As I ready myself to meet the women on the square near rue de Lille, I scamper about the room, gathering the bits and bobs of information about the case Mac has strewn about. I stack his abandoned investigative jottings and the police files in one pile and drafts of his article in another.
A scribbled word catches my eye: “addict.” I scan Mac’s article. To my disappointment, it contains nothing other than the same tawdry opinions I heard at the Vole Hole. It’s as if the victim herself were to blame. How could a man who supports my career, a man who has daughters of his own, harbor such shameful and antiquated views of a young woman? I push the disgust out of my mind and head out.
On the way to the picturesque little square just off rue de Lille, I buy several of today’s papers from a newsstand. The women are already gathered at the corner, but I do not bother with apologies formy mild tardiness. Instead, I hold up the papers and fume, “Have you seen the headlines?”
Last night, I’d informed the women about the nasty speculation among the reporters at the Vole Hole, but seeing the words in print is quite a different thing. I translate the French headline of the first newspaper in the stack:WAS MAY DANIELS A DRUG FIEND? Then I read through the next few, a mix of French and English publications:SYRINGE FOUND NEAR BODY—DRUG DEN?;DRUG TRADE AT THE HEART OF LOCAL MURDER?;WAS BOBBED MISS DANIELS LEADING A LOOSE LIFE?;NAUGHTY NURSE. The last one belonged to Mac, but I don’t highlight that my own husband authored that piece.
“Heaven deliver us,” Emma murmurs, staring at the headlines.
“I don’t think heaven has had a hand here,” Ngaio replies, a tendril of smoke emanating from her lips. “The lengths reporters will go for a scoop is revolting. Do they have any regard for the facts?”
“The poor girl. Imagine how her mother must feel reading these sorts of articles—and what the neighbors must be gossiping about,” Margery adds, playing with the sharp edge of her own shingled bob. Eschewing a complicated, conventional coiffure for that more modern style is an effort to send a message: the wearer leads a busy life and hasn’t the time for fussy updos. But the message received by a traditional few—especially men—is that the woman is fast and loose.
Agatha glances at us. “Why are you all so surprised? Men have been printing prurient untruths about women since time immemorial. One of many efforts to keep us in check.”
“But this? The story doesn’t even make sense. Why would the nurses travel all the way to Boulogne to procure an illicit substance that they have ready access to in London?” Margery asks, raising one of the primary points we’d bandied about last night.
“I suppose they could have been selling it,” Ngaio proposes.
“It’s hard to imagine they were traveling with purloined vials of the stuff in large enough quantities to warrant the label ‘drug trade,’” Agatha says. “Anyway, wouldn’t the vials have been detectedin customs? The Gare Maritime officials take their job very seriously, as we’ve experienced firsthand.”
“It’s a way for the police to excuse their failure in solving May’s disappearance and finding her killer—by laying the blame at her feet,” I maintain. “The drug angle provides a convenient story. There are even a few intimations that the police may close the case based on the discovery of the syringe.”
“They must be blind. How can they not see that it’s a carefully planted red herring designed to lead the police and the reporters away from the truth?” Ngaio asks.
Agatha adds, “Having been the victim of the press myself, I feel sick at this exploitation of Miss Daniels. No woman or girl deserves such abuse, particularly when she can no longer defend her good name.”
I nod in agreement. Each one of these Queens has spoken a truth about poor May, her fate, and our society. To deliver real justice, we need first to dismantle this fictional narrative about May Daniels.
Chapter Sixteen
MARCH 24, 1931
BOULOGNE-SUR-MER,FRANCE
We leave the Old Town behind. Most of its enticing shops, cafés, brasseries, and confectioneries have been inspected and come up wanting. If we are going to follow the October 16 path of the nurses—and debunk the rumors—we must go where they went next: the Gare Centrale.
As we head to the train station on this bright morning, the cobblestones give way to pavers, and the sound of awnings being unfurled and neighbors calling out “Bonjour” is replaced by the cry of seagulls and the bellow of boat horns. I imagine that the young nurses, tired from a day of boat travel and touring, were quiet as they returned to the docks. Was the prospect of the busy workweek ahead—and all the many, many years of work to follow—weighing upon them? Did the taste of freedom only make a future chockablock with nursing rounds more daunting?
We need to speak to the notoriously reticent Celia McCarthy to see if my speculations match reality. She spoke extensively with the authorities after May’s disappearance, as evidenced by the police report, but she’s been unwilling to say more since the discovery of the body. And she has outright refused to travel to France for more questioning.
These musings fade away as we approach the Gare Centrale. The beauty of the station catches me unawares. As we approachit from the front, its ornate arches, soaring spires, and striking statuary seem uncommonly elegant for a train station, more like the towering Basilique Notre-Dame de Boulogne, which looms over the Old Town. It is worlds away from its utilitarian sibling on the harbor, the Gare Maritime.
Lingering before the front entrance, I picture the young women marveling at this structure. Then I imagine May turning toward Celia and asking if they can stop in the Gare Centrale washroom for a “wash and brushup” before they board theGlendowerferry home.
Did Celia bristle at this unexpected stop? Did she push May to wash up at the Gare Maritime instead? After all, there is a washroom at that station, and they had a ferry to catch. Perhaps May balked at Celia’s insistence that she use the danker washroom at Gare Maritime, or perhaps theybothwanted to take a spin through the impressive main train station. Did the investigators even ask? I’ve seen nothing in the official report.
Either way, May and Celia stepped into this building, and we follow in their footsteps. Seeing what they saw, hearing what they heard. The haze of smoke and the slowingclack-clackfrom an approaching train. The cries of “All aboard!” and the panicky squeals of travelers desperate to make it into a car. The tumult of luggage and coats and young children underfoot alongside the cacophony of machinery and voices and the slam of doors. Did it thrill the young women or overwhelm them?
As May and Celia may have done, we inquire of a railway agent the location ofles toilettes des dames. Our heels clicking on the hard marble tiles of the long corridor, we weave through the crowd of arriving passengers toward the ladies’ room. I push open the heavy wooden black door, and we crowd inside.
This is the place,I think.
A number of women jockey for position around the white porcelain sinks while an attendant stands by handing them towels. Other women enter and exit the six stalls in rapid-fire rotation. The black-and-white-tiled space is not large, and as has beenreported widely, only one entrance is visible. We take turns walking the perimeter of the washroom, and none of us can identify a single other means of egress, not even a small window. Once inside, we can see that there is indeed only one way out.
When a stall empties, I slip in, locking the door behind me. Inspecting the narrow area, I wonder if another person—one with nefarious intent—would fit inside here. Between the toilet, the paper holder, and the small waste bin, it would be extremely tight but possible. Just.
I reenter the public section of the washroom and survey the room. How would an evildoer get inside a stall with another person without anyone noticing? How would this same villain perpetrate a wrong upon May—even a kidnapping—in the open? Even if May had been assaulted in a stall and the perpetrator managed to avoid attention, how would he or she get May out of the washroom without notice? There are simply too many witnesses in here, including the attendant.
