The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Murder (10 page)

“Believe me, I'm not trying.”

“He's not.” Ray had forgotten that Skip existed until he spoke. “He doesn't flatter.”

Ray growled. “Go back to your typesetting!
†
Fretta!”

Skip laughed.

Jem wrinkled her nose. “I should go.”

“It's been a pleasure, Miss Watts.”

He hugged his coat to his chest and brought the sleeve to his nose.

Lavender.

The Ward was a maze, and Jem and Merinda's goals of finding lost items or reuniting mothers with their truant offspring were daunting. But at least, Jem decided, their recent days had been free of corpses. She still hadn't shaken the sight of the statue-still woman splayed on the carpet of the Elgin Theatre.

The
Globe and Mail
and the
Daily Telegraph
had stopped running pieces on the Corktown Murders. The
Star
and the other dailies were focused on politics and the new idea for a subway train station. The newsies outside Spenser's were raising a cacophony about the rising rate of immigration in the Ward, rampant crime, and Tertius Montague's new laws regarding females.

Merinda seemed immune to the news around her. Instead, she was elated at their new enterprise. When she wasn't carefully studying her Sherlock Holmes stories she was rereading M.C. Wheaton's
Guide to the Criminal and Commonplace
—frequently quoting whole pages of it at a time whenever Jem returned from her shift. She'd also commissioned a carpenter to make a larger
Herringford and Watts: Lady Detectives
sign for the doorway. But they were far from household names, except in the Ward, where their pro bono service was on the lips of every lady in a predicament.

Business was steady,
**
so Jem balanced her shifts at Spenser's with her need to dash home to aid Merinda. Tippy was generally so preoccupied with the packages that Jem could slip away unnoticed before the five o'clock bell.

The trunk coughed up a deerstalker. Somehow Merinda had acquired a Toronto police uniform of a size much smaller than would fit Jasper, and it came into play as well.

“And look!” Merinda made her newly printed calling cards rain down on the Persian carpet. “We are authentic detectives. I have schooled Mrs. Malone in proper client protocol. She will lead the client into the sitting room to wait. We'll put magazines and leaflets there. Then we'll receive our clients just like Holmes and Watson.”

Merinda was no Holmes and Jem was no Watson, but that didn't keep them from trying. They found lost items and reunited cousins. They learned that Susan's husband had gambled away their savings, that Drusilla had a long-lost brother named Frank, and that Anne had tricked Martha to get a better job. They discovered that Freida had sabotaged Esther's workstation, and they returned little Tommy to his mother's eager arms. They bandied with suffragettes and parleyed with petty thieves.

They got little sleep and made no money whatsoever. But they learned, through it all, that they possessed genuine talent as a sleuthing team. Merinda had a natural knack for deduction and Jem had a way of placating Merinda, of putting their clients at ease, and of acting as an intermediary as Merinda bounded around with poor manners. She was so far beyond the conventions of proper female behavior that bystanders were downright appalled—until they found themselves thanking the girls for work done on their behalf.

But no matter how busy they got, neither Jem nor Merinda could shake the image of the two dead girls, nor the photographs of the mourning families that Ray DeLuca had run in the
Hog
.

Ray DeLuca, indeed, seemed the only remaining way to glean any information, not only on the Corktown Murders, but also on the plight of women pursued by Mayor Montague's indefatigable Morality Squad. While the other papers preferred to trumpet Montague's benevolence, DeLuca and his paper seemed more carefully attuned to what was happening on the periphery. Montague's band was cracking down harder than ever on enforcing laws curtailing women's freedoms. Women were warned not to set foot alone on the city streets as the sun ducked away and autumn drew colder.

Merinda was particularly keen on observing the bylines of one Gavin Crawley, star reporter at the
Globe
and one of the Morality Squad's most vocal advocates. Crawley was a striking contrast to DeLuca. His paper was conservative, well-respected, and, to many Torontonians, the only one worth consulting. But it turned Merinda's stomach to read his diatribes on “female incorrigibility” and his
ongoing belief that unmarried women were filtering into the city to entice respectable men.

Merinda and Jem knew from their investigations in the Ward that these sentiments were making conditions difficult on honest workingwomen. How could they stay indoors after dark when night fell before they were released from their shifts? How could they get home without a cloud of suspicion falling on them for being out at night? Many walked together in huddled groups, looking around like agitated bunnies as they skittered to streetcars or dashed across streets to reach their homes.

