A Singular and Whimsical Problem Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’d hoped different.”
    â€œAnd how did you come to be arrested?” Merinda’s eyebrows were furrowed, curious.
    â€œI was waiting for him,” Jenny said simply. “We were supposed to talk about the baby—what we’d do when it was born. He was late arriving, and it was getting cold. I was just thinking I ought to go home, go inside, when one of those Morality Squad fellows showed up.”
    Merinda gave a low growl from between her teeth.
    â€œI told him I was waiting for Frederick,” Jenny continued. “And he said Frederick wouldn’t be coming. That Frederick had reported me to the Morality Squad… for loose morals, or something like that. As if he hadn’t done his part to put me in this mess!” Her eyes were bright with tears, and I passed her my handkerchief. “Next thing I know I’m being sentenced to this place. No job, no beau, no hope of what to do after… after my time comes.”
    â€œIs there anything else at all we should know?” asked Merinda before Jenny could descend further into her sniffles.
    Jenny furrowed her brow, concentrating. “Well, there’s the sneezing.”
    â€œPardon me?” I said.
    â€œWhenever Mr. Walters came into the tea shop, some of the girls would start to sneeze.”
    The matron standing at the door harrumphed, signaling the end of our conversation. Merinda and I thanked Jenny and wished her well, promising to pursue her case further.
    As we neared the door and the promised sunshine (which, after a brief sojourn to St. Jerome’s, I vowed to never take for granted again), Merinda set her face in intense determination.
    â€œSneezing is an interesting development,” she offered.
    â€œIs it?”
    â€œYes.”
    All of a sudden, we were met by a familiar figure and face. Melanie LaCroix was hoisting a basket of bleached laundry.
    She looked so hopeless.
    â€œMerinda, we have to help her too.” We watched her move wearily away.
    Merinda nodded. “I know. I certainly don’t believe she stole so much as a biscuit from her employer. I telephoned DeLuca to ask about her case and told him to get me more details.”
    â€œWhat did he say?”
    â€œThat he’d basically handed it to me on a platter.” She grimaced. “The case bears further investigation.”
    â€œAre we going to ask the secretary about Jeannette?”
    â€œNo point. I doubt Martha Kingston was lying when she said she got nothing out of these people.”
    â€œSo we’re leaving?”
    â€œNonsense. We haven’t gotten nearly enough. Martha didn’t know that the best place to look is far from the files.”
    I followed Merinda as she snuck down a corridor and creaked open a wrought-iron gate that slid loudly over checkered regulation tiles.
    The dormitories. Where women plucked from the streets were shoved away. Though the only bars were on the windows, there was something so institutional and cruel about the lines of beds made with sharp creases and tucks, the pillows flat against the bleached sheets.Small cases and trunks sat beneath each iron bedframe, and it was here that Merinda and I caught a whiff of personality and color.
    None of the trunks were locked. We looked around before selecting one and lifting its latch. Inside was a wreath of dried flowers and a few childhood books, a few pictures—one of tousle-haired children, another of a young man with a clerical collar. A Bible. A pair of stockings. Papier poudre sheets.
    â€œOdd that they let this stuff in,” Merinda snuffed. I was of the same opinion. As much as I was delighted—if somewhat saddened—at these tokens of femininity in the midst of this dreary gray, my impression was that the matron would be caught dead before allowing these girls to have personal possessions.
    We moved along, peeking in and around, fluttering our hands through the contents of the trunks but leaving everything