A Singular and Whimsical Problem (6 page)

“She said that Melanie was no longer able to work for them on
account of her fierce allergy, and when Judge Abernathy and his wife needed a new girl, she offered Melanie.”

“She must have been deeply attached to the cat.”

Merinda was staring at the fire, but something was flashing behind her eyes. “Yes, she must have missed the
cat
very much.”

Merinda adjusted her hat. Clad similarly in vests, watch chains, trousers, and scuffed shoes, our hair tied and knotted under bowler hats, we returned to St. Jerome's.

A shiver of premonition riddled up my spine. “I can't.”

“Of course you can,” Merinda huffed. “Come on.”

“We don't have a plan A… or a plan B or a plan C.”

Merinda didn't look at me. We were both too busy staring straight ahead, mesmerized by the wrought-iron gate.

“We are health inspectors,” she declared. “From the Hygiene Squad. We are to report on any infractions against Torontonian Hygiene.”

“Does Toronto actually have a Hygiene Squad?”

“Cracker jacks, Jem, if it can have a silly Morality Squad it can have a Hygiene Squad.”

I didn't argue. “Fine. We need names. I'll be Jeremiah Watson.”

“Marcus Herringby.” Her lips tilted up.

“Okay, Marcus Herringby. Good moustache.”

She wiggled her nose and the paste-on moustache tickled her upper lip. I laughed.

A shudder of cold pricked me before I even mounted the front steps. I inched closer and closer and finally took a gasping inhalation of breath while Merinda used the ancient, foreboding doorknocker.

A mouse-haired matron answered our knock. She was not the matron we had seen previously. She wore a pristine pressed apron, and lines (from age, not smiles) surrounded her mouth and eyes. She stared hard-eyed at us.

I let Merinda explain our business at St. Jerome's, and the matron
slid aside to let us into the echoing corridor. “I will go find Mr. Warren.” She gestured in the direction of a cold oak bench. “Please have a seat.”

Once seated, Merinda played with the sides of her moustache while I played with the hem of my tweed vest. I was already nervous about needing to speak. I had not mastered Merinda's aptitude for a lower register.

Luckily, when the steely Mr. Warren appeared with a nose crooked like a crowbar and sinister eyebrows that creased his forehead in odd punctuation marks, Merinda jumped up and strolled confidently to him, extending her gloved hand. “Mr. Warren, I presume.”

“And you are?

“Marcus Herringby, and this is my associate, Jeremiah Watson. Mr. Watson is, unfortunately, rendered mute by an unfortunate bout of laryngitis.”

I rose and strode over with a curt nod and a
harrumph!
as deep as I could make it.

“And your business here, gentleman?”

“Inspection.” Merinda ruffled through her breast pocket. “We're here with a warrant to inspect these premises and ensure that everything is tip-top shape.” A moment later, having procured no paper of sorts, she furrowed her brow and shrugged. “I seem to have lost it, but I assure you, Mr. Warren, that we are here at the express wishes of the Council for Toronto's Medical Hygiene. If you like, we can go to your office and I am happy to telephone Constable Jasper Forth or”—I nudged her as she hesitated—“Mr. Ray DeLuca of the
Hogtown Herald
.”

Here, Mr. Warren's eyebrow tilted up. “That muckraker's sniffed around here before.”

“And with good cause.” Merinda barreled on.

“Listen, I'm doing eight people's work. We're overflowing these days,” Mr. Warren said. Merinda snorted, then covered it with a cough. “And I don't have time to check your credentials. Though Henry Tipton, Chief of Police, is around here somewhere and I am sure he will validate you. Ms. Tate, please take them around, will you?”

Mr. Warren barreled off. Ms. Tate, the mousey matron, grunted and scuffed along, motioning for us to follow her.

“See here, Ms. Tate, I suppose you have eight people's work to do too,” said Merinda. The first speck of humanity relaxed Ms. Tate's stone face, and she murmured her agreement. “We're not up to anything untoward. We just need to have a look around.”

“The girls are mostly at work or chapel.”

“Well, then, they won't notice us taking a quick peek through the dormitories and lavatories and such.”

“You could inspect them from afar. All the workstations have broad windows. The chapel too. But you'll have to be still as a mouse there. They'll be having their lesson.”

“We understand. You can trust us.” Merinda was convincing with that twitchy moustache and those uncanny, smiling eyes. I wouldn't trust us at all.

Ms. Tate gave us directions and we set off as Merinda looked back over her shoulder and gave me a Cheshire grin.

The halls were vacuous and still. The linoleum floors slick, mopped and polished so that they reflected the slightest light from the bright overhead lamps. There was nothing remotely warm or friendly about the machination of the place; it was all too precise. I shivered from more than cold. This time, we steered away from the dormitories and peered into the other spaces in the large facility.

The lavatories were spic and span, with doorless bathing facilities and indoor plumbing. Trickles of water trailed from the ends of the faucets. Merinda and I took a quick look around and pretended interest in case someone passing wondered why Toronto Hygiene Officers were being so callous in their inspection.

