The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Murder (5 page)

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

C
OATLESS, SOAKED REPORTER PURSUES DEADBEAT, DRUNKEN BROTHER-IN-LAW HALFWAY AROUND
T
ORONTO
.

It wasn't nearly as compelling as G
IRLS 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.

M
AYOR
M
ONTAGUE AND THE
C
ASE OF THE
S
ECOND
C
ORPSE
, 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.