Chapter 34
“There is no female brain. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver.”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Marigold headed directly for College Hall. Home, where she might confer with President Irvine on what needed to be done to keep the student body safe until Wilkie Valentine could be apprehended.
For a brief moment, she was tempted to take a different route and different plan. To go north toward the town and Isabella—and with any luck, Cab—at the Wellesley Inn, where she would no doubt also find companionship and comfort and champagne, and feel safe.
But practical considerations came first—and certainly others before self. Non Ministrari sed Ministrare. She could go to her friends at the inn after she had fulfilled her responsibility to President Irvine and the college.
She stood up on her pedals, determined to get there as fast as possible, anxious to crest the rise so she might have the beacon of College Hall in her sights to guide her home.
But suddenly, there he was, in front of her on the path, blocking the way.
The same camel hair coat, now showing some smudge spots, as if perhaps he’d been sleeping rough. The same shoes worn at the heels and soles. But the hat was carefully neat.
Vanity.
She would use it.
For another brief second she thought of trying to ride past him, of keeping on, of defying his pernicious interference.
But the path was uphill and narrow, with shaggy shrubs that would tangle her spokes on either side.
And she was already out of breath, winded with the fear and panic coursing through her blood like poison.
Perhaps it were better in this instance, to try her own antidote—to use honey instead of her more natural vinegar.
“Mr. Wilkerson,” she called casually, dismounting to carefully turn her bicycle as if she were joining him on his walk, and to keep it between them, and to keep moving back toward East Lodge and the Breyers.
“I haven’t seen you in some time,” she said as conversationally as she could.
Wanting to appease her way out of any potential trouble. “Where have you been keeping yourself?”
He seemed not to notice her nervousness. “Boston,” he said breezily, as if were some foreign place beyond her ken. As if she could have no experience of the world that did not start and end at the rural campus of her college. As if her world was still as small as Olivia Thayer’s had been.
“Oh, yes, the Boston Evening Standard. Of course.” She purposefully mangled the name of the tabloid, but he didn’t seem to notice. Or that she was striding faster in her barely manageable fright. “Did you know we identified the girl—the one I found in the lake? It turned out she was very famous.”
He scoffed. “I’d never heard of her.”
“Hadn’t you?” she kept on conversationally, even as her natural vinegar crept back into her tone at his dismissal. “She was to give an important lecture on universal suffrage at the college last Saturday evening. We were all very much looking forward to hearing her.”
“You don’t believe in all that, certainly,” he countered with one of his charming smiles. “You’re too pretty.”
Whatever appeal Mr. Wilkerson might have once engendered—no, he was Valentine. He was a murderer, not a journalist. She needed to remember that he was trying to manipulate her just as much as she was trying to manipulate him.
Only she needed to be cleverer about it.
But she would not pander. “Naturally, I do believe in universal suffrage as well as equal rights. All the pretty girls do,” she assured him blithely. “We’re too smart not to believe in our very selves.”
That he was equally angered and repulsed by her answer showed only briefly on his face before it was replaced by amused condescension.
“Come now. You’re just parroting what you heard some ugly, old, dried-up professor say.
You don’t want to end up like them, surely, all alone with no one for company but their cats? ”
“Professor Currier doesn’t have a cat. Nor does President—formerly Professor of Classics—Irvine. I myself prefer dogs to cats, though I have no pets at the moment, but I infinitely prefer the natural honesty and companionship of a dog over that of a man any day.”
“You can’t mean that.” He laughed and shook his head as if he were indulging her—for now. “You’ll see. When you’re older and wiser you’ll want to forget all this nonsense.”
“Nonsense?” Marigold could not help but give way to her true feelings. “Do you men think that if you just keep repeating an untruth—an untruth you clearly prefer to the actual truth—that it will cease to be a lie?”
He looked at her, really looked at her, as if he was seeing her as she actually existed, not as he wished her to be—or expected her to be to suit his needs. He was clearly baffled.
Marigold decided to give him a dose of his own poisonous medicine—she returned his blithe, supercilious smile and used his same tone. “You’ll see when you are older and wiser, you poor dear.”
All hint of bafflement vanished to be replaced by darkening anger. “I’m no poor dear, and you’re too old to be acting like a spoiled girl who doesn’t know better.”
