Chapter 33
“Re-examine all that you have been told … dismiss that which insults your soul.”
Walt Whitman
“Miss Manners?”
Marigold looked up from her examination of her coins in their electrolytic solution—which was working perfectly thanks to Ethyl’s assiduous assistance—expecting to find Miss Burke ready with one of her seemingly endless summonses.
But it was Eliza Anthony, standing at the top of the stairwell, much as she had the last time she and Marigold had talked. But today she looked entirely different—far less sure of herself.
“Eliza?”
“Do you remember how you asked me to tell you if—”
“Yes.” Marigold went to her immediately, for she looked quite green around the gills. “Come sit.” She kicked out the chair next to her workbench and guided Eliza into it. “What has happened?”
“I thought … I think I might have seen that man … from the photograph you … The one of the front of the boathouse rotunda?” she clarified.
All the alarm Marigold had managed to push aside came screaming back. Just when she had convinced herself that there was no more that she could do, that she ought to leave the entire matter of evidence and justice to others and concentrate on her studies—
“Where did you see him?” she managed. “When? Today?”
“On the street. In town.” Eliza nodded numbly, as if she were still in shock. “At least I think it was him. At the tearoom up on Church Street.”
“Yes.” Marigold knew it well—it was the one she herself had gone to with James Wilkerson to appeal to him, the day she had enlisted Cab’s far superior help.
“Well, he came in. And there was just something about him—about the way he stood there for a moment, with his back to me. His silhouette—the shape he made, you know?” Eliza shook her head, as if to contradict herself.
“All of a sudden, I felt entirely all-overish. Just an awful funny, terrible feeling.”
“Yes,” Marigold completely understood the feeling—she was experiencing it now.
“I was so scared that I had to leave straightaway,” Eliza finished. “But I feel so foolish—I might be wrong.”
“Not at all,” Marigold assured her. “You did the right thing to leave. Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so—his back was to me. He was looking in the mirror.”
He would be.
Marigold’s fright began to abate. The man might be a murderer, but he was only a man—and a vain man at that.
But still, she had to think. And to act. “Did you come straight here? How long ago was this?”
“Yes. I don’t know—maybe twenty minutes? I walked—fast, practically at a run, you know? And I don’t mind saying it was the worst walk I ever took—I was frightened half to death that I was being followed the whole time.”
“Yes.” Marigold knew the feeling. “Thank you, Eliza. You’ve been exceptionally helpful.”
“I feel awful foolish now.” Eliza began to recover more of her urbane, cynical self. “I suppose I ought to have gotten his name.”
“I already know it,” Marigold said. “And you did the very right thing, Eliza. It’s a good thing you didn’t talk to him. That man is a killer.”
And Marigold was going to have to stop him before he killed again.
No. She had promised to be cautious. All she needed to do was to get word to Detective Pratt that Valentine was abroad in the town. The officer, with the assistance of the watchmen, would surely deal with the miscreant.
What she needed to do was warn President Irvine and her sister collegians, then telephone Detective Pratt at the town hall, and telephone the Breyers at the East Lodge to be on the lookout.
But the town hall had no telephone exchange.
She would have to go to them then, in person.
Marigold went immediately to her room to change into far sturdier clothing for being abroad than her cotton laboratory smock—her sturdy wool tweed cycling suit with the split skirt firmly buttoned back so she could move freely, tightly laced boots and a well-secured hat to keep the low autumn sun from her eyes.
She was going to need every advantage, physical or mental, that she might have. She needed to be fast and stealthy to avoid being seen by the wrong person.
Which put her in mind of the first time she had visited the Breyers and found comfort in the safety of numbers—she would need all the allies she might manage. Information was power, and every young woman deserved to be armed with as much information as possible.
“Miss Burke?” She paused at the reception room, “I am heading to East Lodge to confer with the Breyers before I go on to the town hall to speak to Detective Pratt. Would you be kind enough to telephone the lodge to expect me?”
“Certainly, but—
“A safety precaution, Miss Burke.” And while she was thinking of safety. “Do you think you could consult with President Irvine, and tell her I would strongly advise that the student body be put on alert? Any man—all men—on campus are to be treated with suspicion. All.”
Miss Burke, though she drew herself up like a vigilant squirrel, did not blink an eye. “I will do so immediately.”
