“Yes.” He nods, and his eyes darken at the reference to May’s body. “Not to mention that we came across a very chatty guard.”
“One of the gendarmes assigned to keep the scene secure?” I’m surprised by this development. The French police have been closemouthed—downright uncooperative, the reporters have been saying. While the French government may not be receptive to English journalists, it is uncommon for them to be so resistant to cooperating with the English authorities, especially when dealing with an English victim or English criminal. And there have been rumors of the gendarmes and their superiors refusing to work hand in hand with our police in this matter.
He shakes his head. “No, a sentinel assigned to police the column and its pavilions year-round.”
“Ah. I didn’t realize that the memorial would merit routine patrolling.”
“The guard told us that he actually spoke with the nurses on October 16. He maintained that the girls walked around the column, and afterward, he invited them inside to climb the stairway to the top. Tremendous views, apparently. But they declined, according to him.”
I’m a little astonished at this journalist’s loose lips. But he’s young, and I suppose he perceives me as innocuous. Anyway, he knows I’ll be privy to all the more widely known developments from Mac.
“Mac didn’t say anything about the girls visiting Napoleon’s column while they were here.”
“No: that was news.” His face is bright. “Mrs. Fleming, it was quite a lesson to watch your husband in action. Mac was masterful in drawing out the details of the so-called encounter from the guard and then getting the man so tangled up in his own inconsistent statements that the guard admitted it was a lie.”
“All of it?”
“Well, the guard continued to maintain that the girls toured the area. But he admitted that he never spoke to them.”
“That’s Mac for you. I always tell him he should have been a barrister. Speaking of my husband, do you happen to know where he’s landed?”
“I do. I’ll give you one guess.”
“The Vole Hole.”
Chapter Fourteen
MARCH 23, 1931
BOULOGNE-SUR-MER,FRANCE
The darkness disorients. Even at dusk, the muted pinkish light peeking in from the open door is bright compared to the dank, windowless interior of the Vole Hole. Could the tacky cigarette residue coating every surface and the vicious gossip swirling in the air also blacken the establishment? I think so.
“She sought out the French drug trade—”
“You know there’s a tie between white slavers and the drug dealers. Maybe she got wrapped up—”
“In my opinion, she asked for it—”
“The proximity of the syringe to her purse certainly suggests—”
“Why else would she be up at Napoleon’s column? Tourists don’t often go up there. It seems out of the way—”
The reporters’ nitwittery buzzes around me as I sit next to my husband at a crowded zinc-top table in the Vole Hole. How far these stories have spun since this morning—from the briefing statements to suppositions to tales to full-blown fantasies.This is a young woman whose life was snuffed out before it could even begin,I think, feeling sick at the aspersions being cast upon her. All these men can think about is how to make headlines out of her terrible demise—in the name of their own gain. They are accepting one questionable piece of evidence at face value—a syringe near the body—and building scaffolding all around it in order to construct “fact-based”narratives that they’ll toss out into the world without undertaking their own investigations.
Mac is mid-theory: “Perhaps the girls had a rendezvous at Napoleon’s column to buy drugs. Or sell them.” The men nod in agreement, then a cacophony of sound erupts as each vies to offer his version of the events. They nip like dogs at the heels of a dead girl, my own husband among them.
How different my witty, supportive husband seems in the throes of this journalistic chase,I think. How can he be so discerning with the guard at Napoleon’s column but buy into this sort of debased conjecturing? Even his thought processes seem transformed by this quest for a scandalous scoop. I certainly hope that, when this assignment is over, he will metamorphose back.
All at once, a single notion plagues me. Why has not one of these men questioned the logic of two young Englishnursestraveling all the way to France for morphine when they undoubtedly had easy access to the drug at the hospital where they worked every single day? If an injection of an opiate was what they sought, they certainly did not have to take a train to Brighton followed by a ferry to France to get it. This fact calls into question all the theorizing around me. And the notion of the women as drug dealers is laughable. To me, a syringe of morphine discovered near a dead body is an example of the most obvious technique employed by mystery authors: a red herring.
This thought stops me short. If there is a red herring, there is a plot and a formidable murderer. One who has conspired to kill May Daniels. Why on earth would a twenty-one-year-old nurse on a day trip to France merit the attentions of an accomplished murderer?
This question has me spinning like a top, and suddenly, the cacophony of the men and the fug of the smoke and the weight of May’s death feel oppressive, even claustrophobic. “I need some air,” I say to Mac.
“Are you quite all right, Dorothy?” He studies my face. “Your cheeks look flushed.”
“Yes. It’s—it’s just rather warm in here,” I say, reassuring him.
