“Not as well as I imagineNews of the Worldtreats you,” Frank says with a snort.
“I don’t know about that, old chap. We are all just cogs in the great wheel of the press, aren’t we?” Mac says and then gestures toward me. “Allow me to introduce my wife, Mrs. Dorothy Fleming. You might know her better as the novelist Dorothy Sayers.” He puffs up a bit with pride at this introduction.
While it might better suit my purpose to simply be Mac’s wife while I’m in Boulogne—people may be more willing to share information if they don’t know I’m also a writer—I do not demur.
“It’s a pleasure,” Frank says, shaking my hand gently. “Are you the author of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries?”
“I am indeed.”
“I’ve only read the first in the series—Whose Body?—but I quite enjoyed it.”
“I appreciate your reading my work.”
Frank continues, “I was just heading over to a café where most hacks covering the case are having a late spot of lunch and some drinks. Care to join us? The food is a far sight better than what’s on offer at the pubs at home, but I can’t make any promises about the refinement of the company.” He nods in my direction, by way of apology.
Mac guffaws, and with a twinkle in his eye, he says, “It’s not refinement I’m after—but insights. Can the gents promise that?”
“Only insofar as it doesn’t lead to a scoop for you alone!”
We walk away from the dock up the hill toward an area Frank refers to as Old Town. Passing across a square, we arrive at a charming, beautifully preserved medieval thoroughfare so narrow it feels like a lane. A sign on the wall announces the street as rue de Lille.
“The Vole Hole is just there,” Frank says, pointing to a tiny café with a striped awning and several tables scattered in front, all populated with couples smoking cigarettes and sipping on undoubtedly excellent coffee as well as stronger refreshments. “It’s actually the oldest building—the oldest business, in fact—in Boulogne. Dates back to the twelfth century, if you can believe it.”
Mac runs his hand along the uneven stones of the wall of shops—lain by the hands of some long-gone mason—bordering rue de Lille and says, “I can believe it.”
The light in my husband’s eyes grows brighter with each step. Frank holds open the café door for us, and we step into a cavelike room crowded with patrons and the fug of cigarette smoke. Several men break away from the bar, topped with galvanized zinc, to greet Mac, and a few others rise from crowded bistro tables to shake his hand or slap his back. Pride shines on his face as he introduces me around. It’s a joy to witness my husband in his element.
Many of the names I know from Mac’s tales of his reportingantics, but a few of the Frenchmen and Englishmen are unknown to both of us. When I shake hands with a man who introduces himself as “special correspondent to theSunday News,Netley Lucas,” Mac’s face betrays no recognition, but I hear Frank whisper, “Not to mention former crook and convict.” I see a similar blankness when another fellow, “former Chief Inspector Gough writing for theDaily Mail,” stands up from a barstool to make our acquaintance. From the sheer number of journalists sent to cover this story and the unusual variety of reporters—ex-criminals and former police chiefs are rarely in the mix—I realize that the case of May Daniels is unique.
I sip a crisp local white wine and nibble on pickled herring and fresh mussels at the bar. Unusually for me, I stay quiet and listen. As Mac’s wife, I’m wonderfully invisible, and as the drinks flow, the men’s lips loosen.
“I hear the body was in a terrible state,” one man mutters to another.
“Signs of violence, you mean?” the other gent asks.
“Too soon to tell about that. I meant the decomposition,” he replies.
“Ah, interesting. So she’s been dead for some time, maybe even since she went missing?”
“Perhaps,” the man answers, his tone guarded now. Is he worried he’s revealed too much? From Mac, I know these reporters walk a fine line between camaraderie and competition.
I keep listening. Words float over my head like clouds—“bobbed hair” and “full-time nurse” and “stockings”—and I want to reach out and grab them, make them solid on the page. I resist the urge to jot all these tidbits down in my notebook, instead simply filing them away in my mind. I will revisit and sort them later. Then share them with the Queens of Crime.
Still, no matter the volume or array of details I’m gathering, no matter the theories and rumors, only onerealquestion seems to be on everyone’s mind: Who killed May Daniels?
Chapter Nine
MARCH 23, 1931
BOULOGNE-SUR-MER,FRANCE
A shaft of sunlight hits my closed eyes and awakens me mid-dream. I’d been standing on the edge of a vast Sahara-like desert, watching a sandstorm build in the distance. Although I understood on some level that I should run and seek cover, I couldn’t. My limbs would not move; they seemed stricken by some sort of paralysis. All I could do was watch the sandstorm grow closer and pray it changed course.
My eyelids flutter open, and as I lift my hand to shield my face from the sun, the mounting panic from my dream subsides. Glancing around the room, I realize I’m not in some catastrophic desert scenario. Instead, unfamiliar pea-green floral wallpaper and dainty walnut furniture surround me, and for a moment, a different sort of anxiety takes hold as I wonder where I am. Until I hear Mac snore, and I suddenly remember that we are in a small family-owned hotel in Boulogne on assignment forNews of the World.
I lurch up from the tangle of sheets and quilts, making my head throb. I fall back down onto the lumpy pillow. How many glasses of winedidI drink yesterday afternoon and evening? I think back to the hours at the café, but I lose count at four, an unusually large number for me. I have a hazy recollection of stumbling down Boulogne’s cobblestone streets with a drunken Mac intow and our luggage in our arms, laughing as we searched for our lodgings. Although I have no memory of checking in, we must have found our way, because here we are.Good Lord,I think when I realize we have to face the innkeeper this morning.What must she think of us?
However blurry the end of the evening might be, I do recall snatches of conversation from the café. A description of the day May Daniels vanished in Boulogne more than five months ago after taking the ferry from Brighton for a day trip with her friend and fellow nurse Celia McCarthy. Small details concerning the peculiar circumstances around May’s disappearance on that fine autumn day. Particulars about the search parties assembled to locate the young Englishwoman in the weeks after she went missing, all of which came up empty-handed. The circumstances surrounding a poor farmer’s discovery of her body in a tangle of bushes and trees in a park outside of town, near a triumphal monument the locals call Napoleon’s column.
