“Your place is with your husband. You cannot tend to him and your family if you are spending eight hours on your feet in the mailroom.”
Jem wanted to wipe the smirk off his face. Instead, she straightened her shoulders and descended the employee stairwell.
She breathed a long sigh and looked up at the iron door as it clanged shut behind her. Her friend Tippy would keep her informed of the gossip and tales that had often filled their tea breaks. Jem couldn’t help, though, feeling the slammed door clutch at her heart. A part of her life was gone forever. And a new chapter was beginning, and… she really, really needed a job!
Jem walked the half block to Yonge Street, blinking back a prick of tears as the circus of Toronto’s busiest street thrummed into sight and sound. Trolley cars and automobiles and horse-drawn carts warred for space over roads sliced through with tracks and, on each side, gutted with construction. An officer directed traffic with a whistle, white-gloved hands, and a sign he turned to and fro. STOP. GO.
Jem was at the intersection, crossing in the direction of the streetcar, when the officer waved it to a stop. Jolting forward, she nearly collided with an automobile while the driver screeched several heated words and the horse behind him neighed its frustration.
She mustn’t have been paying attention. Thinking instead about home and Ray, who lately had been so busy at the office that she rarely saw him during the week at all. She looked forward to Saturday afternoons, when he would leave his notebook at home and they would explore Cabbagetown or see a nickelodeon or have dinner with Merinda and Jasper Forth, Merinda’s friend from the Toronto Police. (Mrs. Malone, Merinda’s housekeeper, would always send them home with plenty of leftover food for the week.) But lately, with the threat of the anarchists and Mrs. Goldman’s impending arrival in the city, Ray’s mind was in the office even when he was away from it.
Jem paid her fare and boarded the streetcar. It must be admitted that her head was no more in the present moment than her husband’s, for it took her two stops to realize she was going the wrong way. Silly emotional girl! she reprimanded herself as the streetcar rumbled along not in the direction of her home but toward King Street and the townhouse she and Merinda had once shared. She rerouted and trundled down Yonge Street in the opposite direction, her mind as jumbled as the traffic parading outside the trolley window.
“I never thought I would say this,” she muttered under her breath, “but I really hope we’re in the market for a good murder!”
And that was the last thing she said before teetering over and fainting on the lap of the elderly woman seated in front of her.
Merinda Herringford tripped into mysteries as quickly as she stumbled upon their solutions. This feat was made easier by the fact that she had long since given up on ice pick heels and day suits. Toronto’s summer humidity was much more tolerable—and her long limbs much freer—in cotton trousers, brogan shoes, and bobbed hair.
Jasper Forth admired her striking profile as she leaned over to peer into the test tube. Evidently pleased with what she observed, Merinda threw out her arms like a bird taking flight. “I’m a legend!” she cried.
“Easy there.” Jasper raised an amused eyebrow. He almost hoped she would fall so he could catch her and press her to him and smell the tendrils of her hair. “This isn’t becoming of a woman of your breeding,” he said slyly.*
“A legend, Jasper!” She spun on her heel and faced him, cat eyes sparkling in the bright lights. “This concentrated hemoglobin establishes beyond a doubt that Mr. Darryl was indeed the murderer!”
Jasper wondered briefly if Merinda knew that her smile made his heart complete. That she was the only person in the world. Merinda Herringford and her test tubes and her detection and the voice of her hero, Sherlock Holmes, pealing through her head.
“Elementary,” he said lightly, widening her smile. Jasper dabbed at the chemical stains on his fingers. “There we have it. Another win for Herringford and Forth.”
“Herringford and Forth.” Merinda played it over in her mind, closing her eyes and tasting it for a moment. “Yes. Herringford and Forth. I like that!” She smiled broadly, tipping up her chin. “Come, Jasper! Is there anything more we can possibly contribute to the fascinating world of forensic observation today?”
“Probably not.” He lit like a moonbeam when Merinda grabbed his arm and tugged him toward the broad oak door of the laboratory.
Jasper remembered the first time he saw her, the first time he heard her laugh. The first time he noticed the light outlining her angular profile. The first time he decided that his life would be nothing without her somehow a part of it, peppering it with her eccentricities, her buoyant personality, her trousers and bowler hats, her short hems. He wondered if this was the moment to say everything, to untie all the thoughts packed in a tight parcel in his mind.