A Singular and Whimsical Problem Read online

  “Toronto’s most prosperous entrepreneur. Owns half the city, controls more than half of the council. You really should read the papers more.”

  “I read yours.”

  “Apparently not often enough.”

  “More coffee, Mr. DeLuca? Are you two on a case?” The waitress was still hovering. She leaned in conspiratorially and lowered her voice. “Because if you have a moment… ”

  “Did you need to speak to us?” Merinda asked.

  “I was hoping to. I just hadn’t had the opportunity. You see it’s just me and my dad and my older sister, and he worries if I’m not home to fix his supper after my shift.”

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Merinda asked. “You can tell us all about it.”

  “I’m afraid the boss won’t like it so much. But I can get another waitress to cover me if I leave a bit early. Maybe I could…?” There was a question in her voice. “I could be at your flat at half past four.”

  “Perfect. We’ll be happy to help.” Merinda flashed a smile.

  “You won’t regret your choice!” said Ray. “I’ll have you know that Herringford and Watts are the finest lady detectives in Canada. And should your chickens go missing I can recommend no duo better equipped to… ”

  Ray grimaced as Merinda kicked him under the table.

  “It’s set then!” Mabel brightened. “I’d much rather talk to you than the police. It’s a rather… it’s a delicate matter.” She gave a quick smile and turned toward another table of diners.

  I watched her as Ray finished the last of his sandwich. She was plump and pretty, and when she was with us I had noticed her green eyes and soft tendrils of red hair tickling her dimpled cheeks. I wondered if Ray noticed too.

  Merinda, meanwhile, was only noticing an article in the newspaper she was rifling through. “DeLuca, get me some pie.”

  “What?”

  “Lemon meringue. Jem, get yourself some pie.” She put down the paper and stabbed her finger at a headline. Seamstress Sentenced to a Year in St. Jerome’s. “I think you should hire me to sit in some of the ladies’ court cases, DeLuca. I could take notes for you.”

  “You mean you could find new causes to champion and involve yourself helplessly and dangerously in matters that don’t concern you.”

  Merinda raised an eyebrow.

  Ray sighed. “Yes. Fine. When I hear something on the docket. But I’m not paying you.”

  “And why won’t you pay me?”

  “Because you’re doing this out of the goodness of your heart. Anyway, I thought you were here about Clinton Walters.”

  “His wife, actually,” I began, “but really it’s more to do with Martha Kingston.”

  “The suffragette?”

  “She paid us a visit this morning,” I said. I briefly outlined what had transpired at our flat. Ray listened with an inscrutable expression on his face. Finally, he leaned back and gave a low whistle.

  “This woman, this Jeannette… She’s just vanished?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Well, you know as well as I that there’s only one place women vanish in this city.”

  St. Jerome’s. The name lingered unspoken in the air between us.

  Merinda shook her head, breaking the silence. “Come, Jem. Forget the pie. Let’s find Kat and Mouse,” she said.

  We alighted on Yonge Street and walked amid the jangling sleigh bells, the horse-drawn carts toting their wares, and the automobiles skidding and honking in the twilight. The golden lights of the theatre marquees and the stores’ Christmas displays spilled onto the snow-slicked pavement.

  We turned into a funnel of an alley and entered St. John’s Ward, Toronto’s notorious slum. Immigrants from all four corners of the earth, having recently gathered their meager belongings from the deck of a ship, had settled in the ramshackle tenements. The buildings were falling into each other like mismatched teeth in an over-wide mouth. This was where we would find Kat and Mouse.

  Merinda had first met Kat while undercover at a garment factory, and she’d pressed the girl into immediate service. Mouse appeared not long after, with hair cropped bluntly around her ears, a lanky form, and a sly smile that rarely left her smudged young face. While Kat’s tweed cap sat rakishly low over her black hair, Mouse’s unkempt bowler was always tipped at an angle as mischievous as her grin. They both knew too how harsh the city could be. But they were sharp and could winnow into nooks and crannies barred from Merinda and me, even when we were dressed in men’s attire.

