Gold Mountain: A Klondike Mystery (11 page)

“Recognize this?” Sterling asked Angus.

“My mother has one like that. Most women do, don’t they?”

“Yes.” But most women didn’t wear such a lovely green satin gown.

He studied the ground. There had been a fight here. Someone, almost certainly Fiona, had fallen or been knocked to the ground. His stomach clenched and a red mist descended behind his eyes.

“Sterling!” He started at the shout.

Inspector McKnight and Mr. Mann were standing with McAllen. Two constables were with them. “What have you got?”

Sterling pushed himself upright. “You can come, sir. I’ve seen all I need to.”

McKnight and his men walked toward them.

“You,” Sterling said to one of the constables. “Guard the corner at King Street. I don’t want every ghoul in town stamping all over this alley.” The man gave him a nod and trotted off.

“Let’s go back inside,” Sterling said.

Everyone in the dancehall jumped as the door opened. Joe Hamilton hastily stuffed a deck of cards into his pocket, Betsy stopped complaining about her sore feet, and one of the prostitutes took her hand off the knee of one of the cheechakos. Sergeant Lancaster’s tale of when he’d been the champion boxer of Winnipeg, told to a yawning Mrs. Mann, died on his lips.

Without laughing, cheering, foot-stomping miners, or badly played music, flickering kerosene lamps, and colourful costumes, the dance hall reminded Sterling of the building where his father, a pastor, held meetings. Stern and unadorned. Bare wood and long, deep shadows.

But most of all, without Fiona MacGillivray, black eyes constantly moving, neck and back straight, perfume subtle, gown and hair immaculate, the room seemed empty and sterile.

He shoved the sentiment aside.

It was just a room. A cheap room in a cheap frontier dancehall.

“Do we need all these people listening in?” McKnight asked.

“No. Walker, unlock the door. Everyone’s to leave except for Walker and Angus.”

“No! I stay.” Mr. Mann said very firmly.

“I guess that’s okay.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I find out what’s happened to my dear friend,” Mrs. Mann said, her chin extended and her tone matching her husband’s.

Everyone began shouting. No one made a move to follow Sterling’s orders.

“You can’t arrest us all, Corporal,” Barney said. “We’re here ’cause we care about Mrs. Fiona and we’re gonna help. Ain’t that right, boys?”

The men muttered their agreement.

“We could be here all day,” McKnight said. “Very well, carry on Mr. Sterling.”

“Mrs. MacGillivray appears to have been kidnapped,” Sterling said.

“Not again!” McKnight groaned as everyone started talking at once.

“Be quiet,” Sterling shouted above the din. “Or I’ll empty the room.”

The voices died down.

“That woman. For the life of me, I cannot understand how one female can so consistently get herself into trouble.” McKnight glared at Angus as if his mother’s conduct was all his fault.

“I say, sir,” Angus began. Sterling cut him off.

“She was here last night at midnight. You left,” he looked at Ray Walker, “out the front door?”

“Aye.”

“And you,” he asked Betsy, “you left through the front door also?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Whereupon Mrs. MacGillivray appears to have walked through to the back to lock the door leading onto the alley. Did she lock the front door after you, Betsy?”

“I don’t think so.”

Sterling gave her a long look. Then he said, “For the moment we’ll assume she did not. Someone entered through the unlocked front door and followed her through the building. He confronted her as she reached the back. I surmise she attempted to flee into the alley, and the man chased her. She got almost to York Street before he reached her. There was ...” Sterling was suddenly aware of the wide-eyed boy watching him. “I’m sorry, Angus, but I believe the man caught her and,” he coughed, “hit her and knocked her to the ground.”

The room erupted. Lancaster looked as though he were about to have a heart attack. Murray pounded his fist into his hand, and Barney spat on the floor. Maxie gasped and Mrs. Mann moaned. One of the men tittered and Joe Hamilton waved a fist in the fellow’s face. The red-headed prostitute leaned against the cheechako to steady herself. The cheechako put a comforting arm around her. Betsy said, “I didn’t think ...”

Sterling had to take a deep breath to steady his nerves. The thought of a lady such as Fiona being assaulted by a brute of a man.... She’d probably never seen an act of violence in her life. Other than the time she was knifed and tied up in the wilderness for the bears and wolves to get her. Or when a lunatic threatened to cut Martha Witherspoon’s throat, and Mouse O’Brien was shot trying to rescue her.

