The Queens of Crime

Chapter Sixteen

M ARCH 24, 1931

B OULOGNE-SUR- M ER, F RANCE

We leave the Old Town behind. Most of its enticing shops, cafés, brasseries, and confectioneries have been inspected and come up wanting. If we are going to follow the October 16 path of the nurses—and debunk the rumors—we must go where they went next: the Gare Centrale .

As we head to the train station on this bright morning, the cobblestones give way to pavers, and the sound of awnings being unfurled and neighbors calling out “Bonjour” is replaced by the cry of seagulls and the bellow of boat horns. I imagine that the young nurses, tired from a day of boat travel and touring, were quiet as they returned to the docks. Was the prospect of the busy workweek ahead—and all the many, many years of work to follow—weighing upon them? Did the taste of freedom only make a future chockablock with nursing rounds more daunting?

We need to speak to the notoriously reticent Celia McCarthy to see if my speculations match reality. She spoke extensively with the authorities after May’s disappearance, as evidenced by the police report, but she’s been unwilling to say more since the discovery of the body. And she has outright refused to travel to France for more questioning.

These musings fade away as we approach the Gare Centrale. The beauty of the station catches me unawares. As we approach it from the front, its ornate arches, soaring spires, and striking statuary seem uncommonly elegant for a train station, more like the towering Basilique Notre-Dame de Boulogne, which looms over the Old Town. It is worlds away from its utilitarian sibling on the harbor, the Gare Maritime.

Lingering before the front entrance, I picture the young women marveling at this structure. Then I imagine May turning toward Celia and asking if they can stop in the Gare Centrale washroom for a “wash and brushup” before they board the Glendower ferry home.

Did Celia bristle at this unexpected stop? Did she push May to wash up at the Gare Maritime instead? After all, there is a washroom at that station, and they had a ferry to catch. Perhaps May balked at Celia’s insistence that she use the danker washroom at Gare Maritime, or perhaps they both wanted to take a spin through the impressive main train station. Did the investigators even ask? I’ve seen nothing in the official report.

Either way, May and Celia stepped into this building, and we follow in their footsteps. Seeing what they saw, hearing what they heard. The haze of smoke and the slowing clack-clack from an approaching train. The cries of “All aboard!” and the panicky squeals of travelers desperate to make it into a car. The tumult of luggage and coats and young children underfoot alongside the cacophony of machinery and voices and the slam of doors. Did it thrill the young women or overwhelm them?

As May and Celia may have done, we inquire of a railway agent the location of les toilettes des dames . Our heels clicking on the hard marble tiles of the long corridor, we weave through the crowd of arriving passengers toward the ladies’ room. I push open the heavy wooden black door, and we crowd inside.

This is the place, I think.

A number of women jockey for position around the white porcelain sinks while an attendant stands by handing them towels. Other women enter and exit the six stalls in rapid-fire rotation. The black-and-white-tiled space is not large, and as has been reported widely, only one entrance is visible. We take turns walking the perimeter of the washroom, and none of us can identify a single other means of egress, not even a small window. Once inside, we can see that there is indeed only one way out.

When a stall empties, I slip in, locking the door behind me. Inspecting the narrow area, I wonder if another person—one with nefarious intent—would fit inside here. Between the toilet, the paper holder, and the small waste bin, it would be extremely tight but possible. Just.

I reenter the public section of the washroom and survey the room. How would an evildoer get inside a stall with another person without anyone noticing? How would this same villain perpetrate a wrong upon May—even a kidnapping—in the open? Even if May had been assaulted in a stall and the perpetrator managed to avoid attention, how would he or she get May out of the washroom without notice? There are simply too many witnesses in here, including the attendant.

This locked-room puzzle is worse than I imagined. I had assumed that we’d find a back entrance or window that sloppy gendarmes failed to observe. Or that the washroom contained shadowy corners where a young woman might be interfered with or snatched. Or, in the unlikely circumstance that May had a hand in her own vanishing—as did, I suspect, someone else I know—there was another way out. But examining this washroom, I see that none of these theories holds water.

How did May exit this washroom without drawing the attention of Celia, who stood just outside the single door? And if May herself wasn’t responsible, why would anyone go to such lengths to abscond with a middle-class British nurse from Chiswick and Ealing Isolation Hospital on a day trip to France?

“Puis-je vous offrir une serviette, madame?” the washroom attendant asks, one quizzical eyebrow raised, as I loiter at the sinks.

How long have I been standing here while my mind whirs? I have no idea. I suppose I should play along, wash my hands, and take the offered hand towel, even though I don’t need to wash up because I didn’t use the facilities. I see that Margery and Ngaio are acting the part and lathering up. Where are Agatha and Emma?

“Oui, merci,” I say, accepting the towel and draping it across my forearm while I suds up. The attendant has probably seen all sorts of frights far worse than a preoccupied middle-aged Englishwoman staring at the sinks. Might she have even been on duty on October 16? The police report had been emphatic that the attendant witnessed nothing.

Pretending at a casual exchange as I finish and place a tip in her jar, I ask, “Avez-vous travaillé longtemps à la gare?”

“Non, Madame, j’ai commencé ce poste le mois dernier seulement.” She explains that she only took the job last month.

Wishing her a good day, I leave the toilettes, and Margery and Ngaio aren’t far behind. I see Agatha and Emma leaning against the tiled corridor wall just outside the washroom. Intentionally or not, they stand in the position Celia would have assumed. I take a spot alongside them, observing women and girls come and go from the washroom, some in haste, others at leisure. A clock is mounted on the wall at the end of the hallway, and I imagine that Celia must have been watching that second hand tick. She probably waited with mounting impatience for her friend to come out. They had a ferry to catch, after all, and May had their tickets.

By all accounts, Celia waited five minutes for May, at which point the ferry was due to depart in another five minutes. Was her fury mounting? Or was she concerned about her friend? According to Madame Brat, May had been unwell earlier in the day. Whether she was in a huff or not, Celia then marched into the toilettes, hunting down her friend and calling out her name. To no avail.

“Any locked-room stories come to mind that might apply?” I ask the women, hoping for inspiration.

“There’s that the Father Brown story ‘The Arrow of Heaven.’ Gilbert had the millionaire shot to death with an arrow in a locked room,” Ngaio offers.

“True,” Emma replies. “But it contains an arrow used in an unorthodox way, so it’s not helpful.”

“Agatha, you wrote a locked-room story with Poirot, didn’t you?” I ask.

She nods. “‘The Market Basing Mystery.’ A wealthy recluse holed up in his bedroom seems to have shot himself, and Poirot discovers that the gun is found in the wrong hand. It’s a locked-room scenario, but I don’t think its resolution would have any bearing here.”

I feel stuck and frustrated.

But then, as I watch the ingress and egress of the travelers, the words of the agent at the Gare Maritime return to me: “One plain English girl looks very much like another, especially in a crowd.” Suddenly I can picture the “how” of May’s disappearance.