Gold Fever (20 page)

“A night at Fort Herchmer, waiting until your father comes to get you,” Sterling said.

The boy blanched, and Angus knew it was the mention of a father that put the fear into him, not the prospect of a night in the Fort.

“Don't matter to me,” the boy said. He spat, missing Angus's foot by a few inches, and pointed to their right. “Over there.” He ran after his friends.

A drop of water disturbed the dust in the road, and Angus looked up. Overhead the sky was black. One more drop fell on his hand, then the clouds opened and the rain began.

“Goodness,” Miss Witherspoon said. “We must seek shelter.”

“Not even a twig of a tree left standing, and no one's likely to invite us into their tent,” Sterling said. “You'd best head back to town, ma'am.”

Miss Witherspoon puffed up her chest. “Certainly not. Lead the way, Constable.” She slipped her notebook back into her pocket and pushed her hat lower on her head. They came to a hand-drawn sign advertising Maybelle's Laundry. The premises consisted of a canvas tent with a stove pipe poking through the ceiling and a sheet of canvas stretched between two poles to protect the fire burning beneath a big iron pot. A pile of roughly hewn logs lay in the inadequate protection of the canvas awning. Lines of rope were strung among a forest of poles, full of drying laundry. A woman bustled from one line to another, feeling the clothes and pulling the dry and almost dry items off the line.

“Pardon me, ma'am,” Sterling said.

She glanced over her shoulder. She was tall, dressed in a wet and dirty dress patterned with fading flowers. The sleeves were pushed up past her elbows. Her hips were wide and her arms as thick as a man's. Her short black hair curled in tight corkscrews above high, flat cheekbones, and her skin was the colour of rich coffee with a splash of good cream added. Her eyes were even darker than Angus's mother's.

“Can't you see I'm busy,” she growled in a voice as thick and sweet as brown sugar waiting to be added to the coffee. “Gotta get the dry laundry in.”

“My companion will do that for you.” Sterling nodded at Miss Witherspoon. “While we talk.”

Miss Witherspoon glared at Sterling, but once he had returned her glare and muttered something about going back to town, she went to help.

The laundress handed Miss Witherspoon her laundry basket. “Now mind you don't collect the ones what's still wet out of the pot,” she said. “Little rain won't hurt them none.” She placed her hands on generous hips and laughed heartily. “Ain't that a sight. White woman in a silly hat doin' my chores.”

“Only in exchange for some answers, Miss…?”

“Maybelle. Just Maybelle. Don't know what you'd be wantin' with me, sir. Maybelle just be doin' the laundry.”

“I'm looking for a woman you might know. Name of Mary?”

Maybelle's dark eyes shifted fractionally in the direction of the tent. She wiped her hands on her apron.

“Lotsa women in town name o' Mary,” she said, taking a few steps towards the street, scratching at the skin at the cleft of her bosom.

Sterling turned to watch her. “We've been told Mary is a friend of yours.”

Maybelle studied her bare feet. The toes were long and knobbly, the nails yellow and broken. “Maybelle don't have friends. Too many white people in this town.”

“Mary isn't white,” Angus said. “She's an Indian, and she's my friend. I want to help her.”

Maybelle looked at the boy for the first time. “White people don't have Indians and Coloureds as friends,” she said. “I gotta be getting back to my laundry. Lady in the hat movin' so slow, she gonna ruin my business.”

“She
is
my friend,” Angus protested. “Angus,” Sterling said in his no-nonsense Mountie voice, “let me handle this.”

“It's all right, Maybelle.” Mary stepped out of the tent. “They know I'm here. And I'm happy to have Angus as my friend.”

“Mary, you're a fool if'n you trust the redcoats and a yellow-haired boy what thinks he can help you.”

Miss Witherspoon handed Maybelle the laundry basket. Rainwater was collecting in the brim of her hat, and her skirts clung to her legs. She wiped drops from her face. “Perhaps we could talk inside,” she suggested.

They all ignored her. “Thank you, Maybelle,” Mary said. “I won't forget your kindness.” She lifted her chin high. “I imagine you've come to arrest me, Constable?”

