The Woman in the Library

At first, the trip to Rockport is lovely, but then Freddie receives a call with a woman screaming from Cain’s old number. She also gets two text messages that include a picture of her apartment door and another of Cain’s front door. She forces Leo B to take her back to Boston. At the Boston police station, she tells the detective about the messages. The detective points out that the person who sent her these messages sent them to her new number, and only someone who knows her would realize she switched numbers when the police took her old phone. Freddie gives the detective a list of the people who do know, and it includes family, the friends from the Reading Room, Leo B, and the library. The detective speculates that the messages might be a well-intentioned warning that Freddie and Cain are in danger.

In his email to Hannah, Leo A gives Hannah more notes on her draft. Hannah hasn’t included any details about the COVID pandemic, an omission that will make her book dated and unrealistic. She could add a conflict between maskers and anti-maskers to help with that problem. In fact, it would be a good idea for her to include an actual fight over masking. Someone could even get hurt or killed, which would bring excitement to the book. He advises Hannah not to be afraid to explore darkness in the world by including it in her novel.

Freddie returns to her apartment, which the police have searched. All of her items are in disarray. She gets a writing session in and decides to write the detective into her novel. She feels like the bus, her description of what the writing process is like, is back under her control. Whit and Marigold show up as well to comfort her and to share some information. Marigold has done further research on Cain’s case, and Cain has not been completely candid with Freddie. His defense lawyer was Whit’s mother, who remarried and changed her last name in the intervening years. Freddie finally begins to feel some doubts about Cain, especially since he still has not called her as promised. She wonders why he didn’t say anything once he recognized Whit’s mother. Whit is still giving Cain the benefit of the doubt, but Marigold now believes that Cain is not who he appears to be. Whit promises to look for Cain.

In his email to Hannah, Leo A expresses frustration. He believes Hannah is violating the rules of the mystery genre by not allowing Freddie to experience immediate and violent consequences for continuing to support Cain. He reads Whit’s concern for Freddie as flirtation and a reward for Freddie in spite of her bad behavior. He believes Freddie should be punished instead. He tells her that there are now protests in the street (likely protests over the killing of George Floyd) and because of this, the investigation into the serial killer on the loose has slowed. He muses that civil disorder is a perfect cover for a serial killer.

Cain places a video call to Freddie. The police tried to arrest him, but he managed to get away. He is now a fugitive. Every time she asks him a question about the discrepancies between his account and the story Marigold revealed, he is able to explain them away. Freddie accepts what he says because she is in love with him, she realizes. He asks her to give him some money because he’s afraid the police are tracing his debit card, and she agrees to do so. They agree to meet secretly at the Brattle Theatre that night if possible.

After the call, Freddie tries to continue work on her novel, but she feels so disturbed that she begins to put her writing skills to use to try to understand what has happened so far. Just as she does once she has a first draft of her novel, she outlines characters and events in an accordion-style Japanese notebook (it stretches out to one long page horizontally). She begins to wonder if all four of them being in the Boston Public Library Reading Room is no coincidence. The four of them must be connected in some way, but she can’t see what her connection is. She calls her parents. Ever since the death of her sister Geraldine, their relationship is cordial but shallow. Leo B leaves a note that he is available for wine and comfort.

In his email to Hannah, Leo A writes back that Freddie giving money to Cain is alarming. He tells Hannah he has enclosed a picture of himself as she requested. He has on a mask and baseball cap, making him invisible and anonymous, and he revels in this. He knows what Hannah looks like because—unlike him—she is famous and thus has a readily recognizable face.

Leo B arranges a lunch between Freddie and Lauren Penfold, a journalist covering the death of Boo (Shaun Jacobs) for The Rag. Freddie lies to Leo B about what she was really after when she talked to Lauren about Caroline. Lauren tells her that Caroline Palfrey was stuck up and a credit hog who thought she was destined for better than The Rag. Caroline and Whit were working on a story, but something broke up the collaboration. Before that, Caroline was a friend of Whit’s who frequently pretended to be his girlfriend to stop his many distraught ex-lovers and one-night stands from calling the office. Lauren bets that one of these women stabbed Whit.

