She dried her hands and tossed the towel back toward the sink before leaving the room. Once in the hall she saw a silhouette through the curtain of her front door. A second later came the knock. Mercy found herself instantly angry. If it was that man, he’d have better be coming to apologize for his behaviour earlier. She paused at the mirror in the hall to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear and pinch her cheeks. She pressed down the sides of her shirt seconds before opening the door.
“Mr. George…” Mercy raised her chin slightly at the sight of him. “Looking for another quote, are we?”
“Yes—”
“My contribution to your story is the same as it ever was, no comment.” She moved to close the door but he stopped her.
“Ms. Eaton”—Alistair pushed back on the door, preventing it from closing—“are you aware that Cynthia Bolton has been found murdered?”
She stopped pressing on the door and regarded him through the foot-wide opening that remained. “What did you just say?”
“Cynthia Bolton, Louis Bolton’s wife, was murdered. Her body was found this morning.”
She immediately thought of the strangled woman at her sister’s funeral parlour. Had Walker tested her abilities using Louis Bolton’s wife?
She knew Walker would never tell the press anything, especially not so early in the investigation. Mercy looked behind her to see if Edith was there before walking out onto the porch, closing the door behind her. “His wife’s name was Cynthia?”
The reporter nodded.
“Who told you these things?”
“I have my sources.”
She shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s going to think I told you.”
“Who? Detective Walker?”
“If you print any of this he’ll think I was the one who told you.”
Alistair shrugged. “If he asks, I’ll deny your involvement but”—a wry smile began in the corners of his mouth—“you realize you just confirmed everything as a secondary source. I have to go to press with it now.”
“Don’t you dare!” Without thinking she gave him a shove, nearly knocking him from the steps.
The playful expression on his face drained away, revealing a hard, sinister glare. “Now look here,” he said, stepping back to her.
Terrified, Mercy pressed herself against the brick of her house to get away. Outside the hospital, in the middle of the street, he had taken her reproach; but here, hidden among the maples and the elms, the gates and gardens, he wasn’t going to stand for it. He pressed his body against hers and snatched her wrist.
“I pride myself as a gentleman,” he said, in a low, seething tone. “But my chivalry only goes so far.”
Mercy tried to pull her hand away but felt his thumb press into her wrist tighter. She thought of Edith inside, plunking away at the keys of their upright. She thought of Constance, hoping she’d make a surprise visit—her presence would be enough to foil the attack from going any further. Lastly, she thought of Detective Walker, hoping there’d be some reason for him to come around the corner right then.
“Unhand me,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Not until you say ‘please’.”
She could feel his breath on her cheek as he spoke. He had no intention of leaving her even if she did jump through the hoops of his demands.
“What is this then?” a voice from a neighbouring porch said.
Both Mercy and Alistair looked to see Mrs. Fanshaw, on her porch, corn broom in her hand.
“Unhand her or I’ll give you one good to the backside,” she said. “That be before I shout for the policeman who’s standing at the corner.” She made a gesture with her broom to prove her willingness.
Alistair released Mercy’s wrist and raised his hands up to surrender. He looked to Mrs. Fanshaw, then to Mercy as he backed down the steps.
“And don’t ye be thinking of hanging ’round ’ere anymore,” the old lady continued. “That’s right, I saw ye the other day. We ain’t got no need for ye or the likes of ye.” She kept her broom handle raised until he was out of earshot and farther down the street.
“Thank you, Mrs. Fanshaw,” Mercy said, unable to catch her breath. She had been more scared than her body allowed her to feel in the moment.
“Don’t let those types of men push you ’round,” Mrs. Fanshaw said. “They’lls just keep pushing ye around tills they get what they want. My husband and that man were cut from the same cloth. Good thing he died a’fore I had a mind to kill him.”
The door to Mercy’s house opened and Edith peered through the opening. As soon as Mercy heard the door creak she turned to face her daughter. “What’s going on?” Edith asked.
“Mrs. Fanshaw and I are just having a chat.”
Edith looked doubtful. No wonder. In the fourteen years they had lived there their widowed neighbour had scarcely said three words to them that weren’t meant as an insult.
When Mercy looked back to Mrs. Fanshaw’s porch, it was empty. The old lady had retreated back to her house.
Mercy ushered her daughter back in and quickly locked the door behind them.
“I thought I heard that reporter again,” Edith said.
“I don’t want you speaking to him again, all right?” Mercy peered past the curtains alongside the door and scanned the street. “If you see him I want you to cross the street, yes? Don’t let him near you.”
“He’s very persistent, isn’t he?”
Mercy rubbed sweat from her forehead and tried to carefully steady her breathing so she wouldn’t alarm her daughter.
Edith paused at the door to the sitting room. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” The word escaped Mercy’s lips in a near croak. If she were honest she would admit that she was far from all right. Alistair’s behaviour jolted a feeling of panic from deep inside her. She could feel her breath quickening and her throat closing in as more sweat accumulated on her brow. She managed to flash a lighthearted smile to her daughter. “I’m fine, dear. Please just do as I asked.”
