The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Murder (3 page)

“You two scurry,” he said.

Merinda grabbed at Jasper's elbow and pulled tightly. “Please, Jasper, let me back in. I haven't finished investigating.”

“No,” Jasper said. “It'll be the end of my career if the sergeant finds out you were at the scene at all.”

Merinda sighed. “Is Fiona… is the body going to the morgue now for an autopsy?”

“Yes, there will be an autopsy.”

“And you'll keep us posted? You'll let us know what the autopsy shows?”

“Merinda, your excitement is indecent,” Jem said. “A girl is dead.”

“Shush, Jem! There's finally adventure at our fingertips, and I won't let it slip away.” Merinda turned to the constable. “Jasper?” she entreated.

“Yes, yes. I'll loop you two in. Now, scurry!”

Ray DeLuca excelled at being at the right place at the wrong time. Today he was following Skip McCoy, the
Hogtown Herald's
**
sometimes photographer and all-around jack-of-all-trades, unaware the impromptu adventure would result in a corpse.

Skip had told him he knew a secret way up to the Winter Garden, the theatre atop the gilded Elgin Theatre, still several weeks away from its public opening. Later that night, the Elgin would be the scene of Montague's mayoral election rally. Everyone, including Montague's wealthy ally, Thaddeus Spenser, would be in attendance. Skip and Ray would kill a few hours, maybe find a diner nearby before staking out the crowd.

“Tertius Montague put some of his own money into the new theatre.” Skip jumped up and wrestled with the ladder attached to the
fire escape so it came clanking down with a thud. “Thaddeus Spenser contributed.”

Ray looked left and right. Victoria Street was fairly empty for a sunny Saturday afternoon. He let ruddy-haired Skip get a head start and then pulled himself up after him, holding tightly to the handrails. A few flights and Skip opened the unlocked door.

Inside, Ray took off his bowler and muffed at his matted hair. Skip snaked a lit match along the brick wall until he found the lever and yanked so that the electric lights fizzled and spurted before they slowly lit. Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous backstage area, still in disarray. The workers must have had the morning off. Above, ropes and pulleys crisscrossed and drooped. In front, a black fire scrim barricaded them.

Ray maneuvered around piles of lumber and tarps to get nearer to Skip. “So you took me back here to see ropes and lanterns?” Ray replaced his hat, reached into his pocket, retrieved his father's pocket watch, and spun it around his finger.

“No, wait.” Skip approached the fire scrim and Ray watched him peer around it. “All clear!” He motioned Ray over.

Ray followed and they stepped out onto the stage. Whatever lever Skip had pulled not only lit behind the curtain but the entirety of this garden-in-progress. Ray held his hand to his forehead.

It was a fairyland in the making. Even now, when it was just a phantom of soon-to-be-beauty, the leaves winding from the rafters and the painted vines and scalloped flora adorning the pillars and walls presaged its grandeur. Hundreds of painted twigs, birds, and fairy lanterns hung from real beech branches.

“How did you know this was up here?”

“I heard it around,” Skip said vaguely.

“What are you doing here, Ray?” A man's voice came from the top of the grand staircase, the flights that wound down to the Elgin Theatre.

The voice was familiar to Ray. It was his brother-in-law. “Tony?”

“I asked what you're doing here.”

“On a story.” He threw a look at Skip.

“There's a corpse in the foyer,” Tony said. “Pretty freckled girl with red hair almost as bright as the carpet.”

Ray's eyes widened and Skip gasped.

“Did you put it there?” Ray asked lightly.

“Very funny.”

“Then why are you here?”

Tony's face was in shadow. “Business for Montague.”

“Let's go,” said Skip. “If there's a girl dead downstairs we don't want to be found here.”

Ray wanted to press further to determine what Tony's business was, but he heard footsteps—probably the police—ascending the staircase from below.

Ray and Skip exited the way they'd come in, agreeing on a time to meet later that evening.

Ray made his way to the streetcar stop and hopped on, tossing a coin at the driver, making his way to the back as the winking sunlight spread like an outsretched hand over the wide glass panes. His mind was full of a new story idea—one that McCormick, editor of the
Hogtown Herald
, hadn't even signed off on yet. St. Joseph's Home for Working Men: living conditions subsidized by Tertius Montague and Thaddeus Spenser.

The streetcar rambled on, a zigzag of telephone cables and wires overhead and a spark of wheels against the tracks underneath. To the sides the trenches were gutted, every street dug up, repaved, tracks hammered at a frantic pace, carriages squealing and almost colliding with automobiles.

Ray hopped off north of Elizabeth Street where St. Joseph's interrupted the sloping cottages and slanted houses of the Ward. Inside, light shone murkily through filmy windows and cracks snaked up the moldy wallpaper, exposing water-stained cement underneath.

He was greeted by a woman with strings of greasy gray hair falling over a pasty face. He flashed her a full-on smile and spoke in Italian, playing the part of the workingman. She handed him a ratty blanket
and listed off the rules of the establishment, not seeming to care whether he understood English or not as she walked him to the common bunkroom. She didn't mention the fact that he had no belongings with him. He would learn later, watching men come in and out with nothing but the clothes on their backs, that this was customary.