“What happened after that, I can’t tell. There are too many tracks on York Street for me to follow, particularly if the man in question had a horse and wagon, which was probably the case.”

“Do we have a suspect?” McKnight asked.

“I believe we do, yes. Angus, tell the inspector the story.”

Angus stepped forward. He described Paul Sheridan and repeated the story of Gold Mountain and the valley as warm as California.

Barney spat on the floor once again. Sterling saw the two cheechakos exchange glances and the men who’d followed Mr. Mann from the waterfront stand a bit straighter.

“Was this the person you let into the Savoy, Betsy?” Sterling asked.

“He was comin’ in as I was goin’ out.” She lifted her chin, realizing she’d been caught in a lie. “
She
shoulda locked the door if she didn’t want people trailin’ in. I was so pleased, you see, at being offered a speakin’ part in the play, I wasn’t paying much attention. Anyway, ain’t for me to be chasing customers away. Maybe she’d arranged to meet him once everyone were gone.”

“Why you ...” Walker said.

“Leave it,” Sterling snapped. “We must assume this fellow Paul Sheridan has taken Fiona MacGillivray against her will and they are on their way to ... wherever this place is he wants to find.”

McKnight read something in the boy’s face. “Angus, do you know ...”

“I’d suggest we adjourn to the Fort, sir,” Sterling interrupted. “Nothing more can be accomplished here.” The last thing this town needed was Angus revealing details of the supposed location of the fabled Gold Mountain. Barney and the old timers knew the story was rubbish, but from the look on the faces of the city boys and the dock-workers, it wouldn’t take much to have them all rushing into the wilderness. Gold had a way of making men plumb crazy.

“What do we do now?” Murray shouted.

“Go home,” McKnight said. “It’s Sunday and these premises are closed. Leave this matter in the hands of the North-West Mounted Police, where it belongs. If you learn anything about the whereabouts of Mrs. Fiona MacGillivray or of this Sheridan, come to the Fort and make a report.”

Angus’s eyes filled and the boy struggled not to let the tears fall. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to do for my mother?” Mrs. Mann touched his shoulder and he shrugged her off.

“I’m forming a search party. Who’s with me?” Joe Hamilton yelled. Some of the men shouted their agreement and stepped forward. Mr. Mann raised his hand, avoiding his wife’s angry glare.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” McKnight said. “You all go haring off into the wilderness you’ll be lucky to find your way back, never mind bring Mrs. MacGillivray with you.”

The cheechako signalled to his friend. The man unwound himself from the red-headed prostitute and the two men slipped away. The woman pouted. Several other men saw them leave, and a rush for the back door began.

McKnight continued talking as his audience got smaller and smaller. “If Mrs. MacGillivray has gone, against her will or not, with Sheridan, we can only hope the man has enough sense to turn around when he realizes this Gold Mountain’s a pipe dream.”

“If you won’t do anything, then I will,” Angus stretched to his full height. “Mr. Hamilton, I’m with you.”

“Angus,” Sterling snapped. “No one said we’re going to do nothing. Calm down. Hamilton, if I need you, I know where to find you. Walker, you and Angus come with me. I have some ideas. Everyone else, this place is closed. Get out or you’ll be arrested.”

The women began to leave. Miss Vanderdaege gave Angus a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. Sterling saw the red-headed prostitute start to do the same, but her hand lingered on Angus’s chest and he growled, “Kate, one more charge and it’s a blue ticket for you.”

She snatched her hand away. “I ain’t doin’ nothin’ Mr. Sterling,” she whined. “Just figured the boy needs a hug, what with his ma being missin’ and probably dead. Or somefin’ worse.”

Angus swallowed heavily.

Having scored a direct hit, she gave Sterling a smirk full of malice and left the dance hall. Her two companions scurried after her.

The Mounties did not have the facilities or supplies to accommodate prisoners. There were only two sentences handed out in the Yukon: a term spent chopping wood for the NWMP’s ravenous stoves, or a blue ticket, banning the miscreant from the territory permanently.

One of these days, Sterling thought, he’d find an excuse to see both Kate and her Madame, Joey LeBlanc, run out of town.

“Anyone else want to stand here and argue?” he said.

Mr. Mann took his wife’s arm. “Comes Helga, home now. Yous needs help, Sterling, I gives it.”

“Thank you.”

Betsy lumbered to her feet. “Are you sure the streets are safe, Corporal?” She shivered in terror and opened her eyes wide. “Mr. Walker, would you be so good as to walk a girl home. I’m that frightened.”