We turned a tap on and off and Merinda played with a door hinge. We looked at each other and shrugged. The only thing dirty about this place was its necessity.

That and the explanation we coaxed as to Melanie LaCroix's whereabouts.

Merinda approached two girls bent over slop buckets at the edge of the kitchen area. “We're detectives and we're looking for Melanie LaCroix,” Merinda said in her natural register.

One girl spoke no English, but the angry words that escaped her lips sounded like Polish. However, another girl with heavy black hair and peaked eyebrows smiled. “You're a woman.”

“How perceptive,” Merinda complimented. “So is she.” She waved a hand at me.

“The barracks,” the young woman said. “The hospital barracks. That's where Melanie went.”

“You shudder when you say that.”

“The barracks are worth shuddering over. You go to the barracks and you're never seen again.”

We trundled through the corridor and watched the women busy at their needlework or, in the kitchen, scrubbing the floors and surfaces. The grating smell of lye seeped through the crack in the observation window. We headed to the chapel.

The chapel was, for me, more depressing than the vapid and stale scenes preceding. Silent pleas escaped still faces, set in determination against a world that was so decidedly against them. Within the nooks of windows through which filtered the slightest of snubbed sunlight, the chill was pervading and the dark fought for seniority. Who could find God's warmth in this place? Who could see beyond the stone and the grate and the shame and the hopelessness? Merinda had no quip or sarcastic remark. Quietly, we left the solemn scene in pursuit of Melanie. If anyone could tell us more about what Mr. Walters was up to, she could.

We could see neither hide nor hair of the warden or the matron. There were several guards watching the women perform their usual activities. None of the inmates looked up at us, though. They seemed disinterested in male figures stomping about the corridors. I suspected they were used to it by now. There was no one to talk to, no one to bargain or plea with. Also, men were mostly the reason they were here.

A spiral staircase blocked with a solitary chain divided the East Wing from the hospital barracks, or “Infirmary Wing” as a plain sign directed.

“I guess we're going upstairs.” Merinda decided while I shivered.

She led the way, reaching behind and squeezing my hand before we placed our feet on the first steps.

“Now”—her voice was a heavy whisper—“you still have laryngitis if we run into anyone, remember?”

I nodded.

Melanie wasn't difficult to locate in the white line of regulation beds. The women looked like starched, slumbering ghosts barricaded by stern wrought-iron headboards. Not much sunlight came through the filmy windows overhead.

We went to Melanie's bedside and I squeezed her hand. The poor thing was white as a sheet.

“Jemima,” I said. “We met… ”

“At the courtroom,” she said. “You were at the trial.”

“Yes.”

“Melanie, you worked for Mr. and Mrs. Walters,” said Merinda abruptly.

“For a long time.”

“What was your relationship with Judge Abernathy?” she asked.

“I only went to the Abernathy's to work because I was sneezing all the time around the Walters's cat. Pepper, his name was. My eyes would water up and I couldn't work. I wanted to stay with Mrs. Walters. She was kind.”

“But you suspected
Mr.
Walters was doing something criminal.”

Melanie nodded. Slowly.

“And Mrs. Walters knew it too.”

In slow, hiccupped sentences Melanie told us about working in both households. How she'd stayed at the Walters's as long as she could to help Mrs. Walters learn more about her husband. How they suspected he was working with Judge Abernathy. The cat hypersensitivity made for an easy excuse for Melanie to be moved to service in the Abernathy household, where she could snoop out any criminal activity.
But she was found out one night leafing through papers in Mr. Abernathy's study. The next day she was taken away.

Merinda and I were impressed. This was far bigger than a missing cat. This case hinged on the audacity of women with seemingly no power—one bound by wealth and marriage to a husband who would keep her in the dark, the other from the bottom of the food chain scraping by in domestic service. Both trying to make a difference. Both suffering the consequences. Merinda and I shared a long silence.

A silence too soon broken by the arrival of Henry Tipton and a few officers. They looked at Melanie, scowled, and turned to us.

“I suppose,” Merinda said lightly as the two of us found our hands behind our backs, “it would be no use to ask you to ring up Jasper Forth.”

“It would not.” Tipton reached out and ripped off Merinda's fake moustache.

“Oww!” She shook out her hatless curls. “That wasn't nice.”

“Toronto doesn't have a Hygiene Squad.”

“They should,” she said, directing a wink at the shivering Melanie. “The dust in here is something awful.”

Six

Jail. We'd landed ourselves in jail. It was a natural trajectory given our chosen occupation, but it irked me nonetheless.

“My father would kill me!” was all I could think to say to Merinda who, surprisingly, wasn't shivering as I was. She was leaning back against the hard wall, her knees pressed to her chin, her eyes barely open. I, on the other hand, was trembling something fierce, gnashing my teeth and chilled all over.