Chapter Seven
M ARCH 20, 1931
L ONDON, E NGLAND
Who would have believed Agatha capable of such speed?
Emma, Ngaio, Margery, and I race to keep up with her as she storms out of the ballroom and marches down the long hallway to the lobby of the Northumberland Avenue Hotel. The bellman opens the front door as she approaches, and just as she’s about to step outside, I catch her.
“Agatha, wait!”
She turns toward me, eyes blazing, and says, “Why should I? I heard the comments the men made about Emma, Ngaio, and Margery. And Gilbert, well, he’s insufferable—trying to scuttle away from us and then calling himself my king!”
The other women reach us, flanking us on either side. “I don’t know what’s gotten into Gilbert. It’s not exactly like him,” I say. “In fact, I think he was attempting a joke.”
“It wasn’t funny.”
“I know. Anyway, the Detection Club is meant to be an egalitarian group where we support one another’s endeavors, not a hierarchy with the famous G. K. Chesterton at the top and women at the bottom—or absent altogether. The presidential position is one I’d envisioned us taking turns with. Even though this is not Gilbert’s permanent reign, it seems the presidential role has gone to his head.”
Margery says, “He’s got a big enough one.”
We laugh at her unexpected quip, and joining in the momentary frivolity, I add, “Do you know how long it took to find a cape that would fit him? I had to have one specially made.”
When the laughter subsides, Emma, still panting from the exertion of chasing after Agatha, says, “We cannot allow them to defeat us by driving us away with their… their mesquinerie —I cannot think of the English word for this.”
I have never seen Emma at a loss for words, English, French, or otherwise. This unfortunate situation must have flapped the unflappable baroness.
Summoning my college French, I say, “Do you mean ‘pettiness’?”
“Yes, that’s it!” Emma says with a clap of her hands. “We may have tricked them into admitting us into their club, but we must make them welcome us into their fold.”
“Why on earth would we want to do that? After the way they treated you three?” Agatha replies. She still hasn’t moved from the doorway.
“Because the Detection Club is meant to be the champion of our mystery novels and the gatekeeper of the genre’s quality, and these women deserve to take a place alongside those men, miscreants though some of them may be,” I say. “ I, in fact, had a huge hand in creating the club, and I will not let it devolve into yet another men’s organization. I will not let women be slighted in such a way.”
Reaching for Agatha’s hand, I pull her away from the door and toward the small lobby bar. “Come,” I call to the other women.
We settle into a booth in the far back, in a shadowy corner. The last thing we want is to encounter the other Detection Club members as they leave the drinks party. When the waitress comes round, we order sherries; none of us can face a frothy, festive cocktail. The mood simply doesn’t call for it.
The women’s eyes are upon me, telegraphing their expectations. I have only the inkling of an idea how to address this situation, nothing fully formed. But I feel compelled to present the scheme, harebrained though they may find it.
“Before I share my idea—which you may reject outright given how well my last plan went—I want to apologize. I should never have put you three in this position.”
“You could not have known the men would behave like cads,” Ngaio says.
“I could have guessed,” I say, lowering my gaze. Ngaio’s eyes are particularly intense.
“None of us could have predicted this outcome, Dorothy,” Agatha insists. “I’ve dined and worked with some of these men for years, and now I feel as though I don’t know them.”
“Tell us your idea, Dorothy,” Margery suggests.
Taking a big, fortifying gulp of my sherry, I say, “What if we solved a real-life murder?”
Agatha’s eyes look wary. “I’m not certain how that would rectify this situation.”
“Writers merely playact at detective work, resolving bloody crimes from the comfort of their desks and armchairs. What if we got our hands dirty and found an actual murderer? How could the male Detection Club members think us anything but eminently worthy? No one would dare slight us or question our place in the club then.”
“Question our place,” Ngaio says, gesturing at herself, Emma, and Margery. “You and Agatha are a breed apart, fully embraced. You don’t need to fight a battle on our behalf.”
“It is all of us or none of us,” I say, to which Agatha nods.
The women grow quiet, sipping their drinks and presumably mulling over my half-baked notion. Ngaio is the first to speak. “I can’t imagine you’ve got a murder just hanging about for us to solve.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
Agatha, Ngaio, and Margery pepper me with questions all at once, and even Emma raises one imperious, quizzical eyebrow. “How is it that you have a murder at the ready?” Margery asks as Agatha inquires, “Who would want us to investigate a crime?” and Ngaio belts out, “What case are you talking about?”
