Chapter 17
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
Arthur Conan Doyle
“Miss Manners!”
Marigold had learned to recognize the sharp summons from Miss Burke in the reception area.
“Yes, ma’am?” She immediately left off collecting her correspondence from the mail slots at the end of Center Hall—her latest letter from Sophronia would have to wait.
“How may I be of assistance?” She crossed her fingers against there being any urchins involved.
“You have another wire.” Miss Burke led the way back to her desk where the waxy beige envelope lay in some state in the center of Miss Burke’s blotter. “From Mrs. Dana.”
“Oh, thank you, Miss Burke. I am much obliged. I hope it will be some news that will help solve this terrible dilemma of the young woman we found.”
“Oh, I hope so too,” the tiny woman confided. “Such a burden on President Irvine, this has been.”
Marigold understood in that instant that loyalty was the key to Miss Burke’s heart. “I hope I am doing everything I can to relieve her, Miss Burke.” She tore the telegram open so she might begin to do so as soon as possible.
“News from Mme. W.,” it read. “Vivid recollection of girl. Miss Olivia Thayer of Wellesley. Bought for speaking tour.”
The confirmation of her suspicions sat like cold fish stew in Marigold’s belly, allowing her absolutely no satisfaction in being right.
“Miss Manners?” Miss Burke’s normally concerned expression deepened. “Are you quite all right?”
“No,” she heard herself say. “I am not at all right.” Nothing was right.
Miss Olivia Thayer, who had purchased her ensemble from Madame Watteau in Beacon Street specifically for a speaking tour sponsored by a professor she was suspected to have a crush upon, and who had then been thought to reverse course to elope with her rotter the day before the murder, was the girl Marigold had pulled from the lake.
It seemed both inevitable and impossible.
And when one eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however improbable, had to be the truth. Even if the evidence contradicted itself.
Marigold felt as if she needed to take an hour or two to tidy her room and organize her clothes to sort out the problem. But she didn’t have the time—direct action was necessary. “Might I please use your telephone, Miss Burke? It’s very important.”
“Well.” Miss Burke clasped her hands tidily at her waist as if she were preparing herself to refuse.
“Please. It is of vital importance in identifying the young woman who died.” Marigold did not mince her words.
“I have a very alarming report via this wire”—Marigold held forth the telegram as if it were evidence—“that needs must be confirmed as soon as possible. You will be doing me, and therefore President Irvine, an immeasurable favor if you would so kind as to let me use your telephone exchange. Immediately,” Marigold pressed.
Whether it was the appeal to President Irvine or not, her plea worked. “If you’ll come this way.” Miss Burke led Marigold into a small annex behind the reception room, where the wooden box housing the telephonic machinery was mounted on the wall. “I’ll ring up the exchange for you, shall I?”
“Please.”
Marigold watched with fascination as the woman began to grind the handle to rotate the cylinder she then spoke into. “Exchange? Wellesley College, Miss Burke. Will you connect me with—” She raised her eyebrows to Marigold in question.
“House of Dana, Beacon Street, Boston,” Marigold supplied. “Mrs. Isabella Dana.”
“Beacon Street, Boston, House of Dana,” an eerie voice crackled back.
“All right now,” Miss Burke instructed. “You stand here and hold the receiver up to your ear and speak into this small horn.”
“Thank you.” Marigold took up the required position, stooping a little—for the machinery had evidently been installed to Miss Burke’s diminutive height—and listened as the tinny, electric sounds crackled and snapped down the line.
“House of Dana? I have Wellesley College on the line.”
“Oh, one moment.”
More static and noise before a faraway voice come on. “House of Dana. Isabella Dana. Marigold, darling, is that you?”
“Yes, Isabella, it’s Marigold.”
A squawk was her seeming answer.
“You’ll have to speak up,” Miss Burke instructed. “Enunciate clearly. As if you were giving a speech. And put your ear closer, here.”
Marigold did as instructed. “Isabella? Marigold here. I got your wire.”
“Yes, darling! There you are! I feel positively sleuthish to get you the name so easily.”
“But it’s impossible,” Marigold insisted. “Olivia Thayer was supposed to have sailed from Boston the day before the body was found. Professor Currier had it from Olivia Thayer’s father himself.”
“Can’t be,” Isabella rasped back. “Essie was sure.”
“How sure?”
