I saunter out of the washroom in their midst. A French mother-daughter pair, prim and stylish in their nearly identical well-cut navy coats, belted at the waist with a semifitted bust and sleeves that flare at the wrist. A lone graying woman who must be German or German-speaking because she carries a copy of a book entitledDer Prozessby the author Franz Kafka. Two young women with serious expressions, wearing simple cotton frocks and trench coats, who have such strikingly similar hooded brown eyes that they must be related. Finally, an elderly woman with lines deeply etched into her brow and at the corners of her eyes using a cane to bolster her right leg.
I secure a place between the mother-daughter pair and the German woman because I’m gambling that the fashionable navy coats will draw onlookers’ gazes away from everyone else. Walking alongside them, I keep my eyes straight ahead, never making contact with Emma, Ngaio, Agatha, or Margery. In my peripheral vision, however, I can see they’ve remained in position as I requested.
Continuing on, I enter the Gare Centrale proper and take a place under the station’s departure board, as if checking on my train. Once I’m certain the Queens are facing forward—still waiting forme to emerge from the washroom—I pull off the rain hat and the scarf and stuff them in my handbag. I take off my glasses and approach the women from the back.
I tap Ngaio on the shoulder, because she’s the Queen at the back of their little queue. She turns, sees my face, and lets out a yelp.
“You scared the living daylights out of me, Dorothy! How on earth did you get out here?”
All four encircle me now and are bombarding me with questions.
“Is there another exit from the washroom?”
“Did you ever really go back inside thetoilettes?”
“How the devil did you do that?”
I say, “I will explain everything, but suffice it to say that I walked right past you.”
“That’s not possible. We would have seen you,” Margery maintains.
“You saw what I wanted you to see and what you expected to see. Things are not always as they appear.”
Agatha smiles, and I see that her gaze has settled on the corner of the scarf peeking out from my handbag. She understands without my saying a word.
“When I first learned of May’s disappearance, I assumed that there had to be some other means of leaving the washroom, a way overlooked by some inept gendarme. A small window or a storage closet with an outlet elsewhere, perhaps, that May crawled through. Or through which she was dragged. But I was utterly wrong, as we all saw today. There isn’t even a ventilation shaft connected to the washroom. It is the very definition of a locked room.”
“Also the very definition of amalodorousroom,” Ngaio jibes, prompting an outbreak of tittering among the others.
“You’re not wrong there,” I say, then continue. “Given that, the next possibility that occurred to me was that she’d been somehow assaulted within the washroom and surreptitiously removed from it.”
“Nearly impossible without detection,” Agatha offers.
“Exactly. We’ve inspected the washroom, and I think we can agree that May was not smuggled out of it by a nefarious actor. There isn’t the space for a kidnapping to go unnoticed. The Boulogne police may have been half-hearted in their canvassing and interviewing of their citizens, but the official report shows a careful questioning of the washroom attendant and Gare Centrale employees on duty that day. So what does that leave us with?”
“You tellus,” Emma says with her familiar sniff. “You obviously have the answer.”
“Actually, I have that awful Gare Maritime ticket agent to thank for prompting the answer. Emma, do you recall that he told us he couldn’t identify May or Celia because one English girl looks like every other?”
“Yes,” she says slowly and warily.
Staring down the narrow corridor leading to the washroom, I can almost see May as she must have appeared that October afternoon. Furtive, nervous, and scared. I can almost sense her fear now. But why was she afraid?
I continue. “Then I remembered what the salesgirl from the millinery told us. May secretly ran back to the store after she and Celia had left and bought a dark fedora. And I had my answer. She switched her mauve toque for the fedora, pulled it low over her face, and draped a scarf or wrap over her familiar black tailored coat—and walked right past Celia. Thus disguised, May was unrecognizable to Celia, and her friend vanished before her very eyes.”
“May hid in plain sight,” Margery half whispers, in awe of the scheme.
“That was my theory. But I needed to be sure.” Sliding them from my handbag, I hold aloft my scarf and hat. “So I tested it on you.”
“The ruse works,” Ngaio says, shaking her head appreciatively. As if she still cannot believe I pulled the wool over her jaded eyes.
For once, the ladies have no further comment. This is the stuffof their very own novels—stories that have been labeled far-fetched and outlandish by critics. Well-written, brilliant books that have been denied reviews byThe Guardianand theTimesbecause they are supposedly too commercial, too pulpy. Narratives now come to life.
Chapter Eighteen
MARCH 24, 1931
BOULOGNE-SUR-MER,FRANCE
