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RILEY FINCH STOOD ALONE in a windowless room, surrounded by long-neglected files. Dust and cool air tickled the back of her throat as she swept her gaze down rows of stacked boxes. She knew the papers waiting within them were a mess. But Riley was undaunted by the task of organizing and scanning the pages. Instead, she relished the energy she felt as the Vancouver History Museum’s newest archivist. She had the opportunity to give forgotten tales another life.
She moved deeper into the rows, running her finger through thickening layers of dust as she walked, stopping before a pile of boxes leaning against the back wall. She sighed; the bottom box had crumpled from the weight of the others in the stack. Rescuing these documents was a good place to start the day.
Riley’s gloved fingers tingled in anticipation as she reached for the top box on the pile. Many found the work tedious, but these were her first weeks as a full-time researcher. She was lowest in the pecking order and expected the less popular tasks. She didn’t mind them, especially when they allowed her to explore old documents.
“Let’s see what we can do with you,” she said as she set the box on a trolley. A wheel protested as she navigated crowded aisles toward a work counter near the front of the archive room. Here she would scan and catalogue the documents. “Whose stories are you waiting to tell?” Riley patted the box.
Her boss, Claire Cale, had asked Riley to look out for interesting records to include in the upcoming exhibit on policing in the city’s early years. Perhaps the box’s contents contained information about someone like the con man Claire had mentioned: he’d harnessed late nineteenth-century citizens’ eagerness to develop new neighbourhoods by selling the same properties—which he did not own—to multiple buyers.
Riley removed the lid, shivering as she set it down. She stood still, letting the spirits of the people named within the files and books settle with the dust. The box was among several discovered during preparations to move the police force into a larger building. She tutted at the thought of the new apartment tower—sold by a modern-day con man—that would soon replace the old headquarters.
Pages and folders fluttered against Riley’s fingertips as she ran her gloved hand inside the box. She paused at the spine of the first book, tugging at its corner to stand it in place. The inventory, created by someone long ago, listed two books for this box, yet it contained three. She sighed. Maybe the inventory wouldn’t be as reliable as she’d hoped.
Riley eased the books from the box. The smooth, blank cover of the one that caught her eye shone beside the dull, cracked leather of the others. She flipped the book over, inspecting the spine, finding it free of the cracks she liked to trace with her finger, as though mapping a book’s journey to her. She brought it to her nose and inhaled deeply, setting it down to do the same with another book. She picked up the first book and sniffed again.
Different eras.
Forgotten by the person who moved them to the museum? The nameplate on the first page identified the book as belonging to Jack M. Winston, 1897. Heart rate quickening, she closed the book, reopened it. The script looked consistent with the period. Was someone playing a prank on the new archivist? Her colleagues could mimic the detail with little effort.
As she thumbed through the first pages of what appeared to be a journal, the spidery script reminded her of the first handwriting from another era that she had seen as a girl. While playing in the basement, she had searched through an old suitcase near the dress-up trunk to see if it held any more of her grandmother’s old hats. It didn’t. But tucked within it were postcards her great-grandfather had sent home during the First World War. The delicately embroidered floral designs on the front of the cards and the faded script on the back begged to be displayed. After a week, Riley’s mother had finally agreed to let her arrange the cards. That first experience with caring for old documents fuelled her passion for connecting to history.
Riley returned her focus to the book in front of her, rubbing the corner of a page between her thumb and index finger. The gloves dulled her fingertips; she checked she was alone and removed one. She closed her eyes and rubbed the corner again, then replaced the glove. The paper within the book was new, not brittle with age.
Whoever had played this prank spent considerable time preparing it, but why? Riley looked at her watch. With two hours before she and Claire were to meet, she could spare a few minutes before returning to cataloguing. She pulled a high stool from behind the counter and sat, resting the journal on her lap.
April 3 ’97
Without doubt, today was the most frustrating one in several weeks. A man has vanished. Each question I ask yields two more. He is from a prominent local family, so I am under pressure to find him, not the least from his mother, who misses her son. And yet I am working with no one to help me as I search for him, and for answers.
