Chapter 34 #2
And even though she didn’t turn to look at him, Marigold felt the realization within him. “Do you know her?” she asked as if she were perplexed.
“Not at all,” he lied.
“But she knows you,” Marigold allowed. “She’s recognized you from that day you accosted her on the golf course because you thought she was Olivia Thayer.”
He swore again before he said, “More points to you.” But he didn’t move. He stood there, the way Eliza Anthony’s camera had captured him—tall and dark, with his hat shading his eyes—as if he were trying to make up his mind.
Marigold tried to help him along. “Are you going to kill us all?” she asked.
He turned from the view of the Music Hall to look down at her. “No, just you, I think. You’ll give me the most pleasure to kill.”
The spike of fear that rove through Marigold stole her breath. And her logic.
But finally she managed, “Did you derive pleasure from killing Olivia? From strangling her.” Marigold strove to remember her readings of the Viennese physicians in psychology—another required class at Wellesley. “Did that give you, how shall we say, an erotic charge?”
He jerked her arm in response. “Well, aren’t you the hotty totty.”
“Because I can discuss both strangulation and erections without confusing the two?”
His grip upon her arm turned viciously painful as he tried to drag her closer, across the steel rods of the bicycle between them. “Why do you girls always think you’re smarter than us?”
She could not speak for all girls, but she could speak and think for herself. She was halfway to simply saying, “Because I am,” when she saw the look in his eye—the sharp, shocking sight of the menace he had hidden behind the veneer of civilized charm.
But appeasing this man would get her nowhere—except closer to the place where he would try to strangle her too.
She used his own words. “Not smarter than us,” she said. “Just you, I think.”
He overpowered her easily, gripping the soft flesh of her upper arm just above the elbow to propel her toward his chosen path—the longer, low footpath away from the better traveled gravel lanes that led past Stone Hall and the Music Hall.
Marigold wrenched back and turned to call for help—but Aggie and Ethyl had disappeared.
And there was no one else who would hear her call for help.
Because she knew in the vast emptiness of the wilderness along the shore of the lake, no one would hear her. Because they were all obeying the college’s rules and precepts, and were not going abroad when there were potentially dangerous people about the campus.
Marigold scanned the ground ahead for a weapon—some rock or stick that she might use. Perhaps she might be able to swing the bicycle at him and knock him off his feet.
But he kept too tight a grip on her.
She would have to improvise and fight in other ways. But she hardly knew how.
“Did you kill her because she didn’t love you?” she tried. “Because she wouldn’t meet you at the White Star docks to board the Utopia as you planned? Or because she tried to return your ring?”
“Aren’t you clever.” His tone was full of scorn. “But not clever or strong enough to stop me.” His hand dug hard into her flesh, ensuring her continued cooperation.
“You needn’t pinch, Mr. Valentine. I perfectly understand your intent.” She was the one who jerked her arms forward this time, doing anything she could to keep him off his stride—either metaphorically or physically. Either would do.
He retaliated by digging in his grip and shaking her a little, so that her hat was in danger of tilting forward over her eyes.
Though she still kept her left hand on the handlebars, her right she reached up as if she needed to steady her hat. And found her resolve.
And readied it.
Ahead, she could see where the path curved along the edge of the small pond that created a natural boundary between the sloping lawns of College Hall and the woods along the banks of the larger lake.
Where the ground was softer and might be less steady underfoot.
“She’s really not your mother, you know, Imogen Currier.
It really was her younger sister, Lucinda.
” She presented the facts as reasonably and calmly as she could, given the circumstances.
“It’s all in the records.” She chanced a glance at him as he towed her along—his face was flinty and hard.
“For even a pretend journalist, you weren’t very good at finding things out. ”
“I didn’t need to,” he scoffed. “I’ve got you to find out everything for me.”
“Like the fact that you paid the Wilsons to take your place on the Cunard liner? I’m sure you knew that we would eventually learn about the Ultonia—which was why you were clever enough not to get on the ship yourself, given that your coconspirators have already been arrested.
Or are they accessories to the crime—you’ll have to ask your lawyer.
Do you have one yet? Best to be prepared. ”
“Believe me, I am well prepared.”
“To strangle me? One girl gets strangled and the watchmen are in a dither. Two girls get strangled in the same place—you are taking me down to the boathouse, aren’t you? I don’t know where else you hope to get rid of a body on this campus since they are already actively searching for you.”
“No one knows who or where I am.”
“My friends, Aggie and Ethyl, do—they know,” she countered.
“And they’ll have gone to fetch the authorities—the Special District Police detective who has been hot on your heels.
” Her real hope was that the stalwart pair had not done something so ineffective as summon the watch, but were instead arming themselves with Aggie’s strong, Scottish metal golf clubs.
“Those two girls?” His scoff became a sneer. “Couldn’t fight a fly.”
“Perhaps,” she lied. She had every confidence in Aggie’s ability to crack a wiseacre’s skull with a driver. And Ethyl’s resolve to help her do so. But instead of saying so, she turned to look past his left and let her eyes widen. “But what about them?”
He fell for the feint.
He turned sharply, yanking her toward his right side, as if he would pull her in front of him to shield himself from the unseen threat.
Marigold felt the pain of his possession all the way up her arm, but she let the impetus of his action propel her toward his chest.
Where she buried the hatpin she had surreptitiously pulled from her hair between his ribs, six inches deep.