Such were Jem's musings as she walked home from Spenser's one evening. The days were growing colder, and it was with a sense of relief that she found herself back at King Street. She hung up her coat and scarf and retreated to the sitting room, where Merinda sat with a fresh pot of tea—and Tippy.

“Tippy?” said Jem, brushing the snowflakes out of her hair. “I didn't know you were coming for dinner tonight. Why didn't you tell me? We could have walked together.”

Merinda was all business. “Jem, Tippy tells me that her sister, Brigid, might know something about the Corktown Murders.”

Jem stared. That someone she'd worked beside for so long might have a connection with those murders was upsetting. “Tippy? Is this true?”

Tippy shrugged shyly. “Brigid's been getting strange notes from an anonymous source. And I… well, I worry that she might be the next target.”

“Why didn't you tell me at work?” Jem asked, sharing a look with Merinda.

“I was scared. I didn't know what to do. But when I saw your ad… ” Tippy trembled. “Well, I thought maybe you could help.”

Merinda stood and paced in front of the fire. “You knew Fiona and Grace,” Merinda murmured thoughtfully.

“We all lived in the same boardinghouse. And Grace worked with my sister. With Brigid.”

“Where?”

“The King Edward hotel. In the laundry.” Tippy reached into her handbag and extracted a sheet of paper. Upon it were several threats, formed in cut-and-paste fashion from what appeared to be an assortment of periodicals.

“How curious!” Merinda exclaimed.

“I want them to stop,” Tippy said. “Brigid's scared. I'm scared. Whoever is sending these knows where we work and where we live.” A tear pricked her green eye and started a slow descent down her pale, freckled cheek.

Jem offered Tippy a handkerchief. “Now, now, you've come to the right place. We'll get this all sorted.”

Merinda growled. “Stop your sniveling, Tippy. And Jem, stop encouraging her! Take your handkerchief back! Now, Tippy, how many letters has your sister received?”

“A dozen,” Tippy said. “This is the most recent one, but here: I've brought them all.” She extracted a small stack of letters from her bag.

Merinda's nose scrunched up as she read. The notes spoke to Brigid's close relationship with Fiona and Grace and warned her to keep her mouth shut, not to ask any questions.

“She always receives them at work?” Merinda asked.

“Just before the end of the day.”

Merinda smiled. “I know
exactly
what to do.”

Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Malone escorted Tippy out and Merinda paced again before throwing herself in her chair in front of the fire, pressing her fingers to her temples. “I think we have finally been hired to solve the Corktown Murders!” she said elatedly. “And it's about time.”

“Is that what you've been hoping for?” Jem asked. “I still don't think we're experienced enough for that case.”

Merinda wasn't listening. “When you have eliminated the impossible,” she said, chewing her lip, “whatever is left, however improbable… ”

“Must be the truth.”

*
Ray's poetry was terrible. A strange hybrid of Wordsworth and Tennyson that went on at length about nature.

†
The
Hogtown Herald
was skeletally staffed. Skip was a bit of a genius jack-of-all-trades who picked things up rather quickly. Since Ray had met him he had easily been able to work his way around a press as well as take and process all of their photographs. When Ray asked, impressed, where he had picked up so many skills, Skip always replied, “Oh, here and there” with a shrug.

**
If non-paying investigations could be called business.

CHAPTER SIX

One cannot expect that everything will be tied up in a neat knot. Life's greater mysteries and the turn of fortune's wheel work outside the realm of human ability. Try to succeed, but allow yourself moments of weakness. Focus on the art of acceptance when it doesn't all come together in the way you had planned.

Guide to the Criminal and Commonplace, M.C. Wheaton

D
eLuca!” McCormick was a bass drum as he entered the office. The rotund, owl-faced editor threw his coat on his desk, his face stormy.

Ray reclined in his chair, chewing the end of his pencil. “Sir?”

“The state of the
Hog
!”

Was it a question or a statement? “The state of the
Hog
… is good?”

“That's the answer I pay you for?”

“That and my penny-dreadful rehashing of popular events.”

“I'm tired of this Corktown Murder story. We need something like the Don Jail piece. If we don't get it, the
Hog
goes under. As soon as you blink you'll be back where I found you—hunched over, two years away from rheumatoid arthritis, digging railway tunnels near the Roundhouse.”

Ray was unfazed. “The Corktown Murders are important. And as of yet unsolved. Montague's theatre. Montague's maid.”

“People have forgotten those stories, man. The
Hog
is the only paper still splashing them about.” McCormick barreled forward.
“We're becoming a laughingstock. Believe it or not, I still strive toward respectability.”