“Thank you.” And Marigold was out the door and onto her bicycle and racing down the carriage drive—keeping well away from the remoter foot paths—toward East Lodge.
Mr. Breyer was on the porch waiting for her. “Miss Burke telephoned—”
“Yes, thank you for meeting me. Do you keep a log of all the visitors who come to the gate?”
“Mrs. Breyer keeps it,” he answered. “Come in and talk to her where we can be comfortable. Diana, Miss Manners is here, and wants to see the logs.”
“I heard.” Mrs. Breyer waved her through the door.
“Certainly, we keep them same as Miss Burke at the reception room at College Hall,” Mrs. Breyer confirmed, turning to retrieve the leatherbound log.
“And now you see, we’ve the telephone.” She indicated the matching machine to the one in Miss Burke’s office.
“We call over to College Hall to expect someone—and Miss Burke does the same—as she just did to tell us to expect you.”
“And do you record each person and their name? For instance, when Olivia Thayer came?”
“Now, I don’t know if we always put down a guest’s name if they’re with someone we know from the college.
” Mrs. Breyer frowned. “Not after the first time. Miss Thayer came with her aunt, Professor Currier, the first few times, didn’t she?
” She looked to her husband for confirmation.
“And after that I suppose, she was a sort of regular, so I doubt I made any particular note. Once we get to know students, we don’t always write down their names each time. ”
Mrs. Breyer looked apprehensive, as if she thought Marigold were conducting some sort of audit of her procedures.
“Yes, that makes perfect sense,” Marigold assured her. “What I’m trying to get at is, did Olivia Thayer ever have a young man with her when she was walking to campus? Someone who might have been seen to be courting her?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Mrs. Breyer was frowning again.
“She came and went mostly in the afternoons, around three-thirty or so, not during the more popular visiting hours in the evenings. And I often saw her walking home with Professor Currier, who lives just up the street. Young ladies who have young men to socialize with, do so more often in the town, in the tearooms, than at the college.”
“We keep an eye out for young men, collegians and the like, all the same,” Mr. Breyer asserted. “But I look out for vagrant types too, same as the groundsmen and porters do—sometimes the woods here seem inviting to tramps or whatnot. We run them off, let them know they’re not welcome here.”
“And has that happened recently?” Marigold thought of Professor Currier’s image of Valentine lying in wait. “Have there been any unattached men, either collegians or vagrant types loitering in the woods?”
“Chased a fellow out toward the road from the brook down below the farmhouse a while back. But I think he just wandered in there by mistake—said he was looking for his dog.”
That seemed reasonable. But being reasonable was how people went unnoticed. “What sort of a man was he, this fellow?”
“Well, not a vagrant. A gentleman, though he looked like he’d been out some time. Said his dog had got loose and he thought it had come that way. Didn’t know he was on college land. Came out easy as you please. Tipped his hat to me and moved on.”
Something in Marigold’s middle turned to ice. “What sort of a hat?” She heard herself ask, even as she somehow already knew the answer.
“Oh, a nice one—dark sort of felt.”
“A homburg with a small quail feather stuck into a brown grosgrain ribbon.” Her words were nearly a whisper.
“Why, yes.” Mr. Breyer looked baffled. “Say! You don’t mean that’s the fellow you’re looking for? But you said a young man—I thought you meant someone Miss Thayer’s age. You know, like a college boy.”
“I—” She had unthinkingly repeated Professor Currier’s description. “Did the man with—or without—the dog give you a name? Either Valentine or Wilkerson, by chance? Or Valley?”
“That last—Mr. Valley. Lived down in South Natick, he said.”
“No.” Marigold shook her head. “He was resident in a boardinghouse down off Waban Brook.” He probably followed the path of the brook, down under the bridge at Washington Street, where he couldn’t be seen, and into the campus unnoticed.
“When exactly did you see Mr. Valley along Waban Brook? Was he coming away from the campus or heading toward it? What day? What time of day? Was he disheveled or neat?”
“Whoa, whoa, now. Let me think. It was some time ago—at least a week back.” Mr. Breyer screwed up his face in thought. “And he was coming down the brook, as it flows east out of the lake. Said he was worried his dog might drown.”
“Dogs don’t drown unless they are tied or weighted down,” Marigold said tonelessly. “They naturally swim. Unlike people.”
