Chapter 10
“Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot get on without it any more than we can without potatoes.”
Louisa May Alcott
As soon as luncheon was finished, Marigold returned to her prior intent. “Aggie,” she spoke to her young friend before she might depart. “Would you mind showing me your hat?”
“My fancy tam? Certainly.”
They walked to Aggie’s room, where she dutifully fetched the flamboyant blue chapeau.
It looked much the same as the one Marigold had fished out of Lake Waban—the velvet was plush and new, the feathers sewn in an artfully arranged cluster around a gleaming pin. But this one was a bright gold, while the other had been a somewhat dimmer silver.
“Is this pin your own?”
“Oh, yes, it is my prize pin from when I won the golf championship at Nashawtuc Farm where I’m from in Concord.
It’s ever so much nicer than the one from the store—it’s gold, you know—so I took off the tin one that came with it, because I thought this one made the hat more my own.
I mean, it’s not exactly a one-of-a-kind hat—there’s at least one other around. ”
Marigold was instantly alert. “Who else has the same hat?”
“I don’t know, but I know someone must.” Aggie twirled the hat admiringly.
“I was wearing it one day out on the golf course—I wanted to practice my putting at the nearest green, you know—” She turned to point out the window toward the college golf course situated just to the west of the building.
“Anyway, this fellow spoke to me roughly. ‘What was I doing?’ sort of thing, and he grabbed my elbow, all proprietary, quite the masher, which I didn’t care for in the least.”
“Just as you ought.” Marigold had strict feelings about elbow-grabbing, rough-talking young mashers.
“I thought it must be one of the groundskeepers telling me off because the green was too wet—it had rained the day before—but it was just some man looking for his sweetheart or something, because once he realized it was me and not his girl, he begged my pardon, saying he mistook me because she had the same hat, and shied right off. And a good thing, because I was hot enough to give him what for with my putter for grabbing my arm—except that it was my good Robert Forgan putter, from Scotland that my dad bought for me, and it was too expensive to crack on some wiseacre’s back. ”
Marigold was all admiration for Aggie’s plan of self-defense as well as her descriptive vocabulary. But her instant curiosity prompted her to ask, “And what did this wiseacre look like?”
“Oh, you know, some fellow—they’re all alike, if you ask me. Coat and hat, proprietary air, thinks the world is their oyster and nobody else’s. Well, not here, it isn’t.”
“No,” Marigold agreed, equally proprietary about the sanctity of their college as a woman’s place. “You didn’t get a good look at him?”
“Not really. He went straight away, with his back turned, and I got back to my putting.” She sighed. “I thought it was the perfect hat for golfing. But now I don’t know.”
“It is very fine, Aggie.” Marigold weighed satisfying her curiosity against President Irvine’s request for discretion—but doubtless, such indiscretions were happening all across College Hall. “I think there was a different pin on the hat I found at the boathouse yesterday.”
“Do you think the dead girl had her own pin on her hat too? Is that important?”
“Yes, maybe.” Marigold wasn’t exactly sure—a personal or prize pin like Aggie’s might help identify where the dead young woman came from. Or it might mean nothing. “Do you have the original pin?”
“Maybe.” Aggie went to her wardrobe and began to dig through a small jewelry case. “I thought it was just a blank piece of tin or pewter in the shape of a shield—you know, a sort of generic suggestion of Scots heraldry.”
Then the pin on the dead girl’s hat had also been individual and personal. She tried to recall the inscription exactly. “Do you have any idea what S.d.B.L. might be?”
Aggie frowned. “No idea. And I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to find the original pin.”
“That’s all right,” Marigold said. “Though I can’t help but feel as if I am missing something terribly obvious.
” Starting with the poor girl’s identity.
“Have you heard anything about any classmates absent from class? Is no one missing a roommate or hall mate? Surely someone has some information, however small?”
“Not that I’ve heard,” Aggie offered. “Not a peep.”
Which was odd. In such a closed, close-knit community of women, people tended to know everyone else’s business. It was a rare person who could keep a secret in such an intimate society.
But someone seemed to be keeping the greatest secret of them all.
“Well, there she is, the college’s latest cover girl.” It was Sarah Appleton, standing just outside Aggie’s doorway with her coterie of apple polishers. “So desperate for notoriety that you couldn’t spare a thought for the rest of us or the reputation of the college.”
