Chapter Two
Louise had enough of this staring contest between the madam and the detective. Her notebook was filled with words but no story, and she had a deadline. "How are lace, a widow, and a dead husband connected to missing prostitutes? Detective Watts, do you think Madame Nika makes widows disappear? What about the thirty young women who disappeared in the last twelve months?"
She turned to Madame Nika, determined to shove the woman out of complacency. "And you! Several women have rooms here, and men come and go. My source tells me you run a brothel. The constabulary agrees. Isn't that right, Detective?"
Madame Nika remained calm, never rising to the bait. "Miss Cherry. Do you make rudeness a habit? Or do you merely employ it as a gambit? If so, it is tiresome. Regardless, it seems the truth is not an acceptable currency in Toronto."
Louise struggled to match the woman's composure. "Is it untrue that men come and go from here?"
Madame Nika stood, smoothing her skirts. "You have been talking to Mrs. Clark. Third house down on the right. She will also complain if I do not scrub the front steps daily, as she does."
She is right. I spoke with Mrs. Clark. Louise waited for more while Madame Nika regarded her. This interview was different than those she usually conducted. Sometimes she wheedled, blackmailed, ingratiated herself, or was demanding. She'd been known to flirt when necessary. This time, the interviewee was setting the pace. She felt her jaw clench. For once, Louise Cherry ran out of words.
"You did… not answer Miss Cherry's question," Detective Watts finally said.
Louise hated being rescued, but that question got Madame Nika's gaze off her. "Indeed, you did not," she blurted before getting hold of herself, balling her hand into a fist around her pencil. Why did this woman set my teeth on edge?
Madame Nika took a breath before answering. "Men do indeed come here, and women, for discreet help with their clothing."
Louise darted a look at Detective Watts. "Discretion? Your neighbor suggests you keep odd hours for a legitimate business."
"Not everyone has leisure hours during the day." Madame Nika's tone was dry.
"Is that all?" Louise forced herself to ask calmly. "I observed a man departing from here this morning. How do you explain that?"
"Herr Stein. My man-of-all-work. He lives over the carriage house. He will be back this afternoon."
Louise thought Madame Nika had a simple answer for everything. Too easy. She is trying to look like she is cooperating by volunteering extra information about Herr Stein. But is she? If I give her enough rope, maybe she'll hang herself.
"What service did you perform for Mrs. Russo regarding lace and a suit? And who performed this service? May we speak with them?"
Instead of answering Louise, the woman spoke to the detective. "Detective Watts, you require these details?" Madame Nika's voice was cool.
"They are…fair questions, Madame," he said, motioning with his hand.
Louise sighed. He's not much help. "Well?" she said, tapping her pencil.
"Senora Russo brought her husband's suit to be over-dyed to cover a stain. She wanted a piece of Burano lace repaired. We did both for her. She dropped the items off, picked them up, and paid when we finished."
"You take in laundry?"
"In my country, we say 'without work, there is no kalach'—no cake, Miss Cherry. Surely you understand that."
Louise sighed again. "And who is 'we'?"
"We offer the services of a ladies' maid or valet without the cost of servants. We do not advertise except by word of mouth, or recommendations from tailors and dress-makers when they cannot satisfy their customer's needs."
"That sounds exactly like code for… something illicit," Louise suggested. Soft noises came from the upper floors now.
Madame Nika's voice became ever more patient. "Six other ladies live here; two come in for days only. The nine of us work in a garment and textile business I organized with my partners, all recent immigrants to Canada with old-world skills. Herr Stein helps with heavy lifting and…well, ironing." She retrieved cards from the hallway and handed one to Louise and one to the detective. "Artisans clean, repair, alter, and refurbish—also over-dye, felt, make lace, embroider, tat, knit, crochet, and re-weave cloth. I design. And before you ask, this is an atelier, not a convent, and I am not running a boarding house… or a… how do you say? A bawdy house. I resent having to defend myself from gossip. If you wish to talk to the women who helped Signora Russo, meet the rest of the workers here, tour this house, or question them about their visitors, I can arrange that. But I will not have your presence interrupt our commerce, and I will not have my reputation sullied. Do we have an understanding?"
