Chapter 30
“Bullies are cowards at heart and may be credited with a pretty safe instinct in scenting their prey.”
Anna Julia Cooper
“Is young Homer about?” Marigold asked. Children were often overlooked by adults—especially men.
“He’s usually in the back of the yard. Likes the chickens,” May Barnacle offered.
“Likes eating the chickens,” Lucy amended. “Likes eating anything he can get his hands on—growing boy.”
“Got a hollow leg, that boy does,” was Mrs. Barnacle’s opinion.
“Might you have something I could take him to ease the hollow feeling?” Marigold asked Lucy. A hungry boy was bound to be more amenable when he was being fed.
Lucy had a plate at the ready. “Leftover buttermilk biscuit’ll do him some good. It’s stale, from yesterday,” she added, probably for the landlady’s benefit. “But he’ll be glad of it. Just don’t use too many big words, Miss College Manners.”
Marigold felt her face curve into a smile. After so many days of grim expressions, the feeling was a welcome change. “Thank you, Lucy.”
She found Homer Brown playing in the small yard beside the carriage house, throwing rocks to knock over a tin can set on the low stone wall.
“I’m Marigold,” she began. “Miss Lucy from the kitchen gave me this plate for you. She told me to come talk to you. She said you’re a clever boy with a sharp eye.”
“Did she?” Homer’s sharp eyes were all for the buttermilk biscuit.
“She did,” Marigold confirmed with an encouraging smile as she offered him the plate. “Have at it while it’s warm.”
The biscuit disappeared before Marigold could formulate her next question. “I was wondering if you noticed anything strange or off about Mrs. Barnacle’s house in the last few days? Anyone sneaking around or where they shouldn’t be?”
Homer turned his head away and eyed her slantandicular—as Marigold’s cousins on Great Misery used to say. “Why you want to know?”
“Because some very bad things have happened to Professor Currier who lives here, and I’m trying to find out who might have done those things.”
“I ain’t done nothing,” the boy declared hotly—hotly enough for Marigold to think he had done something, even if it didn’t have anything to do with Professor Currier.
“I’m sure you didn’t.” Marigold made her voice as bland as a piece of flounder. “But you’re clever and you’ve got sharp eyes, Miss Lucy says. I was wondering if you saw someone—anyone—who shouldn’t have been here?”
Homer squirmed a little within his well-worn shirt before he finally admitted. “There was that fellow.”
Marigold was alarmed and reassured all at the same time, though her heart started to beat harder within her chest. There were no coincidences. “What sort of a fellow?”
“Nosy sort. Asking questions, mostly.”
That “mostly” was laden with dangerous potential. “What questions did he ask you, Homer?”
Homer pulled a long face for such a short child.
“Did I know the professor lady?” He tossed up his skinny shoulder in an all-too-casual shrug, as if to ask how such a thing could be of any consequence.
“I asked him which one, cuz there’s a passel of ’em living here.
But they keep neat and tidy, those professors. That’s what my momma says.”
“Which professor did he want to know about?”
“The little one, who teaches speechmaking. That Professor Currier—like the picture makers, my momma says.”
“Currier and Ives?” Marigold tried the names of the famous, if nostalgic printmakers.
“Got their pictures up in the parlor.”
Lucy had the measure of Homer Brown—he was clearly a child of vast curiosity. “What else did you notice?”
“That for a white man, he was pretty hard done by.”
“Hard done by?” This was an expression Marigold had not heard. “What do you mean?”
“He dressed real nice, with that fancy hat with the little feathers—I want a hat like that.”
If Marigold had not been so horrified by the confirmation of her suspicions, she might have been in sympathy with a hat lover, if not with that particular hat. Although, she did acknowledge, “It is a very dapper hat.”
“You know the one—that nice brown one?” Homer’s smile was wishful.
“But down at the other end, his shoes was all worn down on the heel and sole. He put newspaper inside ’em.
I saw the hole when he sat out behind the carriage barn, talking, with his foot over his knee, all casual-like, asking me questions.
It was that advert for the soap with the cat doing the washing. ”
“How very clever of you to notice.” Marigold herself had made no notice of the fellow’s shoes. She had been too busy making the mistake of trying to flirt her own way into the man’s good graces. So much for “seeing things other people don’t see.” “So, he was low on funds, do you think?”
“Poor as a stray dog, I reckon. My momma said his collar had been turned more than once. He only had a few pennies to pay me. After the first time, I wanted to see the color of his money before I did his bidding.”