She skimmed several pages of observations about this case and other crimes in the city—mostly thefts and fights—stopping at the short, final entry.
Continued from May 10 ’97
The chief has agreed to give me a constable to aid in my efforts to find H.
Hadn’t there been a station logbook in a box she’d already sorted? Riley opened the database she’d been building to document her work. There, in box eighteen. Constabulary Logbook 1897.
She retrieved the box from the shelf and set it on the floor. As she pulled out the logbook, she welcomed its dusty scent, stronger because of its contrast to the journal she’d just found. The logbook’s yellowing pages contained rows of entries detailing each request for police services the station received. She found two entries for the first of April—a report of pickpockets operating on Water Street, a few blocks from the police station, and a reference to Mrs. Huntington, of Vancouver’s West End, reporting her son’s disappearance.
Riley moved down the page. Mrs. Huntington—update appeared on several lines, each time with Winston’s name in the “assigned” column. Riley glanced behind her, though she knew she was alone. How long had her pranksters spent on this? How had they left the dust undisturbed when they’d added the journal to the box?
Back at the work desk, she set the journal in front of her, running her hand down the unblemished spine. If the journal wasn’t a prank, the personal writings of one of the force’s early detectives could add personality to Claire’s exhibit. She removed her gloves, dug out a pencil from beneath her ponytail elastic, and reached for a small notepad. She paused, then pushed it away again; though she preferred taking notes by hand, Claire had been clear about wanting everything logged in the computer system. Riley slid the pencil back into her hair.
After she finished cataloguing and scanning the remaining documents from the box, she placed them in a new one on the trolley, leaving the journal out. She pushed the trolley through the archive’s centre aisle, glancing down each row of cabinets and shelves as she passed. When she reached the final row of mobile shelves, she tugged the crank, confirming that the last person in the archive had locked it. Despite her many hours spent in archives, mobile shelves still terrified her; she tried to spend as little time as possible between them. She couldn’t set aside the urban legend about a squished archivist.
CATALOGUING RECORDS was like a puzzle, only Riley didn’t have a picture on the back of the box to work from. Working to fit pieces from the case notes in order, she looked for a theme to emerge from the records. She finished the next box from the tower, noting a string of thefts reported by mining-supply shops in Gastown, one of the city’s earliest neighbourhoods and home to the museum.
With twenty minutes until she had to meet Claire, she let her thoughts return to the journal. Where had it come from? Who had placed it in the box? Giving in to its pull, she reopened it, fanning the pages. On the last page of entries, about midway through the book, the final sentence stood out; had she missed it the first time in the excitement of discovery?
My new constable asks many questions. He has little experience but possesses much enthusiasm for investigation, a trait we share, though I can’t tell him how little investigative experience I have. We will work well, I trust.
Riley flipped back a few pages to read some earlier entries, then stared at the notations on the page and the pencil in her gloved hand. When had she removed it from her hair? Her mouth went dry. She dropped the offending pencil and peeled the gloves from her fingers, wiping her palms on her jeans. A quick check of her watch confirmed that too little time remained to erase the marks before seeing Claire.
Sweat dampened Riley’s armpits as her thoughts scrambled: what should she do about the markings in the book? Her meeting was now minutes away. She could just tuck the journal back into the box, but the marks would haunt her. The alternative, confessing to altering documents in her care during her first week working on a project, would ensure her first days were also her last.
Her breath caught in her throat. What about removing the marks? She had done well on a restoration project in university; with time she could restore the journal. Since it wasn’t in the inventory, it was unlikely, if not impossible, anyone would notice the journal was gone. Claire had said that before Riley started, nobody had looked closely at the files since their arrival at the museum. Why would someone look at them today? And how would that someone know a book not listed in the inventory was missing? Her breathing calmed. She would take the journal home, restore the page, and return the book without anyone noticing.
Not a great choice, but given the rules she’d already broken by writing in the journal, taking it home for the night to remove the markings would be safest. As though smuggling a copy of the Magna Carta, Riley slipped the journal into her backpack and slung the bag over her shoulder. She looked back to ensure she had left everything in order. Were anyone else in the archive, they would not have heard her whisper an apology as she shut the door.