Chapter 11
“The truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Eliza left the Student Laboratory and Apparatus Room, but Marigold decided to spend the time before she would need to change for dinner with Isabella working on her own experiments in electrolytic reduction, securing the terminal wires and clips to the battery, while also learning more about the other inhabitants of the laboratory—namely Ethyl, whose bench was marked by a handmade skull and crossbones and “Do Not Touch” placard.
“Why the theatrical sign?”
Ethyl eyed Marigold askance. “Because my experiments are extremely dangerous.”
“Really?” Even as she said it, Marigold realized she still thought of the college as a place of safety and comfort, where nothing dangerous could ever happen, despite the recent tragedy in the boathouse demonstrating exactly the opposite. “The Jolly Roger is not just for show?”
“Not by a long shot,” Ethyl assured her somberly. “I am not the kind of person who tries to scare the bejeebers out of somebody just for fun or notoriety. This stuff is poison.”
“Really?” Perhaps Ethyl would have some insights into Antiphon’s first oration. “Wellesley College is letting you make poison for your honors thesis work?” Marigold asked while wondering idly where her own mother Sophronia’s knowledge of plant poisons had been learned.
“You bet!” Ethyl was amused at Marigold’s skepticism. “No, really it’s just the opposite—I’m trying to isolate a specific active compound in one organic poison to create an antidote for another.”
Marigold was fascinated. “Do tell.”
Ethyl warmed to her subject. “You see, that active compound, physostigmine, is a parasympathomimetic alkaloid, specifically, a reversible cholinesterase inhibitor, which is an antidote for nightshade poisoning. It occurs naturally in the calabar bean and the fruit of the manchineel tree, which is common where I come from. If I can successfully isolate physostigmine from manchineel, that will certainly earn me honors, but more importantly, it ought to get me into medical school.”
Marigold was all admiration for Ethyl’s ambition.
“I don’t want to be a medical doctor, like a sawbones,” Ethyl continued. “I really want to work in disease eradication. Like identifying the pathogen in this last Russian Flu epidemic, which is still ravaging parts of the globe.”
Her words hit Marigold with a pang. “I am well aware of its ravages—both of my parents succumbed to it last winter. And I am also aware of the ravages of poisoning. I helped solve a case of digitalis poisoning last spring.”
Ethyl straightened. “Domestic poison, homemade?”
“Indeed.” Marigold might have had reservations about admitting her involvement in the murders on Great Misery to such a new friend, but The Argosy’s publication of her story would soon render the point moot.
“Happen we do have that in common,” Ethyl said quietly. “Poison took my father.”
Marigold was astonished into silence. “Is that why you’re conducting your research?” she finally asked.
Ethyl shrugged. “Seemed a good place to start.”
“What a strange world.” Marigold moved closer to the maze-like miscellany of tubes and vials.
“Don’t touch that—or breathe it in,” Ethyl warned. “That’s why I’m careful to keep the vent hood running and the window wide open, to vent the distillate outside. It’s all extraordinarily toxic—poisonous—at this stage.”
“And what is this stage?” Marigold asked.
“Preliminary—I’m distilling the raw sap of the manchineel tree, which grows wild where I come from along the coast and mangrove swamps in North Florida.
Beach apples or little apples of death are what the fruits are called, and rightly so—they’re powerful poisonous, every bit of the tree. Even the bark.”
Ethyl took a long moment before she seemed to come to a decision.
“Made an applesauce she fed to my pa to kill him before she disappeared, my ma did,” she said so quietly Marigold had to lean closer to hear.
“Out back, over an open fire, like she was making soap. I’ll never forget the look in her eye.
The things you remember. Not that he was the pleasantest of fellows, my pa, but no one deserves to die that way. ”
“No.” Marigold was all agreement. Because her own memory filled with the image of old Alva Hatchet dying from the poison she had made and taken herself.
“Anyway, my interest in botany took a turn for the chemical after that. And then I got to high school and read Dr. Thomas Fraser’s work on physostigmine as an antidote for poisons and then his treatise on isolating the chemical physostigmine in calabar beans.
I got to thinking about manchineel trees. And there you have it.”
