Gold Fever (15 page)

On the wall opposite the stove, I'd hung a painting that supposedly depicts the Black Cuillins of Skye. Either my memory of my childhood home is poor, or the artist wasn't skilled, but I'd bought the picture on a rare sentimental whim off a wooden slab down at the waterfront. A mirror, missing the top right-hand corner, hung beside the painting. I examined the back and sides of my skirt carefully, terrified of what I'd find, but there appeared to be only a bit of dirt on the hem and on my right hip.

I picked up the book sitting on the table:
Anna Karenina
by Tolstoy. I'd started it in Vancouver, almost a year ago and was almost finished. I read the same page over and over while Angus served up beans and bacon in the kitchen, and Mrs. Mann came in to find out what was going on and scolded Angus for not calling her in to do the cooking. She asked if he'd found Mary, then went back out to the laundry. Graham ate his lunch, no doubt enjoying my portion as well, and attempted to engage Angus in conversation. Angus had lately turned against Graham, although I didn't know why, and his end of the conversation was strictly monosyllabic. Graham finished his meal and thanked Angus for it.

As they left the kitchen, they stopped in front of the sitting room door. “I'll pop in for a quick moment and say goodbye to your mother,” Graham said.

“She doesn't want to be disturbed.” Angus's tone was so disapproving, it sounded like he'd reached puberty in the last ten minutes.

“She won't mind if it's me,” Graham said cheerfully.

“I'd rather you didn't, sir.”

“Graham, go away!” I bellowed in the manner I'd learned from fishmongers in Covent Garden.

“Tell your mother I'll call when she's feeling better,” Graham said in his rush to get out the door.

I checked my watch. It was mid-morning, and regardless of the fact that I hadn't had any sleep, it was almost time to get to the Savoy.

I decided to read
Anna Karenina
for a while more. Maybe the book would have a nice happy ending that would take my mind off the ending of poor Chloe.

But it was not to be. A heavy pounding sounded at the front door. Angus opened it. Not at all to my surprise, I heard Inspector McKnight announcing he wished to speak with me.

Angus escorted them into my sitting room. Between the small inspector, the burly, gone-to-seed Sergeant Lancaster, the looming Constable Sterling, and my son, who, tall as he was, at least didn't take up much horizontal space, there was scarcely room for anyone to breathe.

I carefully marked my place in the book and laid it on the table. “Gentlemen,” I said, “I'd ask you to sit, but as you can see…” I smiled graciously and indicated the cramped room with my hand.

“Quite all right, Mrs. MacGillivray,” McKnight said.

Richard pulled a badly torn notebook and a pencil stub out of his pocket. I could guess why Lancaster was here— feeling protective of me, he'd tagged along, and no one had the heart to tell him to go away.

“Tea, gentlemen?” I asked. McKnight started to refuse, but Lancaster was faster.

“That would be nice, Mrs. MacGillivray.”

I nodded to Angus, and he slipped away. He was a good boy, Angus, none better. As far back as he could remember, we'd always had a full complement of servants: lady's maid, upstairs maid, cook, kitchen maid. Sometimes even a butler, a downstairs maid and a boot boy. But as soon as we'd set off for the Yukon, where a lady's maid was as rare as a trophy elephant and a butler even rarer (he would be off to the gold fields with a shovel over his shoulder the moment the boat docked), Angus knew he had to pitch in, which he did without a word of complaint.

“I'd like to ask you a few questions, Mrs. MacGillivray,” McKnight asked, “about the events of this morning.”

I told them about Mary not showing up for work and Angus being concerned. About going in search of her and my suspicions that she might have returned to Paradise Alley. I mentioned running into Graham, who was doing research for his story about the exploited women of Dawson. At that point Angus held the door open for Mrs. Mann, who was bearing the tea tray, and Richard, who appeared to be on the verge of a coughing fit, rushed to help her lay out the things on the table.

“You need anything more, Mrs. Mac,” Mrs. Mann said, “I'll be in the kitchen.” She didn't approve of a young man such as Angus making tea for visitors.

Ever the gracious hostess, I poured. “You didn't find this woman, Mary?” McKnight asked. “No,” I said. “Milk, Inspector?” Milk being a relative term, as all we had was the horrid canned stuff.

