The train passes expanses of fields, flat and rolling, dotted with stone cottages, until the landscape slowly becomes less bucolic and more urban. My destination approaches, and even though I have some minutes before we pull into the station, I tuck my notepads and writing instruments into my bag. I’d be kidding myself if I thought I had concentration enough to write in the final stretch of this 120-mile journey. My focus is on the next stage of the investigation—a close look at the days leading up to May’s disappearance.
And this, of course, requires that we talk to Celia.
A whistle signals our arrival into Birmingham New Street station. I’m up and ready to disembark before the train comes to a full stop. Steam from the arriving train billows into the high arched iron-and-glass roof, once the tallest of its kind. It is so thick I can barely see as I walk down the steps from the train car onto the platform proper. On the landing, I crash into another passenger. Or so I think.
“Dorothy,” Agatha calls out. “Delighted to bump into you!”
I can’t help but laugh at Agatha’s little joke. They are uncommon, after all, and must be encouraged.
Agatha had volunteered to help me question Celia and in fact had taken over the task of trying to reach the young woman. Although Celia had given several statements to the authorities at the time of May’s disappearance, she has been infamously unwilling to travel to France to answer more questions, and there does not seem to be a legal means of compelling her to do so. I don’t blame the poor girl; after all, the press seems determined to paint an unflattering portrait of May’s visit, and Celia is getting wrapped up in the tawdryallegations of drug use and loose behavior. But how on earth has Agatha managed to secure what the professionals could not?
I wrap my friend in a warm hug, prompting a chuckle from Agatha. “I don’t usually get such fanfare. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“You have not only thrown us a lifeline in this investigation, you’re also saving me from my writing. A deadline looms,” I admit.
“Ah, the dreaded deadline. I have one of my own hovering about rather ominously.”
“Peril at End House?” I ask about Agatha’s latest, which sounds to me like perhaps her most ingenious plot yet.
“Yes. How I wish I was on an actual holiday in Cornwall rather than writing a mystery about one,” Agatha laments.
“I know the feeling. Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey are solving a murder that takes place on a beach.”
Agatha clucks sympathetically. “Wishful thinking. I suppose we will have to make do with Birmingham for today.”
“At least we could coordinate our train travel.” Since I came from London, and Agatha had been visiting her sister and brother-in-law at their home, Abney Hall, near Manchester, we had timed it carefully.
“I was ready to escape the overbearing clutches of my sister, so it wasyouwho rescuedme,” Agatha proclaims. “Since my mother died—many years ago, mind—Madge has taken upon herself to assume the maternal role. Although she’s more tyrannical and overbearing than my mother ever was. And never mind that I’m a mother myself.”
Considering this rare mention of her daughter, Rosalind, I follow Agatha up the platform to the station itself, which is attached to the Italianate Queens and North Western Hotel. Catching my breath after two flights of stairs, I ask, “How did you persuade Celia to meet with us? Miss McCarthy, I mean. Got to get used to calling her that again.”
A sly smile appears on her lips, and a shadow of the Agathaof old flickers across her face. The one who strode into rooms, a brightly colored scarf trailing behind her. The one who gave witty speeches at book launches. The one I encountered only fleetingly and whom the other Queens of Crime have never met.
She glances over at me from under the lowered brim of her tired gray hat. “Who said I did?”
I stop walking. “What are you on about, Agatha? Did we travel all the way to Birmingham without an appointment?”
She links her arm with mine. “Oh, we will meet Miss McCarthy, of that you can be certain. It will not be happening by appointment, however.”
“How, then?” I stand stock-still, refusing to be placated by her pleasant reassurances or the united arms of friendship.
“Well,” she says, her grin softening but her grip remaining, “I happen to know her nursing schedule.”
“And?” I ask, still not moving. I don’t understand what that has to do with meeting Celia. Are we going to feign injury so we can be treated at the Birmingham General Hospital, to which she recently transferred? I hope she’s found anonymity in Birmingham, at the very least.
“And I believe that our path might just coincide with Miss McCarthy’s. As she is leaving her shift and heading toward the hospital housing, we will ‘bump’ into her. Not unlike the way you just bumped into me.”
This is less by the book, so to speak, than I’d like. “You’re certain this will work?” I meet her gray-blue gaze.
Those eyes—usually soft and prone to evasion—have turned steely. “Certain.”
“All righty, then,” I say. “Let’s go.”
I take her arm, and we wind our way through the Birmingham streets, every bit as bustling as those in London. But the dark plumes of smoke billowing from the factories in the distance make it distinctive. It’s hard to tell if the sky is leaden because it’s another gloomy day or if the factory smoke is coloring it gray. I don’t knowthe city well, but Agatha seems to know every twist and turn. Has she studied maps before we arrived?
Within twenty minutes or so, we reach the hospital. Agatha disentangles her arm from mine and begins to study the doorways in and out of the institution. When we finally reach one toward the back of the hospital, she stops her searching. And we wait.
Bells peal, and a gaggle of young women streams out the door. Nurses all, by the look of their uniforms. How will we ever tease out Celia from the throng?
