The Scandalous Mrs. Wilson Read online

  Jo pressed her hand against the small of her back to hide the tremor that rushed through her. Bits and pieces of this declaration had already slid under her front door or sailed through her window.

  “They’re going to run us out of here,” Doc said. “It’s a land grab! That’s what this is about. We’ve got the best land. The best view of the springs. Step out your front door, and you’ve got the springs right at your feet. Even if a man can’t hardly walk, he can take a few steps off your front porch and be in the water.” The salesman’s patter came so easily to Doc he barely seemed to notice that he’d slipped into his pitch. “You get them healthy vapours from the minerals while you’re sleeping if you keep your window open.” He paused, seemed to recollect himself. “Your place, Jo. You’ve got the springs out the front and then more in back, past the trails and the cabins. They want our land.”

  “That’s as may be. They can’t have it.”

  “They’re going to take it. Just snatch it! Sin and temperance—phaw! Who do you think comes to my table every night? Who do you think spends the money? And Mrs. McSheen’s husband’s the worst of the lot! She’s probably sore because he lost her silver teapot in a game of stud poker last Saturday.” The little man turned from white to red as he began pacing around the foyer as if on a stage, almost bursting out of his tweed waistcoat. “Hypocrites, the lot of them. Sin and vice, they say? Your girls don’t do nothing but give the same treatments everyone else here does; they just look prettier while doing it. No two bones about it. Only sin is the evil looks those Society women give out. Cold, unchristian shrews.”

  “Just settle down. They’re not going to take anything, Doc. Ilsa, fetch him a glass of water.” Jo led him towards the sofa and sat him down.

  “Damned McSheen woman’s kettle ain’t even real silver. Just cheap plate,” he muttered sullenly.

  “They can’t take our land. They’re just bored women who want a project. There’s no war to wind bandages for, and a body can only stitch so many samplers. They’ve got to do something with their days.”

  Doc didn’t smile. He was staring straight ahead, out towards the hot springs. “This is different. I can feel it.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be fine. We go to the meeting and we speak our piece. They’ll shake their Bibles and show off for each other, and everyone will go home and pat themselves on the back for having saved the town.”

  Doc grabbed the hand that was on his shoulder and held it. “You’re young, Jo. But I’m old. I’ve been run out of towns before. Was with the circus before I got into this game. Nothing on stage, just moving the animals around, though I guess I would make a pretty good bearded lady.” He stroked his beard and pretended to bat his eyelashes at Ilsa, who giggled as she passed him the glass of water. “But I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of an angry crowd; let’s just say that.” He took a long swig of his water and set the glass down.

  Jo didn’t feel young. She’d come to town with her father when she was just seventeen. No one knew what had sickened him, but the rumour was that Fraser Springs could cure what ailed any man. They’d come from Calgary and taken the train through the Crowsnest Pass, where she’d been dazzled by the greenery and the mountains, by the sheer height of everything. And then her father—no, she didn’t want to think of it. She’d married Albert, and he’d died less than a year into their marriage, and now she was the proprietress of the bathhouse that bore his name.

  “They’ve got no reason to run us out,” she said. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  A banging door reminded them both that customers would soon be wandering in for the noon meal, and Doc stood to go. Ilsa rushed to begin setting the tables. But before Doc left, he leaned in, his mouth set in a hard line. “Angry crowd don’t need a reason, Jo. Remember that.”

  Chapter 3

  Later that evening, inside his room at the ornate St. Alice Hotel, Owen breathed a sigh of relief. Despite the early stumble, he’d pulled it off. She couldn’t suspect a thing. Nice of his sorry excuse for a publisher to neglect to tell him that Joe Wilson was a she, and an attractive she at that! He put it out of his mind. Hard to find a woman attractive when you knew she was spiriting young girls away from their homes to work in sin.

  It didn’t take his investigative prowess to see that the St. Alice looked more like the front parlor of a brothel than Wilson’s. The windows were decked out in red velour curtains. The bed had a red velour coverlet and pillows with gold braid tassels. More velour and tassels on the tablecloth draped over the suggestively curving legs of the dressing table. The yards of heavy fabric seemed to suffocate him. Still, he stretched out on the four-poster bed, intending to take mental notes on his first encounter.