Lauren delivers a bombshell: Her story on Boo will focus on how he was once a surgeon but ended up in prison after drug misuse destroyed his life. Freddie leaves. She is shaken and believes Shaun was the person who stabbed Cain in prison. Like everyone else, maybe he was at the library because someone arranged for him to be there. Whit was there because a rare book request had gone missing, and the librarian said the book might have been misplaced in the Reading Room.

Later that night, Marigold shows up at Freddie’s apartment. She and Whit finally made love, and they are going on a date later that night. Freddie doesn’t say anything about what Lauren told her about Whit, and Freddie also loans Marigold clothes for the date. Marigold confesses she was at the Reading Room the day of the scream because she had been following Whit—stalking him, Freddie realizes.

Leo A apologizes for having questioned Hannah’s direction with Marigold’s character. He praises her for allowing Marigold to get the love she deserves with Whit. He is also happy Hannah incorporated his suggestion to make Marigold older, but he notes one Australian term in Marigold’s dialogue.

Cain makes his way to the theater from the Roxbury neighborhood where he lives while Hannah manages to shake the plain-clothes police officer following her. She wears a baseball cap to make herself anonymous, and she is proud of her skill at evading the police. Cain and Freddie watch the film and have dinner. Freddie confronts Cain over his lies, especially Shaun being the person who stabbed him in prison. Cain explains that Shaun was just following the orders of the prisoner at the top of the pecking order, who wanted Cain punished for stepping out of line. Shaun could have killed Cain, but he didn’t.

Freddie shares her theory that the four of them being at the library that day was no coincidence, but they can’t figure out why Cain was there. Cain rejects her theory that the meeting of the four friends was arranged by someone. He notes that all the scream did was create a bond between four random people. None of them knew Caroline was dead at the time. Cain gives Freddie a burner phone.

Leo A notes that Cain lives in Roxbury, a predominantly Black community, and from that information extrapolates Cain might be Black, which might also explain his skittishness around the police. Leo admits he assumed all the characters are white, but there is no reason they couldn’t be Black. Hannah is “not white” (198), and Leo A admits he may well be acting out of unconscious bias in assuming the characters are white. Marigold could most certainly be Black, but Whit is white because he looks like a “hero of an old cartoon” (4), Freddie’s description of Whit at the start of the novel.

In a postscript, Leo A asks if Leo B is also Black and explains the possibility is disturbing his sense of self since he is white and thinks of himself as Leo B.

In a second postscript, Leo A tells Hannah the color of characters—just like the pandemic—matters. In the United States, police shoot Black people doing innocuous things. Also, leading readers to think the characters they’ve invested in are Black instead of white will make readers angry and might damage her reputation.

Marigold shows up at Freddie’s apartment the next morning in tears because Whit suddenly abandoned her during the date. Marigold assumed he left to be with Freddie, especially when she went to Freddie’s apartment and found that Freddie was not in. Freddie tells her this is foolish and that she has no feelings for Whit. Whit comes over almost immediately after that. He tells them he left suddenly the night before because his mother was attacked, and his mother identified Cain as the one who committed the attack. Marigold and Whit are unhappy that Freddie still maintains that Cain is innocent. When they leave, Freddie calls Cain on the burner phone.

Leo A asks Hannah if Marigold’s jealousy was Hannah giving Leo A a “literary slap” (207) over his own displeasure about how the relationship between Whit and Marigold is unfolding. He reiterates that he thinks it is a mistake for Hannah not to include the pandemic as part of the context for her novel. He sent her a completely revised version of her novel that includes the pandemic, and he added in extra murders in his version. He attaches pictures and several pages on a middle-aged woman who was murdered, complete with graphic descriptions and suggestions for how to incorporate it into her novel. He says she should have had Cain mutilate Jean just like the victim in the attached photos.