Merinda exhaled, bit her lip, and then flicked the loose latch of the satchel open. Inside, a notebook. On them lines of sometimes smudged, sometimes worn ink slanted in Benny’s precise hand. There were years of papers at her fingertips, some bound in hard-backed journals, others leafed out, their corners reaching toward her. Letters he never sent to his cousin. Thoughts and descriptions painting a wilderness canvas as clear in her imagination as day.
She slid a carefully folded letter out, its once sharp creases dulled. She guessed she should feel guilty, but Benny was a client, and these letters, she tried to assure herself, were part of a case.
Benny wasn’t a great writer, she decided. He didn’t have DeLuca’s hyperbolic flourish, but his whole heart was on each measured line. Questions layering questions—did he remember Mad Old Johnson from the Regina detachment and his habit of bringing his pet squirrel to the barracks? Did he remember playing with swords and lances atop that lame old donkey in Riverton? Did Jonathan remember the green vapor of the northern lights, the sweep of the snow, the voice of their grandmother calling them from the brush of woods where they had been playing Indians?
Merinda’s chest constricted. The letters enshrined Jonathan as the smart one, the one with potential. The one who could have risen to the highest ranks.
She opened another book—Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson’s Guide to the Canadian Wilderness. The first pages were written in block letters as if by a schoolboy, but as she flipped through the pages, the writing became more and more assured. A young man’s writing. Peppered with language and phrases that, despite their brief time together, she already associated with him. Little flicks of wisdom here. An anecdote there. He had contributed to this book for years.
Wear your snowshoes backward so your tracks are easily recognizable on newly fallen snow.
She fell asleep with the letter on her chest.
She was just rereading a paragraph about backward snowshoes the next morning when Jem returned for her toiletries, forcing Merinda to look up and quickly return the sheets to their place.
“You’re as bad as I am when I kept and read Ray’s journal!” Jem chastised while rummaging in her case for toothpowder.*
“I-I wasn’t. I was hoping there might be something on… on… ”
“Spare me.” Jem sat down beside Merinda on the sofa, waiting for an explanation.
“Jonathan is Benny’s whole world,” Merinda said, her eyes welling. “And that will be taken away from him. We are helping our client find his cousin so that justice will see him hanged. My conscience is all in a knot.”
“You have a conscience?” Jem winked. “That’s why you need something solid to believe in, Merinda. More than Goldman, who will leave after she has said her piece and rallied a few followers, or Ross, who will forget you exist the moment his grand plan for the Coliseum is complete. You need something stronger, some anchor beyond these anarchists and their ideas of justice and this big banner they’re waving to make a point.”
“I believe in us,” Merinda said solemnly. “And what we do.”
“Running around strange cities until we trip onto a solution?”
“Ross believes in his cause. That he devotes himself to some greater good that will ripple through people and inspire them to fight for their freedom.”
“But Ross is only a man,” Jem said gently. “And men are fallible. Men can let you down.”
“I did not sign up for a church service, Jemima.”
“I know. But God stands for justice too. God stands for equality.”
Merinda stopped a moment. “Equality?”
“Merinda, there’s so much more than what you see in your Wheaton and underneath your microscope. There’s a completely different and vast and wonderful mystery.”
Merinda rolled this around in her mind for a moment. “Mystery?”
Jem nodded. “God is the greatest mystery. And when you believe in something, no matter how grand, no matter how invincible, you are willing to do anything, however preposterous, to see it to its solution.” Jem smiled.
“That’s it!” Merinda clapped her hands.
“I take it this is not Merinda Herringford on the brink of a spiritual awakening,” Jem said lowly.
“I am not undermining what you said, Jem! I respect your dedication to your beliefs. And a belief system is so strong it can break any chains of logic.”
“Is this your golden moment?” Jem asked resignedly.? “Because I am not sure I am completely prepared.” She winked and settled into a chair.
Merinda stayed quiet a moment, finally flopping into a chair and stretching her long legs across the carpet. She chewed on the end of her pencil. “The Red-Headed League!” she cried. “In the story the criminals hire a pawnbroker named Jabez Wilson to sit and copy out the encyclopedia. Holmes discovers that the copying job was a distraction so that criminals could use Mr. Wilson’s pawnshop—which was adjacent to the bank—in order to find a way into the bank and rob it. This is like that story, Jem! The bombs and explosives keep the authorities hopping, and while they are scurrying around, someone has the opportunity to do something big.”
“Something big?”
“There’s something I need to do! You go get DeLuca and have him find Jasper. An hour from now, I want us all in conference in the tearoom!”
* * *