Chapter 35
“I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don’t believe I deserved my friends.”
Walt Whitman
Marigold’s hand stung from the force of the impact. She wrenched herself away. Between them, the shaft of the pin quivered, bristling out of him like a hedgehog’s spine.
“You bitch!” he cawed, immediately trying to tear the thing from him.
She had just enough presence of mind to shove the steel cage of her bicycle at him before she ran. As fast as she could.
Up the hill toward the college. Up the hill into the blazing orange late afternoon sun.
Toward freedom.
“Goddamn bitch,” he was screaming behind her. He must have thrown the bicycle off somehow. She could hear his hard panting as he came after her, laboring certainly, but still close.
She sprinted up the hill, knowing that he would have at least as difficult a time on the rising ground as she, hoping that her superior knowledge of the terrain would come to her aid. Hoping her stamina would last. Hoping against hope itself.
And then she saw them ahead—a daisy chain of women stretching across her vision, young and old, sweeping down from College Hall, armed with bats and clubs, rackets, javelins, and oars and even, perhaps—if that was tiny Miss Burke—brandishing a ruler.
Every woman in the college, professors and students alike, acting as one, holding hands, or linking arms so as not to be separated from each other. A united front.
An army of women.
She raced toward them, giving it every last bit of speed and stamina she had, reaching out her arms as if they might propel her closer. Close enough to touch. Close enough to be safe.
Their arms closed around her.
“Marigold!” It was Aggie and Ethyl pulling her into their embrace, closing ranks and shoulders to form an impenetrable shield. Marigold hugged them tight, taking strength in their numbers and unity.
It was every woman she had so relentlessly scanned for signs of guilt in the chapel that afternoon that seemed so long ago now.
It was President Irvine and tiny, quivering Miss Burke, who looked as if she had not been outside the doors of College Hall in more years than Marigold owned.
It was Sarah Appleton and Eliza Anthony.
Seniors and freshwomen, friends, acquaintances and strangers still, all forming a shield of sisterhood.
But they were all small, flesh and blood compared to the conscienceless killer who was coming. He was forty yards from them, staggering and swaying as he came, but still coming. Relentlessly.
“Oh, Lordy,” Ethyl whispered. “Look at him.”
His shirtfront was red with blood, and as she spoke, he toppled, reaching one empty hand forward to save his fall, while the other hand still clutched the wicked shaft of the pin, shiny and glistening in his clenched fist.
It was Cab who reached him first—Cab, who seemed to appear from nowhere, as if she had once again conjured him from her deepest, most private longings.
He tackled Valentine to the ground, disappearing beneath a scrum of blue frock-coated officers of the District Police—Detective Pratt massing his men as promised.
At first, they appeared to hold Valentine down—all but sitting on his chest—but then their postures reversed and they were tending to him, holding the man’s head up, as if to give him succor.
Don’t, she wanted to shout. Don’t help him. Don’t even touch him.
Valentine was nothing but venom and hurt, violence and poison.
But telling Cab not to do the right thing—not to act like a gentleman, like the best version of himself, full of humanity and pity—was impossible.
Just as impossible as it was for her to stay away. She pushed out of Aggie’s restraining arms and went to them where they hovered over Valentine.
“He should have left it in,” Dr. Barker said, gesturing to the hatpin still clutched in his bloody grasp. “If he had left it in, it might have kept him from bleeding to death.”
“You can’t let him die,” Marigold swore, suddenly reversing course. “I want him to face punishment for what he did to Olivia Thayer—and what he tried to do to Professor Currier.”
“And nearly you,” someone put in.
Marigold shook her head, as if that would make the past half hour go away. As if just by deeming it so, she could keep herself from being made into a victim. She refused to be.
She refused to be sweet and kind and magnanimous. She refused to be discreet. “I want him to hang,” she shouted. “To pay for the crimes he’s done to women. For what men have always done to women! What they have always gotten away with.”
