Chapter 29
“Life appears to be too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
Charlotte Bronte
Marigold left the Hospital Wing with a new determination. And new suspicions. Which she would share with Detective Pratt as soon as she could confirm her misgivings.
“Marigold.”
“Good morning, Sarah.” Marigold stood aside at the door of the Hospital Wing to let Sarah Appleton pass. But to her astonishment—although, to be fair, she hadn’t much astonishment left within her—Sarah stopped to talk.
“I was just going in to see Professor Currier. She is a great favorite, you know.”
“I do know,” Marigold acknowledged. “I am sure she will enjoy your visit with her.”
“We … I heard about what you did for her yesterday.”
“It was all Ethyl, thank goodness, with her scientific expertise. I was only happy I could be of some help.” One never wanted to make too much of oneself, especially with a person like Sarah.
“Nevertheless.” Sarah nodded awkwardly. “Those of us in the Société very much appreciate what you did for our dear professor.”
“Happy to oblige.” Marigold might have left it at that, but her suspicions about Sarah lingered, too strong to ignore.
But an appeal was better than an accusation.
“I was also hoping you might be able to help, Sarah, with this murder of Olivia Thayer.” She refused any attempt at ladylike discretion now—even for Sarah.
“And this attempted murder of Professor Currier.”
Sarah paled. “Attempted murder? Me? How?”
“You said you are this year’s president of the Société des Belles Lettres?”
“Yes?”
“And as such, you must have known Miss Olivia Thayer, who was also a member?”
“I did.” Sarah looked conscious—the corners of her wide, elegant mouth turned down.
“Why didn’t you tell me who she was at the start—at the boathouse, when I found her body?” Sarah had been the first to deny any knowledge of the girl’s identity.
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “She looked so different, so dead,” she tried before she finally acknowledged her true motives. “And I admit, I wanted to impede you in any way I could, even if it was to say nothing.”
And there was that passivity in Sarah’s aggression.
So Marigold said nothing, letting her own silence passively convey her judgment.
“It was not well done of me,” Sarah was forced to admit. “I had none of your aplomb and I wished I had. I made … a mistake.”
“Naturally.” It was simple jealousy. From a girl who had every advantage of birth and opportunity. Yet, she was still jealous of others who had far less.
“And the truth is, I didn’t particularly care for her or her suffragist views—especially her lording it about the place, joining the Societé before she was a member of the college.”
So much jealousy to go around.
“And that man,” Sarah added in a low confidential whisper. “That lapdog, always waiting at the door for her.” Her eyebrows rose like a triumphal arch. “Girl that age with a grown man.”
Marigold was not surprised, but she was very nearly shocked. This was a new characterization of the fellow, who had up to this point been called rough and proprietary, and a ne’er-do-well and a rotter. “Lapdog?”
“He waited around for her, like a dog left outside a shop waiting for its master.”
“And she asked this of him?” Marigold recalled Aggie’s description of the man who had presumably thought she was Olivia, grabbing her arm in a proprietary manner and speaking to her roughly.
“Was he not perhaps more like a guard dog instead? Which begs the question, how are unaccompanied, unattached men allowed to linger”—and lie in wait—“about the college without anyone’s say-so?
Wouldn’t Mr. Duckett or one of the porters drive him away? ”
“I suppose.” Sarah shrugged. “Somehow they didn’t.”
Somehow he had charmed them or fobbed them off with some ready excuse, Marigold was sure.
But practical considerations before anything else. “How often does the Society of Belle Lettres meet?”
“Once a month,” Sarah answered. “So only two meetings so far. But they’ve been very productive.”
“When are the society’s meetings? What time?”
“In the afternoons, between the last afternoon class and the dinner bell. Although often we go in to dinner together,” Sarah went on.
“Olivia Thayer did ask to stay to dinner at the last meeting. I remember because she asked if Mr. Griffin might be available to drive her home—or at least into town where she lived—on the Barge. But the lapdog—or guard dog, I suppose I see now—was there and insisted on escorting her home.”
Marigold felt her alarm begin to pound in her ears. “What day was that?”
“Our meetings are first Fridays, so October fifth.”
Two days before he killed her. But that almost made it worse—Olivia had to endure days of Valentine’s unwanted, overbearing attention. Poor girl.