  The girls weren’t hard to find. They were shivering together on a doorstep, knees knocking against the cold. We handed each of them sandwiches wrapped in paper, and I wished to heaven we’d thought to bring blankets. The two looked chilled to the bone.

  Merinda explained their commission—the quest for Mrs. Walters’s precious Pepper. Neither seemed particularly enthusiastic until we pressed a few crisp bills into their hands and urged them to come to King Street for lunch the next day. Thus supplied with funds and assured of a proper meal, they set off to chase the poor animal around the city.

  With Kat and Mouse on Pepper’s tail, we returned to the flat to receive Mabel the waitress. We arrived just moments before her hesitant ring—just enough time to divest ourselves of our coats and hats and hang our scarves up on hooks.

  “I’ll do the tea this time. You receive her,” said Merinda, already disappearing into the kitchen.

  Mabel’s cheeks were red and her eyes bright from her exercise. Her shapeless gray coat joined ours on the rack, looking a little threadbare next to them. I brought her to the sitting room and indicated the armchair that had so recently held Mrs. Walters and Ms. Kingston. I stoked the fire as she fussed with her hands, nervously picking at an errant thread on her sleeve.

  Merinda appeared with the tea service—she’d forgotten the biscuits—and poured three cups. Mabel accepted her cup with thanks. She took a long sip and smiled weakly. “It’s delicious,” she said.

  I wrapped my hands around my teacup. Lukewarm again. Merinda never had the patience to let the water boil before snatching the kettle off the stove.

  Merinda ignored her cup. “I know your time is short,” she said, “so you’d best get to the point.”

  Mabel nodded, and for a long moment she said nothing. The only sound was the crackle of the fire in the grate. And then—“I can trust you, I hope,” she said.

  “Of course,” said Merinda shortly. “Jem and I are the souls of discretion.”

  “My sister hasn’t been coming home nights,” Mabel finally blurted out. “Not till dawn, sometimes. I think… I always wonder if she won’t come home at all, and one morning her bed will be empty. I try to wait up for her, but my days are so long and my mornings so early that I drop off. Jenny is quiet as a mouse, but I know she’s out most of the night.

  “A few days ago, I confronted her and she broke into tears, begging me not to tell our father. She told me that she had found herself in a”—and here her voice dropped to a whisper—“very bad way. Well, I was shocked. We’re good Christians, we are. She started telling me about this man who had been visiting the restaurant, but… Well, why would someone in… in her situation be gallivanting around Toronto at all hours of the night?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Corktown. We all grew up there, but times got tough and my father hurt his arm. Jenny and I take care of him now.”

  “Where does Jenny work?”

  “The Yellow Rose. It’s a restaurant near the docks.”

  “And she mentioned this one man?”

  “She’s always in love.” Mabel looked between us. “There’s been a series of men. I don’t imagine this one was anything new.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Merinda impatiently. “But I don’t see why this is a mystery at all. Your sister is in a bad way, she’s sneaking out at night—probably with her lover… ”

  “I don’t think she is sneaking out just to see her beau. No.” Mabel sipped her tea. “I think she is h
olding something back from me.”

  “But you have nothing but a theory on this. Just a feeling she’s being secretive.”

  I felt we were going in circles on this count for long minutes, and Merinda wasn’t hiding her growing frustration well.

  “You have to believe me, Miss Herringford,” said Mabel, a hint of desperation in her voice. “Something isn’t right. There is something funny happening there. I know it in my bones.”

  The clock chimed five and Mabel looked up. “I should go,” she said, setting her teacup on the tray. I noticed that she’d barely had anything to drink. “My father… he’ll be wondering where I’ve gotten to. I’d hate for him to worry.”

  I saw Mabel to the door and retrieved her coat from the hook. As I bid her goodbye, I wondered exactly what she intended us to do. The case, such as it was, seemed not the least bit mysterious.

  When I returned to the sitting room Merinda was lighting the lamps. Dark came early these days, and nights were long. I went to the board by the bureau to note our cases, scribbling with a sliver of white chalk: Missing cat. Missing suffragette. Missing sister.

  “Yes, good,” Merinda murmured as I wrote. “And be sure to note that Mrs. Walters has never loved her husband. That’s bound to be significant.”