“Marigold.” The quiet voice at her ear was President Irvine’s. “While your passion is perhaps understandable, please think of the example you’re setting for all, and perhaps curb your bloodlust.”
She would not. She refused.
Discretion had cost them too much.
“It’s not bloodlust,” Marigold insisted.
“It’s justice. Justice for Olivia Thayer.
And Professor Currier. And Minnie Mallory in Pride’s Crossing.
And all those other girls in Salem Sound.
And in the Connecticut River and every other damn river and lake and pond across this land.
The supposed suicides no one has ever cared enough about to make a fuss. To find out what really happened.”
Her throat felt raw and tight, and her face grew hot and stinging with the salt tears that were weeping down her face. “You have to understand,” she sniffed. “I don’t care if it’s wicked. It’s justice.”
“And we hope that justice is tempered with mercy and clear-sighted thinking.” President Irvine was just as insistent, only more quietly so.
“Not just passion.” She put her arm around Marigold’s shoulders.
“But for now, the passion will suffice very well.” She gave Marigold a gentle sort of reassuring shake.
“Well done, Marigold. You are, most assuredly, a credit to the college. And to the name of womankind and thinking women everywhere.”
“Thank you,” Marigold hiccupped. Because somehow, Julia Irvine’s approval meant more to her than anything else.
And because it had been a very trying, exhausting day, and her arm ached and her hand still throbbed like the very devil, and she was still terribly, terribly frightened, and because Cab was yards away from her and could not see her face, she broke down.
She collapsed upon the grass and finally, finally cried.
But while she had been blubbering on about justice, others had been taking action. Kneeling on the bare yellow grass, Dr. Barker pressed a handkerchief firmly against the hole in Wilkie Valentine’s chest.
“Collapsed lung, I should think, along with blood loss,” Marigold heard her say. “We need to get him up to the Hospital Wing immediately so we can get a concertina bag pumping air back into his lungs and do what we can to save him.”
Detective Pratt and his frock coats swung into action, hefting the man up over their shoulders and carrying him to Mr. Duckett’s cart, which now stood at the ready.
It seemed only fitting that the wagon that had conveyed Olivia Thayer from her watery demise should now be hastening Wilkie Valentine slowly toward his, whenever that might be—he would have his day in court, Marigold hoped, and she would be there to ensure justice was served.
But not today. Today, she let the wagon pass by her without following.
“Marigold, darling.” Isabella somehow had her much battered hat.
“Oh, Isabella.” She reached for her friend’s hand. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“You didn’t think I was going to let Cab come and save you without support, did you?”
“No, I suppose not. Thank you for saving my hat.”
“Of course. It’s far too nice to simply leave there—after all, I designed it!”
“Thank you.” Marigold accepted the hat with both gratitude and trepidation. And a deep steadying breath because she still felt ridiculously unsteady. “But I will say, I hope I never get that particular hatpin back.”
But let that be a lesson to young ladies to secure their fashionable headpieces with sturdy, but potentially lethal hatpins. One never knew when one might save one’s life.
And end another’s.
“Dr. Barker will keep your hatpin.” Cab was suddenly there, in that way he had of lending her an arm without ever seeming to paw at her like a masher. “She said she would see to it that the evidence was properly accounted for.”
“Thank you,” Marigold said again, for there seemed nothing else she could say. Cab’s own wool suit seemed to be stained with Valentine’s blood. “Is he—”
“Yes,” Cab answered quietly. “I’m afraid Valentine’s heart stopped beating some time ago from the wound, but primarily from the blood loss.
Your Dr. Barker just didn’t want to have him out there in the middle of the lawn.
Much better, she thought, to get him out of sight so he could be said to have died in the Hospital Wing. ”
Always discretion. Always sparing their sensibilities.
Marigold, for one, thought it would be better for all of them to have looked down upon his body and known he was dead, just as he deserved.
But there was another consideration in this contemplation of what he deserved—what she had now earned for herself. “Then I killed him, didn’t I?”
“Not in my opinion, and certainly not technically,” Cab hedged.