Louise examined the card, disappointment washing over her. It read: 'Baroness Fabricworks: L. S. C. & T. S.' "What do the initials stand for? Your names?"
"Unfortunately, that was Catarina's idea, not mine," Madame Nika said. "Original members."
Louise clapped the card in her notebook, her search for the missing girls at a dead end, meaning she wasted precious time. What story can I get from this? Nothing for today's edition and nothing for a new book.
She had gotten used to those royalties….
ooOO0OOoo-
Adrenaline tingled up Watts' spine, impressed with the ladies' verbal sparing. None of the exaggerated politeness and elliptical references of flighty females. He found it refreshing. Miss Cherry never once caught Madame Nika off guard. But that was what worried him. Madame Nika is too confident. He'd seen this gambit before: the suspect offers full access, expecting it to be declined because guilty people are supposed to be evasive. That line of inquiry dries up because the detective thinks it's a dead end. Watts was not so easily deceived. He wanted to prove this was a brothel.
"Ah… Madame Nika. I think I might just take you up on a quick tour." He observed her reaction: her lips thinned, but nothing more. Louise Cherry looked at him quizzically. "If Miss Cherry has other another engagement, we proceed even quicker."
Watts moved from the parlour toward the back of the house, where he assumed the dining room and kitchen were. His best hope was to catch someone unawares or something out of the ordinary, so pushing Madame Nika this way was his best option. Miss Cherry scrambled to his side, followed by a grim Madame Nika…
…Forty minutes later, he was back on the street with a dejected reporter packing her notebook into her satchel. Madame Nika had led the tour like a steamship plows the waves because she was expecting a customer. They explored every room, including working spaces from attic to basement, and dying vats in the carriage house. The top floor held a large skylight directly over a large work table where the ladies gathered. In all his life, he'd never seen so much yarn and fabric crammed into tidy piles. Madame Nika made rapid introductions to, and translations for, women who looked and sounded just like they claimed to be: garment workers and craftswomen who were confused and irritated by the intrusion or frightened because of their experiences with brutal authorities. Nothing illicit or odd about any of it. He even got an offer to tighten one of his buttons from a shy Hungarian girl who admired his jacket.
I will tell my clients there's nothing suspicious here. He'd even get to offer a chastisement for small-minded listening to unverified gossip, rehabilitating the reputations of their father and his wife in the process. That will feel good.
He checked his watch and settled his hat on his head, his thoughts drifting to a certain vendor cart in front of the York Hotel, arriving there twenty minutes. "Rev. William Wright once said that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. He was talking about Hittites."
"What now?" Miss Cherry stopped and turned back, a deep frown between her brows.
"Absence and evidence." Watts took in a lungful of air, then blew it out. "Not the only philosopher to explore this idea. Today, however, I think the evidence of our own eyes should satisfy."
"We found no evidence. Nothing. And who or what are Hittites?"
"Exactly." He curved one side of his mouth. "Be of good cheer, Miss Cherry. We were both mistaken. You came to prove something unsavoury was occurring, and I came to make sure nothing untoward happened. I was also mistaken about Madame Nika: her ability to remain calm comes from what she has endured, not from hiding anything."
"I suppose, detective," she said sadly, hooking a thumb toward the house. "But there is no story there. My editor won't be interested in a French fire or an Armenian massacre in Turkey fifteen or sixteen years ago, nor in a collection of women foreign-born who sew for a living. My readers do care about events in their lives now. I expect you to investigate and pass on any information regarding the list of young women I gave you. Not every one of them is a prostitute who deserves to be forgotten. In fact-"
"Disappointment to passion, Miss Yin-Yang."
"What?"
"Agreed, Miss Cherry. We shall form an alliance. Now, may I interest you in a nice, hot pretzel?"
ooOO0OOoo
"I can see you in that suit, Nika," Shusha cracked. All nine women stood in the front parlour, curtains pulled aside, staring down the street.
"Not the colourless schmatte," Amalie sniffed, her knitting needles clacking, a delicate white baby sweater growing under the command of her fingers. "Looks like French Foreign Legion. You want the green one."
