The Queens of Crime

Chapter Fifteen

M ARCH 24, 1931

B OULOGNE-SUR- M ER, F RANCE

“Mr. Fleming! Mr. Fleming! There is a telegram for you.”

I hear the heavily accented words as if in a dream. Sleep retains its hold until I hear a loud bang on the door and feel a shudder pass through the thin walls of our room. I know then that I’m awake, back in our tiny Boulogne hotel room. And this summoning is real.

Mac stirs but doesn’t rise. I nudge him awake. He rubs his eyes, reaches for a dressing gown, and stands to open the door a sliver.

“Whatever is it, Madame Bonheur?” I hear him ask. “The hour is early.”

Her voice is low, so I cannot make out her reply. I loll about on the bed, dozing a bit. The night had been anything but restful. Yesterday had been long and tiring, physically and emotionally. Although I crawled into my lumpy bed at ten o’clock, Mac returned at God knows what hour. When he finally rolled into the little room, he scribbled away on his pad of paper for hours as he drafted his article for News of the World. This led to tossing and turning for me. Then Mac collapsed into the bed and promptly started snoring like one of Dante’s hellhounds. Sleep wasn’t exactly forthcoming for me afterward.

Neither is it now. “Jesus,” Mac says as he plops back down on the bed.

“What is it?” I croak, too tired to scold him for taking the Lord’s name in vain. It is a bugaboo of mine.

“Just got a telegram from my editor.”

“And?”

“I’ve been called off the Daniels case.”

“Oh, darling, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“For now, anyway.”

I don’t just feel for him . I feel for myself and the other women. If Mac is no longer on the case, I assume my article will be canceled, and I’m uncertain how long we can afford to stay in Boulogne if News of the World isn’t picking up the tab. The investigation I’ve begun with the Queens will be over before it’s really gotten underway. All the plans we made last evening would go by the wayside.

I sit up, my hair falling around my shoulders like a heavy weight. “Why? From the sound of your pencil on paper last night, you’ve prepared an article for him already.”

He tuts. “Nothing to do with my efforts. My article was well-received. Apparently, my editor got a hot tip that Lord Tarrington is in Boulogne and about to be extradited to England. He wants me to cover that ‘newer news,’ according to him.”

“You’re joking.” I nudge him playfully. The case of Lord Tarrington has captured the attention of the reading public since last summer. The aristocratic solicitor fled to the Continent after he misappropriated clients’ funds, and the slippery Tarrington has evaded the authorities’ grasp ever since.

“No,” he answers, his eyes now bright with the possibility of this scoop. He strides across the room, washes his face in the basin, combs his hair, and trades his dressing gown and pajamas for a new suit, shirt, and tie.

“Oh, Mac, how magnificent.”

“There’s one bit of bad news, my love. I don’t think News of the World will pay for an article from you if I’m not writing a companion piece. We’ll have the room here for tonight, at least, but beyond that I can’t say. Particularly if the rumors are true and Tarrington will be returned to England very soon.”

“Not to worry. I’ll enjoy today, sitting at some delightful café near the beach and working on Have His Carcase or my outline for Hangman’s Holiday. Then I’ll leave tomorrow if you’re heading back.” I add teasingly, “Does it ever bother you that I’ve got projects of my own and that I’m not just slavishly devoted to your needs?”

“You know that’s one of the things that attracted me to you from the start, my love. I’d be bored silly with a bored housewife.” He leans down to kiss me. “All right, I may see you this evening—or I may not.”

“We will let the Fates decide,” I call out, then he’s gone. And I’m up.

Mac’s reassignment is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I’ll have much more freedom to roam about Boulogne, assuming I can sidestep the journalists. But on the other hand, my access to insider information and reporters’ briefings will be curtailed. As might my time in Boulogne.

As I ready myself to meet the women on the square near rue de Lille, I scamper about the room, gathering the bits and bobs of information about the case Mac has strewn about. I stack his abandoned investigative jottings and the police files in one pile and drafts of his article in another.

A scribbled word catches my eye: “addict.” I scan Mac’s article. To my disappointment, it contains nothing other than the same tawdry opinions I heard at the Vole Hole. It’s as if the victim herself were to blame. How could a man who supports my career, a man who has daughters of his own, harbor such shameful and antiquated views of a young woman? I push the disgust out of my mind and head out.

On the way to the picturesque little square just off rue de Lille, I buy several of today’s papers from a newsstand. The women are already gathered at the corner, but I do not bother with apologies for my mild tardiness. Instead, I hold up the papers and fume, “Have you seen the headlines?”

Last night, I’d informed the women about the nasty speculation among the reporters at the Vole Hole, but seeing the words in print is quite a different thing. I translate the French headline of the first newspaper in the stack: WAS MAY DANIELS A DRUG FIEND ? Then I read through the next few, a mix of French and English publications: SYRINGE FOUND NEAR BODY—DRUG DEN? ; DRUG TRADE AT THE HEART OF LOCAL MURDER? ; WAS BOBBED MISS DANIELS LEADING A LOOSE LIFE? ; NAUGHTY NURSE . The last one belonged to Mac, but I don’t highlight that my own husband authored that piece.

“Heaven deliver us,” Emma murmurs, staring at the headlines.

“I don’t think heaven has had a hand here,” Ngaio replies, a tendril of smoke emanating from her lips. “The lengths reporters will go for a scoop is revolting. Do they have any regard for the facts?”

“The poor girl. Imagine how her mother must feel reading these sorts of articles—and what the neighbors must be gossiping about,” Margery adds, playing with the sharp edge of her own shingled bob. Eschewing a complicated, conventional coiffure for that more modern style is an effort to send a message: the wearer leads a busy life and hasn’t the time for fussy updos. But the message received by a traditional few—especially men—is that the woman is fast and loose.

Agatha glances at us. “Why are you all so surprised? Men have been printing prurient untruths about women since time immemorial. One of many efforts to keep us in check.”

“But this? The story doesn’t even make sense. Why would the nurses travel all the way to Boulogne to procure an illicit substance that they have ready access to in London?” Margery asks, raising one of the primary points we’d bandied about last night.

“I suppose they could have been selling it,” Ngaio proposes.

“It’s hard to imagine they were traveling with purloined vials of the stuff in large enough quantities to warrant the label ‘drug trade,’” Agatha says. “Anyway, wouldn’t the vials have been detected in customs? The Gare Maritime officials take their job very seriously, as we’ve experienced firsthand.”

“It’s a way for the police to excuse their failure in solving May’s disappearance and finding her killer—by laying the blame at her feet,” I maintain. “The drug angle provides a convenient story. There are even a few intimations that the police may close the case based on the discovery of the syringe.”

“They must be blind. How can they not see that it’s a carefully planted red herring designed to lead the police and the reporters away from the truth?” Ngaio asks.

Agatha adds, “Having been the victim of the press myself, I feel sick at this exploitation of Miss Daniels. No woman or girl deserves such abuse, particularly when she can no longer defend her good name.”

I nod in agreement. Each one of these Queens has spoken a truth about poor May, her fate, and our society. To deliver real justice, we need first to dismantle this fictional narrative about May Daniels.