  Owen sat back up almost immediately. The mattress had entirely too much give for a man used to spending months at a time sleeping on the ground, and the sinking sensation was unpleasant.

  It didn’t feel right to use his publisher’s money for this ridiculous room, but every real journalist he knew had an expense account for investigative work. And besides, when he broke this story and those poor, trapped girls were returned to their families, the money would have been well spent. There would be a boost in his reputation as a writer, maybe even reprints in national magazines.

  Owen strode to the window, opened it, and took a breath of the humid, faintly sulfuric air. It was a welcome change from the room’s stuffy odour of beeswax and rosewater. No science aficionado worth his salt would believe that hot springs could heal, but the smell was at least bracing. It was an honest, unfussy, outdoors odour, and he liked it. Since coming to Vancouver in the spring of 1894, he’d been on many expeditions into the wilderness, gathering inspiration for his series of boys’ own adventure stories, but he’d never come so far up the coast.

  The sun was finally setting, and only a small sliver of moon would be out. Time to get some real work started in this investigation. It stood to reason that in a small town like this, most of the action at a brothel would happen under the cover of darkness. There was no time to waste. In a burst of renewed energy, he removed the three-piece suit and put on his own clothes: a round-collared shirt, sturdy slacks, and an old knit cardigan. He stuffed his notebook in his pocket.

  In the St. Alice’s marble-floored lobby, a group of fussily dressed ladies stood gossiping in a tight knot. He drifted near and pretended to inspect a basket of wax fruit sitting on a pedestal.

  “The McMillans are with us, as are the Waltons and the Drummonds. All the best families are fully committed,” one woman whispered.

  “Well, of course they are,” another woman cooed. “Who else are they going to side with? Mr. Stryker? That murdering temptress?”

  Could they mean Jo Wilson? Were the townsfolk finally taking matters into their own hands?

  “Where’s your husband anyhow? Didn’t you say he was coming?” asked a third.

  “Oh,” said the first one, waving the question away as she suddenly noticed Owen’s eavesdropping. “Working, I’m sure. There’s so much new business coming in that he probably lost track of time. Shall we begin with a Scripture reading in the parlour?”

  Not wanting to arouse suspicion, Owen headed outside into the cool air, following the creaking boardwalk that wound around the perimeter of the springs towards Wilson’s. Even in the dark, he could feel the warm mist coming off the water. Beyond, a few lights dotted the hillside —miners’ cabins, probably—but otherwise, it was oppressively dark. Owen went slowly to avoid falling off the boardwalk. You’d think the town would have sprung for some lamps along with the fancy hotel and the bank.

  Once he neared Wilson’s, he left the noisy boardwalk and slowly picked his way through the rocky outcroppings that led up to the building’s front porch. The plate glass window blazed with light, and a phonograph’s tinny music came from somewhere inside. Owen ducked along the side of the main house, hoping that the music would overpower the sound of gravel crunching beneath his
feet.

  Inside, he heard voices: two women, it sounded like. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, so he inched closer along the wall, avoiding the swath of light the window cut. Still, the music muffled their voices. Could he hear men? It was hard to tell ...

  “Stop right where you are,” came a voice behind him.

  He whirled around. Jo Wilson stood not three feet away, with an ancient hunting rifle at her shoulder.

  “Don’t shoot, Mrs. Wilson,” he blurted, holding up his hands. “It’s just me. I’m not armed.”

  “Wister. What are you doing sneaking around here? Hoping to peek at some girls undressing?” She took a step closer, and the rifle’s barrel was only a few inches from his chest.

  “Of course not! I got lost! I was trying to find my way back from the lake.”

  She lowered the rifle slightly. The lantern light added a bronze sheen to her auburn hair. Her grey eyes looked brighter in the light. Gun. Focus on the rifle, not the lady holding it.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The, uh, St. Alice.”

