Chapter Thirty-Seven
A PRIL 13, 1931
O XFORDSHIRE, E NGLAND
The hour has gone nigh midnight, and the twinkling windows of the Oxfordshire cottages nearby have gone dark. Still, we are hunched over the boxes, now emptied of their contents. We have divvied up the sheaves of papers within, which now sit before each of us in neat piles. We’ve been at it for hours, except for my brief break reading The Three Musketeers to the children at bedtime as promised.
“So far, all I’ve seen is biographical material on Miss Denning,” Margery says, her voice raspy with exhaustion.
“Can you give us a summary?” Ngaio asks, stubbing out yet another cigarette.
I rise to take the whistling kettle off the stove. The number of cups of sugary, creamy Ceylon tea we’ve consumed defies counting at this point. Teacups and saucers, the mismatched cream and sugar set, and teaspoons are strewn about the parlor and kitchen. I do a quick cleanup as I listen to Margery. How I wish the women had brought cakes, I think again.
“Leonora, by all accounts a talented musician, was finishing up her violin studies at the Royal Academy of Music. She lived in student lodging near the academy, an all-girls boardinghouse. Her family lived in Sussex, too far away for her to live at home. To help with her expenses, Miss Denning substituted in orchestras all over London. Anything from stints at the cinema to the London Symphony Orchestra to the West End shows, including our favorite—”
Ngaio jumps in: “ Cavalcade at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.”
“How did you know?” Margery asks rhetorically.
“It seems all roads lead to Cavalcade, ” Ngaio replies.
“All hail the royal procession!” Margery calls out, and I return to the parlor with tea just in time to witness her mock salute.
We chuckle. The evening has been long, and even this desperate attempt at levity is welcome. I rub my temples; all this intense reading is making my headache flare. I feel Agatha’s hand on my arm. “Is this too much for you?”
“No, no,” I protest. I do not want to miss a single minute of this sleuthing. “In fact, I think I should share my findings next. I have the files recounting the night of Miss Denning’s disappearance.”
Emma sits up straighter. “I suspect we will find Louis Williams there.”
“You suspect correctly,” I say. “After the performance of Cavalcade in question, many members of the cast and crew headed to Café de Paris for a nightcap. We learned from Sir Alfred that this was their wont. Even though she was only substituting for the night, Miss Denning was invited along. The police interviewed around fourteen Cavalcade troupe members, eight members of the orchestra, and an assistant director who were all there, most of whom didn’t recall her. The only exceptions were a trumpet player, the cellist who invited her, and a chorus member.”
“What about Louis?” Ngaio asks. She might be as impatient as I am. “They interviewed him, right?”
“Ah, I’m getting to him. Louis was identified by the chorus member as talking with Miss Denning. A group of well-to-do men seems to have been hanging around the Cavalcade cast at the Café de Paris, although it’s unclear whether the men came with them from the theater or chanced upon them. The police interviewed them as well.”
“What did Louis say?” Agatha asks.
“Just a night out with some friends, he maintained. He claims to not recall Miss Denning,” I report.
“Of course he doesn’t recall her,” Ngaio says with a snort of disbelief. I’ve come to realize that each of her snorts conveys a different message, and I’m getting quite adept at interpreting them.
“Who were the friends?” Agatha asks.
“It looks like two other principals from Mathers Insurance.”
Margery stands up and begins pacing Ivy’s parlor. “It cannot be mere happenstance. Two missing girls—both young single working women out in the world—and Louis Williams has ties to them both?”
“He could be a predator but not a killer,” Emma suggests.
“It seems increasingly unlikely,” Ngaio says, adding her usual refrain, “Still, we need that dang proof.”
“What are the circumstances around Miss Denning’s disappearance?” Agatha asks about the next event in this chronology.
“That’s where my files come to an end,” I reply.
Emma holds up a manila folder. “I’ve got the details on that. Miss Denning hadn’t made much of an impression on the Cavalcade folks, and then she simply wasn’t there. Those who had registered her presence at all assumed she went home.”
“Who first noticed that she was missing?”
“Her landlady. Miss Denning never made it home that night. She was a very responsible young lady, and when she didn’t appear by nightfall the next day, the landlady contacted the girls’ parents and the police,” Emma says, summarizing the thick sheaf of pages.
“And?”
It’s Agatha’s turn. “Her poor parents made public pleas in newspapers and on radio programs. All sorts of reports poured in—”
“Let me guess,” Ngaio interjects. “Most of them phonies, submitted by crackpots?”
“Spot-on,” Agatha replies. “But then the parents received a letter. Ostensibly from their daughter.”
“What did it say?” I ask.
“That she’d eloped with a young German fellow. That they’d traveled to Scotland, where the marital process is simpler. The letter implored the parents not to worry, and Miss Denning assured her parents they’d come by when they returned from their honeymoon,” Agatha says.
“So the mystery was solved,” Margery says with evident relief.
“Not exactly,” Ngaio replies, consulting her records. “The parents were extremely skeptical of the letter. They’d never heard mention of a young man, and this so-called marriage and trip took place during the middle of Miss Denning’s term, about which she was extremely diligent. Not to mention that she simply vanished after this gathering at Café de Paris.”
“Did the police conduct a handwriting analysis?” I ask. This relatively new technique is used with growing frequency to ascertain whether a particular person penned a piece of writing.
“Yes, but it was not conclusive,” Ngaio replies.
“Another hoax,” I say, mostly to myself.
“What’s that, Dorothy?” Emma asks.
“Do we have another coincidence? First another missing girl somehow linked to Louis Williams. And now another letter explaining the disappearance away—one that turns out to be a hoax. Just like the so-called confession found in the fish-and-chips shop.”
The women grow quiet, and Agatha falls back into the worn upholstered chair. Her voice small, she asks, “Did Miss Denning ever come back? With or without this young man?”
“No.” Ngaio settles in a seat across from her. “She hasn’t been heard from since that night in October.”
I ask with hesitation, “What’s the police verdict?” I’m not sure I want to hear the answer, even though I’m quite sure what it is.
“Just another flighty young woman who ran off with her paramour. Case closed,” Ngaio says, no derision or fight in her voice. Only sadness.
“So missing young women are either labeled surplus and disregarded or labeled whores and disregarded?” Agatha asks. Her voice is now the one imbued with anger. “We must do whatever it takes to tie Louis Williams to May. And perhaps to Leonora Denning as well.”