“And can you,” Marigold heard her own voice waver, “describe this man who lurked in wait for Olivia?”
Sarah’s patrician face blanched. “Do you mean that man I saw waiting for Olivia Thayer is most likely the man who—?”
“Who strangled her with his bare hands and threw her into the lake for dead for us to find,” Marigold finished. “Yes.”
Sarah put her hand to her mouth in horror. “But that man didn’t look like a murderer. He looked so gentlemanly. And refined.”
That was what Marigold had thought too, hadn’t she?
But she had to be sure. “Can you describe him—personally, hair and eyes, not just what he was wearing?”
“Dark hair and dark eyes. A nice noble sort of nose without being a Roman nose, if you see what I mean.”
“Naturally,” Marigold agreed. “What else can you remember?”
“Tall—seemed taller because he towered over her. Olivia was just a little bit smaller than you, I should judge. But he had a very buttery sort of smile.” Sarah shook her head as if she heard the inanity of that description.
“You know what I mean—like he poured out the butterboat over her every time he smiled.”
“I do know what you mean, Sarah. Because I think that I have seen that smile too.”
On James Wilkerson’s face.
Wilkerson—not John Wilkes Booth. It was Wilkerson that Wilkie Valentine’s name reminded her of. Tall, charming, camel hair coat wearing Wilkerson.
Right in front of her, all this time.
“I have to go.” Marigold ran up to her dormitory room, where her typewriting machine sat gathering dust, a tangible symbol of her faltering academic status.
She turned a blind eye to its silent rebuke and pulled out her appointment calendar, in which she kept track of classes and assignments—most notably the missed ones—as well as any social engagements she might have, thankful for the habit of meticulously organized note-taking.
She scanned for the last mention of Wilkerson’s name—and there it was, Wednesday, October 10th, their conversation in the tearoom, when she had given him her appeal. Which he had never seen printed. Perhaps because he had never intended to.
Perhaps he had only wanted to know what she knew, so he could stay one step ahead of her.
And make his escape on the Cunard liner Ultonia the next day?
Because he had realized that she was slowly drawing closer to identifying Olivia Thayer, and that it was only a matter of time before his connection to the girl was discovered?
It would be in character for such a rotter to turn tail and run.
Except …
Her last conversation with Professor Currier echoed in her ears. What if the professor, who was by all accounts and experience a sober-minded, rational, educated woman, really did see someone in her room—perhaps because that someone had actually been there?
But where was he now?
There was only one way to find out.
Her bicycle took her from College Hall through the gate at East Lodge and up Washington Street to the boardinghouse in no time.
She found Lucy in the kitchen with May Barnacle.
“Well, hello, Marigold,” Lucy greeted her. “Is the professor better this morning? That was a heck of a to-do yesterday, I don’t mind saying. Don’t know when I’ve ever been that frightened.”
“I’m sorry for your fright, but I will admit to being very glad you acted as you did, Lucy.
Without your quick thinking …” Marigold did not want to contemplate what greater harm might have happened—there was altogether more than enough harm as it was.
“But in answer to your question, I just spoke to Professor Currier this morning and she is recovering nicely. But she told me again today that she did think she saw someone in her room yesterday. I know you said you looked and the room was empty but did you look through the rest of the house?”
“No,” Lucy frowned and shook her head. “How could I do that when I was taking her over to the college to see you?”
“Yes, of course, I see.”
Marigold turned to the landlady, May Barnacle, whose conduct—as far as Marigold could see—might not have been entirely blameless.
If Wilkerson had charmed Marigold and the porters at the college—and who knew how many others—there was a fair chance he had managed to charm the landlady.
“What about you, Mrs. Barnacle? I notice you like to keep a sharp eye on the place from your porch.”
“Looking after things.” May Barnacle eyed her warily, as if she could not make out Marigold’s intent. “I see people come and go from the porch, but it’s starting to get too cold to sit out much.”
“Were you out yesterday?”
“Well, a little, but I didn’t sit out too long. Like I said, too cold.”
“Did you hear the professor’s cry? Lucy said it sounded as if some furniture turned over? Did you hear that?”
“Well, I was back downstairs by then—come to see if I could get some of Lucy’s bone broth that had done so much good for the professor the first time.
