Читать книгу The Klondike Mysteries 4-Book Bundle - Vicki Delany - Страница 19

Blood, drying to an ugly brown, splattered the front of my Worth gown, particularly noticeable against the excellent Belgian lace, which I had struggled so hard to keep a virginal white all these years. The dress hung by a thread at one shoulder, and the rip in the bodice was borderline illegal. My hair had been pulled out of its pins and stood up like stalks of corn in an Ontario field in August. The broken red feather stuck out sideways from my hair. A streak of blood bisected my left cheek like a bolt of devil’s lightning. I almost screamed at the sight of it and grabbed the damp cloth out of Ruby’s hands. I scrubbed frantically.

“What am I going to do? I can’t go back down looking like this. But if I’m not there for closing, Sterling will know something’s wrong!”

“You put that shawl around your shoulders,” Irene said. “And you wash your face and tuck your hair into its pins as best you can manage, and you wear that dress like battle armour.”

I looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her colour was recovering, and her face was set into lines of fierce pride. I cleaned my face, and Ruby helped me arrange my hair into some semblance of order. I draped my heavy shawl over my shoulders, the orange, handmade woollen one that I kept behind my desk chair for protection from the cool northern nights. I could do nothing about the bloodstains. Tomorrow my best dress, a genuine Worth, presented to me by Lord Alveron in a suite of the Savoy Hotel, London, would be torn up for rags, but tonight I would wear it with pride. We’d been through a lot, this dress and I.

“How do I look?” I stepped away from the mirror to face the two women. They smiled. “Like a winner,” Irene said with a chuckle. But she stifled a gasp, and her hand touched her stomach as she laughed.

Footsteps, one pair light, cautious, one heavy, full of authority, sounded on the stairs. “That’s the doctor now,” Ruby said. “You go, Mrs. MacGillivray. I’ll stay with Irene.”

“Good evening, Doctor. I have to close up now. I’ll settle your bill tomorrow.” I swept past him and out of the room.

On a Saturday night in Dawson, Yukon Territory, everything shut down at two minutes to midnight for the Lord’s Day. Up and down Front Street, the gambling wheels slowed to a halt, hands of cards (no matter how good they were) landed face down on the green table, bottles of whisky were fastened shut, and dancing girls pulled off dancing shoes to release cramped toes with a contented sigh. Men left the dance hall, passed through the gaming rooms, and walked out of the saloon like an army of ghosts, picking up silent recruits as they went. No one argued, no one begged for one more spin of the wheel or one more round of drinks. There was no point in offering a bribe to the orchestra to keep playing or to the dealer to keep dealing or to the bartender to keep pouring.

As was my custom, I walked behind the exiting crowds, starting at the back of the dance hall, making sure that no dead-to-the-world-drunk got left behind, or that no Englishman or American unfamiliar with the laws of the Territory would try to stay one minute past midnight.

On this night, the men were particularly polite. “Lovely evening, Mrs. Fiona,” they said, doffing their caps. “Such a pleasant night. See you Monday.” Or, “You look particularly beautiful tonight, Mrs. MacGillivray. That shawl certainly becomes you.” Barney, the old drunk, winked so broadly that I wondered if his face might collapse under the effort.

It didn’t, but I turned to see Constable Richard Sterling standing behind me.

“Peaceful night, Mrs. MacGillivray,” he said. “Everyone filing out like they did leaving my father’s church after a sermon about the Hell that he says so eagerly awaits most of them.”

“Didn’t know you had a father, Constable. Don’t they churn you fellows out of Mountie school like sausages, all in a neat row?”

“A bar in the Prairie town where I had my first posting had a lot of trouble one night,” he said. “They tried to hide it from us, but it was hard to keep the secret after the troublemakers torched the place.”

“Nice quiet night, eh, Constable?” The fellow who dressed like an Indian fighter shouted at us as he made his way to the door, barely held up by his friends. “Pretty boring, ain’t it?” He and his mates all sort of collapsed into the middle together, thus supporting each other and keeping themselves upright at the same time.

“Don’t talk ta the coppers,” one of the friends muttered as he tripped over a loose floorboard.

Sterling raised one dark eyebrow and looked down at me. “It was quite the mess, burned lumber and scorched furniture everywhere. Fortunately no one was hurt, but the smell of shattered whisky bottles and the end of someone’s dreams lingered over the town for weeks.”

“Fascinating story. You must tell me more. When I have time. If you’ll excuse me, Constable?”

The yellow patches gleamed in his brown eyes, but he said nothing further.

That wasn’t the first time trouble had accompanied Jack Ireland into my place. But tonight I was sure I’d seen the last of him—he’d hit the most popular dance hall girl in the Yukon in full sight of a packed hall. He was finished as a newspaperman here; once word spread of what had happened, no one in town would talk to him.

He’d be on the next steamboat out of town. Guaranteed.