The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Murder Read online

  “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 lod
ging. 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! ”

  “My dearest Jemima, do not be concerned about your future security. You know that I will always share whatever I have with you. Anything… from muffins to murder. Speaking of which… Mrs. Malone! Where is my Turkish coffee? ” A tray and a pot and strainer materialized. “Thank you!” Her eyes lit. “Now, where were we?”

  “You were going to find some form of useful employment,” Jem said, reaching for a cup, “and we were both going to pursue appropriate feminine activity.”

  “Oh, absolutely not! We’re going to Tertius Montague’s election rally, of course. It’s been in the papers for weeks—he’s giving a speech, and everyone who matters in Toronto is invited, including your esteemed employer, Mr. Thaddeus Spenser. I suppose the police will let poor Montague out of questioning long enough to attend his own fund-raiser. He’ll want to use it to clear his name.” She jumped up, pacing on the Persian rug. “I’m going to need you to be my outside ears and eyes. I’ll go inside, of course. I am much better prepared to mingle with the higher echelons of society.”

  “You have the worst manners of anyone I have ever met!”

  Merinda bounded from the room. “Trousers, vests, and bowlers, Jemima!”

  * For loitering, read “waiting past dark at a streetcar stop.”

  ** Canada’s largest city acquired the moniker Hogtown in the previous century, borne of the sprawling stockyards of the Wm. Davies Company, one of the largest meatpackers in the country.

  CHAPTER TWO

  There is no dignity in solving mysteries. You will, eventually, in the pursuit of solution, learn that efficiency is more important than pride in appearance or form.

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

  Jem realized early in her acquaintance with Merinda Herringford that attempting to solve a crime as an amateur and a woman meant leaving any semblance of pride or dignity behind. She became all too familiar with hiding her attractive feminine traits—her soft curves and curls—under the dirty, mangy tweed folds of her flatmate’s nifty disguises.

  They kept those disguises in a trunk in Merinda’s bedroom. It contained castoffs from Merinda’s uncle—a former actor whom Jem liked to picture rambling about the countryside in a traveling troupe performing second-rate Shakespeare. The most-used garments were trousers, bowlers, and vests, all of which would have caused Jem’s parents to pale to the color of death. But they were necessary to avoid the unwanted attention of the Morality Squad. Two strolling females would call too much attention to themselves, and would even face the prospect of jail.

  Having lost her best pair of trousers to one of Merinda’s recent chemical experiments, Jem was worried as she held up the alternative in front of her: a pair of never-before-worn monstrous pinstripes that threatened to fall down the moment she took a single step.

  “Women walk with their hips,” Merinda said, the false moustaches on her upper lip giving a deft twirl to her mouth. “But men walk with their legs.” She demonstrated, her boots and long pants stretching out in a display of exaggerated masculinity.*

  Jem tried to emulate her stance and stride, feeling generally lucky to escape the eyebrow makeup and moustaches. Instead, her fair features were blemished with grease and grime while Merinda adorned her with a wig, unkempt strands sprouting in all directions. Jem was close to letting Merinda strap a pillow to her stomach to round out the oversized clothes, but Merinda settled on having her look lanky, as if she was unable to keep enough food in her belly to hold her belt buckle straight.

  “These pants will not stay up, Merinda,” Jem said at the doorway.

  “Perfect!” Merinda clapped.

  “I am warning you, they will fall down to my knees.”

  “Then you’ll look destitute. Poor waif! Can’t even afford pants that fit.”

  Merinda’s garb was distinctly upper crust. She practiced the smirk of the rich: smugly self-satisfied, with a chin tilted at the rest of the world.

  Jem thought of a dozen ways this scheme would fail, but she didn’t relay them to Merinda. Instead, she resigned herself to wait outside the event, hovering by a lamppost with her knees pulled to her chin, cursing her fate, while Merinda was inside, silver clattering and champagne glasses tinkling.

  She breathed a prayer for the rain to hold off and to avoid detection, at which Merinda smirked, scolding her friend for conversing with an invisible God. But He wasn’t invisible to Jem, and there were some things that even the great Merinda Herringford didn’t control.

  Ten minutes later, Jem waddled down the street, wondering how to keep her pants from falling down. Merinda turned every few paces to remind Jem to emulate her masculine stance and stride. She was answered with a dozen angry looks shot from under the flickering streetlights.

  Easy for her, Jem thought. Merinda’s pants fit her perfectly. The curve of Jem’s hips and the incline of her waist did not suit the trousers. She hiked them up as best she could and, upon reaching the threshold of bustling Yonge Street, hoped she just looked like some intoxicated old fool.

  Merinda m
arched forward in the direction of the Elgin Theatre, rapping her walking stick, which if necessary could double as a crowbar, in punctuated rhythm with her quick pace. As they reached the intersection, she shoved Jem back. “We cannot be seen together anymore.” Her overdrawn eyebrows settled into an exaggerated furrow.

  Jem’s whisper back was exasperated: “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Use your powers of memory. I want you to be able to recall details of everyone who enters. Note who bends down to throw pennies at you in your pathetic state. Note—”

  “My pathetic state! I’m only pathetic because—”

  “Quiet! And if you see anyone who doesn’t look like they belong here—besides yourself, of course—let me know about it.”

  Merinda began to turn away but Jem clutched at her coat sleeve. “How am I supposed to know who belongs and who doesn’t?”

  “Use your intuition. I need to be inside, so you’re my eyes and ears out here. We need to find something on Tertius Montague so Jasper will let us be part of it. Part of it all.”

  “What do you think you can possibly find at an event meant to celebrate the mayor?”

  “Anything suspicious. The man was just held for questioning for the murder of a girl in his beautiful theatre. Even though I stand by my belief that the murder took place somewhere else entirely. If he’s guilty, something will show. And if he’s in league with someone else, who knows who will filter in and out of the crowd? Now go.” She shoved Jem. “Go beg for alms like a good girl.”

  Jem watched Merinda disappear, and she shuffled over the pavement, finally settling by a lamppost near the entrance to the theatre. Merinda was soon lost in a sea of other black coattails. Ladies flitted by Jem, their skirts brushing her with swooshes of satin and lace. Gentlemen looked down with sneers and snarls. A few tried to shoo her away—a rapscallion who would somehow tarnish their evening.