“No,” Walker said.

“I’ll protect you, Betsy,” Maxie said with an unladylike snort of laughter. She turned with a flounce of her skirts and stalked out, trailing mud behind her. Murray grinned and he and Betsy followed her.

Soon only Ray Walker, Graham Donohue, Angus MacGillivray, and the police were left.

McKnight coughed. “Well done clearing the room. Good job, Corporal. I suggest that we... uh.”

“Angus,” Sterling said. “Am I right that you’ve seen this map of Sheridan’s?”

“Yes, sir. I have.”

“Donohue, you’ve always got paper and pen on you. Give a blank sheet to Angus. Start drawing what you remember.”

I was a few days short of my eleventh birthday when my parents were murdered and I ran for my life. My father had been groundskeeper on a great estate, and he and I had walked the Black Cuillins of Skye together since I took my first steps. The Earl had eleven sons and one lonely, shy daughter, and I was being educated in the big house in order to provide her with companionship. Neither of my parents had stepped foot out of Western Skye in their lives, and my father never understood why anyone would possibly want to, but I knew something of the wider world. I dreamed of one day travelling to London, to Paris or Rome, perhaps even to New York.

I found the wider world far sooner than I wanted.

I ran from our neat white-washed croft, the bloodied bodies of my parents, and the man who had killed them. I hid in the wilds for three days, knowing he’d kill me if he found me. It was November and the Highland nights were cold and rain fell hard. Eventually, the scent of food cooking over an open fire lured me down from the hills.

I moved slowly through the trees. I’d thrown off the uncomfortable shoes I wore in the big house and was in my bare feet. I knew how to move in the wilds without making a sound.

A cart was pulled into a clearing beside a swift-moving creek, swollen with rain water. A sway-backed horse hobbled nearby chewed a patch of grass and lifted its head at my approach. It let out a soft whinny. I stood still until it lost interest and bent its big brown head back to its meal. Firelight flickered through the bare branches of the trees, water gurgled as it rushed over rocks, and people spoke in loud voices. A man shouted and a woman laughed. It was a nice laugh, I thought.

There are not many trees on Skye, and what there are tend to be small and scraggly, but the campsite was in a grove of alders. A large iron pot was suspended over the fire, emitting clouds of fragrant steam. My mouth watered.

“Come forward child,” a woman’s voice said.

No one had moved and no one had looked in my direction.

“The fire’s warm,” she said, “and the sloorich’s ready.”

The voice belonged to a woman squatting beside the pot. She held a large wooden spoon in her hand. She lifted her eyes and held out the spoon. “Stew. Hot and good.”

I stepped into the circle of light. Nine people watched me. No one moved, no one spoke. No one smiled. I knew they were Travellers, Gypsies. My father was charged with sending them on their way if they tried to set up camp on the Earl’s property when they weren’t needed, or giving them work at berry picking time.

The woman reached behind herself and found a bowl. Not looking at me, she dipped her spoon into the cauldron and slowly poured a long line of stew. I smelled rich broth, cooked vegetables, spices. She held out the bowl. “Eat, child.”

My manners fled and I dashed forward. I grabbed the offering. It was almost too hot to eat but I spooned it up quickly.

“Good?” she said when I paused for breath.

I nodded.

“Then sit.”

I squatted on the ground.

“What’s your name?” A man asked. His accent was very rough and the words broken. He was seated closest to the fire. The only one of them in a proper chair.

I hesitated. He had a large beard and long unkempt hair the colour of smoke rising from the fire. His eyes were cloudy and the skin on his face folded over and over itself. His hands were scarred and thick with calluses, the knuckles swollen with arthritis. He was missing the thumb on his right hand. He smelled as if his teeth were rotting inside his mouth.

“I am called Fiona and I thank you for the dinner, ma’am, sir,” I said, remembering my manners at last. “It was most delicious.” I pulled my handkerchief out of my skirt pocket and dabbed at my lips.

The old man’s bushy eyebrows lifted in surprise. He threw a glance at the woman. She studied my face for a long time and then leaned over to put a log on the fire and as the flames shot up I could see she was as grey and well-worn as he although her brown eyes were bright and clear.

“What’re you doing out by yourself?” a younger man asked. “Are you lost?”

“No,” I replied, “I am not lost.”

“A runaway then,” he said.

I did not speak.

“You can eat with us tonight,” the old man said. His voice rumbled deep in his chest. “Sleep in the tent. Tomorrow I’ll decide.”

