Chapter 6 #2
“—torn at great force.” The doctor had moved her glass to the aforementioned spot.
“Yes, I agree. That possibility that it was ripped from being tangled with the post seems unlikely to me, as that rip is here, on the other side of her hems. Well, that gives us a definite suspicion of foul play, I should think. Of a malefactor or malefactors, at this point unknown, having at the poor girl. Whom I still do not in the least recognize—I think I should remember such Titian hair. Always wanted auburn hair as a girl. Still do if I’m honest. But that is neither here nor there. ”
Dr. Barker paused to listen to the sound of a key being turned in the lock. “I latched that so we wouldn’t be disturbed.”
“Emilie?”
“Julia? We’re in here,” Dr. Barker called to President Irvine, who led in a pair of rather unprepossessing men in worn wool jackets and faded plus fours, who looked as if they had come in to fix the plumbing.
“The watchmen from the town are here. Mr. Driscoll and Mr. Worthington.” President Irvine introduced them in turn.
“Dr. Emilie Barker, our resident physician, and one of our more accomplished undergraduates, Miss Marigold Manners, who has been assisting the doctor in the difficult duty of examining the body.”
Marigold watched the watchmen’s faces change when they realized that the table before them contained a dead young woman. They swallowed and belatedly doffed their hats.
“Drowned in the lake, was she?” the taller of the two posited.
Dr. Barker looked pained but prepared, as if she had anticipated just such an assertion.
“That is to be determined by an autopsy conducted by the coroner’s office.
But it is my professional opinion as a medical doctor that the young woman did not drown—or if she did drown, it was due to injuries she received from person or persons unknown before her body was put into the lake. ”
“I was told she drowned.” The tall fellow, Driscoll, looked to President Irvine, who had obviously tried her best to brief the men before she brought them in.
“As I said in the note I sent to the town hall requesting your presence,” the president explained in a patient tone, “the young woman was found in the lake—by our Miss Manners here, to whom we are most obliged. That is why I requested she remain here to make herself available to any questions you might have.”
The men looked at Marigold as if she were a strange species of insect they had never encountered. “You’ll want to get out of those wet things,” Driscoll finally commented in his nasal New England drawl, “afore you catch yourself pee-newmonia.”
Dr. Barker spoke before Marigold was required to answer. “Pneumonia is caused by the bacterium Streptococcus pneumonia. Merely getting wet will not cause Miss Manners to contract the disease. I have—”
“My cousin caught it after falling in the creek over to Newton Falls,” the shorter of the two fellows averred. “Water in his lungs gave him the pee-newmonia. Right near died of it.”
“Thank you for your advice, Mr. Worthington.” Marigold interrupted this recitation of woe. “Which I will take as soon as I am able. But in the meantime, we have a young woman who has already died—of injuries which Dr. Barker has catalogued.”
“All righty then.” Driscoll nodded his agreement, but then neither said nor did anything else to the point.
President Irvine shared a look with Dr. Barker, which Marigold would only characterize as a moment of silent, put-upon female communication, before the doctor took her turn to try and explain.
“The evidence before us suggests that the young woman has been strangled, as you can see from the bruising around her neck.” Dr. Barker moved to the table and pared back the poor thing’s clothing to show the lurid purple marks.
“She was either killed before she was put into the water, or she fell into the water in unconsciousness as a result of the strangulation.”
The watchmen stared at her—in stupidity or incomprehension, Marigold could not tell.
“She was strangled.” Dr. Barker spoke again, quietly but plainly. “She was killed.”
Driscoll gaped at her. “You mean like … murdered?”
Dr. Barker nodded. “I mean quite exactly murdered.”
After another very long, very painful silence, the man Driscoll finally said. “I don’t know what you expect us to be able to do about that.”
The three women exchanged speaking glances, and once again, Marigold was reminded what it was to be with women who were not only her equals but also superior in intellect, understanding, and experience.
President Irvine calmly took up the directorial reins. “We should like you to investigate the cause and circumstances of her death.”
Worthington gaped. “Us?”
“Look, lady, ma’am,” Driscoll stammered. “We’re just the watchmen, meant to keep the peace. Keep people from moving their dairy herds into other people’s fields. And keep old man Crutcher from letting his dogs get loose to get into Martin’s chicken coops.”
