The Queens of Crime

Chapter Twenty-Eight

M ARCH 31, 1931

L ONDON, E NGLAND

No University Women’s Club for today’s gathering. No luxurious Café Royal for coq au vin , as we’d enjoyed in Boulogne. Not even Battenberg cakes at a more utilitarian Lyons Tea Shop, like the one Agatha and I visited with Celia. No, today’s Queens of Crime outing involves a serviceable, if a touch down-at-the-heels, teahouse. Because it’s perfectly positioned for our vigil.

The Mathers Insurance concern is located on Leadenhall Street, which has been a hub of commerce since medieval times. The East India Company took it over during the Victorian era, but ever since Lloyd’s made Leadenhall Street its home, the insurance industry has claimed it. In fact, if I crane my neck, I can spy a corner of that venerable organization’s building.

An abundance of attractive cafés there are not in this area of town. Most businessmen dine or meet at their clubs. The Queens and I settle for the establishment with the best possible view of 107 Leadenhall, hunker down, and form a plan.

“You really posed as aunt and niece?” Ngaio exclaims when Margery and I recap our success at Madame Isobel’s. “I mean, you’re only about ten years apart.”

“Smaller gaps in age have been known to occur in large families,” Margery insists.

“True enough,” Ngaio concedes. “Although you could have cleared the visit with us first.”

She’s right.

“Apologies,” I say.

Agatha gives up a small round of applause. “Maths aside, it worked,” she says. “You got the company name and address of the individual who bought May Daniels those lavish dresses. I’d say that’s good sleuthing.”

“Hear! Hear!” Emma lifts a battered teacup—no gold trim or floral design on these functional items—and we take turns touching rims.

Margery and I nod in appreciation, but I cannot fully accept the praise. I’d expected to get the exact name of May’s beau. Not the name of some insurance company.

“Heaps better than the police have done,” Ngaio adds, to which Emma lets out an undignified snort. Is Emma adopting certain of Ngaio’s mannerisms? The snort is usually Ngaio’s signature sound. Perhaps the clearly delineated roles we’ve been playing aren’t so well defined after all.

“No surprise after that precinct visit,” Emma mutters.

“So how are we going to discover which of the many men who work in that office have ties to May?” Agatha asks, cutting through the chitchat.

It’s my turn. I’d popped down to the library to do some research on Mathers Insurance in preparation for today.

“We don’t need to sift through the hundreds of men who work in the building or even the dozens who work at Mathers. We only need to assess Mathers’s twelve principals,” I inform them. “They have upwards of forty clerks, but I think we can safely bypass them. None of them could afford dresses from Madame Isobel’s. Or West End theater tickets.”

“Well, that’s a horse of a different color,” Emma exclaims, and I realize how much I enjoy hearing British idioms in her slightly accented English. As she never tires of telling us, she fled her native Hungary and immigrated to England when she was about fourteen. When she and her family landed, Emma spoke no English—only Hungarian, French, and German.

“It’s manageable with a little subterfuge,” Margery says, glancing at me with a wink.

Ngaio rubs her hands together expectantly. “Count me in.”

“I’m glad you offered, because we’ve pegged you for a role. You and Emma. It’s your turn to act as aunt and niece,” I inform them.

“Like starring in one of my plays,” Emma declares with a wide smile. Her successful Scarlet Pimpernel books actually started out as smash hits onstage and are about to be adapted for film. Something tells me she’s always longed for the limelight.

“Mathers mostly sells commercial insurance policies, so you and Emma will pose as relatives who own farmsteads on the Continent and in New Zealand. Heighten those accents. You are interested in gathering information on policies to protect against weather anomalies. While you are there, you will get a list of the principals.”

Ngaio and Emma glance at each other. Answering for both, Emma says, “We can manage that.”

They push themselves to standing and gather their coats and bags. “While you’re doing that, we will put our heads together and see if we can’t figure out a way to get backstage at Cavalcade or access the official file of the missing London girl.”

We nod our farewells to Ngaio and Emma, and the remaining three of us begin discussing our connections. No one seems to have the sort of contacts with the police department necessary to acquire the official records for Leonora Denning, the missing violinist. Save me. Mac might be able to get them, but it would likely require a confession on my part—admitting that I’ve continued to work on May Daniels’s disappearance. Would he be irritated? Not necessarily; he’s used to all manner of strange projects from me. Wait a moment, I think. What if I couch the request as book research? That way, I might be able to avoid an inquisition.

As for the theater contacts, Agatha, in fact, has a fair few. Her runaway hit The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was adapted for the West End stage three years ago as a play called Alibi. While Agatha was disappointed in its depiction of Hercule Poirot, it did pave the way for her to launch an original play about Poirot, a spy thriller entitled Black Coffee, in the West End. That play is also being adapted for film. Her sister, Madge, has hopped on Agatha’s bandwagon and written a play called The Claimant, about the historic Tichborne case, and hopes to find a producer as well.

“My brother-in-law, Jim Watts, has arranged a party at his family estate, Abney Hall, and invited all my theater associates. My sister and her husband hope, of course, that someone will take an interest in Madge’s play.”

“I assume you will be in attendance?” I ask.

“Much to my chagrin,” Agatha replies. Knowing her ambivalent feelings toward crowds and her sister, I can only imagine how deeply she’s dreading this event.

“When is this party happening?”

“This weekend.”

“Might I impose myself? We may be able to dig out some contacts at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, or in Cavalcade .”

“That would be divine,” she says, squeezing my hand in gratitude. “I’d feel far less exposed and nervous with you at my side.”

Just then, the bell on the tea shop’s front door rings, and Ngaio and Emma return. “What happened?” I ask before they can sit back down at the table. “You were barely gone long enough to take the elevator up to the Mathers offices and back down again.”

Emma arches an eyebrow in mock horror. “Do you doubt our acting abilities? Do you think we got tossed out?”

Ngaio rushes to answer. “We didn’t need more time, Dorothy. We didn’t even need to trot out our alter egos beyond introducing ourselves and asking for an appointment. There is a list of Mathers Insurance principals right there on the sign when you walk inside their offices.”

“Why do you look so pleased with yourselves?” Agatha asks.

“Because you’ll never guess whose name was on the Mathers Insurance wall, listed among the other principals.”

Ngaio must have been met with blank stares, because she shakes her head in disappointment at us. She exclaims, “None other than Jimmy Williams and his son, Louis Williams. The latter was mentioned in May’s hidden Daily Herald article; he was interviewed in the case of the missing violinist.”

“Good God,” Margery says.

“It cannot be a coincidence. We discover that the man who may have purchased May’s expensive dresses is also mentioned in a newspaper article about a different missing girl, an article May has secretly squirreled away. Might Mr. Williams the younger be May’s beau?” Agatha posits.

I ask a related, but more crucial, question. “Might he also be her murderer?”