Chapter Eight
M ARCH 22, 1931
T HE E NGLISH C HANNEL AND B OULOGNE-SUR- M ER, F RANCE
I stare out at the eternal roil of the dark-blue channel waters. The salty air leaves my skin a bit tacky and moist, but I do not care. The breeze is cold but wonderfully fresh after the heavy gray smog of London, and I feel invigorated.
Glancing down at my notebook, I study the columns of information I’ve written, using the process I routinely adhere to when beginning a new novel and organizing my characters, setting, and plot. Except here, the data I’m categorizing are not the elements of a fictional mystery or the latest developments in the lives of Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey. No, they are the very real details of May Daniels’s vanishing and the discovery of her body. I only hope that Emma is right, that we can help solve this terrible puzzle. The more I learn, the more I believe that this young nurse merits closure and retribution.
I feel a tap on my shoulder. Glancing up, I see my husband, his eyes sparkling in the reflected light and crinkling at the corners. “Care for a cocktail before we reach shore?” he asks.
Smiling at my husband of nearly five years, I nod and follow him to the small bar just inside the deck. As we wait for our orders to be filled, I stare over at Mac. Silver gleams in my husband’s ginger hair as he stands tall, gazing out the window over the ship’s sunny prow to the whitecapped waves. I’m reminded of the early days of our dating life, when the adventuresome News of the World correspondent lured me in with his witty zest for life and his journalistic output on motor racing and crime. I’d been skeptical of his interest in me at first—I never did have much luck with men—but he’d won me over once and for all with his wordsmithing and beautifully crafted memoir about his experiences in the Great War, entitled How to See the Battlefields . Cracks have emerged over the years, as with any relationship, but the tenuous rapport he has with his two daughters from his first marriage and his occasional dark bouts, when British Army wartime memories flood him and the drink takes hold, are nothing I cannot handle. They are a small price to pay for his adoration of me and support of my writing career, a rarity among men. What remains to be seen is how we might fare in the matter of our own children, a step he is keen for us to take.
Carrying our drinks, we step out onto the deck. With my free hand, I reach for his, and Mac looks at me with a smile. We’ve spent too much time apart lately—not by choice. Until recently, I’d worked at Benson’s advertising firm—creating the triumphant “Guinness is good for you” campaign—which necessitated that I stay in our London flat. Because he’d buckled down to write another book, Mac had largely decamped to our Newland Street town house, in the Essex town of Witham, until this assignment came up. Perhaps this trip could not only help us nab a killer but also provide Mac and me with several much-needed days together. Although, now that I think on it, the two goals make strange bedfellows, particularly with the Queens of Crime in tow.
We chat about our shared assignment. Mac’s editor had liked my idea of a piece on the murder of May Daniels from a mystery novelist’s perspective. So in addition to the daily coverage Mac will be undertaking, we will write a couple of companion features about the investigation from our two points of view—a crime reporter and a writer of detective fiction. The editor told Mac he envisioned printing the articles side by side in the expanded weekend edition with a tagline about married sleuths.
The horn sounds, signaling our approach to shore. The boat shifts, and I’m gifted with a stunning view of Boulogne, still sunny even though the light is waning. The ancient port town contains fortifications that abut a steep hillside dotted with white terra-cotta-roofed buildings and the enormous Basilique Notre-Dame de Boulogne looming over it all.
“Captain Fleming? Mrs. Fleming? We are about to arrive,” a sailor announces. We tear our gaze away from the view and head inside the cabin to gather our belongings.
As the ferry slows and finally stops, a rocking motion overtakes the vessel. I have to stop my bag from sliding down the aisle. Mac lunges for it in the nick of time, but in the process, we collide and nearly fall to the floor. We look so ridiculous that I burst into laughter, and my husband joins in.
Suitcases in hand, we make our way onto the gangplank, where I glimpse Boulogne again. The vista is so lovely that one could nearly forget it was one of three main ports used by British armies on the Western Front. Mac pauses at the sight, and a pit forms in my stomach. Will our return to Boulogne evoke memories of the times he’d passed through it during the war? Occasionally his war experiences boil over the surface, which is perfectly understandable. Two of Mac’s brothers died during the war. Another was badly injured, and Mac himself was gassed and shot at.
I wait for a deeply furrowed brow or the rattle of a telltale cough. This signals not only a flare of his lung condition, acquired from poison gas exposure, but also an attendant dip in mood. Yet Mac seems surprisingly cheery.
We step from the gangplank onto the cobblestone walkway toward the Gare Maritime, the harbor station through which all ferry passengers must pass upon docking in Boulogne. Just as Mac and I are about to enter the building, I spot the familiar faces of Agatha, Emma, Ngaio, and Margery walking off the ferry toward the Gare Maritime as well. They’d been on the same boat, but we’d intentionally kept to different sections so Mac wouldn’t encounter them. Despite these precautions, Margery begins to raise her hand in greeting to us—an automatic gesture, no doubt. When my steely gaze stops her short, she quickly lowers her hand and looks away.