“I assume you refer to the tabloid photogravure of Dr. Barker and me?” Marigold asked in as conversational a tone as she might manage.
“How interesting that you should bring it up, Sarah.” The easiest way to deflect blame from oneself was to purposefully heap it upon others.
“I only had a glance at it this morning—tabloids aren’t my preferred reading—but as neither Dr. Barker nor I had any knowledge of our likeness being taken, we can hardly be made responsible for the reputation of the college. ”
“We should have expected as much from someone like you” was Sarah’s snide retort.
Marigold had already learned better than to bite at that particular bait, but sweet Aggie was not so forbearing. “What do you mean by that?” she demanded hotly.
“I mean that I know all the vulgar”—Sarah emphasized the word to echo Marigold’s own use of the adjective at dinner the first night—“details of Miss Marigold Manners’s tawdry, scandalous parentage. Her audacity astonishes.”
“Does it?” Marigold worked a little—a very little—to keep her crocodile smile in check, but she stood and used every inch of her slight height to crowd the taller girl from the doorway.
“My audacity is nothing compared to my manners, which find this conversation vulgar in the extreme.” Then she lowered her voice so that only Sarah could hear.
“But if you insist on discussing family matters publicly, I’m sure I can speak with some assurance of your father’s well-known affinity for a certain Mrs. Lake’s house on Endicott Street in the North End.
” Marigold was never more thankful for having spent the summer with Isabella, listening to her encyclopedic knowledge of both society and gossip.
“I’m sure he goes there,” she continued in her quietest, kindest, most ironic tone, “to an area well known for its brothels, for the intellectual conversation and not any tawdry or scandalous purposes. I’m sure his audacity is at the forefront of your thinking. ”
“Why—” Sarah’s face drew white with outrage. “That is none of your business!”
“Correct,” Marigold agreed matter-of-factly. Her only business was getting to the bottom of the dead girl’s identity, not trading veiled barbs with Sarah—unless Sarah continued to act in this highly suspicious manner. “Do you by any chance have a copy of this vulgar tabloid at the ready?”
Sarah gestured to one of the girls behind her, who quickly brought the newspaper in question out from behind her skirts.
“Naturally, you do. Thank you.” Marigold took it from the girl’s hands and smiled upon them all, gracious in her small triumph. “That will be all.” And she shut the door in their collective faces so she might take a good long look at the image before her.
At least the photogravure had captured her from a good angle.
Aggie was thinking along the same lines. “It is a nice shot.”
“Of a dead girl, Aggie. Vanity must certainly take a backward-facing seat to more important issues. Like her identity.” Marigold strove to take a more logical approach.
“From the angle, this photographer must have been right here on campus—I wonder that no one noticed them about the place with the equipment they must have had to take such a photograph.” She took a close look at the attribution at the bottom of the image. “Mr. E. Anthony.”
“Oh!” Aggie exclaimed. “That is likely not a mister at all!” She snatched the paper from Marigold’s hands. “Yes! I am sure that is bound to be Eliza Anthony—she’s a sophomore, so you might not know her.”
“She is a photographer?”
“And how! Always about the place with something she calls a patented detective camera, snapping away when one least expects it. She’s got all the equipment—her father is the Anthony of the New York Anthony Camera Company.
She’s put it about that her father’s company has several patents for cameras, and I think that Eliza has them all, to try them out. ”
“And sell the images to the tabloids for photogravures?”
“This is the first time I’ve heard of her doing so, but clearly, she must have done.”
“And where is this Miss Eliza Anthony’s room?”
“She’s commandeered a good portion of the Student Laboratory and Apparatus Room, up in the attic story, where she has set up her ‘darkroom.’ ”
“I think I know just the spot. Well, then.” Marigold rose. “I think it’s time for me to give our Miss Anthony a visit.”
Eliza Anthony had clearly curtained off her portion of the Student Laboratory and Apparatus Room to control the amount of available light.
But in her righteous fury, Marigold cared not for whatever delicate or unstable process Miss Anthony was engaged in.
She threw back the heavy blackout curtains.
“I hope you made a tidy profit for your illicit piece of voyeurism?”
Miss Anthony jumped back, dropping whatever it was she had been doing. Shiny liquid splashed down the front of her heavy waxed muslin smock. “I didn’t hear you.”