Who Holds the Key to Unlocking this Mystery?

Posted on May 09, 2017 Topic : Fiction

Toronto, 1914

Detective duo Jem Watts and Merinda Herringford are embroiled in a murder mystery made even more dangerous by the growing civil and political unrest in a city poised to enter World War I at the behest of Great Britain. Complicating matters, a war measure adopted by the mayor has put a target on Jem and her Italian husband, newspaper reporter Ray DeLuca. In this gripping scene from The White Feather Murders, Jem comes home to discover her sense of security has literally been shattered.

***

Jem walked up the porch steps gingerly and then edged through the still-open door. She walked toward the jeweled crystal of the glass shards catching the wink of the flittering streetlight outside. Spotting something out of the corner of her eye not too far from her latest knitting disaster, she knelt to pick it up. It was the rock responsible for the desecration of the window pane. She clutched it without looking at the note affixed to the bottom, preferring to wait until Ray arrived.

When she heard footsteps coming up the walk and a rattle at the door, her heart clenched in her chest, and she instinctively moved to grab her son, Hamish.

“Jem!” Ray’s voice met her even before he did, calling frantically from the hallway. “Jemima, what happened?” He surveyed the room and the damage to the window before standing beside her, searching her face before peering down at Hamish and running a finger over his cheek. “Are you hurt?”

Jem shook her head. “We arrived home after it was done, and… oh, Ray! It scared me so! Hamish plays by that window. We haven’t ever had any trouble here. Not with the neighbors.”

“Times are changing,” Ray said in a low voice.

“I found this.” She pressed the rock into his hand.

Ray examined it, and she watched his eyes darken at the note on the bottom.

“I’ve been called worse.” He shrugged. “And with European politics at a tipping point, people’s prejudices are raging even hotter. Tonight almost certainly pitted us at war.”

Jem felt sick, looking at the slight sparkle on the carpet even as she tried not to. She’d have to put a mat down. Or keep Hamish from the windows. “I can’t imagine anyone on our street resorting to violence. Maybe someone is angry at you for something you printed.”

Ray shook his head. “It’s more than that. It will be worst in the Ward. It’s the war. People are ignorant and scared.”

“So what are you going to do?” she asked after a long silence interrupted only by the persistent ticking of the clock in the hallway.

He shook his head. “Hope that the man who did this got all of his anger out of his system. I think you should gather your things. You and Hamish should go to King Street for a while.”

Jem shook her head. “That’s just giving in to them, Ray. We won’t run away. We’ve done nothing.”

They stared at each other silently a moment. “I want you to go, Jem.”

“And I say I am staying. We do all of this together.”

“Jemima, you do not need to help me fight for my right to live here.”

“Nonsense! I took the risk as well. I took your name. We stay together.” With that pronouncement, she kissed her baby lightly on the cheek. “I am taking Hamish to bed.”

Ray felt for her hand in the pitch-black and squeezed it. “It’s too late to have such deep thoughts, Jem. It’s been a… ” Jem could almost hear the wheels in his mind turning, her sense of hearing heightened in the dark, “… harrowing day.”

“I don’t want you to lessen what I am feeling just because it’s been a harrowing day,” Jem said, sighing.

“I’m not lessening anything, my love. I just know that sometimes you have to climb each mountain as you come to it. Then another and another. You can’t see the peak on the other side, so you concentrate all of your efforts and strength on one. You focus on one. And then you take a deep breath and see the next mountain and find the strength to climb it.” Ray exhaled.

“Just one mountain,” Jem said softly.

“Just one mountain,” Ray agreed.

***

Will Jem and Merinda be able to solve their most threatening case yet before it's too late to save those they hold dear?