“Why do you think that?” Sterling asked. “Don't play games with me,” Mary said. She lowered her chin. “Sorry, sir. I heard you found something belonging to me on that dead dancer's body. I'm an Indian, so you assume I must be guilty. Isn't that the way the police think?”

“Not the NWMP, we don't,” Sterling said. “The Inspector wants to ask you some routine questions.”

“Don't worry, Mary, I'll stay with you,” Angus said.

Mary smiled, a tiny one that turned up the corners of her mouth but didn't touch her eyes.

Maybelle huffed. “Day's worth o' laundry soakin' wet. Now get outta here. I got work to do. If'n they let you go, Mary, you come back here.”

“Thank you.”

“Mary,” Sterling said politely.

“I didn't kill that dancer. I didn't even know her.”

“Then it will all get straightened out, you'll see.” Angus tried to sound positive.

“You take care,” Maybelle said to her friend.

Without another word, Mary started walking at a determined pace back towards town. Sterling and Angus followed.

Miss Witherspoon scurried behind. Having taken off her useless hat, she was using it in an attempt to shield the pages of her notebook from the rain while she made notes on all that had transpired. She was having difficulty balancing hat, notebook and pencil while writing and walking fast enough to keep up with the others. Every tree within shouting distance of Dawson had been cut down for firewood or building lumber, with the result that whenever it rained, the run-off created instant creeks that poured down the hillside. Miss Witherspoon failed to notice that the terrain they were crossing was different from when they'd come this way only half an hour earlier. She stepped into a rushing river. When the cold water flowed over the edges of her shoes, chosen for afternoon tea, she shrieked and tried to jump out of the water. In her haste, she slipped on a rock and pitched forward, downhill, into the middle of the stream. Rather than save herself, she chose to heroically hold her notebook high above the dirty water.

Angus turned at the sound of the scream and splash. Miss Witherspoon was fully stretched out in the middle of the road, flat on her front, while the new river rushed downhill as though it were a sourdough heading for the nearest saloon. Her skirt had risen above her knees, and she thrashed about on her belly, feet and legs kicking at nothing but wet air, like a fish on a line. She was only wearing one shoe. She let go of her hat, and it floated away. She lifted her head and handed Angus the notebook. He tucked it into his jacket pocket and asked, “Can you stand up?”

She mumbled something positive, as Angus grabbed her by the arm. She rose out of the mud with a sickening squelch.

“I seem to have lost my hat,” she said once she was standing on her own two feet. She looked down. “And one shoe.” The entire front of her dress, from hem to high collar, was covered in mud. Mud dotted her cheeks and nose like freckles.

“I have your notebook,” Angus said. “Good lad. There it is.” Miss Witherspoon limped across the road to rescue her shoe. The heel dangled uselessly as she examined it. “Do you think this can be repaired? You follow your friends; they seem not to be waiting for us. I'll make my way back to the hotel, lest my appearance frighten small children. No, you keep that,” she protested as Angus reached into his pocket for the notebook. “I have no way of keeping it dry. Come to the hotel when you're free. If I've gone out, I'll leave a note at the desk. I didn't care much for that hat anyway.” She set off down the hill, hobbling on one shoe, holding the other, clutching her ribs, hatless, filthy, but keeping her head high.

Angus passed her as he ran to catch up with Constable Sterling and Mary.

The NWMP post of Fort Herchmer had come into existence in the early years of the gold discovery, before there was much of a town, and thus it occupied a good slice of precious Dawson real estate. Rows of wooden buildings containing the men's barracks, officer's quarters, jail, offices and storage rooms surrounded a large parade square with a Union Jack fluttering on top of a tall flagpole in the centre.

The Fort took up several city blocks near the meeting place of the Klondike and Yukon rivers, which proved not to be a very fortuitous location when the square was knee deep in dirty brown water during the flooding of the spring run-off.

Sterling stopped at the entrance to the Fort. Passersby, the few that hadn't headed for shelter from the driving rain, observed them with interest. “You'll have to leave us now, Angus,” he said.

“I want to stay with Mary.”

“I'm sorry, son, but you won't be allowed in. The inspector'll want to talk to Mary in private.”

“I'm not leaving.” Angus almost stamped his foot, looking very much like the twelve-year-old boy he was.