Chapter 20
Jeremiah Walker was one block away from the Boltons’ room when his name was called from the shadows of an adjoining alleyway. “Walker!” Mink, gruff and unkempt, called again when his first attempt went unrewarded.
Jeremiah stopped but didn’t leave the relative safety of the sidewalk.
“I found something more about…” His voice trailed off as he glanced down the road. “That woman.”
Such a horrid thing, to refer to a man’s wife merely as that woman. It was so diminishing. So crude. Not at all demonstrative of her effect on him. Mink did not know the true reasons she was being sought, of course, and that in her possession she held a sizable piece of Jeremiah’s own heart.
Jeremiah stepped away from the light and allowed himself to be swallowed by the shade of the building. “Where is she?” he asked.
“I don’t know—”
Jeremiah turned for the street.
“But I know where she was yesterday.” The man very nearly grabbed Jeremiah’s coat to coax him back into the cover of the buildings.
“Continue.”
“I was out front of Madam Audulay’s—”
“The brothel?”
“Now don’t go reaching fer yer cuffs.” The man put his hands up and took a step back despite Jeremiah having no inclination to arrest him. “I were just lookin’, nothing wrong with that. Ain’t none of those girls got something that I’ze can’t get at home.” His tone went from nervous to almost boastful in one sentence.
Jeremiah knew the place better than most. Hidden, yet within plain view of anyone in the city, only certain people knew it was there.
“Was she there?”
“No, sergeant. Not exactly. I saw her in one of them closed in-carriages. It had pulled up to the curb, you see. A man jumped down and ran into the front door of Mrs. Audulay’s, in broad daylight too. He had such cheek, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t.”<
br />
The man swallowed nervously. “He left yer… er that lady, Ruth you called her, in the carriage.”
“Did he say anything to her?”
“No, she was sleeping, sir.”
“Sleeping?”
“Yes, her head was propped up on the window, but I could see her face clear enough. She don’t look good, if you ask me. Her dress was all fine but her skin and hair…” He scrunched up his face and shook his head in pity. “Don’t seem right for a girl as pretty as that to be in such a way.”
“Can you describe the gentleman you saw her with?”
The man let out a groan as his mind searched for the right words. “Tall, dressed proper-like.”
“What was the colour of his hair then? Had he a beard?”
“Brown. No beard.”
“Old or young?”
“Hard to say exactly. I paid little attention to him. My focus was on the woman.”
“What can you tell me about the carriage then? Any marks or colours used? How large was the horse team?”
“Black. The carriage was black, the two horses brown. There were no colours. Only that it looked to cost a pretty penny, is all. I thought to hold them back and send word but…”
“You were drunk.”
“Yeah…” His voice trailed off. The closest thing to an apology Jeremiah was ever going to get.
Without waiting for another word from Mink, Jeremiah turned and headed back to the sidewalk.
“Hey now, what’s about my reward?”
Jeremiah could hear him shuffling in the gravel behind him.
“You’ll get the reward when she is standing in front of me again,” he said, without bothering to look at the man. He was not about to swindle the man for his efforts but he couldn’t entirely trust that Mink wouldn’t swindle him for his.
***
Mrs. Audulay’s establishment occupied a three-storey brick home in the heart of Thornhill. Its understated exterior and neat appearance made it difficult to distinguish from all the others on the street. Anyone who did not know better would not have been able to assume much about the property other than that it was well looked after. The women and the loyal patrons were always quiet and well behaved, following Mrs. Audulay’s strict rules without deviation.
The Toronto police force did not concern itself with the business, many officers having no clue it was even there. After quietly establishing itself a few decades prior, the brothel remained unchallenged and slowly melded into the fabric of the city. The average police office or pedestrian may not have known about the brothel’s existence, but Jeremiah knew and, for the most part, avoided darkening the doors of the place at all costs.
Jeremiah found an empty bench in a small, corner park on the opposite side of the street with a direct view of Mrs. Audulay’s front door. In the hour that passed the sun dropped further in the sky and visitor traffic grew. Jeremiah sorted through the steady stream of people, scanning each carriage for the face he knew so well, caring little for how much time had passed and the other tasks he originally had planned for the day. Time had no meaning while his wife remained missing.
He hadn’t thought how he would be able to decipher facial features with the loss of light but as the day turned into dusk, Jeremiah remained at his vigil, unmoved by the monumental task. If she had been escorted here once, most likely she would be escorted here again.
He was oblivious to all others on the street until he saw the smartly dressed red-headed woman, well into her senior years, sauntering toward him. He nearly stopped breathing when she took a seat on the opposite side of the bench. She looked ahead, scanning the same portion of the street as him.
“You may come in, if you’d like,” she said softly, her voice subtly betraying her Scottish heritage. When he didn’t reply, she turned her head to look at him. “How long will you continue like this?”
