Chapter Fifty-Three
A PRIL 17, 1931
L ONDON, E NGLAND
The bookshelves have been dusted and the wooden floors swept. I’ve wiped clean the kitchen surfaces and tidied the drafts of the very tardy Have His Carcase on my desk. The timeline has been pinned to the wall alongside blank sheets of paper where we will sketch out our plan. Earlier, I braved the unseasonably brisk early morning temperatures and scampered down Great James Street to the bakery on the corner, and now reheated hot crumpets and scones sit alongside jars of orange marmalade and berry jam, stacks of small porcelain plates, teacups, and a steaming pot of tea on the sofa table. A fire burns in the hearth. The flat has even been cleared of Mac, although that was his own doing; work called.
A delicate knock sounds at the door, and from the tempo, I guess that Agatha has arrived first. But when I open the door, I’m wrong. It is Emma, the Queen I’d been most anxious about inviting to my flat. She lives a razzle-dazzle life in Monte Carlo, Tuscany, and Kent, and I worry that a glimpse into my less-than-glamorous existence may alter her perception of me.
She steps into the flat and hands me her coat and hat. She peeks into the parlor, declaring, “How positively wondrous! A London pied-à-terre of the most writerly sort!”
I’d never thought of my flat as a pied-à-terre, but I’ll take the compliment.
After I guide her toward the most comfortable upholstered armchair, I rush back to answer the next knock. The three other Queens stand at the door, then pour into my flat on a wave of laughter and chatter. Has my flat ever reverberated with a cacophony of such happy sounds? I wonder, a smile spreading across my face. Too bad it took a murder and assaults and threats to prompt this cheery gathering.
The women settle on the sofa and upholstered chairs, helping themselves to crumpets and scones while I pour them tea. Once the chin-wagging dies down, I take my place at the wall facing them. “Apologies that the timeline has reappeared,” I joke, pointing to the now familiar chronology, and they laugh. “But we shan’t be focusing on that first. Instead, we will start with a question, the most pressing one before us today. How does each of you solve your murders?”
“What exactly do you mean?” Emma asks. “How do we map them out for the purposes of writing? Or how do we resolve them in the pages of our books?”
“The latter.”
“Let’s turn the question on the questioner,” Margery says with a smile. “How do you do it, Dorothy?”
This unexpected turn might take us a bit off course. A very specific idea of how we might decipher this mystery had occurred to me last evening, but I want the women to reach the same conclusion on their own.
“I guess the best way to describe the way I solve the murders is that I serve the work,” I reply.
“What on earth does that mean? Sounds very mystical,” Ngaio—of course—says.
I don’t let her shake me. “I take direction from it and shape it according to that guidance. I don’t let my own predilections or potential readers’ desires dictate the course of the plot or its conclusion.”
“So you let the muse direct you?” Emma asks.
“That’s one way to describe it. Although for me, the muse is God rather than the ancient Greek mythological figure with a capital M . I grew up in a religious household; my father was an Anglican vicar. Those teachings have never left me, although they have taken on their own form in my adult years.”
The women are quiet. Religious beliefs are a topic upon which we haven’t touched. Although why not? We are dealing with life and death as well as good and evil in the case of May Daniels. This secular age in which we live and the intellectual labors in which we engage don’t lend themselves to religion, I suppose. That is a conversation, however, for another day.
Or is it?
“I’m not saying that religion will help us reach a solution to May Daniels’s murder—I hardly think Moses will descend with tablets naming the killer and the best way to trap him,” I say, and the women laugh in relief. Did they think I was about to embark on a sermon? “But if we use our own muses—whatever inspires us as writers, not the detectives we’ve been playing at—as the guide, how would we bring about the just and right solution for May? What device would we use?”
“I know what technique I would use,” Ngaio says.
“So do I,” Emma says in agreement.
“I do as well,” Margery says. “I wonder if we are all landing on the same approach.”
“Why don’t I go first?” Agatha leans forward, a grin on her face. She’s enjoying this little game immensely. I suppose it isn’t often we have similarly situated others with whom to discuss the ins and outs of our work. Isn’t that the main reason I formed the Detection Club in the first place? To provide a forum for exactly this sort of discussion? So that we wouldn’t be considered mad for speaking aloud the many ways the latest kitchen gadget could be used as a murder weapon? Of course, I had originally thought we’d be considering fictional mysteries. I had no idea that the behavior by certain male Detection Club members would spur us into solving actual crimes.