“She remembered the girl perfectly—how she and her mother bought the whole ensemble straight off the mannequin in the bay window. Said it would go perfectly with her hat—from Jordan Marsh. Lovely young girl from Wellesley, beginning to make a name for herself as a passionate speaker for women’s suffrage. The mother was beaming with pride.”
“When?” Marigold called. “When did she buy it?”
“Let me see.” The line subsided into crackles as Isabella presumably looked at something.
“She showed me her order book, Essie did,” she came back on the line to explain.
“I saw the girl’s name myself. Thayer—copied it all down for you exactly.
Two weeks ago, on Friday, the twenty-eighth of September. ”
That was the date that Marigold herself had gotten her telegram from The Argosy that had reversed her fortunes and sent her back to Wellesley.
“Marigold? Marigold, are you there?
Marigold didn’t know what to say. It all seemed so impossible and conflicting.
“Marigold?”
“I am here.” She pulled her muddled mind back into some semblance of order. “Thank you. You’ve done yeoman’s labor.”
“Hardly, darling,” Isabella laughed. “Unless yeomen drink champagne at luncheon.”
“Yes, no,” Marigold answered nonsensically. “Thank you all the same. I’m going to ring off now. Thank you.”
Whatever response Isabella might have given was lost to the crackle of the line as Marigold replaced the earpiece on its hook. “Thank you, Miss Burke.”
“You are most welcome.” Miss Burke’s usual persnicketiness was absent. “And it does seem quite a dilemma,” she added in a quiet show of sympathy.
“Truer words were never spoken, Miss Burke.” Marigold felt deflated, as if all the air had run out of her lungs along with all the logic from her brain. “What I am going to do about this dilemma, I do not know.”
“Did you never meet or see her here?” Miss Burke asked.
It took Marigold a long moment to understand. “Olivia Thayer, do you mean?”
“Yes.” The lines that normally bracketed Miss Burke’s pursed-up mouth seemed to soften—she was quietly pleased to help.
“But I suppose you came late this year. She came here often at the beginning of the semester, as I recall. A very polite, well-mannered girl. Beautifully spoken, as you might imagine. But never a hint of the firebrand when she was here in my reception rooms, waiting to be given permission to visit Professor Currier. She was bringing her along, you see, the professor. Teaching her, though she wasn’t a student here yet. ”
“She came here,” Marigold gestured to the reception room. “Often? Often enough that you might recognize her?”
“Yes, certainly,” Miss Burke affirmed.
“I am sorry to ask this of you, but do you think you could identify her body?”
“Oh, no,” Miss Burke said with evident horror. “No, I couldn’t possibly. I couldn’t possibly leave the reception room unattended.”
“We’ll leave a note on the door. I’m sure no one would mind.” Marigold would remove all obstacles—the sooner the young woman could be positively identified, the better.
“No, no.” The little woman waved her hands in front of Marigold as if she could shoo her away. “That would mean going out—” Miss Burke’s eyes darkened with imagined terrors.
“It is not very far at all, Miss Burke,” Marigold cajoled, trying to gauge the distance to the county seat in Dedham. “And not for very long. Just long enough for you to take a look at—” Marigold stopped herself at the look of panicked horror on the woman’s face.
“I couldn’t possibly,” the poor woman stammered. “I mean. No, I don’t think I could. No.”
“I am sorry to ask, Miss Burke,” Marigold attempted to soothe, not quite understanding what seemed to her like a disproportionate response to a reasonable request. “But you would be doing a great service to the college.”
“I don’t see how.” The woman’s panic seemed to expand within her—she began to speak more and more rapidly.
“That girl wasn’t even a student yet, I know she was meant to be, and had already passed the entrance examination because Professor Currier had prepared her, but …
but …” She seemed to run out of excuses. “I just couldn’t possibly.”
Marigold tried another tack. “What if …” She searched her brain for something that would satisfy them both while easing the woman’s seemingly irrational anxiety.
“Oh, no, please!” Miss Burke’s eyes seemed to roll back in her head, as if she were going to succumb to a sudden swoon. “I don’t think I could.”
Marigold fought against being unkind. “Someone must, Miss Burke. And you are the someone best positioned to do so.” She appealed to the woman’s sense of loyalty.
“Think of your service to the college. Think of all the other girls here—of President Irvine and Professor Currier—who are counting upon you to be a Wellesley Woman. To be of service. Non Ministrari sed Ministrare.” Marigold quoted the college’s Latin motto.
