Chapter 13

C HAPTER 13

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly

recognizes genius.

—Arthur Conan Doyle

They made speedy progress across the sound with Lucy's perfectly balanced skiff pushing them along on the bluff easterly. Lucy added to the atmosphere of escape by singing spirituals as they sailed along. She had a lovely voice, and her calm company helped keep Marigold from dwelling on the possibility of mulberry-clad bodies floating just beneath the waves—though she did look.

Lucy piloted them past the private beaches of mostly empty summer estates until they reached a small reed-ringed cove, where she made fast at a small pier.

"My momma's place is back along the marsh." She pointed down the boardwalk they were to take. "Doc Oliphant's place." Lucy gestured to a well-maintained two-story house with a picturesque porch across the water. "If you ever need doctoring."

"I am in excellent health, thank you, but that is a good thing to know—if he is a well-trained, well-read medical doctor and not a patent medicine–dispensing quack? What has your experience with the man been?"

"No experience at all." Lucy's smile gave way to careful blankness. "Doc Oliphant is just for you white folks."

"Even in such a rural place?" Marigold was shocked. She knew doctors in Boston might have exclusive practices, taking only well-to-do patients, but she had never imagined that a doctor might refuse patients based solely on their race. "I apologize for my ignorance, Lucy, though I do deplore that you should have no doctor to see you. What if you became ill?" She thought of the perilous number of casual threats she had endured in only two days with the Hatchets, and especially how they had all feared poisoning. "What if something went wrong?"

"We got doctors and learned people of our own, you know, though maybe not so many out here as in other places, like Boston. But my momma used to nurse, back in the day, back in the war. She still makes her own medicinal notions and tonics, so she does for what might ail me, though nothing does."

The list of Mrs. Dove's virtues increased.

Lucy pointed out other landmarks as she led the way down the boardwalk. "Gloucester branch of the railroad cuts this part of town off from the rest, which is how my momma could afford it." She gestured in the opposite direction to orient Marigold. "The smithy's at the other end of the cove, up against the old quarry at Snake Hill. We'll send a message to him when we get to Momma's."

"And to purchase some supplies for cleaning, along with materials for a garden?"

"What garden?"

"The herb garden I am planning to start to improve the culinary situation." While Marigold had never before kept her own garden, she had excelled at botany in college—indeed, she had excelled in every discipline to which she had applied herself.

"Unless you can cook," Lucy opined, "you're not improving anything."

"I cannot." While Marigold's peripatetic lifestyle might have kept her from learning to cook, she had the advantage of having eaten food that had not been stewed to a pulp—Isabella's chef was an effervescent delight of sauce-making wonderment. Which meant that though Marigold might not have skills, she had standards. And she was hungry. "What about you? Why do you not cook for the whole of the household but just for Great-Aunt Alva?" Marigold tried to keep the hopeful expectation from her voice.

Lucy regarded her with a sidelong glance. "You can ask that of my momma."

"I will."

Bessie Dove's house was a respectable, two-story boardinghouse from whence the tantalizing aroma of spiced ham wafted to tempt Marigold's starved taste buds. "Cleon said your mother used to cook at Hatchet Farm before? Before what exactly?"

"Afore she had a set-to with Mr. Ellery on account of him saying her soul was as black as her skin because she was demanding her back wages that he owed her."

Marigold already thought her cousin's husband a frightening person as well as a dreadful father—this report only confirmed her less-than-flattering opinion of the man. And given her parents, Marigold had strict feelings about unpaid debts. "Was it a large sum?"

"Enough to buy this boardinghouse."

"Excellent." Marigold very much approved of women owning their own property. "So now Cleon does the cooking?"

"What passes for it. One reason I'm glad to have my own place to cook and store foods and preserves from my momma. And there she is!" Lucy waved as they passed through the picket gate into the neatly swept backyard. "Hey, Momma."

Bessie Dove proved to be a small woman with ebony skin, steel-gray hair, and a butter-soft smile, who met them on the wraparound porch with her arms outstretched to her daughter. "Come here, baby girl, and let me give you some love. I been worried about you."