It seemed strange to be discussing domestic poisons, homemade, at Wellesley, which was a world away from the events on Great Misery Island last spring. But malice seemed to have a way of finding its way where it was least wanted. Or expected.
“But please—” Ethyl held out her hands in open appeal.
“If you wouldn’t mind keeping that rather unsavory information to yourself.
Not that I’m ashamed, but—” She shrugged again.
“Professor Cleaver knows everything, of course, but we think it best not to let everyone—or anyone—else know what I’m doing up here.
Someone might get the wrong impression. You’re the only one I’ve told. ”
“Thank you for telling me, Ethyl.” Marigold took her hand in a gesture of solidarity. “You may be assured that I will honor your confidence. I understand all too well the potential savagery of our fellow students’ innuendo.”
“Sarah Appleton?”
“Indeed.” A lovely sort of fellow-feeling—or perhaps just a peaceable sort of sisterhood—filled Marigold and momentarily banished sour Sarah from her thoughts. But it couldn’t be for long—Marigold knew she would have to reckon with her suspicions about Sarah shortly.
The Japanese bell broke their moment of accord and sent them on to their next classes, but when Marigold went rapidly down the west stairwell, who should be coming slowly up but President Irvine, along with Dr. Barker, and a couple of somberly dressed men—the “authorities” made real and put into white suits.
“Marigold,” President Irvine greeted her. “If you have a moment to wait here, while Dr. Barker and I see to these gentlemen from the county?”
“Naturally, ma’am,” Marigold answered, before her conscience reminded her of her class schedule. “If you wouldn’t mind writing me a pass for Professor Chapin’s History of the Hellenes?” Not even a murder was going to get her excused from classwork.
“Yes, of course. One forgets that young women are trying to get an education here in the midst of all this …” Julia Irvine let whatever vocabulary choice she might have made fade away as she turned back to the men that Marigold assumed were from the coroner’s office—they had a much more professional, serious nature about them than the watchmen from the town.
“This is one of our students, Miss Marigold Manners. She was the one who found the deceased down at our campus boathouse,” she told the gentlemen.
“She also assisted Dr. Barker in her preliminary assessment of the body. I’ve asked her to remain here,” she indicated the oak bench, “so she can answer any questions you might have of her.”
The more corpulent one of the gentlemen raised his brows, though his face was a studied blank. “Don’t expect we’ll need anything but the doctor’s report, if that.”
Dr. Barker barely twitched at the implied insult to her professionalism.
“I should hope so. I’m sure you’re well aware that many of the observed marks and discolorations that were made when the body was newly found will have faded or disappeared in the interim.
I made my report to fill in the gaps in your knowledge as it has taken the better part of a day for you to retrieve the body. ”
The younger of the two men had the grace to look chagrined, while the older of the two looked cross at having been told how to do his job by someone clearly better educated than he.
“Shall we?” was all President Irvine said, as she gestured Dr. Barker forward with the keys. “I’ll be back presently, Marigold.”
Marigold found herself pacing back and forth along the corridor, nodding absently to anyone who passed, too absorbed in her own thoughts to make small talk.
She wanted to get the logical sequence of her suppositions in order before she presented them to President Irvine.
She was about to accuse a valued, treasured, respected member of the faculty of being—what?
Knowledgeable seemed the only sensible word.
Presently, President Irvine returned. “Marigold.” She held out her hand to shake in her forthright, unsentimental way. “If you’d be so kind as to accompany me to my office, where we might speak privately?”
“Did they perchance make any identification yet?” Marigold asked.
“No, but they have agreed to take possession of the body, as we have neither the facilities nor frankly any legal right, since she has not been identified as one of our students.” President Irvine looked even more aggravated than usual.
“Come, let us proceed as if we are in close conference—which we are—so we might make our way to my office unmolested by some new care or worry before we can address the first ones.”
“I assume you’ve been made aware of the tabloid article and photogravure?” Marigold asked quietly as they made their rapid way down the long hallway toward the president’s office at the opposite end of the building.
“Indeed.” Julia Irvine’s sigh was more than frustration. “No less than three faculty members have come to me, clutching their pearls and pinstripes, bemoaning the dragging of the college’s name through the mud and demanding to know what I plan to do about it.”
“I am sorry, ma’am.”