“Yes, please.” “With all the excitement of finding poor Chloe, we abandoned the search and came home.” I passed the inspector his cup. It wasn't a proper tea presentation by any means: the heavy brown teapot, the mismatched mugs, the sugar still in the tin it was sold in. Not to mention canned milk. In Dawson one makes do.

“As soon as Ma, I mean Mother, leaves for work, I'm going to look for Mary,” Angus said. “You haven't seen her, have you?”

The men shook their heads. “Sorry, Angus,” Richard said. He declined a cup of tea, indicating the paper and pencil in his hands.

McKnight didn't seem the least bit interested in Mary. He asked me about Chloe: who might not have liked her (no one, I assured him), who her friends were (all the dancers, I said), why she had been fired (reduction in staff, I said, with a tinge of regret in my voice).

McKnight put his mug down. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. MacGillivray. If you think of anything else, I'd be obliged if you'd contact me.”

“Certainly.” I stood to show my guests out.

“One more thing,” McKnight said, reaching into his pocket. “Have you seen this before?”

It was a tiny tin-plated cross hanging off a thin chain with a broken clasp. I shook my head, trying to appear thoughtful. “It isn't original, nor at all valuable,” I said at last. “Probably a good many like that around.”

“It's Mary's,” Angus said. “She must've lost it.” He held out his hand. “Thanks, Inspector, I'll see she gets it back.”

McKnight put the jewellery into his pocket. “Sorry, son. I'll hold on to it for a while. Why don't you sit back down, Mrs. MacGillivray, and you and young Angus can tell me more about this Mary.”

Angus and I looked at each other. “Not much to tell,” I said. “Constable Sterling knows the story.” I sat down.

McKnight glanced at Richard, but he spoke to me. “Why don't you tell it to me, Mrs. MacGillivray?”

So I did. The whole story. Leaving out the matter of finding Mary in the shadows behind the Savoy with Tom Jannis and her running off, which I couldn't see was any of their business. I simply said she hadn't come to work that morning, and Angus was concerned.

There was a long silence after I finished speaking. I sipped my tea. Sergeant Lancaster attempted to give me an encouraging smile. Richard wrote in his notebook, carefully avoiding both Angus's and my eyes.

“You're sure this necklace belongs to Mary, Angus?” McKnight said at last, pulling the object back out of his pocket and turning it over in his hands. His hands were like a lady's, soft, uncalloused, the fingers long, the nails neatly trimmed.

“Looks like it. But as Mother said, it's a common enough type.”

He dropped the cross back into his pocket. “If you find this woman, Mary, bring her around to see me would you, Angus?”

“Why?” Suspicion crept into Angus's voice. “I want to talk to everyone who might have seen

something suspicious in Paradise Alley this morning.”

“Sure,” Angus said. McKnight put his hat back on his head. Lancaster and

Sterling did likewise.

I rose from my chair, but I couldn't pass the men in order to get to the door to show them out. Instead we all jostled and shifted and spilled out into the hallway. We found Mrs. Mann standing by the sitting room entrance, where she no doubt had been listening. More jostling ensued as Angus opened the front door and the police filed out. Sergeant Lancaster came last.

I lifted my hand to my forehead and swayed with the slightest of moans. The sergeant took hold of my arm as a look of concern crossed his beefy features. “Mrs. MacGillivray?” he said.

I waved my hand (the one that wasn't pressed to my forehead) and swayed once again. “I feel quite faint. Sergeant, if you don't mind.” Angus rolled his eyes and followed the police out the door, asking Richard Sterling what would happen to Chloe's body. Mrs. Mann went into the kitchen. Abandoned by my natural protectors, my son and landlady, who apparently know me too well, I leaned on Lancaster's arm. “My chair, please,” I breathed.

He almost carried me into the sitting room. I collapsed delicately into the chair and arranged my skirts around my legs. I opened my eyes wide. “A glass of water, perhaps,” I whispered.

Lancaster bolted from the room.

When he returned with the water, I accepted it graciously. “Do pardon me, Sergeant,” I said, a touch of strength returning to my voice. “The events of this morning have been most distressing.”

