Chapter Nine
M ARCH 23, 1931
B OULOGNE-SUR- M ER, F RANCE
A shaft of sunlight hits my closed eyes and awakens me mid-dream. I’d been standing on the edge of a vast Sahara-like desert, watching a sandstorm build in the distance. Although I understood on some level that I should run and seek cover, I couldn’t. My limbs would not move; they seemed stricken by some sort of paralysis. All I could do was watch the sandstorm grow closer and pray it changed course.
My eyelids flutter open, and as I lift my hand to shield my face from the sun, the mounting panic from my dream subsides. Glancing around the room, I realize I’m not in some catastrophic desert scenario. Instead, unfamiliar pea-green floral wallpaper and dainty walnut furniture surround me, and for a moment, a different sort of anxiety takes hold as I wonder where I am. Until I hear Mac snore, and I suddenly remember that we are in a small family-owned hotel in Boulogne on assignment for News of the World .
I lurch up from the tangle of sheets and quilts, making my head throb. I fall back down onto the lumpy pillow. How many glasses of wine did I drink yesterday afternoon and evening? I think back to the hours at the café, but I lose count at four, an unusually large number for me. I have a hazy recollection of stumbling down Boulogne’s cobblestone streets with a drunken Mac in tow and our luggage in our arms, laughing as we searched for our lodgings. Although I have no memory of checking in, we must have found our way, because here we are. Good Lord, I think when I realize we have to face the innkeeper this morning. What must she think of us?
However blurry the end of the evening might be, I do recall snatches of conversation from the café. A description of the day May Daniels vanished in Boulogne more than five months ago after taking the ferry from Brighton for a day trip with her friend and fellow nurse Celia McCarthy. Small details concerning the peculiar circumstances around May’s disappearance on that fine autumn day. Particulars about the search parties assembled to locate the young Englishwoman in the weeks after she went missing, all of which came up empty-handed. The circumstances surrounding a poor farmer’s discovery of her body in a tangle of bushes and trees in a park outside of town, near a triumphal monument the locals call Napoleon’s column.
I wonder how my friends are faring. Their hotel on rue de Bernet sounds fancier than this little inn. But I doubt their access to information is anywhere near as robust. And I bet the view is less stirring.
I run my fingers through Mac’s gingery hair. He rustles the sheets and turns toward me. He offers a sly smile at first, then groans. “What a night. I’ve got a head full of wasps.”
“Mine is buzzing as well,” I say, licking my lips. “And my mouth is as dry as the desert I just dreamed about.”
“Good fun, though, eh?” His sky-blue eyes are hopeful.
“Good fun,” I reassure him with a smile and a gentle brush on his cheek with my fingers.
“I suppose I best rouse myself and head to Napoleon’s column for today’s briefing,” he says, then whispers, “although it’s cozy in here.”
I draw close to him and whisper, “Are you sure you can’t stay?”
“We could tuck ourselves away here and work on that other project I mentioned,” he whispers back with a purrlike groan.
He means the project of children of our own, to which I haven’t yet committed. It is a topic filled with both possibility and trepidation for me, as Mac well knows, and much would need to be resolved beforehand. “Oh, my, would you look at the time?” I exclaim, as if I’d just seen the clock for the first time this morning.
Craning his head toward it, he groans again. It is a different sort of groan than before. “How I wish we could stay, but we missed the briefing yesterday, and I don’t want to miss the one today.”
“If you are going, then so am I.” I extricate myself from his arms and push myself to standing. After I drain a glass of water by the bedside, I rummage through my luggage for a dress and fresh undergarments. “It’s necessary for our article, and anyway, I like to observe you at work and play. A day in the life of a crime reporter and all that.”
“Like when you wrote The Five Red Herrings ?” he asks, raising one side of his copper mustache with his half smile.
I actually contrived the plot of my last Wimsey novel, The Five Red Herrings, to pivot around two of Mac’s passions, fishing and painting. That way, we’d have ample reason for weekends in his native Scotland, his favorite place to undertake both his hobbies.
“Exactly,” I answer.
