Chapter Three
F EbrUARY 10, 1931
L ONDON, E NGLAND
“Welcome to the murder game!” I hear Agatha announce from the doorway.
The women file into the library at the University Women’s Club, each one true to type yet distinct nearly to the point of being humorous. Diminutive, elegant, silver-haired, jewel- and fur-laden Baroness Emma Orczy, the Hungarian-born aristocrat best known for her hugely successful Scarlet Pimpernel novels, sweeps across the room in a full-skirted sapphire dress of a style popular two decades ago. The angular New Zealander Ngaio Marsh, writer of the well-regarded Inspector Alleyn mysteries, is striking in a brown tweed skirt suit—complete with a tie—that looks for all the world like a man’s pantsuit, at least from the waist up. Effervescent, bright-eyed, dark-haired Margery Allingham, who pens the clever novels about gentleman sleuth Albert Campion, breezes into the library in a simple belted lavender dress à la Mainbocher, a little ahead of the weather in its springtime color but refreshing nonetheless. Agatha takes up the rear, wearing an unfortunate sacklike dress in mottled brown.
Agatha and I could not have crafted a better cast of characters if we’d invented them ourselves over the long afternoon we spent selecting them for this special group. Still, I wonder, can they possibly fulfill the aspirations Agatha and I have for them? Time will tell, and today is only the beginning.
The sound of a staff member locking the library door from the outside echoes in the high-ceilinged space. I watch the women through narrowed eyes, hoping they don’t notice. I’m meant to be dead, after all.
Lying supine on the floor of the library, I play the part of victim in this Victorian parlor game in which the participants must solve a locked-room murder. My arms are splayed, my legs are askew, my mouth is agape, and a red silk scarf spreads around my head in an approximation of blood. I am meant to be frozen in the very moment when the act of violence was perpetrated upon me in a crime I carefully plotted for the women to solve.
The perfect icebreaker —that’s how Agatha and I think of this murder game. Not to mention that it’s the ideal way for us to assess the women and their ability to work together before we issue our official invitation.
The women’s expressions are solemn as they circle the room searching for the murder weapon and hover over me to assess my “injuries.” What do they really make of this bit of drama? Since my youth as a beloved only child of older parents, I’ve adored creating plays and theater, a hobby my family indulged, even dressing in the costumes I created. But I’ve also been accused of excess, particularly at boarding school and at Oxford. Have I gone over the top here? I search for clues in their faces and in their comments to one another. But I see and hear nothing other than enjoyment.
I sense rather than observe someone kneeling next to me. Fingers touch the lustrous faux pearls I’d carefully arranged on my chest. “Does the placement of this necklace seem off?” Ngaio asks. “If the victim was indeed struck from the back, as the blood suggests, and she fell back toward the floor, wouldn’t the pearls have fallen backward instead of forward?”
Heels clack on the ancient wood-plank floor, and I feel more bodies around me. “Good observation, Ngaio,” Emma says, the merest hint of a Hungarian accent noticeable in her speech—and then only to the discriminating listener. “And I don’t think they’d be twisted in this unnatural manner from a fall backward.”
Margery chimes in. “Wasn’t there a pendant hanging from the pearls earlier today?”
“By God, you’re right, Margery,” Agatha exclaims, her voice louder than usual. “We must have failed to notice because we were looking for means rather than motive.”
Ngaio calls out, “Good on you,” in her distinctive New Zealand lilt. Despite the fact that she’s spent the past five years living primarily in London, her cadence and pronunciation remain unaltered. I’m quite certain her accent is a point of pride.
“So now we’ve got motive—robbery of the bejeweled pendant. But we’ve still got to discern the method of the murder,” Emma says, and I spot her fingers fluttering around her own strand of diamond-clasped pearls as if she fears for their safety as well. She then smooths her silvery coiffed hair and pulls her fur stole tighter around her shoulders. An unconscious effort to ward off danger, perhaps? A victim of a peasant uprising nearly half a century ago, she should know better than anyone that money is no hedge against disaster. “It would help to know the sort of weapon we are looking for. No obvious object has emerged yet.”
“Given that the victim died facing up instead of down and there is minimal blood loss from the wound on the back of her head, I’d put my money on a smallish blunt object,” Margery ventures, her tone uncertain.
“The infamous blunt instrument so often mentioned in detective novels. Not mine, of course. A bit too obvious for my books,” Ngaio mutters.
“How did she die? The placement of the wound seems odd compared to the layout of the body,” Emma muses.