“I’m not the one pouting,” she pointed out without letting her hopefully infuriating smile slip. “How does it feel to be talked to like that?”
He reacted as if he’d been slapped. “I don’t have to stand here and be insulted.”
“No, you don’t,” she agreed brightly gesturing toward the way ahead—the way off college grounds. “Go ahead,” her anger goaded her to say. “You’re already bound for hell, you might as well get a head start.”
For a second, a flash of some dark, fretting emotion passed across his face before he schooled it into contempt. “No, I don’t think so.” He took her arm in a hard grip. “If I’m going to hell, I’m taking you there with me.”
For half a second Marigold was too affronted and shocked—his hand around her upper arm hurt—to take any action swift enough to counteract his grip before he was towing her along, much as she had imagined he had towed Olivia.
She had to think. To come up with a plan that would overpower him with cleverness instead of brute force.
She kept her own hands firm upon her handlebars, not relinquishing the machine, keeping it between them. And she kept quiet, watching him carefully, all but listening to him think. Working out how to keep him mentally, if not physically, off balance.
“I know who you are, you know, Wilkie Valentine.” If she had hoped her assertion might stop him, she was mistaken—he kept on at that yard eating pace. “And I know what you did! To both Olivia Thayer and to Professor Currier.”
He was unfazed. “Points to you. I’m glad to hear that the old bat’s dead too—I wasn’t able to stick around to confirm her timely demise.”
“If you mean the professor, I am happy to disappoint you. We were able to counteract your clumsy attempt at poison.” She could hear the icy heat in her own voice. “We educated women.”
His veneer cracked. “You interfering little c—” He jerked her forward, his hand digging painfully into the muscles of her biceps.
“Scholar,” she supplied over his curse. “Along with my fellow scholars, who created the antidote. You would have done well to study harder and pay attention in chemistry class.”
He let out a curse so raw Marigold felt the tips of her ears turn blue—as she was sure her arm was turning under the viselike pressure of his grip.
But she kept her composure. “If I were you, I would run, now, while you can. You’re going to need that head start.”
“I can run later too,” he gritted out. “I can disappear anytime I like.”
“I’m sure you think you can create another name—Wilkie Valentine to Wilkerson to Valley. But that won’t change who you really are—a murderer!”
“Perhaps I am,” he yanked her to a halt to smile down at her. “But I assure you, I am getting to be a first-class murderer.”
She could not help but quake under his glare. Could not help but feel pain under his abuse. But despite the pain, she could not help but be herself—she was logical.
They were nearing the fateful fork in the path where she had found the glove, midway between the Music Hall ahead on the left and Stone Hall up in the trees to the right. Where Olivia Thayer had put up a fight.
Where she too would stand her ground. Somehow.
“Marigold!”
Ahead, on the flat lawn of the Music Hall, Marigold was astonished to see Aggie and Ethyl—one so tall and athletic, the other smaller and so much more academic—waving frantically.
Marigold momentarily let go of her handlebar and waved back.
Ethyl’s voice cracked in relief, “Come on up, we’ve been looking for you!”
“Yes!” Marigold called back, eager to be with her friends. Hopeful that logic and prudence would dictate Valentine’s actions now that there were witnesses, and he would let her go. “As you can see—”
Some noise—a cry of distress—came from Aggie. She had put her hand up to shade her eyes from the late afternoon sun but dropped it to cover her mouth.
“Marigold, come away!” Ethyl called, more strongly, waving Marigold up the hill.
But neither girl moved forward. Both seemed stricken, affixed to where they stood.
“I don’t think your friends like me.” Valentine tightened his hand on her arm, demonstrating the power of his grip.
She would definitely have a bruise.
“Points to them,” she said in ironic echo of his words. “I don’t think they like most men.”
“Typical,” he scoffed. “You should stay away from them. It might be catching.”
His voice was cold, but he was smiling.
“Marigold!” The pleading in Aggie’s voice was something Marigold had never heard before.
She put her own hand up to shade her eyes and saw more clearly the fear on Aggie’s face. The fear as she looked at him.
At someone Aggie recognized. Someone she had seen before.
The man who had grabbed her in such a proprietary manner while she was wearing her hat. The hat another girl—another girl he was looking for—had worn. Another girl who was now dead.