I answer Ngaio’s question first because it’s the loudest. “Do you remember the newspaper articles last autumn about May Daniels?” The story about Miss Daniels had been widely reported in British and French newspapers last October, and I remember reading the pieces with interest. But afterward, when the coverage died down, I’m embarrassed to admit that I gave poor Miss Daniels very little thought. Until yesterday morning.
The other women’s faces are blank, but then Margery asks, “Wait—do you mean the nurse who went missing?”
“Exactly.” The case of May Daniels involves her vanishing, and I know how uncomfortably close another disappearance might be for Agatha. But Agatha’s face looks expectant, not abashed, so I continue. “That’s the one. She faded into thin air near the port in Boulogne-sur-Mer, in France. Miss Daniels stepped into a washroom at the train station, the Gare Centrale, at the end of a day trip she took with a fellow nurse from Chiswick and Ealing Isolation Hospital—and never stepped out.” The manner in which she entered the small washroom but never exited its only door almost seemed like a magician’s trick to me.
“I remember now,” Ngaio declares, still louder than the others. “The newspaper articles weren’t exactly on the front page, but the particulars stuck in my mind because they were so unusual.”
“Yes,” I say. “Her friend Miss McCarthy stood outside the washroom when Miss Daniels entered. But Miss McCarthy never saw her leave. She went inside after five minutes because their ferry back to England was scheduled to leave soon, and they still had to head from the train station to the harbor. Yet Miss Daniels was nowhere to be found.”
“Am I recalling correctly that there were no other exits?” Margery asks.
“That’s right,” I answer. “The police reported that there was only one way in and one way out. Supposedly not even any windows, because the washroom was in an enclosed part of the Boulogne train station, where the young women had stopped en route to the dock to board their ferry. Miss McCarthy never moved from her post outside the washroom. And Miss Daniels could not be located afterward.”
“It’s almost like a Murder Game scenario. Or the locked-room plot of one of our books,” Margery says, referring to the device many writers in our genre employ. In a locked-room story, a crime occurs in a place where a perpetrator could not have entered or exited without notice—and no one noticed. In the matter of Miss Daniels, not only the criminal but also the victim came and went through the “locked-room” washroom without the notice of the witness, Miss McCarthy.
“What would our role be in all this?” Ngaio asks. “Didn’t she disappear last October? I don’t recall reading that she’s been found.”
“My husband is a journalist, and his paper, News of the World, has assigned him to travel to Boulogne to cover the case, now that it’s more than a disappearance.”
“What do you mean?” Margery asks, her eyes wide.
“Miss Daniels’s body was discovered yesterday.”
Margery and Emma gasp, and Agatha retreats further into her upholstered chair. After letting out a low whistle, Ngaio asks, “Where was she found?”
“In a wooded parklike area around a mile from the town center of Boulogne.”
“How did she die?“Agatha asks quietly.
“The coroner’s inspection has not been finalized yet, so we don’t know how or when,” I answer. “But it certainly seems like some form of foul play.”
“Poor girl,” Agatha says with a sad shake of her head. “But I still don’t see how we would be involved in all this.”
“What if I suggested to my husband that I join him in Boulogne to add my ‘unique mystery writer’ perspective to his coverage? Even propose a joint article for his editor? It would give me access to the crime scene, the police, and all the investigation files—and you all could join me.”
“How would your husband feel about the lot of us tagging along?” Ngaio asks. “I can’t imagine it would make him very popular with the other journalists on-site. Reporters are a boys’ club well beyond anything the Detection Club men could ever envision.”
I picture my burly, gregarious Scottish husband with a gaggle of women in tow. He’d probably be a good sport about it, but it wouldn’t serve his purposes—or ours—for our detective work to be known.
“I wouldn’t tell him. Not at first, anyway,” I reply. “I’d go with Mac to Boulogne, and you four would travel separately. Once there, we’d reconnoiter and begin our investigation.”
Emma, the very last person I imagine would be inclined to dirty her hands with an actual murder, locks eyes with me and says, “We must, Dorothy. The girl deserves it. I think we know too well that a woman’s fate often poses such complex problems that it requires other women to find the solution.” She then turns her gaze upon each of the Queens in turn and says, “And we deserve it as well. We will find this poor creature’s murderer, and we will stride into the next Detection Club meeting to a hero’s welcome.”