“If I were to hazard a guess,” Agatha observes, “the murderer hit her with something blunt enough to cause the disorienting fall to the ground—but not a tremendous amount of blood—at which point the murderer shoved her back to more easily grab the pendant. Perhaps the push actually caused the death instead of the initial blow.”
Emma says, “Those pieces all fit.”
“But where is this blunt weapon you three are nattering on about?” Ngaio asks. “There’s no hint of blood on any object, and we’ve scoured the room.”
The blood they’re looking for is represented by a small crimson silk ribbon tied around the murder weapon—if the women can locate it, that is. I am quite pleased with myself on that front, and I have to stifle a giggle.
“Are you expecting to find a bloody cricket bat sitting in the open?” Emma asks with a sniff. It’s the sort of sound my dear mama used to make when she disapproved of my behavior, which was often enough. “Have you forgotten that the Dorothy Sayers has fashioned the plot of this murder game for us? I hardly think the murder weapon would be literally waiting for us to stumble upon it.”
How unnecessarily fractious Emma and Ngaio seem with each other, I think. I hope it’s just that a competitive spirit has swept over them. If I were not the murder victim, I’d be smoothing over those rough edges; I need this group to feel aligned. As it stands, I am stuck on this cold wooden floor. Why, oh, why did I choose an uncarpeted section of the floor for my murder?
To my surprise, Agatha leaps into the fray. “Ladies, no need for discord. There’s always a weapon, and we will find it,” she says. “Together.”
“Not if Dorothy broke the rules of fair play and placed the murder weapon outside the four walls of the locked room,” Ngaio says.
Me? Break the rules of fair play, which require, among other things, that the murder be solved with only the facts laid out before us, whether on the page or in the room? I’m outraged at the suggestion and nearly jump from the floor when I hear Agatha say with a chuckle, “Dorothy? Not a chance she’d violate the very principles she extols, both in her writing and in person. Let’s examine the room more closely.”
Thus mollified, I maintain my position while the women continue their search. The grandfather clock counts out several long minutes with its echoey tick as they poke and prod the library again. Leather-bound volumes are removed from shelves during the hunt for a hidden knife or a bloody letter opener. Dusty, cluttered surfaces are inspected for statues or decorative objects capable of blunt destruction. The ticking seems to grow louder and faster than before as the allotted murder game hour passes and the women begin to run out of time.
Then I hear the sound of drawers being slid out, and I freeze.
Emma calls out, “Careful, Ngaio. Now that I look at it more closely, I think that’s an eighteenth-century David Roentgen desk. Or a copy.”
“I am meant to treat an antique with kid gloves during a murder investigation?” Ngaio asks, her tone a little sharp.
“Impressive knowledge of antique carpentry,” Agatha murmurs in a voice only I can hear.
Emma sounds aghast. “Of course not, Ngaio. Solving the crime is paramount. I mention that it’s a Roentgen creation because if you turn the key in that lower section”—she points to a brass key jutting out of an ornately inlaid drawer—“side drawers will spring open.”
“How on earth do you know that?” Ngaio asks, her tone impressed rather than irritated.
Emma chuckles, clearly pleased with the reaction. “We had a Roentgen desk in the family chateau in Tarnaors, and I spent many happy childhood hours playing with it.” She enjoys trotting out her lavish origins as the daughter of a Hungarian nobleman who served the Austro-Hungarian emperor before the entire family was driven out by a revolt. This boastfulness is noticeable, and I wonder how it will sit with us as time goes on.
The clip-clop of shoe heels sounds out again as the women congregate around the desk. “So,” Margery asks, “if I turn this key, drawers will magically appear?”
“They should,” Emma answers knowingly.
I hear a pop and a squeal of excitement from Margery.
“Ingenious,” Ngaio says. “What a perfect place to hide a murder weapon. The average person would have no idea about these secret compartments.”
Then, in a dejected voice, Margery says, “It’s empty.”
“There must be more to it,” Agatha says. “Let me take a closer look.”
The library is silent save for the opening and closing of drawers. “What’s this?” Agatha asks.
A spring sounds, followed by a bang, and I nearly jump up from the floor. “How did you do that?” Emma asks.
Agatha answers, “I felt a button on the underside of one of the secret drawers, and I pressed it.”
“There’s another layer of hidden drawers behind them,” Margery exclaims.
An expectant silence settles on the library. Finally I hear a rustling and an exultant “Here it is! A heavy brass paperweight tied with a red ribbon!”
At that moment, the grandfather clock strikes four, and the locked doors to the library fling open. I rise from the floor and begin applauding.
“I never doubted you for a second, as you can see.” I gesture to the Champagne flutes entering the room on a waiter’s silver tray. “Congratulations on solving my murder!”