On that third afternoon, Kat hopped on the back of Judge Abernathy’s automobile as it was leaving Walters’s office and trundling down toward the harbor. She jumped off just as it skidded past Front Street to the Queen’s Quay. Several hours later, shivering, and grateful for the cocoa and sandwiches we provided her, she related, wide-eyed, what she had seen.

  “Girls.”

  Mouse watched her friend’s animated face from the edge of the sofa.

  “There were girls in that cart. It was shrouded with canvas. And then once we got down to the docks they were whisked off to a boat.”

  Merinda and I looked at each other. This was deep indeed.

  “I waited around. Behind a skiff. And that’s when I heard it.”

  “Heard what?”

  “Sneezing.”

  “Sneezing. Is it that unusual?”

  “Fierce sneezing.” She took a long sip of her cocoa. “Over and over again.”

  Sneezing was an interesting addition to our blackboard.

  I gathered Merinda was as perplexed as I as she paced around a bit before demanding Mrs. Walters’s card and telephone contact. I ruffled around the bureau and gave it to her.

  “You know in the fall when the ragweed sprouts up and you have a runny nose?” she said.

  “I have a hypersensitivity,” I sniffed. “At least that’s what the doctor said. There’s this Viennese pediatrician he quoted once… ”

  “Yes, regarding research around the idea of allergens affecting our senses and giving us cold-like symptoms. People may have the exact same reaction to animals. And to cats.”

  “The sneezing.”

  “If the cat’s owner had remnants of cat hair on him or if the cat itself was around, some might find their senses to be more delicate.” She held Mrs. Walters’s card up to the light. “I wonder… ”

  A moment later, I could hear her side of the conversation:

  “Mrs. Walters… Melanie LaCroix. Yes. Yes. Of course. Well. Yes. Pepper. Yes. Very well. Of course. Yes. Mangy cat… I mean, dear cat. I understand.”

  Then the receiver reverberated a vehement click and she returned to the sitting room with a triumphantly raised fist.

  “Melanie LaCroix was in the employ of Mr. and Mrs. Walters, but she was allergic to their cat.”

  “Pardon?”

  “And Mrs. Walters was just as happy as a clam as she told me this in hopes it will help find her silly cat.”

  “So she doesn’t know what happened to Melanie? That she is in St. Jerome’s?”

  “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.

  “Why are you shaking like that? Stop it.” She swatted my arm.

  “Merinda, it is freezing in this awful cell.”

  A few other women looked up and snickered, probably at my delicate sensibilities. Some had obviously been detained for public intoxication; they hiccupped something fierce. A few others were smudged with rouge and glossed with heavy red lips. I supposed they were ladies of the night.

  A rat scurried in the corner. The whipping winter wind was poorly blocked by the wooden slated door. And my teeth would not stop their incessant chattering!

  “So this is what happens when you attempt to do some good in the world,” Merinda muttered.

  “I wonder if I’ll ever be free again.” I sighed.

  “Oh, hush. It’s not a death knell, Jemima, it’s a night in a holding cell. Think! Think! We can finally appreciate what so many of our clients endure!”

  “I could be home! I could be home in my lovely bed sipping a warm drink by the fire. Without any rats.”

  Merinda did not deign to respond.

  Melanie was huddled on the opposite bunk, which was more a slat than a bed. Suspecting that she was part of our intrigue, the police had thrown her in here with us as well. Her knees were pulled up to her chest.

  “You are braver than we are,” I told her.

  “My mother used to quote a verse from Matthew.” She took a breath and said in French, “ ‘Vraiment, je vous l’assure: chaque fois que vous avez fait cela au moindre de mes frères que voici, c’est à moi-même que vous l’avez fait.’ ”

  “ ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,’ ” I murmured to myself. “I guess that applies to more than the poor on the street.”

  “I tried to remember it.”

  Several hours later, I woke up with a painful crick in my neck. I lifted my head from where it had dropped atop Merinda’s. I stretched and looked about me in murky morning light.

  It was drabber and even grayer now that I could see the cell in clarity. The rats had abandoned their search for fallen crumbs and the other lady occupants snored loudly, their makeup in even more disarray. The pretty lashes, sumptuous lips, and flaming red hair was, when brightened by daylight, quite garish and unflattering.

  The bells were tolling brightly and I could just imagine them catching the brisk winter air. Honestly! I’d been confined less than twelve hours and I already was feeling like I had completely forgotten the tang of the wind on my tongue, the taste of an errant snowflake. I supposed I would never do to be locked up for any length of time.

  Merinda was still sleeping, her knees tucked up to her chest. Her blonde bob was the brightest thing in the dank cell. Melanie, too, was asleep, looking childlike with her fist curled under her chin.

  I nudged Merinda, suddenly lonely and desperate for company in spite of the bodies sprawled unconscious around me.

  The door clinked open suddenly and the three of us were ushered out. I blinked away the too-bright light just before a man grabbed my elbow and muttered at me. His voice rumbled low in his throat, almost indecipherable, but I made out enough to wince in offense. Merinda tried to kick him a few times, but to no avail. He was bulky and fast, and her wiry frame was easily contained and tossed in the back of a carriage. I soon followed. The rumbly man with sour breath wound two handkerchiefs around our eyes and pulled tight.

  I didn’t see what happened to Melanie. My heart caught in my chest.

  “What about our trial?” Merinda seethed.

  “Abernathy said to skip the trial with you two.”

  Sardines in the back of a rickety carriage, I could make out little of what was happening outside. I could tell Merinda was trying to compensate for what she couldn’t see with her other senses. Her ears were pressed to the slats of wood in our covered partition and she was sniffing, her nose wrinkling like a jittery rabbit.

  Finally, still blindfolded, we were tugged out of the back of the automobile and dragged over slick stones. I held tightly to Merinda. Even if I hadn’t heard the gulls cawing or smelled the fish carcasses, I would’ve deduced we were near the harbor on account of the bracing chill.

  We were shoved and prodded, pulled and pushed, and finally tossed harshly into a sweltering circumference that I sensed must have been a cubby of sorts. It was hot and close and smelled awful. My body had trouble overcompensating for the shivers that had rippled through me and were now replaced with sweltering perspiration.

 

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