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PERCHED ON A BLUFF above downtown Duluth, Cascade Park was awash with ladies attired in white and cream and the pastel colors of summer. Wide-brimmed hats decorated with silk flowers nodded this way and that. Gentlemen stood in clumps, talking and smoking cigars. Children dashed here and there. Off in a corner of the park, a small brass band tootled away on a medley of patriotic tunes.
Mary MacDougall walked around the freestanding stage in the center of the park for one final inspection. She had paid for it to be built. And in a few minutes it would become the focus of attention for all those who had come to enjoy the Ladies’ Guild 1902 Decoration Day festivities. Glancing out into the crowd, Mary was trying to make a rough count of the gathering audience when a baritone voice interrupted her tally.
“Miss MacDougall, good morning. Lovely day for a celebration.”
She turned to regard the ruggedly attractive, brown-haired, brown-eyed gentleman standing there, in his brown suit and brown fedora.
“Detective Sauer!” She beamed at him. “So nice to see you. And it is indeed a lovely day.”
Mary hadn’t talked with the detective for a number of weeks, not since her last visit to police headquarters. After helping him recover a stolen sapphire six months ago, she had occasionally imposed upon him to answer her questions about the craft of detecting. He had even entrusted her with a small assignment earlier in the spring. She had sat for stretches of several hours in a restaurant, watching out the window and writing down the comings and goings from a certain address across the street.
“Are you here on business?” she asked eagerly. “Is some malefactor on the loose?”
The detective gave her a wry look. “I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not on the hunt for any villains. And this crowd,” he said, nodding at several white-bearded veterans in wheelchairs, “doesn’t look to be very troublesome.”
“Have you been working on any interesting cases? Anything I could help with?” It was Mary’s improbable dream to become a consulting detective. She didn’t want to be a pest, but she was ever hopeful that the detective would have something for her.
“Nothing, I think, that requires an inquisitive young lady. How about you? Have you done any sleuthing lately?”
“None at all.” She frowned. “Everyone I know is perfectly well behaved. It’s all very boring. The only thing I’ve been working on is the construction of this new stage for the tableaux vivants.”
“Been up there hammering and nailing, have you?”
Mary laughed. “My carpentry skills leave much to be desired. But I was in charge of building it and you can be quite sure that stage is solid as a rock. We wouldn’t want any accidents, with all those people up there posing for our scenes.”
“As a matter of fact, that’s the very reason I’ve stopped by. I enjoy seeing the tableaux vivants each year. They’re quite a spectacle.”
The tableaux vivants—exact reproductions of famous historical scenes, portrayed by real people—were the highlight of the Decoration Day celebration. And this year Mary had a special interest in these living images.
“Be sure to pay particular attention to Lady Justice,” she said proudly. “She’s my Aunt Christena, filling in for the first Lady Justice, who took ill at the last moment.”
“I will indeed do that. After all, in a sense, I work for Lady Justice, don’t I?” Detective Sauer paused as a troop of jabbering school children marched by, each with a little version of Old Glory in hand. “Does your aunt live in Duluth?” he said, turning his attention back to Mary.
“No, she’s visiting from Pittsburgh. She and I are heading off to Mackinac Island soon, for a few weeks at the Grand Hotel. We’ll be hiking and biking and playing tennis and going to parties—all the usual stuff one does on summer holiday.”
“Not the usual stuff of my summer holiday,” the detective sniffed. “I go fishing with my brother. Our accommodations are an army tent pitched on the dirt.”
Mary smiled at his reply. Over the last half year, she had come to enjoy the detective’s company and found his droll observations quite amusing.
Detective Sauer went silent for a moment, then cocked his head. “You say you’re going to Mackinac Island? You’ll be taking the train through the eastern part of Upper Michigan, I’d imagine.”
“It cannot be avoided,” Mary noted, “if one means to travel to the island.”
The detective appeared to be mulling something over. Finally he spoke. “If you have some time during your journey, Miss MacDougall, I may have a lead for you on a case there.”
A thrill of anticipation coursed through Mary’s body. A case! What did Detective Sauer have in mind?
He started to explain. “A young lady stopped by my rooming house recently and—”
“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please,” bellowed a rather large and formidable lady from the stage above them. “The time has arrived for the sixth edition of the Ladies’ Guild Decoration Day tableaux vivants. Please do take your seats.”
It was Mrs. Mason, president of the Ladies’ Guild, who had come out and stood in front of the stage’s curtain.
“Better go grab a chair,” Detective Sauer said. “We can talk about the matter after the show.”
Mary didn’t have a chance to say another word before the detective scooted off. But her head was spinning.
A real investigation! And Detective Sauer thought she was capable enough to look into it.
She dashed off to join her father and their housekeeper, Emma Beach, in the third row of seats back from the stage. Up front, Mrs. Mason droned on about the good works being done by the Guild.
“And how is Detective Sauer?” asked John MacDougall in his mild Scotch burr. “You and he seemed to be having a lively conversation.”
“Quite well,” Mary whispered. “We were just exchanging pleasantries.”
It wouldn’t do to say anything about a potential case in Michigan. Mary’s widowed father frowned upon her unorthodox aspiration to become a detective. It was simply not an appropriate choice, he had told her, for a young lady of her class. Mary knew he hoped that marriage to a sensible young businessman would be in her immediate future.
Mary, however, had no desire to see “Mrs.” affixed to her name. She had no desire to cede her rights to any man, even a good and well-intentioned one. She had no desire to cloud her mind with the narcotic effects of infatuation. She wanted first and foremost to have her independence.
But then there was Edmond Roy.
Mary couldn’t quite decide how to describe her association with him. The word “friendship” just seemed inadequate. But anything stronger than that carried a hint of commitment. Still, she knew her connection with Edmond was something special, and she was determined to carry it forward. But to what end? It was so hard for her to say.
