The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Murder (4 page)

“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

J
em 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 marched 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.

A few men dipped into their pockets and the ladies their handbags, fishing out coins that Jem acknowledged in a deep voice. Her hat started looking rather full, inspiring her to wonder if she had chosen the wrong career as a Spenser's department store mailroom girl.

Certainly the upper echelons of society in front of her, glistening and ornamented, could spare the change they tossed into her overturned hat. Nonetheless, Jem's conscience pricked her, and she decided she would put the spoils in the St. James poor box at the end of the evening.

Finally, most of the crowd was inside, and golden-hued beams of warmth spilled through the ornate doorframes. Jem had little to do then but watch the clouds—which were looking more ominous every minute—and hope to be spared a downpour. She sat clinking the change in her cap and wondering what Sherlock Holmes would do.

Observation: The polished handle of a walking stick. The scuff on a shoe. A woman wringing her hands as she looks up, besotted, at the man beside her. A man casting a longing glance at his friend's companion while another woman, dour and severe, settles her gloved hand into the crook of his arm.

The muffled cello section of a Bach piece slipped through the broad doors, and Jem thought of Merinda inside. Thus a half hour elapsed with Jem sitting and shivering, jangling her coins and watching for anything suspicious or interesting. Couples began meandering outside to take in the night air, dresses and coattails brushing side by side. Snatches of music followed them.

Jem was in the process of moving the most recent collection of change from her hat to her breast pocket when she noticed someone crouched at her level. His black hair was just barely contained by the
circumference of a ratty old bowler, and decidedly charcoal eyes were piercing her straight on.

“Excuse me.”

Was he addressing her? She growled something inaudible in a lower octave of voice and then added a quick
yes
, hoping it sounded masculine. Unfortunately, it came out squeaking and high, and she slapped her palm over her mouth.

“Have you been sitting here long?”

Jem nodded. Shook her head. And fairly gaped as he sat down beside her.

“Isn't this the way? The rich inside at a charity ball, dolling out twenty-five dollars a ticket to aid the illustrious Tertius Montague, while mostly tripping over you, poor fellow, right in front of their noses.”

Jem wanted to protest but was afraid her voice would betray her even further. Instead she glared at the man, hoping her disguise would stand the test of such close proximity. His black eyes looked everywhere, as if drinking in the whole scene at once.

“I want you to know,” he was saying, “that I advocate for charity, yes, but I also want to give a voice to people like you! People who are just ordinary, under the noses of the upper crust who pass callously by. People who”—he examined her thoroughly, closely—“people who… ” The man clapped his hands on his knees.
“Santo cielo!”

“Shhh!”

He laughed. “You're a woman!”

“I'm not a woman!” Jem sounded very, very much like a woman.

“There are places for people like you. Safe places. Get you off the street. Do you want to get arrested?” He clapped his hands on his knees again and fidgeted in his coat pocket to retrieve a notebook and pencil stub. “Ray DeLuca of the
Hogtown Herald
.” He extended his free hand.

The
Hogtown Herald.
Jem recognized the name of the biweekly rag, commonly called the
Hog
, which was filled with this fellow's muckraking exposés on the city's lack of social justice and reform. When she didn't take his hand, he grabbed hers anyway and shook it
hard. She noticed his nails: They were coal black, as black as his eyes and hair. “I'm trying to get the perspective of the street people. Especially in contrast to big parties like this.”

“Oh, rats!”

“Do you find that you make more money with that disguise?”

“I am not a woman!”

“I don't believe you!” He reached up and yanked off her hat, and a pile of brown hair fell around her shoulders. “You're the oddest hobo I've ever met. If we could just get that grime off your face. Now, Miss… Miss… ”