  I whirled, startled, dragging the chalk in a long, bold line down the board. “How on earth did you decide that?”

  “Why, surely you saw… ” But I was not to know the rest, for just at that moment the telephone buzzed. Merinda dashed to the kitchen to answer it and returned to the sitting room not a moment later. “That was DeLuca!” she cried, and she clapped her hands almost gleefully. “There’s a case on the docket tomorrow, and he says we can report for the Hog!”

  Two

  Merinda and I shivered and yawned on the steps of City Hall early the next morning as the bright, frozen sun pierced the blue of the December sky. It had snowed the previous evening, and everything was still fresh and unsullied by traffic. We were dressed in our finest daysuits, which were clean though a bit rumpled, due to Mrs. Malone’s continued absence. Neither of us had any idea how to operate an iron.

  The broad oak doors of City Hall needed a hefty push. Once inside, we were confronted by a few official-looking men. Merinda answered their quizzical looks with an explanation that we were there on Hogtown Herald business, and she even produced a card lined with credentials I was unaware she possessed. We proceeded to the courtroom and took our seats on one of the benches. We sat close together, conserving our body heat as best we could against the insufferable cold.

  Merinda was taking in the whole picture with wide interest. A shivering young woman, obviously the prisoner, was sniffling her red nose into a floral handkerchief. She had been accused of stealing from her employer—that much Ray had told Merinda on the telephone.

  The accused looked up and around. No sister or friend offered her a consoling hand. She blew her nose again and straightened her shoulders as best she could before shivering into a teary mess.

  “Merinda, we have to go and speak to her,” I said.

  “And what would we say?”

  “She needs a friend.”

  “You go. I’ll just get angry and throw something.” I cast Merinda an incredulous look, and she sighed heavily. “You have this way about you, Jem. Probably on account of your Sunday school upbringing. You go.”

  I headed toward the defendant’s box. The gallery was filling quickly. There were a few reporters but most were spectators, hoping that the girl would get what was coming to her. Whatever that was.

  “Hello.” I was unsure what to say when I finally got near enough to speak to the girl.

  She looked up and her sniffles slowed. I hoped my demeanor proved I was on her side.

  “Hello.” A fragile smile parted her rosebud lips.

  “Where is your legal defense?” I asked. The chair sat empty beside her.

  “The city is providing one,” she said in a heavy French accent. “I haven’t met him yet. But they took my… they made me write things and… ”

  Her English was poor. I lapsed into what little French I had and made out that she had been accused of stealing a pair of silver cufflinks. She professed total ignorance of the matter, and I believed her, poor thing. The justice system seemed to have already decided against her, and she had enough common sense to know it.

  I squeezed her shoulder. Relief spilled through her as her muscles relaxed, releasing their tension. To my surprise, she reached her hand back and gripped mine.

  “My name is Jemima,” I said in French. “But everyone calls me Jem.”

  She fumbled, pressing her hand to her chest. “Melanie. Melanie LaCroix.”

  My mouth was open to ask another question when I heard Merinda’s dramatic whisper from several rows back. I turned around.

  “Come here!” she mouthed, waving at me frantically.

  I squeezed Melanie’s shoulder once more and gave her a reassuring smile. Merinda hurried me out the oak doors and into the corridor.

  “Where are we going? What about the trial?” I said.

  “This isn’t the trial we need to be attending!”

  “It isn’t?”

  “There’s another one down the hall. I overheard the reporter from the Telygraph talking about it. A young woman named Jenny who works at the Yellow Rose.”

  We saw Mabel as soon as we entered the adjacent gallery. She was wringing her hands as the gathered assembly awaited the verdict. The Court chancellor—an eagle-nosed, sinewy fellow with a perpetually sour expression—was just reading out the verdict. We made our way to Mabel as his monotone voice found Jenny guilty of loitering.

  “As the accused has indicated that she cannot pay her fine, she will be transferred to St. Jerome’s Reformatory for Vagrant and Incorrigible Females,” he intoned. Mabel stumbled as she heard the words, and even from a distance we could see that Jenny had gone absolutely white. Merinda muttered something under her breath, and I shivered. St. Jerome’s was no place for a woman who had found herself in a bad way.