“You used your hatpin quite clearly in self-defense, which was witnessed by all—including Detective Pratt, who will no doubt testify to such in his report. And very well and bravely done too.” He covered her blood-stained glove with his own warm hand.
“But you left the hatpin in—cleverly, or luckily, positioned between the fourth and fifth ribs on the left side, Dr. Barker said. And as she also observed, Valentine was the one who pulled it out, probably tearing a hole in the left ventricle and causing him to bleed out of his heart. No court in the land would convict you of murd—” He stopped himself.
“You acted purely in self-defense. Please put your mind to rest.”
“I’ll try,” Marigold said, and took the moment to do just that, taking a deep steadying breath before she rose.
“Thank you for coming to my rescue.” She forswore the word the moment it came from her mouth.
“For helping,” she amended. “And … everything.” She began to feel foolish using such feeble euphemisms. “All you’ve done. Both of you.”
“Naturally, darling,” Isabella soothed. “I hope you should expect nothing less from your friends. And you know, I always thought there was something fishy and suspicious and untoward about him, that journalist. I never liked him.”
“No, you didn’t. And you were right, so I shall after this always heed your instincts.”
“As well you should.” Isabella brightened. “Which of course means you must marry Cab.”
“Isabella.” Both Cab and Marigold spoke at the same time.
In Cab’s voice, Marigold heard all the disappointment and chagrin of already having asked and been refused. For herself, she knew her own feelings on the matter were bittersweet—especially at the moment, when she was feeling so decidedly vulnerable.
Cab was and, she feared, always would be the finest man she knew. His disinterested assistance in this case was evidence enough of that.
As was that careful way he touched her arm.
“Now that the murderer has been brought to justice—or if he by some miracle can be brought back to life by your resourceful Dr. Barker, he is at least the beginning of the long trail to justice,” he amended.
“Let us get you out of all this wind and bother. If you’re all to rights? ” he asked quietly.
Something about his calm consideration took the last of her breath from her. She instantly felt as if her legs were about to give way.
Marigold sat back heavily in the grass.
“Clearly not okay.” Cab shucked off his jacket and slung it around her shoulders just as he sat beside her and put his arm around her.
“I’ll fetch something bracing,” Isabella suggested before she hurried off, leaving Cab and Marigold alone.
“I expect you’re feeling a little cold,” Cab said solicitously as he rubbed her back. “Shock and fright does that, I’m told.”
“You’ve never been frightened, have you?” Not like that, with someone who so clearly could do whatever they wanted to do to her physically.
Every woman knew that fear. Very few men ever did.
“Do you think me a stone?” was his answer.
“I was frightened enough today, trying to find you, hoping, praying I wouldn’t be too late—that we hadn’t made a fatal mistake in looking for him elsewhere, and in taking so long to realize the truth.
I was as frightened as I’ve ever been,” he continued.
“More so, because I didn’t know if you knew. ”
“Yes,” Marigold confirmed. “I came to the realization that Wilkerson and Valentine were the same rotter rather too slowly for my liking.”
“But the important thing is that you did come to that realization. Thank God. And you told Miss Burke, who raised the alarm. I think she telephoned every listing on the entire exchange of the town of Wellesley—thankfully including our inn.”
“I’d rather thank Miss Burke than God. And Imogen Currier and Aggie Newton and Ethyl Rautencranz,” Marigold amended.
“They were the ones, who, each in their own way—although Aggie and Ethyl were together on the path—made me realize he was the murderer. Although clearly, Isabella suspected him first. And will never let me forget about that.”
“Isabella is fulsome with warnings.”
“Is that how she got you up here? Giving you a warning—that I might be falling for Wilkerson?”
“That and her idea to buy a tearoom. And naturally, it worked,” he admitted without rancor.
“Because she knows I care deeply about you. And want the best for you. And I think the best for you—in case you were wondering—is having you alive and well and carrying on being the Marigold we all know and love.”
He loved her.
She knew that—she had always known that, it seemed.
Just as she had always known she loved him too.