The Maidens

After leaving Edward’s rooms, Mariana needs someone to talk to and phones Fred. They meet at a Greek diner and discuss the case. Fred suggests that Edward may have an accomplice, but Mariana is not convinced. They plan to meet the following morning to discuss further. In the meantime, Fred urges Mariana to be careful. While returning to campus, Mariana receives a phone call. “I’m watching you,” the caller whispers (239). Mariana is sure it is Henry and feels uneasy on the deserted street.

Mariana wakes up early the following morning and sees Edward and Morris in an archway. Edward passes Morris a bulky envelope, and they part. Mariana decides to follow Morris.

Mariana follows Morris into an alley, where he scales a brick wall. After a moment, she climbs up after him.

On the other side of the wall is an abandoned cemetery. Mariana hurries through it trying to pick up Morris’s trail and sees him with Serena. He lifts her onto a marble crypt, and they have sex. Mariana steps on a branch as she tries to leave, and Morris hears. He catches up with her and warns her to mind her own business. He leaves, but Mariana is paralyzed with fear. She longs for Sebastian but knows she must “learn to fight for herself” (247).

Mariana takes a fast train back to London. Jumpy and unsettled, she ponders the connection between Edward, Morris, and Serena. She can’t shake the feeling that someone is watching her. She wonders if she is wrong about Edward and whether the killer could be on the train with her right now. 

Back in London, Mariana continues to feel jumpy. She visits Ruth, her training therapist and now supervisor, and they discuss the case. Ruth suggests that Mariana speak to the Maidens as a group, since group therapy is Mariana’s specialty. Ruth notes that Edward’s and Mariana’s fathers were both charismatic, powerful, and narcissistic men and asks if Mariana’s feelings for her father are manifesting in her attitude toward Edward. Mariana denies it and leaves shortly after. As they part, Ruth arranges a meeting for Mariana with Theo, a forensic psychotherapist who may have some insights into the case.

Mariana and Theo meet. When she explains that the slashing occurred postmortem, he suggests that the murderer seems to be staging the crime scene for the audience’s benefit and to distract from something else. If Mariana can figure out why, Theo tells her, then she will be able to figure out who the murderer is. He compliments her “rare gift for empathy” and tells her that he senses she is afraid of something inside herself that she needs to pay attention to (258).

Mariana returns to Cambridge thinking about her conflicted feelings towards her father. Her past therapy sessions with Ruth revealed that Mariana had feared but not loved her father (or herself). Mariana credits seeing herself through Sebastian’s eyes with cracking “the wall of delusion and denial, letting in some light” (263). 

Back at Cambridge, Mariana passes Morris, whom the police are questioning. She knows better than to share her suspicions with Sangha and considers calling Fred; however, she stops herself, thinking it disloyal and frightening. Arriving at her room, she finds the door ajar and the room torn apart, with a cross carved into the mahogany desk. Morris and the police come to investigate, but she elects to drop the issue. She thinks of Henry and is afraid.

In another first-person interlude, the narrator describes “being trapped in time” (267)—specifically, trapped on the day that his mother announced that she would be leaving alone. The narrator, then 12, realized his mother never loved and protected him the way she did Rex. She allowed his father to torture him, making her as “selfish, spoiled, thoughtless” and “[c]ruel” as his father claimed she was (269). That night, he dreamt of decapitating her and was disappointed to discover her whole and healthy the following morning.