The Maidens

Physically sick, Mariana walks away in tears. When Ashcroft catches up with her, he reveals that Conrad was in custody at the time of the murder. The pathologist on the scene confirms that the same person must have committed both murders since they were identically executed. Mariana is surprised to learn that the slashing was performed postmortem: The killer snuck up behind the victims, slit their throats and then turned them over to slash their torsos. The murders were not violent frenzies but calculated and ritualistic. Both bodies were found with pinecones, prompting Mariana to recall the marble relief of a pinecone that Edward showed during his talk. An angry Inspector Sangha appears.

After Mariana tells Sangha that he should question Edward, he warns her that he will arrest her if he finds her “trespassing on another crime scene” (187). Ashcroft guides her reluctantly away, promising to keep her informed. When he invites her out for a drink, she declines, and he notices her looking at Fred. She claims Fred is a friend of Zoe’s and then is annoyed at herself for lying. She wonders if she is lying to herself about her feelings for Fred or anything else.

Veronica’s murder makes international headlines, and the press follows her parents to Cambridge, camping out just beyond the university’s gates. Scotland Yard sends a contingent to investigate at the request of Veronica’s father. Mariana wants to feel pity but can only summon up fear.

The first-person narrator describes his father as a violent alcoholic who abused his wife and son. The narrator’s mother left him behind to the abuse that he saw as punishment for his “sins,” even if he “didn’t know what they were” (192). The narrator wonders if he feels pity for the little boy he once was but decides that he doesn’t deserve it.

Mariana goes to the site where Veronica was last seen alive: the Dramatic Club where she was rehearsing for her starring role in The Duchess of Malfi. Given that she vanished “in broad daylight” (194), Mariana concludes that Veronica must have known her killer and left with him willingly. She steps inside the building.

Momentarily distracted by her personal memories, Mariana is startled out of her reverie by a loud banging. She follows the sound to find a young man—Nikos Kouris, the show’s director—violently demolishing the set. He is furious because the performance, to which he had invited a London agent, has been cancelled. Mariana feels frightened of him, but he gives her access to Veronica’s former dressing room. Though the police have already picked the room over, Mariana finds another postcard, this one of a Christian saint with a “silver dagger sticking out of her neck […] holding a tray with two human eyeballs on it” (200). On the back is another handwritten ancient Greek quotation.

Zoe seems to take Veronica’s death hard, prompting Mariana to believe that Zoe is processing her grief over Tara’s death through Veronica’s.

Mariana and Zoe have dinner with Clarissa. Clarissa explains that the woman on the postcard is St. Lucy, an early Christian martyr whose eyes were gouged out before she was stabbed to death. Clarissa also recognizes the Greek passage on the back: It is from Euripides’s Iphigenia at Aulis and describes the moment of Iphigenia’s sacrifice. Mariana is convinced Edward wrote the postcards. Zoe agrees it is “the kind of thing he’d do” (204).

Mariana and Zoe stop for a drink and run into Serena, who accuses Mariana of setting the police on Edward. After Serena storms out, Zoe asks Mariana why she is so fixated on Edward, and the two women teeter on the edge of an argument. When Zoe points out that Sebastian called Mariana “the most stubborn person he ever met” (208), Mariana notes that he never said that to her. Both apologize and go their separate ways for the evening. Mariana does not tell Zoe that she is meeting Edward for dinner in his rooms. 

After leaving Zoe, Mariana feels unsettled and overwhelmed. She decides to return to London the following day and meet with Ruth, her supervisor.

Mariana arrives at Edward’s rooms and finds him formally dressed. He has arranged for dinner and champagne. Mariana notices a pinecone among his decorations, and he explains that pinecones were offered to initiates in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Mariana notes that Edward is “almost impossible to read” (216).

Over dinner, Mariana probes Edward, who flatters her and plays along, telling her about his unhappy childhood with an abusive father. Mariana feels drunk and uncertain, but thinks of Sebastian and feels “safer, calmer” (219). Edward asks Mariana what she has against him and why she thinks he murdered his students before offering his opinion of the murders: They “are a sacrificial act, […] a ritual—of rebirth and resurrection” committed by a man who believes himself to be spiritual (223). Troubled and frightened, Mariana stands up, declaring that she has “had enough.”

Edward and Mariana retire to his sitting room, where he insists they have coffee. Mariana is frustrated and annoyed with herself. While he is in the kitchen, she notices The Collected Works of Euripides on a table. Looking inside, she sees the same passage from the postcard underlined in the book. Edward returns with the coffee and, seeing her with the book, says that Euripides is his favorite, “an old friend […] who always speaks the truth” about human nature (226). Mariana is convinced that Edward is the murderer.