The beautiful tiles and polished fixtures. The saints in their rainbow-glassed vignettes. I just come and clutch my hat in my hands and sit. One afternoon the minister, Ethan Talbot, came and spoke to me. He told me that the door will never be locked for me. Then he offered to teach me to read and write English. And I promised, in that moment, I would do something with that gift. Someday.

  From a journal which Jem still (guiltily) has in her possession

  Ray sat at his desk in the Hog office, transcribing notes he’d scrawled in his peculiar shorthand the night before. Cold. Wretched. A mess of nomads and working men. I have befriended a Swede, Lars, and am helping him with his English. Wonder if he’ll acquire my Italian accent. Or my penchant for bad poetry.

  As Ray sat typing at his old Underwood, Skip stood nearby rambling a mile a minute about emulsions and exposures, reflectors and plates, all while cleaning his equipment.

  “You hungry, Skip?”

  “Possibly.”

  Ray took him to the Wellington Room just across City Hall.

  Skip wasn’t nearly as interested in his roast beef sandwich as Ray was in his. Instead, Skip’s eyes focused on the foot traffic out the window. He boxed his index fingers and thumbs like a lens and peered through. “The entire city is a photograph, Mr. DeLuca.”

  Ray smiled and chewed slowly.

  Skip moved his imaginary lens over the street, finally stopping on a pair of women dressed in white shirtwaists and prim black skirts. “There she is.”

  Ray swallowed and looked up. “Jemima Watts?”

  For there was Jem, presumably on her lunch break, laughing at something her companion had said.

  “No,” Skip said. “That vision of a girl beside her.”

  Ray studied her. Doe-eyed and pretty. Fairy-like, almost. He nudged Skip. “You’re sweet on her?”

  “Her name is Tippy. That’s what they call her. I’ve got a friend who works in the shipping department.” He sighed. “She’s nice to look at.”

  Ray leaned across. “You should tell her that.”

  “ ‘You are nice to look at.’ ” Skip’s voice was monotone as he repeated it. “I’ve seen her before at one of those dances on Elm Street.”

  Ray laughed. “Sei una ragazza carina.”

  Skip brightened. “There. That sounds much better. What does that mean?”

  “You are a pretty girl.”

  “I wish I could say it like you.”

  “Hmm.” Ray smiled as he watched Jem struggling to keep her straw hat atop her head as the wind whisked across the road. “I don’t think women want sly or clever, Skip. I’m sure your Tippy would appreciate your telling her the truth.”

  “You think so?”

  Ray gave a dark laugh. “That’s your advice from a bachelor reporter.” He shrugged ruefully and took another bite of roast beef sandwich.

  “Dance with me, Jem.” Jasper jumped up from his half-eaten dinner. He set the phonograph to playing and brought Jem to her feet.

  He had waltzed into Jem and Merinda’s dining room that evening relaying the details of the upcoming Policeman’s Ball even t
hrough their meal. It was the one night when all men from every station, even lowly detective constables normally on traffic duty, met on common ground in the ballroom at the King Edward Hotel. Jasper vowed to spit-shine his shoes, polish his bronze buttons bright, and whirl the night away.

  Jem laughed and smiled shyly at Merinda, who was hardly paying attention. “I’m not in shape here. Haven’t danced in years.”

  “Nonsense. You have a natural grace. And I need to practice.” He extended his hand to her.

  “Oh, very well!” Jem rose and took his hand. They made great ceremony of bowing to each other.

  Jasper proved a proficient enough dancer, though there was something boxed rather than fluid about his careful movements. Jem watched the strain on his face, betraying the counting in his head.

  One two three, one two three, one two three.

  Jem fell into the easy step of his lead, and after a few spins her head was light. The music and the rapturous mood and their collective laughter kept her in a constant, dizzy carousel until the phonograph squeaked to an abrupt stop.

  “I’ve got it!” Merinda said, standing. “Jasper! Jasper stop!” Merinda was across the room in a flash and grabbing his forearm. Jasper and Jem stopped midstep. “Is the ball sponsored by Mayor Montague again?”

  Jasper wiped his forehead. “Yes. And Chief Tipton. All the police will be there, and a few reporters are invited too.”

  “Good! Jasper, I will be your guest.” Merinda shoved Jem out of the way and stood in front of Jasper. “Show me how to do this thing you’re doing.” She waved her hand about.

  “Waltzing?”

  “Yes.”

  Merinda waltzing? Jasper and Jem’s eyes met, but both managed not to laugh. Jem looked Merinda over, beginning with the braids plaited down her back and ending with the cuffs of the trousers over her rubber-soled boots. There was nothing graceful about Merinda. She was all angles and lines and precision. But, Jem thought, dancing with Jasper was more like mapping out the corners of a rigid triangle than spinning weightlessly on clouds.