“Or keep Dewey Smalls from making a nuisance of himself around town when he gets too far into the drink,” added Worthington.
“That sort of thing.” Driscoll spread his hands in his earnestness. “We’ve no idea about … Well, the sort of thing you’re talking about.”
President Irvine clasped her hands together in a gesture Marigold knew to be one of mounting frustration. “Then, gentlemen,” she asked precisely, “to whom in authority must we appeal? If the town of Wellesley does not have someone prepared to thoroughly investigate this murder, then who does?”
Driscoll shrugged uncomfortably. “Dunno. Maybe the county. Maybe the district fellows in Boston?”
Marigold interjected what she hoped was a logical train of thought. “If you are not prepared to investigate the young woman’s murder, perhaps you might be able, at the very least, to help to identify her?”
“What does that mean?” Driscoll stepped forward briefly before he stepped back. “Do you mean that you don’t know who she is?”
“Yes,” Marigold answered. “None of the people thus far involved in recovering her from the water recognize her or know who she is.”
Mr. Driscoll reached for the lowest hanging fruit. “One of your students, ain’t she? Bound to be.”
“Very possible,” President Irvine conceded. “But that has yet to be determined. Our campus is not strictly fenced off, or forbidden to the townspeople or visitors, as much as we try to regulate the flow—”
“Well, that’s for you to do, surely,” Driscoll grew more positive. “Not us.”
“Yes,” President Irvine was as patient and polite as her position demanded, but Marigold could hear the sharpening edge in her voice.
“We will certainly take account of all our students as soon as may be. But while we are doing that, we should like to know who amongst the authorities of Wellesley town or Norfolk County—or even the Commonwealth of Massachusetts—will be investigating her murder?”
“I can’t like that you keep saying that—murder,” Worthington muttered.
“I can’t like witnessing it.” Marigold’s own patience in the face of their lack of urgency, or even some sense of responsibility, was wearing decidedly thin. “If the evidence before our eyes is of murder, then murder we must say. Using some other word won’t make her any less strangled.”
President Irvine tried to reimpose calm.
“What Miss Manners means, gentlemen, is that someone—someone who might be abroad on our campus, or in the town, at this very moment—killed this young woman, for reasons we cannot yet comprehend. But until we find that person and find out why this was done, we—all of us at Wellesley College and in the town of Wellesley beyond—are in danger.”
Driscoll looked nonplussed. “How do you figure that?”
“If you ask me,” Worthington opined, “young girl, likely seeing some man like that—bound to come to a bad end.”
“Yup.” Driscoll nodded. “It’s bound to be that she got herself in a bad way.”
Marigold’s sense of outrage rose like a wave within her.
“First of all, we have no way of knowing anything about the circumstances of her death, other than the fact that she was strangled. She might have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time—perhaps she saw something or witnessed some crime that had nothing to do with her. And secondly—” Her voice rose to match her outrage.
“If you mean to suggest that this young woman might have been impregnated by someone whom she was seeing romantically, then that would not be an excuse to let her be strangled but would instead be strong evidence of a motive to murder!”
“Indeed,” Dr. Barker chimed in. “Young—and even older—women are particularly vulnerable to violence when disclosing their pregnancies to their romantic partners. So you see why a coroner’s examination is necessary as an aid to a thorough investigation into this young woman’s death?”
“By jeezum,” Driscoll said, as if he could not see anything so obvious.
“Tell you what—we’ll send over to Dedham to the county for your coroner, if you’ll get to figuring out if the girl’s your student.
” He hitched up his pants in a gesture of finality.
“Then we can worry about romantical partners and murder or not.”
President Irvine looked her question to Dr. Barker, who nodded. “That seems a sensible path to initiate an investigation.” She nodded to the men. “We’re agreed.”
“All righty.” Driscoll jammed his hat back on his head. “Likely ’bout the only thing we’re going to agree upon. Because it won’t be murder.”
Marigold could no longer hide her disdain. Or her outrage. “Mark my words, gentlemen. Her death will be thoroughly investigated.” Her chin went up in what she was self-observant enough to recognize as a gesture of defiance. “See if it isn’t.”