  Jo raised the gun again. “The St. Alice! If you’re staying in that marble monstrosity, what are you doing even taking treatments at my place? Why don’t you soak in their fancy baths? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m lost! And, besides, I was told your bathhouse is the best.” Luckily, the cover of darkness hid his blush. He couldn’t very well say he was a journalist, but he also didn’t enjoy implying that he was on the prowl for ladies of ill repute.

  Jo leaned towards him. “If you’re looking for the St. Alice, allow me to give you a hint. Just look for the only large structure within a hundred miles, with enough electric lights to be seen from the heavens. Literally the only bright thing in all these miles of darkness.” She swept her hand wide, gesturing over the rocks and the boardwalk towards the St. Alice. The hotel’s illuminated windows cast a wavering glow over the lake. She stared intently at him. “I’ve met men like you before, getting your little thrills by sneaking up on women. Peeping Toms.”

  “I am most certainly not a Peeping Tom! Good Lord, do you speak to all of your customers this way?”

  “Only the ones I find creeping around my property after hours.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve had a little too much to drink, and I was all turned around. I’m not used to this darkness. And I heard music: I thought you might be having a party.”

  “Ha! I know what kind of ‘party’ you were looking for. I told you before. We’re a respectable house. It’s just my staff and myself in there. Which you knew, because you were peeping through the windows.”

  “I wasn’t peeping! And could you please point that gun somewhere other than at my person? I’m not Jack the Ripper.”

  “How do I know that?”

  Slowly, he reached towards the barrel of the gun. She looked uncertain, but her finger moved off the trigger. He pushed the barrel to one side, moving slowly and deliberately, as if she were a wild creature he’d startled in its den. “Because I’m just lost. I wasn’t trying to do whatever it is you’re accusing me of doing. I got turned around. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, you’re new here,” she said, finally. “But don’t even so much as talk to my girls when you come in tomorrow.”

  Owen nodded, putting up both hands to show that he meant no harm. “Understood,” he said. He took a few steps backwards. “Have a good night, Mrs. Wilson. I’m sorry about the mix-up.”

  She didn’t respond. Confident that she was no longer going to shoot him, he turned tail and headed back for the safety of the boardwalk. Though he did not dare to look back, he could feel those grey eyes watching him in the dark.

  • • •

  Jo slammed the door behind her, startling Ilsa, who was still scrubbing potatoes for the morning breakfast as she swayed to the love song on the phonograph. Jo’s heart was beating so hard it made her limbs buzz.

  “Where did you run off to so fast?” Ilsa asked, wiping her forehead and leaving a smudge of dirt there. “And what are you doing with the gun?”

  Jo fixed the safety, propped the gun against the wall, and began pulling all of the curtains shut. “Just saying hello to our newest customer. I heard a noise and thought it was the Temperance Society come to deliver me one of their little love letters. I found Mr. Wister sneaking around, trying to spy on us”

  Ilsa came to help her. “What was he looking for?”

  “He said he was lost. How can you get lost looking for the St. Alice?”

  “He’s staying there? Why isn’t he getting his treatments at their place? And now to be prowling around here like the cat around hot porridge ...” Ilsa’s Scandinavian idioms came out at odd times.

  Jo steadied herself against the back of the chair. Maybe it was the looming town meeting, but the encounter with Mr. Wister had left her rattled. Perhaps he had been hired by the Temperance Society to spy on them. Or maybe he’d come slumming around her bathhouse to rid himself of unclean urges that he couldn’t indulge at the St. Alice. Even in the dim light of the lantern, she could tell that he’d been too calm by half for a disoriented city banker at the wrong end of a rifle.

  “I don’t know. It’s all very suspicious. Be careful tonight, Ilsa. If you hear anything, come get me.”

  Jo slept that night with the gun leaned against the foot of the bed, as she had in the first months after Albert’s passing. She heard everything acutely: the springs fizzling beneath her window, the pines rustling against one another, the dogs (or were they wolves?) howling in the mountains. If she could manage being orphaned at seventeen in a strange town, followed by a hasty marriage and the passing of her new husband—all within less than a year—and if she could somehow turn a profit on this tumbledown bathhouse in spite of women who spent their evenings praying for guidance on how best to ruin her ... Well, she and her girls could manage Ross Wister just fine.