  It was only a moment before Jenny was led away, hands behind her back, terrified and unsure and all alone.

  “Cracker jacks!” Merinda’s voice was eerily low.

  We each put a hand on Mabel’s arms—she was a bit unsteady on her feet. We escorted her into the corridor and then out into the sparkling snow. The jingle bells made a joyful sound incongruous to the occasion, and their ringing only made me shiver more. I kept one arm around Mabel, having promised to see her into a taxi for home.

  Once the cab was rambling eastward over the snow-smattered street, Merinda and I pondered our next course of action. Out the corner of my eye I saw another woman leaving City Hall, her hands tied in front of her and her elbow held by a guard. Melanie, the French girl. Her bright, teary eyes met mine across the snowy yard between us, and I gave her a grave smile.

  Merinda noticed and grimaced. “We have to do something. If they’re going to St. Jerome’s, then so are we!”

  “And what are we going to do?” I asked. “Stage a jailbreak? Help them escape?”

  “Nothing that dramatic,” said Merinda. “We’ll observe. Take notes. Get Ray to report on the conditions we find.”

  “Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone,” I said. “While we’re there we can look for Jeannette—Ms. Kingston’s suffragette.”

  But first, it was time to meet Kat and Mouse for lunch at our flat—and hopefully receive an update on the Pepper case. A case which was not precisely at the forefront of our minds.

  Merinda and I provided sustenance from our dwindling kitchen stores. I stared at the pantry shelves grimly as Merinda put together a plate of sausages and cheese for our urchins. If Mrs. Malone didn’t return soon we would have to make time to go to the grocer’s.

  Kat and Mouse tucked into their repast eagerly, unaware of the crumbs sprinkled all over the table and around their cracked lips. Finally, Merinda demanded to know if they’d brought us any news.


  “Mouse was down at the docks making an honest penny,” Kat began. “Respectable employment. And she saw Pepper.”

  “How do you know it was Pepper?” I wondered. “There must be dozens of black cats wandering around those docks.”

  “Not dozens of cats with one missing ear. You said he had a missing ear, didn’t you?” I nodded.

  Merinda was sitting cross-legged in her fireside chair. She sat forward, her eyes bright. “And you caught the animal?”

  “Naw. Too fast,” said Kat. “But we’ll get him. Only a matter of time. Animals love Mouse here, and she’ll tame him quick enough.”

  “Be sure you do,” said Merinda. “I don’t need this missing cat muddling my thinking—I’ve got to concentrate on the actual cases at hand. The sooner Peepers is caught, the better.”

  “Pepper,” I said.

  “Pepper. Yes. Dear Pepper,” Merinda said.

  We sent the girls on their way with the rest of our cheese and sausages. And when Mrs. Walters telephoned regarding her cat’s safe return, I was able to report that we had our best people on it.

  It took me only a few moments to clear up the dishes and set them to soaking in soapy water. When I returned to the sitting room, Merinda was sitting in a sea of open newspapers, her fingers smudged black with ink as she rifled through the pages.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Something about Jeannette,” she told me. “But there’s nothing about her here. How can a woman disappear in jail without the slightest notice in the papers?”

  “So what’s our first step?”

  “We’re in luck: Tomorrow is visitation day at St. Jerome’s.”

  “Don’t you have to be family?”

  Merinda gave a wave of her hand. “Cousins, dear Jem. We’re visiting poor Cousin Jenny.”

  I felt the air leave my body. St. Jerome’s. We’d be breaking in to St. Jerome’s. I just hoped that we weren’t immediately recognizable from the photographs that sometimes accompanied Ray’s pieces on us in the Hog.

  Merinda was ahead of me, though, and the trunk in the attic coughed up the perfect disguises. She tucked her blonde curls under a wig already styled into a sleek black chignon, and I tamed my mounds of chestnut locks under a blonde wig. With a pair of wire-rimmed glasses for me and with Merinda’s sharp cheekbones softened with some rouge, we were ready to play a part.