I cannot take any chances, so I quickly steer Mac through the customs line and out of the station toward town. The scent of fish is heavy in the air, wafting from the stalls that sell the day’s catch. Women operate the stalls—the husbands and sons, I’m guessing, are still fishing—and call out their wares. But I can barely hear their voices over the cry of the seagulls circling the market. My attention elsewhere and clumsy as always, I bump directly into a bespectacled gentleman wearing a black bowler hat as he crosses in front of us.
Mac offers our apologies, but the man starts laughing. “Well, if it isn’t Mac Fleming! I don’t have to ask what brings you to Boulogne.”
“As I live and breathe, Frank Routledge!” Mac recognizes the man and claps him on the back as they shake hands. “It’s been an age, although I’m not surprised that recent developments drew you here as well. How’s the Birmingham Gazette treating you?”
“Not as well as I imagine News of the World treats you,” Frank says with a snort.
“I don’t know about that, old chap. We are all just cogs in the great wheel of the press, aren’t we?” Mac says and then gestures toward me. “Allow me to introduce my wife, Mrs. Dorothy Fleming. You might know her better as the novelist Dorothy Sayers.” He puffs up a bit with pride at this introduction.
While it might better suit my purpose to simply be Mac’s wife while I’m in Boulogne—people may be more willing to share information if they don’t know I’m also a writer—I do not demur.
“It’s a pleasure,” Frank says, shaking my hand gently. “Are you the author of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries?”
“I am indeed.”
“I’ve only read the first in the series— Whose Body? —but I quite enjoyed it.”
“I appreciate your reading my work.”
Frank continues, “I was just heading over to a café where most hacks covering the case are having a late spot of lunch and some drinks. Care to join us? The food is a far sight better than what’s on offer at the pubs at home, but I can’t make any promises about the refinement of the company.” He nods in my direction, by way of apology.
Mac guffaws, and with a twinkle in his eye, he says, “It’s not refinement I’m after—but insights. Can the gents promise that?”
“Only insofar as it doesn’t lead to a scoop for you alone!”
We walk away from the dock up the hill toward an area Frank refers to as Old Town. Passing across a square, we arrive at a charming, beautifully preserved medieval thoroughfare so narrow it feels like a lane. A sign on the wall announces the street as rue de Lille.
“The Vole Hole is just there,” Frank says, pointing to a tiny café with a striped awning and several tables scattered in front, all populated with couples smoking cigarettes and sipping on undoubtedly excellent coffee as well as stronger refreshments. “It’s actually the oldest building—the oldest business, in fact—in Boulogne. Dates back to the twelfth century, if you can believe it.”
Mac runs his hand along the uneven stones of the wall of shops—lain by the hands of some long-gone mason—bordering rue de Lille and says, “I can believe it.”
The light in my husband’s eyes grows brighter with each step. Frank holds open the café door for us, and we step into a cavelike room crowded with patrons and the fug of cigarette smoke. Several men break away from the bar, topped with galvanized zinc, to greet Mac, and a few others rise from crowded bistro tables to shake his hand or slap his back. Pride shines on his face as he introduces me around. It’s a joy to witness my husband in his element.
Many of the names I know from Mac’s tales of his reporting antics, but a few of the Frenchmen and Englishmen are unknown to both of us. When I shake hands with a man who introduces himself as “special correspondent to the Sunday News, Netley Lucas,” Mac’s face betrays no recognition, but I hear Frank whisper, “Not to mention former crook and convict.” I see a similar blankness when another fellow, “former Chief Inspector Gough writing for the Daily Mail, ” stands up from a barstool to make our acquaintance. From the sheer number of journalists sent to cover this story and the unusual variety of reporters—ex-criminals and former police chiefs are rarely in the mix—I realize that the case of May Daniels is unique.
I sip a crisp local white wine and nibble on pickled herring and fresh mussels at the bar. Unusually for me, I stay quiet and listen. As Mac’s wife, I’m wonderfully invisible, and as the drinks flow, the men’s lips loosen.
“I hear the body was in a terrible state,” one man mutters to another.
“Signs of violence, you mean?” the other gent asks.
“Too soon to tell about that. I meant the decomposition,” he replies.
“Ah, interesting. So she’s been dead for some time, maybe even since she went missing?”
“Perhaps,” the man answers, his tone guarded now. Is he worried he’s revealed too much? From Mac, I know these reporters walk a fine line between camaraderie and competition.
I keep listening. Words float over my head like clouds—“bobbed hair” and “full-time nurse” and “stockings”—and I want to reach out and grab them, make them solid on the page. I resist the urge to jot all these tidbits down in my notebook, instead simply filing them away in my mind. I will revisit and sort them later. Then share them with the Queens of Crime.
Still, no matter the volume or array of details I’m gathering, no matter the theories and rumors, only one real question seems to be on everyone’s mind: Who killed May Daniels?