"Me? You know I can take care of myself."

Mrs. Dove enveloped her daughter in a hug that ought to have creased her starched, lace-edged apron but somehow didn't. It was clear where Lucy had gotten her sartorial sense—her mother's clothing was every bit as immaculate and well put together as her daughter's.

Mrs. Dove shook her head and lowered her voice, but Marigold heard her tell Lucy, "They found another girl. Washed up just down-sound at the Point."

The word another blared in Marigold's brain like a siren.

"Dead?" Lucy asked with a speaking glance toward Marigold. "Who was it?"

"Minnie Mallory, the reverend's daughter. You remember her?"

Marigold had three conflicting thoughts simultaneously. First, vindication—she knew she had seen someone in the water two days ago. And second, alarm—how many local preachers' daughters might be named Minnie, the very name she had heard Sophronia call the unseen girl in the hayloft with Seviah yesterday morning? And third, terror—how often did girls get drowned that the local populace, including Marigold's Hatchet relatives, talked about their deaths so casually?

"I remember her," Lucy said. "Hard to forget a girl like Minnie. What are they saying?"

Mrs. Dove spared a wary glance at Marigold before she answered. "That she drowned by mistake or mischance. But that's what they always say when they seem to be finding dead girls down-sound."

You'll end up drowned like the rest of them.

Marigold felt her skin go cold and clammy in the chill spring wind.

"Did Minnie have a bun in her oven?" Lucy's question was blunt.

"They didn't say," Bessie Dove said, though her skeptical expression rejected that answer. "What they did say is she got herself disappointed in love and fell in—likely because she's the reverend's daughter." Mrs. Dove shook her head. "Like there couldn't be no one else to account for her being in the water," she said, almost too low for Marigold to hear.

Almost. "Does that mean you think there is someone to blame?" Marigold queried.

Mrs. Dove pressed her lips between her teeth, as if she were deciding how much she might say. Or if she'd already said too much.

Marigold was torn between her affront that such an obviously whitewashed tale was being put about—it seemed an outrageous injustice to the deceased young woman—and her newfound understanding that not everyone was as able or prepared as she to tackle such sanctimonious nonsense.

"It's all right, Momma," Lucy put in. "You can't shock her—she's modern. And I reckon she might have actually seen Minnie's body in the water when she rowed over to Great Misery two nights ago."

"If that's so, maybe you ought to introduce me to this sharp-eyed lady you brought with you today."

"She's Miss Sophronia's kin from Boston," Lucy offered.

"I am Marigold Manners, Mrs. Dove." Marigold had to recall herself to her own manners, when all her brain wanted to do was ruminate on dead girls and their possible relationship to her Hatchet relatives. "Honored to make your acquaintance, ma'am."

Mrs. Dove took her hand. "Call me Bessie, and you're welcome here. That make you Miss Esmie's girl?" she asked as she led Marigold into her clean, comfortable kitchen, where a well-polished cast-iron stove radiated soothing heat and mouthwatering aromas.

"Yes, Esm é Sedgwick Manners was my mother, ma'am. She recently passed away."

"I'm sorry to hear that, child." Bessie covered Marigold's hand consolingly. "Bless her soul."

Marigold realized with a pang that none of her Hatchet relatives had offered any word of condolence at the loss of her parents. Until that moment, she hadn't realized how much she would have welcomed it. "Thank you very much, ma'am. You are very kind. Did you know my mother?"

"No, child," Bessie disappointed her. "I never had that pleasure. But she sounded like a real sweet lady, and I seen her picture that Miz Sophronia kept."

This was the second reference to a photograph—Cleon had mentioned it as well. Marigold made a mental note to seek it out. After she had some answers about this poor young woman in the water—who, she now realized, could not have been the Minnie making the most of her time in the hayloft with Seviah yesterday morning if she had been drowned two days ago. "You were saying you thought there might be someone else to blame in Miss Mallory's death?"

