Chapter 20 #2
“Yes, of course,” he nodded and patted her hand again.
“You are very kind. And our dear friend the professor has also told us that you are just the sort of scholar our Olivia would have aspired to be. Just the sort of intellectually strong and morally secure person we would have wanted her to become.”
“You are too kind,” Marigold answered. “And though I never met Olivia in person, let me say on behalf of the entire student body of Wellesley College, how much we were looking forward to hearing her speak and being inspired by her extraordinary gift for oration. Clearly, she was well on the way to being the sort of person we all would admire.”
“Bless you. Indeed. True, true.” The gentleman shook his head as if this might ward off the tears that were brimming in his eyes. “Come, come, we must do something for her, mustn’t we, Mother?” He addressed his wife. “Some token to show our thanks.”
“Oh, yes,” his wife agreed solemnly. “Perhaps one of Olivia’s books? Dear Imogen has told us you are a scholar of the Greeks—I recall there is a particularly nice edition of Thucydides on Olivia’s shelves that you might like.”
Marigold had to work to control her own nascent emotions with the thought that she could not imagine her own sweet mother, Esmé, even knowing the name Thucydides, or any Greek philosopher or historian for that matter.
What a gift for Olivia Thayer to have been raised by such people. At one time in her young life, Marigold might have thought she would do anything to have such parents. Mr. Thayer, especially, was so perfectly the ideal father of her daydreams—educated and thoughtful.
But now she hoped she knew better. Even if Harry Manners had not been a scholar, he had given Marigold many gifts of character—not the least of which was the gift for taking a chance at the right time.
She glanced briefly at Professor Currier, who seemed to give her a sort of smile of encouragement, before she answered. “You are very kind, ma’am.” She nodded respectfully to Mrs. Thayer. “But I will admit to wanting something different.”
Mrs. Thayer raised her thin white eyebrows in silent question.
Marigold gave way to a small embellishment.
“As Professor Currier is aware, I am making inquiries on behalf of President Irvine of the college, who feels that the Wellesley authorities”—such a woefully inadequate word, authorities, when they seemed to exert no authority whatsoever—“might need some assistance from those to whom Olivia’s death matters most—her fellow suffragists. ”
This brought a different sort of regard from the Thayers, who looked at her with less grief and more interest. “Yes?”
“Do you still have the telegram you received from this Valentine fellow?”
It was as if a cloud had passed over his eyes, so profoundly did Mr. Thayer’s entire countenance change. “That … black-hearted, vacuous, unctuous, insinuating viper!” He all but vibrated with his rage and grief. “I rue the day he darkened our door.”
“And which day was that?” Marigold asked carefully. “How long had this Valentine known Olivia?”
Mrs. Thayer was the one who answered. “I believe my husband is speaking metaphorically, for the young man never did have the courtesy or the good manners to come to our door. No, he snuck around, making trouble and making himself a nuisance trying to turn poor Olivia’s head behind our backs, away from the better influence of those who loved her best. We dismissed him, of course—never thinking that it would come to anything in the least. But he was dangerously persistent.
We should have done more to drive him away, but Olivia said she wanted to deal with him herself.
That it was the only morally correct thing to do. ”
Marigold agreed with their assessment of the unseen Mr. Valentine. “That seems entirely in keeping with his low character. So, you never worried he was going to succeed in turning Olivia’s head?”
“No.” Her mother’s negation was plaintive. “She said she thought him a nuisance and his words and blandishments as empty as his understanding. Those were her words.”
“He made her uncomfortable, she said,” Professor Currier added vehemently. “She found it all so embarrassing, his attention.”
“Which is why we were so shocked …” Mrs. Thayer turned away, burying her face in her handkerchief.
Marigold looked to Professor Currier, who had taken up Mrs. Thayer’s hand, to also take up the tale. “So shocked …?”
“So shocked that she would reverse course and go with him—elope to Europe the way the telegram said,” Professor Currier finished, shaking her head. “We should have known Olivia never would have done such a thing—she wouldn’t have ever thought it.”
“But you accepted the contents of the telegram as fact?” Marigold probed. “Even as you pursued them to the docks?”
“We felt she had been coerced and only needed the support of her family to turn him away. But we were told the ship had already sailed. We were too late.”
The three—Mr. Thayer, Mrs. Thayer and Professor Currier—exchanged what Marigold could only characterize as agonized looks. “And then, much to our shame—” Mr. Thayer began.
“And to our loss—” his wife added.
“—we thought of the scandal. Of the waste. Of ourselves,” Mr. Thayer explained.
“But not of Olivia,” Mrs. Thayer finished with an anguished sigh. “We should have thought of Olivia. And how such a thing was entirely out of character.”
“Please don’t think you might have prevented what happened,” Marigold said, with feeling. “I am convinced that Olivia was already dead when that telegram was sent.”
The news was not taken as the help Marigold had intended—her pronouncement was met with gasps from some, and fresh tears from the Thayers.
“I do apologize for my clumsiness,” she managed. “All I meant was that you should not reproach yourselves. If it weren’t a plausible lie, Valentine never would have gotten away with it. So, as to my first question—do you still have the telegram?”
“What good would it do to read it again?” asked Professor Currier.
“I don’t know,” Marigold said honestly, “other than the fact that I hope to glean some factual information from it—such as the office that he sent it from. With that knowledge, the clerk might be interviewed—they might remember some pertinent information that might help us locate Mr. Valentine.”
“Surely he is across the sea on his ship—beyond the reach of the law?”
“Perhaps,” Marigold allowed. “But as I understand it, that ship was to have sailed the night Olivia was murdered.”
Mrs. Thayer flinched, as if in physical pain inflicted by the word murder.
“I am sorry,” Marigold apologized again.
“But there is no way to sanitize what was done to her—she was strangled. And Valentine had the strongest potential motive to kill her. But he could not be on a White Star liner out of Boston at the same time that he was in Wellesley, strangling Olivia and pushing her—” Another glance at Mrs. Thayer’s pained, tearful expression moved Marigold to greater prudence in her speech.
“He could not be in two places at once. It is impossible.”
Mr. Thayer stared at her for what felt like a full minute before he walked away into another room, from whence he finally reappeared, holding the familiar waxy brown envelope of a telegram.
“Take it,” he said to Marigold. “Take it and see if you can extract some justice from it. But I fear my sorrow will find no end, no matter what—no revenge will bring Olivia back.”
“No,” Marigold agreed. “But it will stop him from being able to do this to another young woman ever again. And if that is revenge, so be it.”
Perhaps the first murders she had been involved with had made her personally conversant with how much wickedness was in the world. But this murder—this waste of an important life—made her feel so wicked, she was ready to exact that revenge herself.