From the stage, Mrs. Mason’s stentorian oration crescendoed. “Now, my friends, watch as history comes alive right before your eyes.”
A teenaged girl with straw-colored hair cascading down her back marched out from between the curtains, carrying a large cardboard placard. She held it up to the audience and loudly repeated the words inscribed on it.
“Abraham Lincoln and the Signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.”
The girl darted back out of sight and the fancy brocade fabric began to divide. The audience erupted in ooohs and aaahs as the scene was revealed.
There, seated at a small oak desk, was a lanky, bearded gentleman in an old-fashioned black frock coat. He was the spitting image of Honest Abe. Frozen in place, he peered down at the document on his desk, a steel pen held in his hand, poised above the paper, ready to inscribe his signature. Arrayed behind him stood half a dozen men in old-fashioned coats, regarding the “president” with studied soberness. They, too, held perfectly motionless. They may as well have been caught in amber.
After about thirty seconds, the curtain trundled shut. The audience burst into exuberant applause.
“Superb!” John MacDougall exclaimed to his daughter. “How do they hold so still?”
“They’ve been rehearsing for weeks,” Mary answered. “It’s just a matter of practice and good breath control. Now it’s Tena’s turn.”
“That girl was always one to help out in a pinch,” her father said approvingly. “My very favorite sister.”
“Your only sister,” Emma Beach pointed out. It was an old and tired joke, but Mary’s father enjoyed repeating it.
A terrific good sport, Christena MacDougall had agreed at the last minute to fill in for the ailing Mrs. Halliwell, who was to have portrayed Lady Justice, the Roman goddess. It was presumed that, as a sometime actress upon the amateur stage, Christena would project a vivid presence.
Several minutes later the blonde girl reappeared. She held up a new placard, and turned it around so everyone could see.
“Lady Justice,” she announced, then quickly retreated.
The curtains parted again and there, center stage, stood Christena, tall and regal, in her green Roman gown and wig, with a green blindfold across her eyes. Every inch of her skin was green, as well. The effect was supposed to be that of a weathered, copper-clad statue. In her right hand she held a sword by its grip, pointed down. In her left was a scale. She seemed the very embodiment of the goddess.
Mary thought she could detect a hint of a tremor in her aunt’s right arm. And who could blame Christena? That sword looked awfully heavy.
“Lady Justice,” though, stood proudly and, for the most part, firmly in her half minute in the spotlight.
The curtain closed and the crowd clapped its approval.
Following Christena came Rembrandt’s “Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer” and “Betsy Ross Sewing the First American Flag.” Both elicited much applause and robust shouts of approbation. But Mary hardly noticed Aristotle and Mrs. Ross, her mind being on her upcoming holiday off in Michigan.
The prospect of a real case to work on en route was quite delightfully unexpected. She was dying to know the details. What was the client’s problem? Was it a domestic matter? Or something to do with a business? Why would a woman in Duluth need to find out about some doings hundreds of miles to the east?
Even more exciting, the train Mary and Christena would be traveling on went right through the town of Ishpeming. And in Ishpeming, the handsome Edmond Roy was busily painting a large mural in a bank. Edmond, with whom she had corresponded since January, was expecting Mary and her aunt for a brief stay.
With any luck, Mary and Edmond would find themselves alone. And he would pull her close and kiss her again, as he had back in December. It was a memory that she had savored countless times since.
The rousing applause for Mrs. Ross and her flag brought Mary back to the here and now, just in time for the afternoon’s final and most dramatic tableau.
The blonde girl came out front and lifted up her placard. “In honor of Decoration Day and our brave men of the Grand Army of the Republic,” she announced, “we present ‘The Charge of the First Minnesota Regiment at Gettysburg.’”
The crowd went silent and serious at the gravity of the event they were about to witness. The curtains parted.
When she saw the dozen or so men in blue uniforms, arrayed in an arrowhead formation with their bayonet-tipped muskets and sabers, Mary’s eyes teared up. The power of the scene was incredible.
The men’s faces were dappled with gun soot, their expressions grim, their postures suggestive of headlong movement. Old Glory was held high among them.
Then it was over, almost before it began. The curtains rolled shut and the audience erupted once again in applause.
As the band struck up a Sousa march, the crowd began to disperse. John MacDougall and Emma Beach left for the big house on Superior Street, where they would be hosting a Decoration Day dinner. While Mary waited for her aunt to reappear from backstage, she scanned the crowd for Detective Sauer’s distinctive brown fedora. He seemed to have vanished, but her disappointment was short-lived, as he emerged from a scrum of men at the far end of the park, making his way toward her through the now-empty folding chairs.
“I don’t have much time to chat, Miss MacDougall,” the detective said. “But I can tell you that the young lady has the idea her mother died in unusual circumstances when she was traveling in Upper Michigan. Personally, I don’t give her suspicions much credence. I think the daughter is overwrought. She just needs someone to set her mind at rest. Someone to go ask a few tactful questions on her behalf. And I thought that perhaps you could...”
“Oh, yes!” Mary exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “I would love to help her.”
“Well, don’t get too excited. This is undoubtedly some innocent matter that merely requires reassuring the client. Now, if you’ll drop in at headquarters Monday afternoon at, say, about two, I’ll tell you what I know about the mother’s death. And you can decide then whether you’re interested.”
“Is there any chance at all that it might have been foul play?” Mary blurted. She couldn’t help herself.
The detective shot her an exasperated look.
“I get the impression that you hope so,” he said. “Well, you can get that idea out of your head, Miss MacDougall. Really, now, do you think I’d send a young lady of nineteen off to investigate a possible murder?”
