“No—my husband is covering the case forNews of the World,and I volunteered to help. Anything for the poor young English girl,” I answer. This of course is a half truth, knowing as I do that the shopkeeper has no real reason to share a single morsel of information with me and every incentive to paint a pretty picture and thus keep the tourist trade steady. “I’m wondering if you saw either one of the girls on the October day that Miss Daniels disappeared.”
“I did,” she answers, to my surprise. The chemist’s shop was only mentioned in passing in the police reports.
“You did?” I blurt out, gobsmacked at my luck. Triple luck, actually, since we’ve now encountered three women who interacted with the nurses but whose names aren’t referenced in the policereport. Did the gendarmes not think the observations of Madame Brat, the millinery salesgirl, or this shopkeeper worth recording? Interesting that these everyday women have been devalued or ignored by the authorities, even though they see and hear and know more than anyone believes possible. Perhaps Emma was correct when she pronounced that May’s murder needed to be solved by women, in part because only female sleuths properly credit female witnesses.
“Yes, the young women stopped in my store.”
In as calm a voice as I can manage, I ask, “About what time?”
“Just before four o’clock, I believe.”
“Do you know what brought them into your shop?”
“Miss Daniels had”—she pauses, then says—“an illness of the belly fromla mal de mer. I showed her the proper remedies.”
A stomachache. Just as Madame Brat had mentioned. It seems the tea and toast hadn’t settled her seasickness.
“Can you show me the medicine you directed her to?”
“Yes,” she says. I follow her at a brisk clip for a few feet until she stops before several boxes bearing sketches of various plants. The other women hover nearby but do not intrude on the conversation. She points to a package and says, “I recommended this to her.”
“Did Miss Daniels purchase it?”
“No. She examined several other products,” the woman replies, adding, “despite the fact that I assured her that this particular formulation is superior.”
Perhaps Miss Daniels wanted to check the prices. A young nurse on a day trip to France wouldn’t have budgeted for medicine and would want to keep this unplanned expense low. Not to mention that she had either just purchased the fedora at the millinery or was about to and so perhaps needed to be careful with her funds.
I ask, “Did she say why she didn’t want to purchase it?”
“She said it wouldn’t alleviate her stomach pain.Yet the label says that it does help withla mal de mer.”
“What did Miss McCarthy do while her friend was studying the boxes?” I ask, trying to get a sense of the entire scene.
“She lingered over the cosmetics,” she answers, pointing to the display of lipsticks.
“I assume you shared all this information with the police?”
She raises one of those perfect brows and says, “Of course I answered the gendarmes’ questions.”
“Of course,” I hasten to say. I have no wish to offend her by intimating that she’d be anything less than forthcoming with the police. Especially when she’s being so forthcoming with me. But then I realize that she hasn’t answered my query directly, so I take a chance. “Did they ask about your conversation with Miss Daniels?”
“No, they never asked. They inquired as to whether she made any purchases. Only you have asked, and so you are the one who knows.”
Interesting,I think, although I’m not yet certain what to make of May’s unsettled tummy and her exchange with the store owner. “I appreciate your candor,” I say.
“And I appreciate your thoroughness. No young girl should suffer a terrible fate without an exhaustive investigation,” she says, and I realize that she understands what we’re doing—that the police work is strangely shoddy and that concern over tourism shouldn’t be the reason for half-baked detective work. Then she adds, “The autopsy report was a bit unsettling, wasn’t it?”
“The autopsy report is back?”
“Oh, yes.” Her tone is matter-of-fact. “It came in this morning, along with the results of the soil tests conducted on the earth around and under the body.”
I refrain from asking how she knows. The townspeople of Boulogne, I’m guessing, are an interconnected bunch, but I wonder if my suspicions about the shopkeeper are correct. Is she sharing becauseIasked the right questions but the police did not? And because I listened to her answers when no male investigator had?
“May I ask what the testing discovered?”
“Only if you did not hear it from me,” she insists.
“I promise.”