"Yes. Trousers, a white shirt, suspenders, and a nice pair of brogues. I haven't decided about the hat." Nika laughed, visualizing herself strolling down an avenue in Prague in that get-up trying to avoid arrest for wearing men's clothing. She imagined defiantly explaining that they were not a man's clothes—they were hers. She waved at Mrs. Clark, who turned tail and slammed her door. Busybody, she said under her breath. One of her favourite English words for the idle. "At least those two are not coming back."
"What was that young man going on about? He thought we were paying off a debt with our labour? And, who is this Hart, Schaffner, and Marx?" Hedwig's raspy voice ended in a chuckle. "Karl Marx, I know."
"Those are factory owners, I believe. A garment worker's strike in the city of Chicago." Nika laughed again. "You nearly unmasked us when Detective Watts saw your book and wanted to discuss Schopenhauer, Heddy."
Thuma shot back, "Better than your chemistry books, Stasia."
The ladies giggled, even Hedwig laughed at herself for being too severe and tiresomely philosophical. Despite their laughing, Nika heard forced cheerfulness underneath. None of them like police, for oh, so many reasons. They like the press even less. Being considered a house of prostitution was bad for custom and will bring unwanted attention to them.
Amalie locked the front door without speaking, and Nika followed the ladies to the dining room where they arranged themselves around the table. Stasia fixed a second pot of water for tea while they waited for Nika to decide their next
move.
Nika stirred sugar in her cup. "This was, as the English say, a narrow escape," she said. "Good thing embalmers use arsenic, and Signora Russo embalmed her husband and sent him to Sicily to rest with his mama. What unfinished work have we?"
She listened and nodded as the ladies listed about two dozen fabric items in various stages of completion, not including a wedding dress and veil all nine had worked on for months. "So, perhaps six days' work if we keep at it? And our other contracts?"
"I am nearly done with pin-tucking and stitching the chemises for our cigar-smoking, high-hatted friend," Shusha said. "Amalie will double check the code is correct. I expect to be done by Friday, as ordered."
"And I have only six inches to go on the sweater. You can check me. I will package it with Shusha's and take it to the drop," Amalie said. "Please warn him not to smoke around the fabric because he will make it stink!"
Nika smiled and nodded, sipping her hot tea, the thin, translucent porcelain giving her fingers no protection from the heat. "Any special orders?"
"Only one," Stasia said. "A leather wallet, key fob, and matching watch fob. It is soaking in the carriage house as we speak. That detective never bothered to check what the green dye was made of. I guarantee it will work because the target constantly puts things in his mouth and chews on them. Disgusting habit." She made a face for emphasis.
"No other side requests, like Signora Russo?"
Head shakes from around the table.
Catarina said, "Do we have to leave?"
Nika met each woman's gaze. These women were fierce, their faces set for battle, and she loved them.
"I think so. We were never going to make Toronto our home. Despite recruiting us, I don't trust Mr. Meyers to protect us or leave us at our liberty. I think we go to America and do some business in Buffalo before moving on." Nika got nods, some eager, some reluctant, from her compatriots. "We are agreed. We will close up shop in a week. I will tell the rental agent. Each of you dispose of extraneous materials—Stasia and Hedwig, be careful of the chemicals; remember what happened in Berlin? You know how we do this. We will leave separately and reconnect in Buffalo when you see a notice in the papers."
As the ladies filed out of the dining room, Nika sat with her tea. She pulled one of the business cards from her pocket and smiled at Catarina's little joke:
Baroness Fabricwork L. S. C. & T. S.
—Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society-
-END-
A/N: I am responsible for the content of this vignette, because a writer uses their imagination and draws in from every experience to flesh out a story, never knowing from where the next inspiration will surface. AND, back in the day, there were T shirts with that logo on them and it was a JOKE, not a threat of actual violence, but a statement of the power of women to overturn the world if they wished, that women who knitted and quilted and worked together in 'women's work, did more than drudge work, and knew the power of working collectively.
I occasionally write to order & I asked Joanna Syrokomla, MM's fabulous costume designer, if she could appears as a character in the series, what might that be and with whom would she like to shoot a scene? She wanted Watts to be in it, and either Miss Cherry or Nina Bloom & she mentioned it would be neat if somehow there was something about fabric... I have been working on this since last November. I knew where I wanted it to start & where I wanted it to end, writing one with Nina (as a friend of Nika) first and then abandoning it in favor of Miss Cherry for some sandpaper between the characters.