I thanked him. The woman began passing around bowls of stew. Sloorich, she explained to me. Everything into the pot with a lot of potatoes. A girl close to my age, dressed in a plain brown skirt with faded yellow blouse, shifted over on the log where she was sitting. She patted it, indicating that I could join her.

I smiled my thanks and did so.

Her hair was matted and dirty, but her face and hands were clean. She told me her name was Moira and pointed out the others. As well as the old man and woman, there was a younger woman, three boys older than I, one of whom stared openly at me, and two small girls, poking each other in the ribs and giggling at I knew not what.

The old woman handed around bowls of stew.

The men and boys were in working-man’s overalls and caps. Their collars and cuffs were shredding and stained with grime, but like the girl, their faces and hands were clean for eating. The two younger girls wore once-white dresses and pinafores. Their hair was a mass of blond curls, and one had a red ribbon looped through it and tied in a bow at the top.

I jerked awake as I almost fell off the log. The old woman smiled at me. “Come,” she said, getting to her feet. “Sleep.”

She led the way to a tent. It was very small — cloth bent over branches with an open doorway. She gestured for me to enter and I crawled inside. The floor was soft with straw covered by a sheet, and a pile of blankets was stacked against the wall. I lay down.

“Thank you for your kindness,” I said. “I’ll be off in the morning.”

The blankets were rough wool and smelled of much use and infrequent washing, but they were warm, and I felt safe for the first time in three days.

Whereas I’d fallen asleep sitting up, with a bowl of stew on my lap, now that I was lying down I was awake, watching flames dance against the tent walls, listening to the people talk. They pitched their voices low, but the night air was still, and I could hear. The old man said, “Morning, go to the house and listen. Say nothing about the girl.”

I woke when the first light of the sun touched the tent. I knew where I was right away and what had happened to me. Something was pressed up against my back, and my face almost touched the tent walls. I rolled over and sat up. The tent was full of bodies.

I’d thought all the blankets were for me and had wrapped myself up warmly. I was now aware of the cold and damp under the one shredded covering I’d been left.

“Mornin’,” Moira said. Two brown eyes peered over the rim of her blanket. The covers shifted, and I could see that the rest of the tent was occupied by the younger girls, still sleeping.

We crawled out of the tent and went into the bushes to take care of what needed to be taken care of. The ground was thick with frost, and clouds hung so low I couldn’t see the surrounding hills. “Do you sleep in tents all year?” I asked Moira.

“Aye.”

“Don’t you get cold? What do you do when it snows?”

She looked at me as if that were a very stupid question. “We brush it off, of course.”

When we got back to camp, the adults were up. The old lady, Jean was her name, was stirring the embers of the fire back to life and Yuri, her husband, was lighting his pipe.

The girls came out of their tent and the three young men out of another. The oldest of them, nineteen or twenty perhaps, ran his eyes up and down my body in a way that reminded me of Alistair Forester regarding my mother. I shivered and turned away. Jean handed each of the boys a hunk of bread, and they set off without a word.

If they were going to the big house to ask about me, I did not want to be here when they returned.

But I’d have time for breakfast.

We ate porridge that was not as good as my mother made and bread neither toasted nor served with butter or jam. When I finished eating, I pulled my handkerchief out of my pocket and dapped at my lips once again. It was a nice handkerchief, lovely stiff linen, pure white, trimmed with blue lace, and my name was flamboyantly embroidered in one corner. It had been a birthday gift from Euila, the Earl’s daughter and my school-mate. Euila, I thought, would be shocked to see how filthy it was now.

I was feeling quite grubby after three days and nights in the same clothes, but judging by the garments these people were wearing, they didn’t do laundry all that often.

I put my handkerchief away and got to my feet. “Thank you for your hospitality, sir, madam. I’ll be on my way now.” Where I would go, what I would do, how I would survive, I had absolutely no idea. The Earl, who’d spoken politely to my mother, who’d shared a dram with my father while they talked about salmon in the rivers and stags on the hills and slipped me shortbread from the kitchen, was seriously ill and no longer left the house. The second son, Alistair, was in charge.

Alistair had killed my parents, and he knew I’d seen him do it.

“Sit,” Yuri said. He slurped watery porridge through one side of his mouth while his pipe remained clamped in the other.

“I don’t want to impose.”

“We won’t send ye were ye dinna want ta go, girl. Now sit.”

I sat.