“You're free to do as you like, but curfew is eleven and you must leave by eight the next morning. Eight, you understand?” She held up eight fingers. “Don't use the stove or the radiator or dry your socks there and never, ever entertain female company. Some of the men try to pass their
sisters
and
cousins
by me”—she turned to look at him pointedly—“but I know better.”

He was left to settle in. As this required little more than flopping on his bed and removing his hat, he took the time to explore his surroundings. He peered through the window. The gated courtyard was more prison-like than Ray had anticipated. But prison or not, it was a place for men new to the country to spend a few nights, hoping there wasn't a long list for an empty bed and hoping they could secure a job the next morning to pay for bed and board.

Not long after, men shuffled in after their morning shift. It was a veritable Tower of Babel: All manner of languages sewed a tapestry of Yiddish, Italian, Chinese, and a few Nordic dialects. Ray creased open his journal, scribbling a few thoughts for his upcoming article. But despite all he saw around him, he had trouble focusing on anything other than the corpse at the theatre. Why would anyone murder someone there the same day as Montague's first campaign party—unless that was the reason for the murder in the first place?

Turning down his wrinkled blanket to mark his spot, he grabbed his coat and set out to meet Skip again.

Jem wanted to take the streetcar from the theatre back to the residence she and Merinda shared at King Street, but Merinda was in no
mood for the stifling crowds of the trolley. Assuring Jem that the fresh evening air would do their minds some good, Merinda set a frantic pace, straining ahead, her rapid stride made easier by the shortened length of her skirt.

Too short. The Morality Squad would write her a ticket if she wasn't careful.

For her part, Jem was dressed with decorum and decency and couldn't help but lag behind. In addition, Merinda's figure was far more lithe, with a boyish flatness of angles and lines, whereas Jem's soft, feminine curves filled out daysuits well but were not ideal for racing down to the West End at the speed of streetcars.

Autumn had rustled in with evenings as crisp as russet apples and skies a tangy cerulean blue. But the clear, bright days of September were all but behind them. Currently, showers threatened to burst from the low-hanging clouds, and the prospect of long, gloomy nights broken only by the flickering light of tallow candles stretched before them. The church bells of St. Andrews and St. James mixed with the whip of the wind in an eerie musical contest.

Finally, breathless and blistered, Merinda and Jem ascended the steps to their lodging. Merinda slid the key in the lock and opened the door while wriggling out of her coat. She tossed the coat on the floor, ignoring the glare it inspired from their landlady, Mrs. Malone, and stomped over the Persian rug in the front sitting room, bellowing for her Turkish coffee.

And thus they sat, causing Mrs. Malone to wonder loudly from the kitchen why two girls on the wrong side of twenty were oblivious to Toronto's numerous options for perfecting one's domestic skills and meeting appropriate young men. Especially when said girls were of such good breeding and high pedigree.

Mrs. Malone was not alone in her puzzlement. Jem wondered that too, constantly. Merinda was the most productively useless person she had ever met. Hardly ever gainfully employed, she spent hours in medical study at the university laboratory—despite the fact that
she'd abandoned her plans to practice medicine. And she followed Jasper around like a dog promised a bone whenever there was a whiff of mystery in the air.

They kept their heads above the tide of impropriety—barely—thanks to Merinda's family's fortune and the watchful eye of Mrs. Malone. Jem felt the lack of romantic prospects more acutely. She had exchanged her parent's social circle for Merinda's odd moods, temper, and the air of constant excitement that followed them, especially when in the vicinity of a problem overseen by Jasper Forth. Merinda was so competitive in the company of the opposite sex that men had little choice but to cower. And she was oblivious to the way said police constable looked at her.

Back in university, the pair had been far more interested in the disappearance of a stolen watch or the conveniently circulating answers to a test than the realms of social and cordial respectability. Now they sat on either side of their hearth, another mystery buzzing at their fingertips, reliant on Jem's employment at Spenser's Department Store and Merinda's father's liberal allowance. Adrift on some urban island, marooned from respectable society.

Merinda couldn't have cared less. “Do you really think that Tertius Montague is the murderer? It seems too easy.”

But Jem's mind was far away. “Do you ever wonder about security? About the future?” She thought about white picket fences and matching dishes from the Spenser's catalogue.

“Je-mi-ma!” Merinda said. “Do you think Montague is the murderer?”

“I wonder if we should go to one of those church socials,” Jem said dreamily. “They have crokinole!”

“Cracker jacks, Jem! Sometimes I wonder if we are even having the same conversation. What about those hemp boys? The out-of-work sailors who work in the pullies? They could have used one of the ropes to strangle the girl.”

“Silly sailors! Does it not bother you that my parents just dropped me like a hot poker?” She extracted the letter and pamphlet that had
arrived in the morning's mail and waved them like a flag in front of her companion. “We have nothing to show for this mystery nonsense but a letter from the police congratulating you on a job well done…
for a woman!
”