“Like what, exactly?”
“How long will you continue to act as if you don’t know me.”
Jeremiah shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
He saw her smile out the corner of his eye. A flirtatious smile, with a slight lift of her chin. A smile perfected over many years. “Do they allow you days off from your work with the police?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Then why have you not come to visit?”
Jeremiah finally turned his head to look at her. “You know I can’t, Mother.” He had not meant for the words to sound harsh. Theirs was a tense relationship made even more so after his nuptials.
If his mother was offended by his comment she made no indication. “Then she has left you again,” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the last time my grown son came to this address, he was looking for his new wife, who had stepped out on him for the weekend.”
“That was two years ago,” Jeremiah answered, as if time meant the wound no longer existed.
“You mean to tell me she’s been loyal this entire time?”
He bowed his head. Loyalty hadn’t made much of an appearance in his short marriage, not on Ruth’s side anyway.
“I told you she would only—”
“I know.”
His mother paused. “I told you not to confuse lust with love. Or regret with obligation.” When Jeremiah did not answer, she turned her body toward him. Anyone watching would know they were having a conversation, something Jeremiah had hoped to avoid. “You are too good a man to have to chase after a wife.”
“I’m not chasing after her.”
She looked doubtful.
“I am merely letting her know she may come back if she wishes,” Jeremiah said.
Ruth would never be owned by anyone; he had learned as much during their three years of marriage. He could no more entice or convince her to return home than he could convince her to leave behind her previous life. She did what she wanted without a care or concern for him.
“Some women don’t wish to be wives and mothers,” she said.
He now knew this to be true. Despite a marriage document that stated otherwise, Ruth would not be tied to him. He had feared as much since the minute he had asked for her hand. It was a bluntly asked question, meant to ease her suffering, and it did for a time, but she grew weary of their home and routine life. It was not the life for her, as much as he had wished it to be. Each day that passed he could see the joy in her draining, the colour in her eyes lessen. She was trapped like an exotic animal captured and forced to perform for the genteel public. An animal who would one day either break free or die. He had told himself things would change once the weather warmed, or once they conceived a child. He lied to himself on a daily basis in an effort to convince himself that she did not pine for the rough life she once had. The life he had been so desperate to break her free from.
“And you, Mother?” Jeremiah said at last. “Did you wish to be a wife and mother or were you saddled with me against your will?”
She allowed a small smile, a motherly smile of pride and contentment, to spread over her face. “Early on I accepted I would never be the one but forever the other. And I am so pleased by the man my son has become.”
Jeremiah was not expecting that reply. In the thirty-odd years he had been on the earth his mother had never been anything but commanding. Her profession demanded it. He had never hated her for it, though. Her high expectations for him had pushed him to do better and be better. If she was pleased she merely had herself to thank.
“Come inside,” she said, “if your pride will allow it. I shall make you a tea. You can place one of my chairs next to the window and look from there.” She stood and took a step toward him, smiling at the prospect of her son under her roof again.
“I could never…” He swallowed. “My position.”
“No one has to know, Jeremy,” she said. “Besides, you are far more concealed in the confines of my office than you are out here, where anyone can see you, including Ruth herself.” She folded her arms delicately in fron
t of her. She smiled and acknowledged a man as he walked past them.
Jeremiah stood, still unsure if he should take her up on her offer. “I feel—”
“Walker!” MacNeal bounded toward them. “Walker, there’s another one. This one’s in Queen’s Park. Chief wants you there before anyone moves the b—” MacNeal stopped himself and glanced to the woman at Jeremiah’s side. “Her. He wants you there before they move her.”
Jeremiah turned to Mrs. Audulay. “Thank you for your help, ma’am,” he said, as if she weren’t anyone of significance to him. “You have been most… helpful.”
She bowed her head in a gesture of acknowledgement. “Of course. We are always here. You are always welcome.”
As they walked away, MacNeal looked over his shoulder, confused.
“None of your business, Sergeant,” Jeremiah said sharply.
“Of course, sir, it’s only… is this about Ruth? Was she seen here?”
“I said none of your business, now take me to Queen’s Park. We’ll see what can be done.”
***
The carriage stopped at the corner in front of a large brick house, with a vast porch that wrapped around the building in its entirety. There was an iron fence that sectioned the property from the sidewalk and road, with a gate of access at both the walkway and driveway. The lawn and gardens were vast and well-manicured. The house looked tidy and well kept.
MacNeal and Jeremiah walked shoulder to shoulder as they made their way up the laneway to the carriage house.
“Her name is Clementine Howden, but the cook tells us she went by Clemmie,” MacNeal explained.
“How was she dispatched?” Jeremiah asked, aware that some members of the household staff lingered on the nearby porch, watching over their activities.
“Dr. Bishop hasn’t determined that yet, sir.”
A constable, who had been standing guard at the scene, squared his shoulders as they approached.
“Detective.”
Mercy Me Page 14