Mr. Breyer looked at her askance. “Well, I didn’t think about that.
I just told him he had to get out from there—that he wasn’t allowed.
And he came right out, nice and polite and respectful.
Walked off down the road toward South Natick looking all forlorn.
He’d been out looking for his dog all night. ”
“All night? Which night?”
Mrs. Breyer spoke up. “Would you not have put that down in the log, Steven? We’re very conscientious about such things, I promise you, Miss Manners. We don’t just let things pass. We write things down.”
“Did you write Mr. Valley down?”
Steven Breyer went to the log book as if in a trance. Thumbing through the pages, each page a day. Each a day a list of visitors and tradesmen. “Yes,” he finally said with great relief. “Yes. ‘5:15 AM. Found a Mr. Valley searching for his dog, in the dell below the farmhouse. Warned off.’ There.”
“What date was that, if you please, Mr. Breyer?”
“The morning of Monday, October the eighth. Five fifteen in the morning.”
“Which was the morning after the night Olivia Thayer was killed and her body pushed or thrown into Lake Waban. I found her body floating beneath the boathouse that afternoon.”
“By jeezum,” Mr. Breyer breathed. “Do you think it was him?”
“I do,” Marigold said simply. “I am sure that your Mr. Valley’s real name is Wilkie Valentine and that he murdered Olivia Thayer.
And I am very glad you have the evidence of the log, so you will be able to say so in a court of law.
” They didn’t just have to have evidence that Valentine was the killer, they needed to bring him to justice. “If he can be caught.”
If he had any sense, Wilkie Valentine, or James Wilkerson, or Mr. Valley, or whoever he really was should have been long gone by now, conscious of the noose slowly but surely tightening around his neck.
But he hadn’t—he thought he was smarter than all of them. He was certainly more wicked. And more vain.
“We should tell the authorities,” Mrs. Breyer suggested.
“I am on my way now to alert Detective Pratt of the District Police along with the watch, and give them as full a description as I might, including all the names he has used.” Marigold told him.
“But I would ask you to report Mr. Valley to the watch as well, so there is some official record besides your log books—which I thank you for keeping. They will be important evidence in the effort to bring Wilkie Valentine to justice.”
“Why don’t you let me do that for you,” Mr. Breyer suggested. “I can tell them what he looked like, clear as day. You’ve done more than your share, Miss Manners. You’re better off getting back to the college to warn them there.”
“Yes,” Marigold agreed, reaffirming her promise to Cab. “I’ll do just that.”
It would be better to know they were not looking for just any man on campus, but this specific man. She would confirm with Professor Currier beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Wilkie Valentine and James Wilkerson and the vagrant Valley were, in fact, the same man.
She ought to telephone Isabella and Cab too—they could identify him. As could Aggie, who had most likely been accosted by Valentine when he was seeking Olivia Thayer.
So many different people, who might give evidence against him, and at least put him in the right place at the right time to make his identification as Olivia’s murderer plausible.
Because he certainly had not got on that ocean liner.
He had been amongst them the whole time, hiding in plain sight.
Hiding behind his gentlemanlike plausibility. And his deadly charm.
Oh, the perniciousness of such a thing!
It might have been one thing if the man had strangled Olivia Thayer in a fit of passion and fear, and then regretted the fatal impulse of his actions.
But it was wholly another thing for him to have loitered and idled around the town in the aftermath, creating diversions to hamper his victim’s identification, stealing photographs and telling lies to the press and anyone who was in any way connected with solving the crime.
Lying to everyone he came in contact with. Lying to her.
He had stolen the photograph—or asked poor young Homer to steal it. He had poisoned Imogen Currier’s medicine. Only because Lucy and Ethyl each acted so swiftly was his attempt to kill Professor Currier thwarted.
The depth and breadth of the man’s evil was breathtaking.
And frightening.
“Miss Manners?” Mrs. Breyer recalled her to the present. “You go on home now.”
“Yes,” Marigold agreed. “I will go home.”
Marigold started down the path at a run, mounting her bicycle on the fly.
She had never wanted the noisy comfort—as Professor Currier had called it—of her fellow students more that she did at that moment. She needed their company and their humanity to restore her faith in mankind.
Because at the moment, that faith was all but gone.