The Queens of Crime

Chapter Seventeen

M ARCH 24, 1931

B OULOGNE-SUR- M ER, F RANCE

“Can we agree that anyone entering or exiting the washroom must pass through this narrow hallway?” I step back from the corridor wall and study the women’s faces as I ask.

The women nod, but I watch Emma’s eyebrow arch like a question mark.

“Can we also agree that Celia would have been standing approximately where you are right now?”

“Yes,” Ngaio says. “Why are you asking?”

“Indulge me a few minutes more. So Celia would have been within inches of anyone coming out of or going into the washroom?”

They nod once more, but Margery asks, “Why are you reviewing these basic points? I thought we’d been through these particular details.”

“It will all become clear when I return. Might I ask you to stay right here until I do?”

Agatha answers for the group. “Of course, Dorothy. Do what you must.”

The women look at me curiously but remain in their positions. I scurry back into the washroom, past the attendant at the sinks and three women finishing up washing their hands, and race into an empty stall. There, in that narrow space, I remove a wide plum-and-black-patterned shawl from my handbag, unfold it, and drape it over most of my gray wool coat. Then I slide out the ingenious rubberized wide-brimmed black rain hat I’d purchased at the millinery yesterday and replace my cloche with it. Carefully tucking my hair into the rain hat, I yank it down low on my forehead and put on my reading glasses, the ones I rarely wear in public.

Leaving the stall, I wash my hands in the sink until six women quit their stalls and begin using the adjacent sinks. I lather slowly and take my time drying my fingers on the linen cloth the attendant provides. Checking my image one last time in the mirror, I adjust the scarf to cover not only my coat but also my handbag, and I tilt the rain hat so that one side of the brim hangs lower than the other.

Then I wait for the other women in the washroom to exit.

I saunter out of the washroom in their midst. A French mother-daughter pair, prim and stylish in their nearly identical well-cut navy coats, belted at the waist with a semifitted bust and sleeves that flare at the wrist. A lone graying woman who must be German or German-speaking because she carries a copy of a book entitled Der Prozess by the author Franz Kafka. Two young women with serious expressions, wearing simple cotton frocks and trench coats, who have such strikingly similar hooded brown eyes that they must be related. Finally, an elderly woman with lines deeply etched into her brow and at the corners of her eyes using a cane to bolster her right leg.

I secure a place between the mother-daughter pair and the German woman because I’m gambling that the fashionable navy coats will draw onlookers’ gazes away from everyone else. Walking alongside them, I keep my eyes straight ahead, never making contact with Emma, Ngaio, Agatha, or Margery. In my peripheral vision, however, I can see they’ve remained in position as I requested.

Continuing on, I enter the Gare Centrale proper and take a place under the station’s departure board, as if checking on my train. Once I’m certain the Queens are facing forward—still waiting for me to emerge from the washroom—I pull off the rain hat and the scarf and stuff them in my handbag. I take off my glasses and approach the women from the back.

I tap Ngaio on the shoulder, because she’s the Queen at the back of their little queue. She turns, sees my face, and lets out a yelp.

“You scared the living daylights out of me, Dorothy! How on earth did you get out here?”

All four encircle me now and are bombarding me with questions.

“Is there another exit from the washroom?”

“Did you ever really go back inside the toilettes ?”

“How the devil did you do that?”

I say, “I will explain everything, but suffice it to say that I walked right past you.”

“That’s not possible. We would have seen you,” Margery maintains.

“You saw what I wanted you to see and what you expected to see. Things are not always as they appear.”

Agatha smiles, and I see that her gaze has settled on the corner of the scarf peeking out from my handbag. She understands without my saying a word.

“When I first learned of May’s disappearance, I assumed that there had to be some other means of leaving the washroom, a way overlooked by some inept gendarme. A small window or a storage closet with an outlet elsewhere, perhaps, that May crawled through. Or through which she was dragged. But I was utterly wrong, as we all saw today. There isn’t even a ventilation shaft connected to the washroom. It is the very definition of a locked room.”

“Also the very definition of a malodorous room,” Ngaio jibes, prompting an outbreak of tittering among the others.

“You’re not wrong there,” I say, then continue. “Given that, the next possibility that occurred to me was that she’d been somehow assaulted within the washroom and surreptitiously removed from it.”

“Nearly impossible without detection,” Agatha offers.

“Exactly. We’ve inspected the washroom, and I think we can agree that May was not smuggled out of it by a nefarious actor. There isn’t the space for a kidnapping to go unnoticed. The Boulogne police may have been half-hearted in their canvassing and interviewing of their citizens, but the official report shows a careful questioning of the washroom attendant and Gare Centrale employees on duty that day. So what does that leave us with?”

“You tell us, ” Emma says with her familiar sniff. “You obviously have the answer.”

“Actually, I have that awful Gare Maritime ticket agent to thank for prompting the answer. Emma, do you recall that he told us he couldn’t identify May or Celia because one English girl looks like every other?”

“Yes,” she says slowly and warily.

Staring down the narrow corridor leading to the washroom, I can almost see May as she must have appeared that October afternoon. Furtive, nervous, and scared. I can almost sense her fear now. But why was she afraid?

I continue. “Then I remembered what the salesgirl from the millinery told us. May secretly ran back to the store after she and Celia had left and bought a dark fedora. And I had my answer. She switched her mauve toque for the fedora, pulled it low over her face, and draped a scarf or wrap over her familiar black tailored coat—and walked right past Celia. Thus disguised, May was unrecognizable to Celia, and her friend vanished before her very eyes.”

“May hid in plain sight,” Margery half whispers, in awe of the scheme.

“That was my theory. But I needed to be sure.” Sliding them from my handbag, I hold aloft my scarf and hat. “So I tested it on you.”

“The ruse works,” Ngaio says, shaking her head appreciatively. As if she still cannot believe I pulled the wool over her jaded eyes.

For once, the ladies have no further comment. This is the stuff of their very own novels—stories that have been labeled far-fetched and outlandish by critics. Well-written, brilliant books that have been denied reviews by The Guardian and the Times because they are supposedly too commercial, too pulpy. Narratives now come to life.