“And what was his bidding?”
For the first time, Homer lost some of his nonchalance. “I ain’t suppose to say.”
Marigold took a very pointed, well-honed stab in the dark.
“Did he ask you to take anything from the professor’s room?
Or perhaps break something? Not money or anything valuable, but something that wouldn’t do any harm?
Or maybe just a prank, like turning over a table, or taking a photograph picture of two ladies, maybe? ”
Homer looked uncomfortable. “Promise you won’t tell?”
Marigold felt she had to come down on the side of moral right—she did not promise. But under her level stare, he finally confessed. “Said he was going to bring the picture back, so I wouldn’t get in trouble. But he didn’t bring it back. And my momma whupped me bad.”
Marigold’s outrage, as well as her terrible sense of guilt, sat together like sour milk in her stomach. Wilkerson had sold the photo to the tabloid—which was then likely used to finance the second set of ocean liner tickets to make his getaway.
“Why didn’t your mother tell the professor?”
“Didn’t want to lose her job. And if you tell on me and she loses her job, she’s gonna whup me something fierce.”
“I won’t tell if you tell me everything. Was there anything else he wanted you to do?” Marigold asked even though she feared she already knew the answer.
“He wanted me to get that pretty little blue bottle with the cup that fits on top. He wanted me to bring that to him, and I did, and after, he sent me to put it back, so it was all right.”
Professor Currier had taken her medication with water from that very blue bottle.
Vindication sat cold in her stomach. “Was that yesterday, Homer?”
“Uh-huh. But he didn’t pay me nothing like he promised. He went away at a run, after the professor went into such a taking.” Homer pulled a glum face. “Got a whupping then too, just for talking to him. But he said he was going to pay me,” he said in his own defense.
Marigold patted his shoulder. “I am sorry his lies cost you a spanking.”
“It was a whupping,” he said again, in order that she might understand the difference.
“I am very sorry,” she said solemnly. “But you know you should not have done something that you knew was wrong—even if he had paid you well for the favor.”
“Wouldn’t have been enough to take a whupping.”
Marigold patted his shoulder in attempted consolation. “No, my dear Homer. Nothing ever is.”
She took a deep breath to force herself to think logically, to put herself in James Wilkerson’s—or Wilkie Valentine’s—worn-down shoes. “Did he ever mention where he was staying? A different rooming house, where they take men?”
Homer shrugged in the way of children who have more important things on their mind, like throwing rocks at trees and avoiding whuppings. “Thought he said he was down the way, maybe, over down Waban Brook. Otises keep a place for menfolk of his sort.”
His sort—lying, aiding and abetting scoundrels.
“Is that where he went away at a run yesterday?”
Homer shrugged again. “Nah. He went that way. Like he was going to the train.” He hitched his thumb over his shoulder at the unseen station up Washington Street.
“Thank you, Homer.” Marigold dug into the pocket of her tweed bloomers for a nickel. “I appreciate your time and your honesty.”
“A whole nickel?” He looked up at her with dubious eyes. “Do I hafta tell my momma about it?”
“That is entirely up to you. If you think you can get away without incurring any whuppings—but I’d think twice if I were you.”
Homer’s sly grin told her there would be no thinking about it, but Marigold had bigger fish—and bigger liars—to catch.
James Wilkerson was Wilkie Valentine. He really was like the villains of Jane Austen’s novels—having all the appearance of good and none of the actual goodness.
Marigold set off on her bicycle, following Homer’s direction, heading south down Washington Street toward Waban Brook intent upon evidence to not only link Valentine to Olivia’s murder but to the attempted murder of Imogen Currier, as well.
He had lingered longer than they had thought, to exact his final revenge against the professor—and to remove the person who could conclusively link him to Olivia Thayer—but was now probably gone for good.
She wheeled up and down a few rutted lanes before she found a hinged sign on a picket fence advertising “Rooms to Let” with a placard next to the door that read “Otis House.”
Marigold dismounted, taking a path toward the rear of the house and the kitchen, where there was usually bound to be someone working, if Lucy’s example had taught her anything.
“Help you?” Was the cryptic query from the dooryard, where a worn-looking woman very much in the vein of Marigold’s first impression of her mother, Sophronia Hatchett—that is to say, a crone—toiled over a washing mangle.
“Yes, ma’am, good afternoon. How do you do.” One might adapt one’s standards but never let them down. “I was wondering if you had a man by the name of Wilkie Valentine resident here?”