“Angus, I'm ordering you to go home. If you want to be a Mountie…”

“Maybe I don't want to be a Mountie any more. Not if I have to arrest innocent people like Mary.” The boy was trying hard not to cry.

“Angus.” Mary placed one small brown hand on his sleeve. “You go home. Give your mother a message from me: I don't want her to think I was abusing her trust. The other night, when she saw me in the back of the Savoy, please tell her I was just out for some air. I couldn't stand being in that place. The noise, the horrible music, the air so dirty with smoke. I couldn't sleep, so I went outside. That man...that Mr. Jannis, he thought I was there, well, for another reason.”

“Tell her yourself. I'm not leaving you.”

“Go home. I trust Constable Sterling to protect me.”

Sterling shifted uncomfortably. He wouldn't be any protection for her, not if McKnight intended to arrest and charge her. He couldn't imagine that this petite, polite woman was a murderer. He had no doubt she'd defend herself if she, or someone she loved, were under attack. But to kill a woman, a dancer like Chloe, whom she barely knew? He didn't believe it, but his unsubstantiated opinion would carry no weight with the officers in charge.

“Come on, Mary,” he said. “We need to get you dry.” Her thin homespun dress was so wet, he could see the sharp bones of her shoulders and hips beneath the fabric. The end of her long black braid dripped rainwater. She shivered.

Angus knew he was defeated. “I'll tell Mrs. Mann you'll be on time for work tomorrow,” he said. “The laundry's too much work for her all on her own.”

Mary smiled, whispered, “Thank you,” and turning, walked towards the flagpole with a straight back and proud chin. The Union Jack hung limp and sodden in the driving rain.

Sterling almost had to break into a run to catch up with her. “This way, ma'am,” he said, steering her towards the offices.

It went as he'd feared. McKnight asked him to show Mary the necklace found on Chloe's body and asked her if she recognized it. She told them it looked like one she'd lost. McKnight then arrested her for the murder of Chloe Jones. A constable was summoned to escort her to the cells. Mary didn't look back as she was taken away.

Dawson was so isolated and, particularly in wintertime, the environment so harsh, the Mounties in the Yukon had considerable leeway to adapt the law for their needs. There were normally only two punishments meted out, no matter how severe the crime. Either a sentence of hard labour, which meant a month or two chopping wood to feed the stoves, or a blue ticket—banishment from the territory. Murder? Even in Dawson, that was a hanging offence.

“She didn't do it, sir,” Sterling said, once the door to Inspector McKnight's office slammed behind Mary and her guard.

“You have proof of that, Constable?”

“No, sir, I don't, but there's no reason why an Indian woman would murder a white woman she didn't even know.”

“She's a known prostitute.”

“Sold into prostitution, sir, and trying her best to get out of it.”

“There hasn't been slavery in the Empire in almost a hundred years, Sterling; they don't even have it in the United States, or so I've been told. It takes a certain type of woman to become a prostitute, circumstances be damned.

That sort of woman is capable of doing almost anything if she thinks there's profit in it.”

“What options do you think a woman like Mary has? It takes a certain type of woman to starve on the street, but I think better of a person… man or woman…who finds a way to survive. That has nothing to do with the fact that you don't have a single reason for why she would kill this Chloe.”

McKnight stood up. “Look here, Sterling.” He waved his index finger in the air as though he were lecturing a class of naughty schoolboys. Sterling barely managed to refrain from grabbing it and shaking the man at the other end. “The woman is a prostitute, and that's the end of it. She was offered a respectable job at a laundry and chucked it in after a few days. If you hadn't found her, she'd be turning tricks by nightfall.”

“We don't know why she didn't show up at her job this morning. Christ, Inspector…”

“Watch your mouth, Constable, or I'll have you up on charges.”

Sterling almost said something a good deal stronger, but at the last moment he bit back a retort. His once illustrious career had suffered enough damage at the hands of his temper. But he damn well wouldn't apologize. “If there is nothing else. Sir.”

McKnight could have reprimanded him for his tone alone, but instead the inspector sat back down. “I'm not ending it here, Sterling. I want to talk to Irene Davidson about her relationship with the Jones woman. I've heard they had an argument a couple of days ago. We'll be sure to find her at the Savoy tonight. Meet me here at seven thirty, and we'll head over there.”