A Singular and Whimsical Problem (4 page)

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.

Three

St. Jerome's Reformatory for Vagrant and Incorrigible Females stood ominously at the very edge of Toronto, its turrets and mortared limestone closing it off from the bustling city. Women charged for anything from vagrancy to pickpocketing found themselves within its perimeters to be “domesticated and refined.” When the women emerged, they stood paler, and some spark was gone, like the wisps of smoke expelled from an extinguished candle. They could sew and bleach the sheets and dust and perfunctorily perform their duties, but there was something left behind the gates that couldn't be reclaimed.

Having disembarked from the trolley, far from our usual stop and at a corner of Toronto I had previously visited only once or twice, I stood as still as Lot's wife. Merinda eyed the building with more than her usual caution.

I noted her hesitation from the corner of my eye. “All right, Merinda?”

“I hate this place.”

I looped my arm through hers. “We hold our heads high. We look nothing like ourselves, so there's no need to worry. It's not like we'll step over the threshold and immediately be tossed into a cell.”

“How is it you know what I'm thinking?”

I smiled and tried to sound cheery. “Come on. An adventure with nifty disguises. It's like Christmas come early for you!”

We crossed over the threshold.

Once inside, the matron escorted us to a large and dull auditorium. We were assaulted by the pungent smell of disinfectant. We waited there for long minutes. When we were just about to give up, Jenny
appeared, clad in the drab, colorless uniform all inmates were required to wear.

“Cousin Jenny!” cried Merinda, recognizing her. She waved and smiled brightly. Jenny came toward us, a question in her eyes.

“I'm sorry, do I…?”

“We're friends of Mabel,” I said quickly—and quietly, on account of the eagle-eyed matron positioned by the door. “We're detectives. Mabel solicited our help in your predicament. I'm Jem Watts and this is Merinda Herringford—but today we're your cousins Lillian and Mildred.”

She smiled. “Lillian and Mildred. Got it. And you're going to get me out of here?”

“We'll certainly try,” I said. “Could you begin by telling us your story?”

“I was working at the Yellow Rose,” she began. “Mabel and I both support our father on account of an injury that prevents him from working. It's just the three of us. And I liked the Yellow Rose. Most of the customers were working ladies on their lunch breaks.

“A few months ago I started noticing different customers—well-dressed men. Rich-looking. I wondered why they came to a café near Corktown when they could easily afford something—well, something nicer. At first, I wanted to serve them as I thought the tips might be higher. But after a while, I was warned to steer clear.”

“Steer clear?” said Merinda.

“It seemed they only came in when I was working. It was strange. The other waitresses were tight-lipped about the whole business—just told me to watch myself and keep my head about me. And I did. I had a young man and it seemed a good future, but then Mr. Walters… ” She paused, looking uncertainly about. She wondered, I could tell, if she had said too much. “He bought the tearoom, and he talked to me about finding something else beyond the Yellow Rose.”

“Like what?” asked Merinda.

“Miss Herringford, I couldn't… ”

“Please,” Merinda said. “I am not Miss Herringford. I am your dear Cousin Mildred.”

A smile played on Jenny's lips. “Mr. Walters said I was pretty enough
to qualify for a special project he was starting in New York City. A new set of tea shops.” Merinda and I exchanged a look. “I kept declining, and when he found out I was in the family way, he lost his temper. Turned over a table.”

“Odd behavior.”

“I think these…
shops…
have criteria. I hear whispers about height and complexion. I was glad that Mabel was spared. Nothing like that happens at the Wellington, where she works.”

“A new set of tea shops indeed!” seethed Merinda, adjusting her wig and her jaunty little hat.

“You say you have a young man,” I put in.

“Frederick.”

“Surely he must be awfully concerned about you in your… ” I wanted to say
condition
. Instead, I said, “present circumstance.”

“I don't know what he thinks of me now.” Jenny's voice was somber. “He made it clear that… well, he wasn't happy about the baby. I'd hoped… well, I'd hoped different.”

“And how did you come to be arrested?” Merinda's eyebrows were furrowed, curious.

“I was waiting for him,” Jenny said simply. “We were supposed to talk about the baby—what we'd do when it was born. He was late arriving, and it was getting cold. I was just thinking I ought to go home, go inside, when one of those Morality Squad fellows showed up.”

Merinda gave a low growl from between her teeth.

“I told him I was waiting for Frederick,” Jenny continued. “And he said Frederick wouldn't be coming. That Frederick had reported me to the Morality Squad… for loose morals, or something like that. As if he hadn't done his part to put me in this mess!” Her eyes were bright with tears, and I passed her my handkerchief. “Next thing I know I'm being sentenced to this place. No job, no beau, no hope of what to do after… after my time comes.”

“Is there anything else at all we should know?” asked Merinda before Jenny could descend further into her sniffles.

Jenny furrowed her brow, concentrating. “Well, there's the sneezing.”

“Pardon me?” I said.

“Whenever Mr. Walters came into the tea shop, some of the girls would start to sneeze.”

The matron standing at the door harrumphed, signaling the end of our conversation. Merinda and I thanked Jenny and wished her well, promising to pursue her case further.

As we neared the door and the promised sunshine (which, after a brief sojourn to St. Jerome's, I vowed to never take for granted again), Merinda set her face in intense determination.

“Sneezing is an interesting development,” she offered.

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

All of a sudden, we were met by a familiar figure and face. Melanie LaCroix was hoisting a basket of bleached laundry.

She looked so hopeless.

“Merinda, we have to help her too.” We watched her move wearily away.

Merinda nodded. “I know. I certainly don't believe she stole so much as a biscuit from her employer. I telephoned DeLuca to ask about her case and told him to get me more details.”

“What did he say?”

“That he'd basically handed it to me on a platter.” She grimaced. “The case bears further investigation.”

“Are we going to ask the secretary about Jeannette?”

“No point. I doubt Martha Kingston was lying when she said she got nothing out of these people.”

“So we're leaving?”

“Nonsense. We haven't gotten nearly enough. Martha didn't know that the best place to look is far from the files.”

I followed Merinda as she snuck down a corridor and creaked open a wrought-iron gate that slid loudly over checkered regulation tiles.

The dormitories. Where women plucked from the streets were shoved away. Though the only bars were on the windows, there was something so institutional and cruel about the lines of beds made with sharp creases and tucks, the pillows flat against the bleached sheets.
Small cases and trunks sat beneath each iron bedframe, and it was here that Merinda and I caught a whiff of personality and color.

None of the trunks were locked. We looked around before selecting one and lifting its latch. Inside was a wreath of dried flowers and a few childhood books, a few pictures—one of tousle-haired children, another of a young man with a clerical collar. A Bible. A pair of stockings.
Papier poudre
sheets.

“Odd that they let this stuff in,” Merinda snuffed. I was of the same opinion. As much as I was delighted—if somewhat saddened—at these tokens of femininity in the midst of this dreary gray, my impression was that the matron would be caught dead before allowing these girls to have personal possessions.

We moved along, peeking in and around, fluttering our hands through the contents of the trunks but leaving everything the way we found it.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” I asked Merinda.

“We'll know it when we see it,” she said.

But all we found were keepsakes and knickknacks. A few pairs of silk stockings as well as an old pink garter. Nothing out of the ordinary.