He picked up my empty hand and patted it. “Quite understandable, my dear. As I've told you before, I simply don't understand how a gentle lady such as yourself can continue to mix with the more undesirable elements of society.”

I managed to avoid copying Angus and rolling my eyes. Lancaster had indeed told me his opinions on the proper milieu for a lady such as me: making his dinner and washing his socks.

I pulled my hand away, politely, and sipped the water. “Thank you for your gallantry, Sergeant. Due in no small part to your courteous attentions, I am feeling a good deal better.” I have learned that it's simply impossible to go too far in praising a man's concept of his own chivalry.

He smiled hugely. Lancaster's nose appeared to have been broken on more than one occasion, but he still had most of his front teeth. “I'd best be on my way then,” he said, reluctantly.

I smiled and placed the glass on the table. “Perhaps you should. But before you go could you tell me why Inspector McKnight is carrying that cross around.” I refrained from batting my eyelashes.

“He found it…” his voice dropped “…on the body of the dead woman.”

I gasped and held my hand to my forehead once again. Lancaster grabbed the water glass and pressed it back into my free hand. “So it was hers then, Chloe's, how sad.”

“It wasn't on her body, as in around her neck, Mrs. MacGillivray.” Lancaster bent forward so as to whisper. “It was clutched in her hand. Like she'd ripped it from the woman who'd killed her.”

I didn't bother to gasp again. I'd suspected as much. The only question was whether Chloe had been gripping the cross and chain before or after Joey LeBlanc had bent over her body.

“What do you know about this Mary, Constable?” McKnight asked as they headed back across town towards Fort Herchmer.

“Not a great deal, sir,” Sterling said. “Nothing more than what Fiona…Mrs. MacGillivray told you. Mary's not from the Yukon, so she's far away from her tribe. I think she's a Christian; there was a bible among her belongings, so I wouldn't be surprised if the necklace belongs to her.”

“The necklace seems to be the key, wouldn't you say?”

As they walked through the streets, men stepped aside to let them pass, nervous eyes watching them go. News of the finding of the body had swept through town on the wind. Miners tended to be a superstitious lot, and no one wanted to cross the path of men who had so recently been in the presence of death. McKnight and Sterling had questioned the onlookers, but none of them, to no one's surprise, had seen or heard anything unusual. Apparently no one—whore, customer, or passerby—had laid eyes on Chloe before.

McKnight liked to talk out loud, to hear his thoughts as if they were part of a conversation. Sterling found it fascinating.

So deep in thought was McKnight, he didn't notice the tall, scrawny figure of Angus MacGillivray tagging along behind.

Lancaster hadn't been seen since he'd fallen for Fiona's fainting trick like a pig trotting after the farmer to the slaughterhouse, tail waving. Sterling could take a guess as to what Fiona was up to—trying to find out more about the investigation—particularly as her protégé Mary appeared to be involved in this mess. He hoped she'd stay clear. A murder investigation in a community as isolated as Dawson was difficult at best, without the added complication of the lovely but somewhat headstrong Fiona MacGillivray trying to take charge.

Sterling felt the edges of his mouth curling up in a secret smile.

“Constable?” Sterling tore his thoughts away from an image of Fiona

MacGillivray in red serge and crispy ironed jodhpurs tucked into shiny boots issuing orders to the investigating officers.

“Uh, sorry, sir. Didn't hear.” Sterling gestured to a passing wagon, loaded down with crates, the driver of which seemed to be under the impression that screaming at his miserable nag of a horse would make it go faster.

“I said that the necklace is most interesting. What do you think about it?”

“Seems rather conveniently placed to me, sir,” Sterling said, managing at the last minute to avoid a pile of recently deposited, steaming horse dung.

“Sometimes the easiest solution is the answer all along,” McKnight murmured, as much to himself as to Sterling. “Don't go looking for complications if you don't have to, that's what I always say. And I'm usually right. But I'd be more comfortable had that bloody LeBlanc woman not interfered with the body before we had a good look at it. Don't suppose you noticed this necklace before LeBlanc's performance, did you, Constable?”

“No, sir. I didn't.” “Too bad.” McKnight stopped abruptly in the centre of

the intersection. “I'm assigning you to assist me in this investigation, Constable Sterling,” he said, heedless of the traffic forced to detour around him.