“Not to be ministered unto, but to minister.”
But her appeals were in vain. Miss Burke shut her eyes as if she was also shutting her ears. “I cannot.” Her voice grew so thin Marigold had to lean down to hear her. “Please don’t be so cruel as to ask me again. I cannot.”
Marigold stepped back. And chastised herself—no one had ever called her cruel. Determined, yes. Dogged even, in her pursuit of justice. But never cruel.
She immediately apologized. “Please forgive me. I am sorry to distress you so, ma’am. I will not do so again.” Barring an unforeseen infestation of urchins, of course.
But what was she to do with the information she had received? Where was she to look for confirmation? And how was she to do so discreetly?
She had to be logical. And far more thoughtful.
“Do you think it would be possible for me to speak with President Irvine about this, Miss Burke?” she asked in a quieter, more considerate tone. “I do think I ought to inform her of the information in the telephone call.”
“Oh, yes.” Miss Burke drew a steadier breath. “Yes, certainly. Let me conduct you to her.”
“Thank you for your kind assistance, Miss Burke. And I apologize again.” One might alter one’s standards to help solve a murder, but never let them down.
Marigold was forced to pace in the corridor as Miss Burke gained access to the president’s inner sanctum.
“Khairete,” her classmate in History of the Hellenes, Fannie Arbuthnot, hailed her as she came down the hall with Mabel Benkins. “How now, Marigold. We missed you in class yesterday.”
“Kalimera, Fannie. Mabel.” Marigold greeted her fellow classicists in Greek and tried hard not to feel too guilty about the missed class—sometimes other things, like murder, took precedence.
“Mabel, you’re in the Forensic and Debate Society, aren’t you?
Did you, or either of you, know Olivia Thayer, the proposed speaker for the Saturday lecture, personally? ”
“I think I saw her once, hanging about at the back of Professor Currier’s class,” Mabel answered. “And I did ask for a photograph of her from Professor Currier to include on the flyers, but it hardly matters now, does it, with the lecture being canceled.”
“Did the professor give you a photograph? Could you recognize her from that, do you think?”
“I suppose, maybe. Wait!” Mabel put her hand over her mouth. “Word is you’ve been trying to identify the drowned girl. You don’t mean—”
“She wasn’t drowned.” Marigold was done with untruths. Her sense of right rebelled at the thought that all their discretion and careful respect for young women’s sensibilities and sparing older women distress had actually been a hinderance to identifying and solving this young woman’s murder.
If she had only held her tongue and had let Dr. Barker take the poor girl’s body in through Center Hall, in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of the college, where everyone could see, the chances that some one of the many people who had seen or met her before—Professor Currier, Miss Burke, or any number of other students—would have recognized her right then and there.
“Miss Manners?” President Irvine stood in the doorway. “You needed to see me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Marigold ducked her head and followed Julia Irvine into her office. As soon as the door was closed behind them, she said what she had come to say. “I fear it really is Olivia Thayer after all.”
President Irvine froze halfway to her chair. “But Professor Currier—”
“Was told by Thayer’s parents—who were informed by telegram, which I now believe must have been a deliberate lie.”
“Why do you think that?”
“The labels on the girl’s clothing were from a Madame Watteau on Beacon Street—and Madame Watteau herself has confirmed that the clothing in question was purchased by Olivia Thayer and her mother, specifically for her speaking tour.”
“Are you positive? Might it just be a coincidence? Professor Currier seemed sure—”
“I don’t believe in coincidence. I am as positive as I can be without having someone who knew Olivia Thayer personally identify her body. And that is what I recommend. As soon as possible.”
President Irvine, normally so stoic, blanched a little. “Ah, I begin to see now why you asked Miss Burke.” She drew a considering breath. “I also hate to ask Imogen, given her health, but I fear it were far better to ask her than the Thayers,” she mused. “Cruel either way.”
“Crueler than having them think their daughter abandoned all her principles and ran away with a rotter?”
“Yes,” the president said simply. “Far crueler. At least with the rotter they might hope that she would be happy. And alive.” She sat abruptly, as if the weight of all her responsibilities had, of a sudden, become too heavy.
“Let me send for Professor Currier at the bell. What must be done, however unpleasant, ought to be done soonest.”