As I wash my face in the basin, style my hair, powder my nose, and apply a bright swipe of red lipstick, I think about my plans to meet the women at midday. We’d agreed to meet for a spot of lunch at a little café off rue de Lille. Should I have difficulty making this assignation, I am to leave a note at their hotel. If I race to the briefing with Mac, gleaning as many tidbits as possible while I’m there, I’ll need to find an excuse to skedaddle when it’s over. I’m hoping Mac will be so preoccupied with his fellow journalists that I’ll be able to slink off practically unnoticed.
“Let’s have a spot of breakfast downstairs and then head out to Napoleon’s column,” he says as he finishes shaving and kisses me on the cheek.
“That would be the bee’s knees.”
We stroll hand in hand down the long tree-lined promenade leading away from the town. Mac and I are chatting about the differences between crime reporting and crime fiction when I spy Napoleon’s column. I’d read that the Column of the Grande Armée, as it is officially called, is modeled on Trajan’s Column and that building on the fifty-three-meter-high marble monument first started in 1804 to memorialize a French invasion of England that then never actually occurred. Repurposed to commemorate the first dispatch of Napoleon’s troops from Boulogne and situated on the town periphery, the column is topped by a statue of Napoleon. Odd, I think, for a monument to take pride of place and celebrate an event that did not transpire. What does it say about the people who live here? Fiction is stronger than fact?
I expect to find an expanse of green surrounding the monument; after all, the journalists last night kept referring to the area around the column as “the park.” Perhaps there is, in fact, grass underfoot, but it’s covered with dozens of journalists—all men, some familiar from last night, a few giving me odd looks. Every one of the reporters’ bodies is turned toward a small platform to the right of the column.
Weaving through the journalists, I follow in Mac’s wake. An electric current of anticipation buzzes through the men assembled here, and I feel it passing into me. Only then do I realize that I had never fully understood journalism, even after observing Mac over the years, because I hadn’t experienced the sheer thrill of it until this moment. Getting swept up in the mad quest for a scoop, I suppose, isn’t so different from what I imagine a detective feels when hunting down a criminal. Except that the objective is quite different—sensationalism instead of justice.
As we slow, we spot Frank Routledge, the man we bumped into yesterday after we disembarked from the ferry. “What in the devil is happening?” Mac asks him quietly. “I thought it was a routine briefing with a policeman, but from the crowds, you’d think the king was coming.”
“The gendarmes are supposedly making a big announcement.”
“Do we know what about?”
“Rumor has it that they’ve found some sort of evidence near where the body was found,” Frank explains.
“Where did they find her?” I blurt out, and nearly cover my mouth with my gloved hand at my mistake. Even though I’m a mystery writer, it simply won’t do to behave like a ghoul asking detailed questions about a murder. Mac is used to it, but we are in public, after all. Wives aren’t meant to be fascinated by the sordid.
Frank doesn’t react negatively to my inquiry, however. In fact, he points to a patch of bushes and trees on the border of the cleared area around the column. “Over there. The body had been tucked behind those trees. Some farmer found it.”
He refers to May Daniels as “it,” not “her,” I think.
Shielding his eyes from the bright sun—the brim of his hat is too small to provide adequate shade—Mac stares at the spot. “The body wasn’t buried?” he asks.
“No,” Frank answers. “It had been sort of hidden behind the trunk of those few large trees and the thicket at their base.”
“Strange place to stash a body,” Mac says, giving voice to the thought rattling around in my mind. “Seems awfully close to a public monument. I imagine people stroll around here with some frequency.”
“When the weather is fine,” Frank says, “but don’t forget that we don’t know when she was killed or when the body was placed there. Perhaps it was only put there recently—or maybe it’s been there all along but the weather’s been so crap that the Boulogne citizens haven’t come up here.”
“True. Although…” Mac pauses as if processing this nugget alongside another recently surfaced one. “I thought one of the gents from last night told me that the state of decomposition of the body was consistent with the death having taken place around the time she disappeared, five months ago. So if that’s true, we do know the approximate time of Miss Daniels’s death.”
