Chapter Forty-Two
A PRIL 14, 1931
B OULOGNE-SUR- M ER, F RANCE
“You did it!” Margery shrieks, staring down at the object. “You really did it!”
“Shhhhh!” Ngaio hisses and rolls her eyes, as if Margery is an annoying little sister. “We don’t want to draw attention.”
“You doubted us, Margery?” Emma asks quietly, with a smirk.
“It wasn’t easy.” I don’t mind admitting the truth. “We were extremely lucky that the Gare Maritime policeman wasn’t there.”
“Of course it was difficult,” Agatha offers. She’s the only one who hasn’t squealed too loudly or laughed too much since Emma and I shed our disguises and met them in the rue de Lille café. “Describe what happened.”
Emma takes charge. Step by step, she lays out for them the way we duped the policemen into believing we were May’s relatives and how we discovered May’s key—which resembles the locker keys in the Gare Centrale Left Luggage department. How we slipped away with it, even though the two gendarmes watched our every move and checked every item returned in the box against a master list. It was only possible because the police had no idea the key was there in the first place.
Now the five of us are back at Left Luggage, standing before the locker number inscribed on May’s key: 242. We are somewhat the worse for wear, having traipsed up and around the hills of Boulogne and back down again. Even Emma’s elaborate, typically immobile coiffure—how does she do it? I often wonder—is disheveled. Probably the black lace dislodged some of the updo. But everyone’s eyes shine with excitement.
We are inside the pages of one of our own novels.
Key in hand, I’m poised to slide it into the lock, and suddenly I freeze. What if everything we deduced is wrong? Or what if it’s true, but far worse?
“What are you waiting for, Dorothy?” Ngaio asks.
“Nothing, I guess,” I say, then wriggle the key into the lock. It’s sticking. I push a little harder, but I’m concerned the key will bend or snap if I’m too rough.
“Oh, I hope this does the trick,” Emma says. “If May’s handbag and the key were indeed out in the elements all these months, it’s possible the deep freeze warped the key.”
“I wish you’d mentioned that earlier, Emma,” Agatha says in an uncharacteristically sharp tone.
“How do you know so much about keys, anyway?” Ngaio asks Emma. “You’re not the actual Scarlet Pimpernel.”
“No, although it’s fun to pretend.” Emma smiles, then determination returns. “But I’ve certainly researched thieves, locksmiths, and locks enough to learn a thing or two.”
The key is now entirely in the lock. Time to turn it left or right. But when I try, it doesn’t budge. Gently, I continue fiddling with it.
“Want me to give it a go?” Margery offers.
“No—I think it’s coming,” I say, but I wonder. Why do I feel like I have to handle everything myself? I am surrounded by smart, crafty women who’ve proved they’ll do anything for the case—and for me. Is this so hard to accept? That I needn’t shoulder all burdens on my own?
The Queens cease all chatter and stare at the locker. I struggle to twist the key left then right, but it just won’t gain purchase, and I’m afraid to push too hard.
Without asking again, Margery places her hand over mine. Together we turn the key to the right—hard. And the lock springs open.
Emma claps, and despite her silvery hair and finely lined skin, I have a flash of the aristocratic child she once was. Blond curls, calf-length dress of pink silk brocade festooned with lace and pearls, governess in tow, cheering at the presentation of a special gift from Vienna or Budapest; she did grow up in the Austro-Hungarian empire, after all. Fabergé everywhere, I bet.
Will this locker be my Fabergé egg? Containing treasure of a very different kind?
I lift the locker’s latch and creak open the door. The interior is dark, and at first, the locker appears empty. Then a white object materializes at the back.
Is it the item I suspect? The writing May so furiously scribbled in the little park off rue de Lille?
With a shaking hand, I reach inside. My fingers touch several sheets of folded paper. Carefully, I slide them out from inside the dim locker into the light of the station. I then unfold them and read aloud: “To whom it may concern—My name is May Daniels…”
They are the final words of a dead girl.