Bessie took another moment before she said, "Let me just say this about that—ain't no girl ever got a bun up her oven by herself. But that's got nothing to do with us. Now, what brings you home?" she asked Lucy. "You ailing? I got a new cranberry tonic I brewed up—"

"Not me." Lucy looked to Marigold. "She's got a load of junk metal out from Hatchet Farm she wants to sell to a smith."

Bessie nodded approvingly. "Let me send for Samuel. He'll deal with you fair."

"Thank you, ma'am," Marigold answered. "I appreciate your help."

Something in Marigold's behavior—perhaps the way her nostrils flared to take in the scent of the cooking or the way her eyes kept sliding back toward the oven—gave her away to Mrs. Dove. "You had anything fit to eat out there yet, honey?"

"No, ma'am." Even Marigold could hear the rather desperate hope in her voice.

"She already asked me to cook for her, Momma—for pay," Lucy added. "But you should see what she's done to that old kitchen. She might look like a flannel-mouthed piece of calico, all delicate and fancy, but she scrubbed that place to a shine. Almost like you said it used to be," she reported.

"Bet it still don't taste like it used to," Bessie laughed as she heaped a plate high with ham, baked beans, and soda biscuits.

Only the strictest application of self-discipline and good manners kept Marigold from falling to it like a stray cat. "Thank you, ma'am. You have no idea—" Marigold's words would have to wait until she could spoon beans, sweet with molasses and whiskey, onto her tongue.

"Oh, I got a pretty good idea." Bessie was still laughing.

"This is absolutely delicious, ma'am," Marigold began. "And as you say, far superior to the mush and fish stew being ladled up by Cleon."

"That poor old man." Bessie shook her head. "My advice to you would be not to eat a thing out of that kitchen."

"I feel very much that way myself," Marigold agreed between bites. "Is there any way I can persuade you to come back—"

"Oh, no." Bessie held up her hand. "Save your breath. I won't step foot on that island again. I tell Lucy only to go to the door of the house and no further. To keep herself to herself. You can't wallow with pigs and not but get dirty," was Bessie's blunt opinion.

"But, as Lucy said, I've already made great strides in banishing the dirt. Together—"

"You made considerable progress on that kitchen," Lucy agreed. "But there is nothing you're ever going to be able to do about them ."

"Is it their air of decaying eeriness," Marigold asked with all seriousness, "or something more specific?" Something Bessie, with her long experience of the duplicitous Hatchets, might know that the others didn't.

Lucy broke into guffaws. " Decaying eeriness. Oh, I gotta remember that."

Bessie laughed along with her daughter. "You got a way with words, child."

"Thank you, ma'am." Marigold tried not to let the compliment sway her attention. "I do mean to be an academic author someday and publish tales of ancient civilizations, but at the moment, what I wish I had was a way with food. Or could convince someone who knew her way around a stove—"

"No, child. No." Bessie's tone was firm but kind. "Even if I wanted to—which I don't—Ellery Hatchet won't have food made by a Black hand in his house."

"But—" Marigold's powers of logic and reasoning were being stretched thin in the face of Hatchet's bigotry. "Lucy makes the food for his mother, and that's in his house."

"I make it in my house that no one else is allowed in," Lucy corrected.

"But—"

"I ain't saying it makes sense," Bessie countered, "just what is. Lucy will cook for you." She nodded at her daughter to confirm their understanding, and Marigold was struck by the fact that it was Bessie who gave Lucy permission—not Alva or Ellery Hatchet. How instructive.

"Now, you get that good food in you." Bessie brought her a cup of blessedly scalding coffee. "And never mind things that can't be changed."

"Everything can be changed," Marigold insisted, "if only one wants to change and puts in the effort required. And that is what I'm prepared to do."

"But what about them ? You mark my words, child." Bessie was emphatic. "Them Hatchets ain't prepared to do nothing but make trouble for themselves. Years and years of it. Nothing but everlasting trouble."