“By all means: you have the floor.”
“Close your eyes for a moment,” Agatha instructs us, and we obey. “You have all been at this juncture before. The factual threads are coming together. An image is forming of May and Louis and the assault and May’s pregnancy and the other missing girl and the manner in which May’s involvement made her dangerous. Am I correct?”
I squint through my lashes to see the others nodding, and I join in before shutting my eyes again.
“But the image is only an outline without a clear shape. We have a sense of the why as well as the how. Yet there is a big blank spot in the center of that image—the who—and identifying that who requires the characters to reveal their guilt or innocence to us.”
As expected, Ngaio interjects, “I’d argue that Louis is that who. May practically identifies him in her letter.”
I chime in. “You may well be correct, Ngaio. But we are talking about the device we will choose to prove it.”
“Exactly,” Agatha says, concurring. “To me, the obvious choice is a gathering of the circle of suspects. We will bring together all the possible perpetrators under the auspices of revealing the murderer’s identity—and they will do the work for us.”
“That’s what I was thinking!” Margaret squeals delightedly.
Emma sits back and beams contentedly. “Outstanding.”
“We hardly have a circle,” Ngaio mutters. “We’ve only got the one.”
“Do we?” I ask, and the women stare at me.
I continue. “We have Louis, of course. That is a given. Even though I’m no longer entirely sold on his guilt, he’s despicable enough to consider. We know he’s married with children and a cheater to boot. He had an affair with May—tossing her off when it didn’t suit him—and undoubtedly has had numerous other paramours. Certainly he flirted with Leonora Denning on her last night—a coincidence that’s impossible to ignore—and look how quickly he jumped at Margery when she seemed to be on offer.”
Ngaio gives me an unexpectedly wide grin. “My point exactly.”
“What I learned about him and his father last night from my husband would seem to seal his fate as the murderer.”
“What is that?” Emma asks.
“Mac and I discussed the fact that his father had a very low birth.” I cannot bring myself to say the word “bastard,” and Agatha gives me a sympathetic nod of understanding. “To make the sort of incredible climb that he did, Jimmy had to create opportunities for himself. A boy born in the slums has to use whatever means are at his disposal to make money and connections—in this case, gambling and horses and moneylending and probably worse with a fast crowd of aristocrats, celebrities, and affluent businessmen who commit their own multitude of sins. When he’d amassed enough cash, he put window dressing on it and created Mathers Insurance. And now Jimmy Williams has the desperate desire to create for his son the sort of prosperous, respectable existence he wanted for himself.”
“Is Louis involved in the same illegal enterprises as his father?” Margery asks.
“Mac suspects not. He’s heard rumors that Jimmy still has a hand in loan sharking and the like, but he seems to be shielding his son from his shady dealings. Directing him toward the reputable aspects of Mathers Insurance. But certainly Louis would understand the nature of the people to whom he sells insurance and with whom his father still socializes. And he would have a healthy appreciation for the kind of person his father is, since Jimmy controls Louis with an iron fist. He has all his hopes of gentility pinned on his son.”
“Let me guess,” Emma says. “You would add Jimmy Williams to our circle of suspects as well.”
“Wouldn’t you?” I ask.
The women nod, and Ngaio cannot help but state the obvious. With sarcasm. “Well, that makes two suspects. More of a line than a circle.”
“Have you forgotten the other person that keeps popping up? Sir Alfred Chapman?” I ask.
“Sir Alfred? He doesn’t sound as though he’d swat a fly,” Ngaio says.
“Sir Alfred is not what he seems. He may have been knighted for his work with food rationing during the Great War, but Mac is fairly certain that he also dealt in the black market. So he was taking milk and eggs and produce away from the citizens and reselling it at a hefty premium. He’s best known, of course, for his theater empire, owning and running many theaters in the West End and elsewhere. But don’t forget about the theater world’s dark underbelly. All those young, vulnerable women, desperate for jobs and vying for roles.”
“These men all seem rotten.” Emma sounds disgusted.
“So shall we add Sir Alfred to the circle?” I ask.
“Yes,” Agatha says, her eyes shining. “Let’s gather all three men and force them to disclose their natures.”
“As you did in The Mysterious Affair at Styles . ” I smile at Agatha.
“As you did in The Five Red Herrings, Dorothy,” Agatha says.
I share my smile with the others. “Perhaps our circle of suspects will shake loose a killer. And the truth will come out.”