Because I had taken her the copy of the Morning Standard that put her into her taking, you see.
I got it from Mr. Henry as I was leaving the butcher shop, and I thought she should see it. ”
Mrs. Barnacle seemed sincere. “How did she take the news?” Marigold probed.
“Well, how else could she? It sent her straight to her nerve medicine, but that didn’t seem to help at all, which is when I came down for the broth.”
Marigold looked to Lucy for confirmation.
“That’s right,” Lucy agreed as she worked. “I was getting out a pan to warm the broth when I heard the crash, and Mrs. Barnacle, she said, ‘You go, you’re bigger and stronger.’ So I went.”
So far, so logical. But Marigold remained leery. “And what did you do then, Mrs. Barnacle?”
“I went looking for Homer, in case we needed to send over for the doctor, but the professor asked Lucy to take her over to the college instead.”
“Who is Homer?”
“Oh, that’s Mrs. Brown the skivvy’s boy,” Mrs. Barnacle explained. “He comes by now and again in the afternoons—”
“Every day,” Lucy interjected beneath her employer’s patter.
“—when Mrs. Brown is just finishing up her chores, afore she heads home. Lives down in the Fells.” May Barnacle waggled her eyebrows when mentioning the area just beyond the town limits, as if that was all she needed to say.
Lucy was having none of that unspoken opinion.
“He’s a Black child.” She cut into Mrs. Barnacle’s litany of unuseful facts.
“He most often comes after school—that is, if he goes to school. Sometimes he comes with Althea Brown in the mornings. Doesn’t care much for school because he’s not often treated right.
But that boy is sharp. If he’s seen anything, he’ll know. ”
“Did you find Homer when you were looking for him yesterday, Mrs. Barnacle?” Marigold tried to steer the landlady back on track.
“Didn’t need to when Lucy told me she was taking the professor over to the college. I turned my mind to what was going to happen to the supper with Lucy gone.”
“I had roast chicken I was about to start,” Lucy explained. “And that was a near thing with all the coming and going to the college. I had to serve it a little late, the chicken. But sure enough, Mrs. Barnacle had everything ready for me, so that supper was still exactly as it should have been.”
“Best cook I ever had,” said May Barnacle. “It’s like she and that stove are one person. Like manna from heaven, her cooking.” She sidled closer to take a whiff from a fragrant pot. “Always got something or another on the hob.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Barnacle.” Lucy was all gracious acceptance.
Marigold tried to turn their attention back to the murder—and potential attempted murder—at hand. “So, you were either with each other or with Professor Currier?”
“No where else to be,” Mrs. Barnacle cackled. “I see to my boarders myself.”
“What about the other boarders?” Marigold asked. “Was there anyone else you noticed coming or going?”
May Barnacle scratched her chin. “Once they went away—Lucy and the professor—I straightened up the table that Imogen had turned over—”
Lucy stropped kneading her dough. “I don’t remember a table turned over. I thought it was that little side chair—the professor said she’d leaned too hard on the back of it and it went over. I picked that up to help her out of the house.”
“Oh, no, her whole side table—the one with the stained-glass lamp—was tipped over. Glass everywhere, but I suspect that was mostly her water pitcher and glass. She had a lovely blue set, that she used to take her medicine.”
“And that was broken? And you cleaned it up?”
“Certainly, I did.” Mrs. Barnacle was near outraged at the suggestion that her house was less than perfectly kept.
“I couldn’t have water staining the floor.
We keep a clean and tidy house, we do. Everything is top notch.
Top notch.” She nodded to herself before she nodded at Lucy, as if acknowledging her part in that superior housekeeping.
“Were any of your other boarders involved? Any of them here to lend a hand?”
“I would never ask them to,” Mrs. Barnacle protested.
“Most of my ladies are professional women—at their places of business or over at the college during the day. Don’t recall anyone else about, except Homer and Mrs. Brown.
She was airing out my rooms—that’s the schedule for a Tuesday.
Everything keeps to a schedule, that’s how things are kept top notch. ”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Marigold couldn’t decide if she was relieved or suspicious that May Barnacle’s explanation was so reasonable. And believable. Which meant she had to go on to her next theory and her next witness.
Poison might have been a women’s weapon, but there was always the exception that would prove the rule.