The boys soon returned. The one named Jock, whom I did not care for, thrust a thumb in my direction and said, “The daughter of the house isn’t missing.”

Yuri looked at me. His eyes were covered by a white film, and I wondered how much he could see. Enough, I had no doubt.

“I could have told you that,” I said with a sniff.

“You have a mouth on you, girl,” Jock said.

“Quiet,” Yuri said. “Who’s she then? Dressed like that, speaking like that?”

“We didn’t have to walk far to hear the news,” one of the younger boys said. His eyes bulged as if there were eggs stuffed behind them, but his smile was shy and kind. “Everyone’s talking about it. Fire in a croft on the estate. The groundskeeper and his wife and wee daughter run off. The Earl’s son’s saying MacGillivray was caught poaching to sell for himself.”

Old Yuri stroked his beard and asked me one question only: “What’s your father’s name, girl?”

“Angus MacGillivray,” I replied, lifting my head high. “Our ancestors were at Culloden.”

“Time we were moving on,” Yuri said, and the women and young men and girls rushed to break up camp.

I lived with Yuri and his family for two years. Although Jean was Yuri’s wife, the younger woman, Mary, often slept in his tent. Travellers, I learned, did not bother with the conventions of Scottish society, and things such as marriages were rarely formalized.

Jock and Donald and Davie were the sons of Yuri and Jean. The two little girls were the daughters of Yuri and Mary. Moira was the daughter of Jean’s sister. Her mother was dead and her father in jail.

Yuri and Jean had to be a lot younger than they looked, if their oldest child was not yet twenty. I soon came to realize Travellers led a hard life indeed. They and their parents and their children had been born in a tent in the woods, and they’d lived every day of their lives outside, sun or snow, always on the move as they followed work and the seasons.

The family were plain-featured, with long, strong faces resembling horses, crooked teeth and sallow complexions, either spotty or scarred. They were short and thin, probably due as much to poor diet as to family characteristics. My mother, dressed in her homespun clothes, bending over a peat fire, had been more beautiful than any of the fine ladies from London or Edinburgh who visited the estate, trailing scores of servants and trunks full of good clothes and glittering jewellery. She’d had clear skin, thick black hair, high cheekbones, delicate hands, and dark eyes rimmed with long lashes. I took after her.

Yuri immediately realized that with my plumy upper-crust accent (beaten into me in Euila’s schoolroom) and my looks, I could be profitably put to beg.

It became my job to stand on street corners, looking sad and beautiful, and tell well-dressed passersby my tragic story in my perfect accent. When my beloved father had been tragically killed, his heartless family threw my mother — of whom they never approved, because although she was minor aristocracy, her family was moneyless — into the street. She was dying of consumption, I went on, and had no one but me to bring in money for food and medicine. I would touch my beautiful handkerchief to my eyes and look stoic and brave. When my family was destroyed, I’d been wearing an altered, cast-off day-dress from Lady Forester, which probably cost more than Yuri’s family would see in a year. Jean looked after it with great care and it, along with my handkerchief, was put aside to be used only as my begging outfit. Jock or Donald or Davie would stand on the other side of the road or around the corner in case some well-meaning lady wanted to take me home. I made a lot of money.

Yuri was afraid I’d start taking on their speech, and retribution would be harsh and sudden if I slipped in a word of Scottish or said ye instead of you.

One night, sitting around the fire, watching sparks leap into the trees, I asked Jean if she ever feared the tents would catch fire. Yuri lifted his stick and hit me across the back of the head. I fell to the ground with a cry and he kicked me soundly in the ribs.

He didn’t have cause to hit me often, but when he did he made sure never to strike my face. That would be bad for business.

Travelling families generally keep to the same routine year after year, making a circuit of towns, farms, and camping sites. Generations return to the same farms, moving with the seasons, picking berries or harvesting the neeps. When times are good and work finished, they gather at established campsites — dozens of families, maybe hundreds of people — to exchange the news, see new babies and growing children, drink whisky, and sing around the fire in the soft summer light.

Whether Yuri’s family did this before I arrived I do not know, but now they kept themselves apart. We left Skye immediately and spent the winter travelling Scotland. It was hard work, living on the move. It could take hours to put up the tents, as holes had to be dug into the sometimes frozen ground to secure the shelter against the winter winds. The poles were cut from trees, hazel or ash usually, which were able to be bent. I’d lived in a croft house, but I could never get warm enough in the tent. Not once I realized I had to share the blankets with three other girls.