Chapter 30 #2
“Who?” The woman turned down her mouth and peered hard at Marigold. “Don’t put up with no fraternizing on my property, if that’s what you’re after.”
“No, ma’am,” Marigold assured her. “I am only seeking information about Mr. Valentine—I do not seek him personally.”
But suspicion was a deep-seated New England trait. “What fer?” The narrow-eyed woman idled closer, as if she wanted a better look at Marigold.
“I am making inquiries on behalf of”—here she gave way to a small lie—“the authorities of the District Police in regard to some suspicious events in the town. Mr. Valentine’s name has come up a time or two.”
“Has it now?” She wiped her hands on her faded work smock as if she were washing her hands of any knowledge. “Don’t have anyone of that name here.”
“No?” Marigold could almost taste the disappointment like ash in her mouth.
“Perhaps James Wilkerson? Tall, handsome man about thirty years old? Brown hair, brown eyes, nice nose? Perhaps he said he was a journalist with one of the Boston papers? Wears a brown felt homburg hat with quail feathers tucked into the ribbon? Shoes worn down at the heel?”
“Oh, him.” The woman harrumphed in disdain. “He was here a week or two—left without paying the rest of his shot. Didn’t call himself that—whatever it was you said.”
How was it that every time she was proved right she felt worse instead of better?
“What name did he give?”
“Don’t recall.” The woman narrowed her gaze to mercenary slits. “Paid the first week in advance, in cash.” She stuck her hands on her hips. “Cash money is always helpful. Always welcome.”
Marigold didn’t blink. “If this is an invitation to pay you for your time and information, I am happy to do so.”
The woman’s smile was pleasantly sly. “You catch on nice and quick.”
“Thank you.” Marigold searched her pockets to come up with her last coin. “I hope this quarter will suffice to refresh your memory, ma’am, as it is all I have on me.”
“That’ll do.” The old woman pocketed the money in a flash. “Valley, he said his name was. Traveling through, he said. Lovely town, with a lot of young women. Man like him would notice that, wouldn’t he?”
“I’ll bet he did.” Marigold would add Mrs. Otis to the list of people taken in by good looks and charm. “When did he arrive?”
“Four or five weeks ago?” The woman searched her memory. “Maybe more. Paid in cash for the first week. Said as he had some business in town and then in Boston. Said he’d be back and forth. But he hasn’t come back.”
“When was the last time he was here?”
“Nigh on a week and a half ago. Monday before last. Left at dawn.”
The morning after the night he murdered Olivia Thayer.
“If he does come back, would you mind sending a message up to me at the college? To College Hall. There will be money in it, for you, a great deal, if you can get a message to me—without him knowing, you understand. He can’t know you’re contacting me.”
The canny woman narrowed her eyes. “How much?”
Two could play that game. “How much do you reckon a message would be worth?” She would break her own rule and borrow from Isabella if need be.
The crone eyed Marigold up and down, from the top of her boater to the bottom of her cycling bloomers, as if measuring her for a coffin. “A fin.”
Marigold narrowed her own eyes. “One dollar,” she countered. “A silver dollar if you can get a message to me fast—again, without him knowing.”
“Bring it myself for a silver dollar,” the crone cackled.
“You do that.” Marigold struck out her hand.
“Marigold Manners, Wellesley College. Just leave word at the reception room.” She would have to begin bribing poor Miss Burke as well, if this crone was added to the parade of persons Marigold was responsible for.
“If this Mr. Valley comes back, or you see him at all, anywhere about town, you’ll let me know? ”
Mrs. Otis’s suspicions softened into satisfaction. “Reckon I might could do that.”
“Thank you.” Marigold didn’t want to stand there arguing over the garden gate for a moment longer than necessary—lest the object of her interrogation come waltzing down the lane.
But when she turned to go, she felt an intriguing frisson of recognition at what she finally realized was a kitchen garden laid out irregularly across the yard. It put her in mind of her far more precisely cultivated kitchen garden plot at Hatchet Farm on Great Misery.
But something about the shaggy garden stirred up a breeze in the back of her mind—that cone-shaped flower especially.
It reminded Marigold of one her actual mother, Sophronia—although Marigold had no idea she was her mother at the time—who had been deeply conversant in the language of flowers, had added to the kitchen garden for “protection.”
“What is that flower, there, along the wall, with the berries?”
The woman’s narrow suspicion crept back. “Well, aren’t you a clever one. Quick. Nasty too, I’ll bet.”
“I beg your pardon?” Marigold felt all of the insult and little of the backhanded admiration, but she tamped down her feelings in favor of facts. “I thought I recognized it from my mother’s garden, is all, but it’s different from what I’m remembering.”
“Banewort, I call it. Used in a medicinal tonic I make. Cure putrid throat, along with carbuncles and furuncles. You got any carbuncles need shrinking?”
“No, thank you.” Any plant with the word bane in it was never benign. And experience—as well as her recent close translation of Antiphon’s Against the Step-mother for Poisoning—was reminding her that poisons were most often a woman’s weapon.
But who was to say who else at Otis House might have noticed and made use of the plant?
There were no coincidences.
“We used to have something similar in my mother’s herb garden. She’s powerful clever with tonics. But I don’t recall anything called banewort. Does it have some other name?”
“Ayuh.” The woman’s eyes narrowed into cynical slits. “Deadly nightshade.”