  Chapter 4

  Burning with embarrassment, Owen could only trudge back the way he’d come in the darkness. Less than a day gone, and his investigation was already a shambles. Maybe he’d been deluding himself all along. Maybe all he was good for was writing stories about loyal huskies and their improbably heroic twelve-year-old owners.

  The quiet of Fraser Springs was broken by boisterous voices spilling out from a bathhouse built half on the shore of the hot springs and half on stilts jutting into the water. Three signs tacked onto the porch posts read Doc Stryker’s, Every Ailment and Complaint Cured, and All Are Welcome. Well, Owen surely needed a cure for everything right then.

  Inside, he was greeted with a blast of stale alcohol fumes. Cigar smoke mingled with wood smoke from a small stove burning at the back of the bar. Clustered around low tables, men dealt cards and argued, while a solid little man with a tidy white beard and tiny round glasses strolled between the tables, his two hands tapping on his belly like a king surveying his lands.

  Owen took a seat at the bar beside a young man wearing a neatly patched plaid coat.

  “Evenin’,” said the man, only barely glancing in his direction.

  “Evenin’,” Owen said, too tired to even begin to pull together the appropriate small talk. He waited for the man to strike up a conversation, but he remained hunched over his sketchbook.

  Owen drummed his fingers. “Drawing something?” he asked finally.

  The man’s obvious first instinct was to bring his arm protectively around his drawing, but he checked himself and showed Owen his sketch. “Just this fellow here.” He pointed to an upside-down whiskey glass on the bar. Owen leaned in and saw, underneath the glass, a small, gray, oblong creature trundling along in circles around the scarred wood of the bar top.

  “A pill bug?” The drawing was actually quite good. The man had taken great care shading the creature’s armour so that it looked almost mechanical.

  The man sighed. “Armadillidiidae. Or, more specifically, Armadillidium vulgare. Did you know that they’re actually crustaceans? Like lobsters?” He flipped over
the glass and nudged the little bug with the tip of his pencil. It rolled up into a ball. “Closest you get to lobsters up here.” The man had a faint, musically lilting accent. Danish or Swedish, for sure.

  “Are you some kind of naturalist?” Owen asked.

  “Naw, just a trapper.” He wiped his hand’s graphite smudges on his pants and extended it. “Nils Barson. This,” he gestured to the sketchbook, “is only a hobby. Got my hands on a few books when I was a boy, and I’ve been at it ever since. You’d be surprised, you know, about Fraser Springs. What with the mineral springs, you see every manner of creature.”

  “I bet,” Owen said. “I’m Ross Wister.”

  Despite Nils’s rugged attire, he had the pink cheeks and blond stubble of a younger man. His dark blond curls, which he’d made no effort to shear into a grown man’s haircut, made him look no older than twenty. “So not from around here, then. What brings you to Fraser Springs?” An argument flared up around a card game, and both men turned to look. Nothing serious. When Owen looked back at the bar, the pill bug had wandered off to parts unknown.

  “Doctor recommended a few weeks in the hot springs to cure some ills. Thought I’d relax, see the ... you know, sights.” He gave Nils a knowing leer to encourage the man on to the subject of Wilson’s Bathhouse and the sights one might find there.

  “A little time in the timber would do any man good,” Nils said, smoothing the edge of his drawing. “And the springs are nice. Can’t say they’ve ever cured me of anything, but they are restful.”

  The barkeep came by and Owen ordered a whiskey. “And one for my friend here,” he said. The barkeep poured two generous drinks from a ceramic jar and placed them in front of the men. Owen raised the drink to his lips. Little bits of sediment were suspended in the liquid. It tasted of moss and kerosene. The alcohol (what kind, he couldn’t say) burned down his throat and fanned into a warmth in his stomach, making a merciful start on scalding away this embarrassment of an evening.