Frank nods slowly, and I can see that he’s hoping Mac doesn’t have all the necessary verifiable sources to draw this conclusion yet. Time of death is a crucial piece of information and could be headline-worthy. When Frank doesn’t say anything more—knowing that he still has to play nice with his fellow reporter—Mac adds, “But you’re right that we don’t know when the body was actually placed there.”
The men grow quiet. So that Frank doesn’t think I’m overly interested in their morbid exchange, I say, “My goodness, the view from the top of the column must be magnificent. I wonder whether you can see the ocean. I’ll have to ask if one can climb to the top. I do see a platform up there.”
Just then a line of uniformed police officers marches out from a small stone building behind the column. The most decorated of the lot climbs the step of the platform and stares out at the reporters. “Messieurs, nous avons découvert des preuves sur les lieux du crime,” he calls out, then pauses.
Finding my college French useful, I’m about to translate for Mac when another officer yells out an English translation. “Gentlemen, we have discovered evidence at the scene of the crime.”
I wait for this laborious bilingual communication to transpire back and forth until we hear what this new clue or clues might be. “We have located Miss Daniels’s handbag in a bush near the body. While certain items appear to be missing, her identification remains.”
Handy, I think, that Miss Daniels’s papers were still in her purse. If the body had no longer been recognizable, then those papers would have identified her. It’s almost too convenient. The reporters surrounding me, however, mutter nothing of the sort.
The translating policeman then bellows, “We have also found a syringe peeking out from the surface a few feet from Miss Daniels’s body. Our tests have shown that the vial bears traces of morphine.”
At this, the reporters go wild with questions, and a policeman blows his whistle to restore order. The officer in charge announces that he will only answer one query and randomly points to the journalist closest to him.
“When will the autopsy report be made available?”
I had been wondering the same thing myself. It will reveal much.
“We hope to have it finalized in the next couple of days. That will be all,” he announces, then pivots away.
A murmur ripples through the journalists. Bands of reporters clump together, excitedly chattering about the briefing and what it means for the case. “Is the illegal drug trade involved?” I hear one man ask and another reply, “Maybe the dead girl was an addict.” No one utters a word about the fortuitous happenstance of the handbag discovery. Mac gets pulled into a conversation with a group of journalists he knows from London, and I’m left standing alone.
But I don’t feel awkward at being the odd “man” out, as many women might. I see my invisibility as an opportunity to do a bit of sleuthing of my own and then quietly dash away. Glancing over to the place where Frank indicated the body had been found, I ask myself what my fictional detective Harriet Vane would do. I see that no one is in the vicinity. Not even gendarmes. As if I’m simply out for a stroll, I walk in that direction. I stop only when I reach four soaring oak trees bound together by thick rope and a sign stating NE PAS ENTRER . Do not enter.
This must be where they found her.
Well, I think, I’ll abide by the letter if not the spirit of the law here. After all, this might be the only such chance I ever have. Standing as close to the rope as I dare, I lean over it and peer down onto the small area of grassy earth shielded by the four thick tree trunks and ringed with bushes.
Suddenly I can envision the body of poor twenty-one-year-old May Daniels jammed into that tiny space in perfect detail as de scribed in the reports. Her long, slender limbs curled into the fetal position. Her brown, carefully bobbed and styled hair falling to the side in disarray. One stylish black T-strap shoe half off her foot. Her dark, lifeless eyes staring straight ahead into nothingness.
Tears well up in my eyes as May becomes very real. She’s no longer just a news headline for Mac to chase or a chance for us to prove our real-life detective skills and return to the Detection Club triumphant. She was a hardworking young nurse on the hunt for a bit of adventure during her time off. A young woman attempting to earn a living in a society that frowns upon unmarried working females, even when the dearth of men makes finding a husband nearly impossible. A person upon whom harm was inflicted. A girl, discarded and forgotten. What happened to her and why? Who was May Daniels?
Dabbing away my tears, I have an epiphany about how the Queens and I must proceed. We must get to know May in order to understand what happened to her. We must treat her as if she were a character in one of our novels but never forget that she was very real. And that doesn’t mean looking for answers at the end, as everyone else seems to be doing. That means starting at the beginning.