The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Murder (34 page)

If we hadn't already cut you off completely, we would be doing so now.

We can merely speculate what we possibly did to inspire such wayward behavior in our only daughter.

We will pray for you and hope that you spare us a thought now and then.

In their new semi-detached house in Cabbagetown, Jem kept the telegram near. During the daylight she kept it in her pocket. At night, it was in her memory as she squeezed her eyes shut in the starlight-spattered room.

One night, as moonlight latticed the curtains she had sewn and hung in their small bedroom, she heard a persistent tapping and jolted awake.

She didn't notice that Ray, too, was awake: black eyes staring above him, mind obsessed with a slight crack in the ceiling.

While Ray feigned sleep, Jem folded her legs over the side of the bed, crept to the window, and through the curtain made out a figure under the starlight.

It was Merinda, of course, waving hard and fast for her to hurry up.

Jem tiptoed to the wardrobe and pulled out trousers and a cotton shirt that she slid over her nightgown, its folds soon tucked in and safely constricted by a belt she pulled tight. She stepped into her scuffed, rubber-soled shoes. She twisted her hair into a braid, wondering how she would hide it now that she didn't have the costume trunk and its variety of headgear. Then she remembered she didn't need it—she had something better.

She slipped quietly to the mismatched table adjacent her bed where a worn old bowler sat with a frayed rim. Ray wouldn't miss it before tomorrow.

She didn't see his eyes flutter open to watch her shadow tiptoe
out. Nor did she hear him when he rose a moment later to shut the door behind her.

“A missing pocket-watch,” Ray heard through the slightly ajar window. Merinda was explaining the specifics of the case.

“A pocket watch!” Jem laughed. “You woke me up for a pocket watch?”

And then they set off into the night.

Toronto was cloaked in stillness. An owl hooted and a raccoon's fleeting footfall skittered across their path. A blonde girl in a bowler hat leaned into her companion and spun an excited tale of radical revolutionaries and a city that was their own, even as they wound its dark street.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

T
here are no factual figures in
The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Murder
—even M.C. Wheaton and Dorothea Fairfax are figments of my imagination—and I took several historical liberties in creating Jem and Merinda's world.

While the
Globe and Mail
and the
Tely
were daily papers in Toronto, the only accurate thing about their representation here are their names. The
Hogtown Herald
is a complete fiction.

The King Edward Hotel and St. James Cathedral are just some of the real places I used, though their owners and the events therein are completely fictional. Perhaps the most imaginative liberty was taken with the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres, which didn't open until 1913 and whose proprietor, Frederick Loewe, was absolutely not a criminal. If you ever have the opportunity to visit, you will see why I wanted to make it a part of my fictional landscape.

My favorite historical fiction inspires my interest in a period and setting through capturing an essence of the long-ago world. Thus, I did try to capture the essence that was the transient city of Toronto in the early 1900s. It saw a remarkable wave of immigrants crossing over the Bridge of Sighs, many scraping by in St. John's Ward and many the victims of poor working conditions, flophouses, and unfair wages.

The Morality Squad is also a figment of my imagination, although women's courts and arrests for female incorrigibility are a sadly true part of Toronto's history. The Ontario Female Refuge's Act of 1897 made sure that anyone at all could charge a woman aged sixteen to thirty-five with charges of idleness, dissolution, and incorrigibility. Prison stints and incarceration at the notorious Mercer Reformatory
in Toronto were believed to be the cure for everything from pickpocketing to familial estrangement and suspected immorality.

Social reform and political change were very much hot topics—as they continue to be today. Toronto remains one of the most multicultural cities in the world.

The book
Toronto's Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City,
by Carolyn Strange, sheds some light on the prejudice awaiting single working women moving to the city in the Edwardian age.
Bachelor Girl,
by Besty Israel, provided an interesting look at the history of unmarried women throughout history. If you would like to learn more about some of the books and websites I consulted (and take a glimpse at some of the many wonderful photographs preserved from Edwardian Toronto), please visit my website at
www.a-fair-substitute-for-heaven.blogspot.com
. The Toronto Reference Library, with their amazing archives and materials (and their attached Balzac's coffee location), were influential in the creation of this world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rachel McMillan is a keen history enthusiast and a lifelong bibliophile. When not writing or reading, she can most often be found drinking tea and watching British miniseries. Rachel lives in bustling Toronto, where she works in educational publishing and pursues her passion for art, literature, music, and theater.

OTHER BOOKS BY RACHEL MCMILLAN

A Singular and Whimsical Problem

Christmas, 1910.
Merinda Herringford and Jem Watts would be enjoying the season a lot more if they weren't forced to do their own laundry and cooking. Just as they are adapting to their trusty housekeeper's ill-timed vacation, they are confronted by the strangest mystery they've encountered since they started their private investigation firm.

In this bonus e-only novella, what begins as the search for a missing cat leads to a rabble-rousing suffragette and the disappearance of several young women from St. Jerome's Reformatory for Incorrigible Females. From the women's courts of City Hall to Toronto's seedy docks and into the cold heart of the underground shipping industry, this will be the most exciting Christmas the girls have had yet…if they can stay alive long enough to enjoy it.

A Lesson in Love and Murder

The legacy of literary icon Sherlock Holmes is alive and well in 1912 Canada, where best friends Merinda Herringford and Jem Watts continue to develop their skills as consulting detectives.

The city of Toronto has been thrown into upheaval by the arrival of radical anarchist Emma Goldman. Amid this political chaos, Benny Citrone of the Royal North-West Mounted Police arrives at Merinda and Jem's flat, requesting assistance in locating his runaway cousin—a man with a deadly talent.

While Merinda eagerly accepts the case, she finds herself constantly butting heads—and hearts—with Benny. Meanwhile, Jem has her own hands full with a husband who is distracted by his sister's problems but still determined to keep Jem out of harm's way.

As Merinda and Jem close in on the danger they've tracked from Toronto to Chicago, will they also be able to resolve the troubles threatening their future happiness before it's too late?

Independence, love, and lives are at stake in
A Lesson in Love and Murder
, the gripping second installment of the Herringford and Watts Mysteries series.