“My brother-in-law, Jim Watts, has arranged a party at his family estate, Abney Hall, and invited all my theater associates. My sister and her husband hope, of course, that someone will take an interest in Madge’s play.”
“I assume you will be in attendance?” I ask.
“Much to my chagrin,” Agatha replies. Knowing her ambivalent feelings toward crowds and her sister, I can only imagine how deeply she’s dreading this event.
“When is this party happening?”
“This weekend.”
“Might I impose myself? We may be able to dig out some contacts at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, or inCavalcade.”
“That would be divine,” she says, squeezing my hand in gratitude. “I’d feel far less exposed and nervous with you at my side.”
Just then, the bell on the tea shop’s front door rings, and Ngaio and Emma return. “What happened?” I ask before they can sit back down at the table. “You were barely gone long enough to take the elevator up to the Mathers offices and back down again.”
Emma arches an eyebrow in mock horror. “Do you doubt our acting abilities? Do you think we got tossed out?”
Ngaio rushes to answer. “We didn’t need more time, Dorothy. We didn’t even need to trot out our alter egos beyond introducing ourselves and asking for an appointment. There is a list of Mathers Insurance principals right there on the sign when you walk inside their offices.”
“Why do you look so pleased with yourselves?” Agatha asks.
“Because you’ll never guess whose name was on the Mathers Insurance wall, listed among the other principals.”
Ngaio must have been met with blank stares, because she shakes her head in disappointment at us. She exclaims, “None other than Jimmy Williams and his son, Louis Williams. The latter was mentioned in May’s hiddenDaily Heraldarticle; he was interviewed in the case of the missing violinist.”
“Good God,” Margery says.
“It cannot be a coincidence. We discover that the man who may have purchased May’s expensive dresses is also mentioned in a newspaper article about a different missing girl, an article May has secretly squirreled away. Might Mr. Williams the younger be May’s beau?” Agatha posits.
I ask a related, but more crucial, question. “Might he also be her murderer?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
APRIL 1, 1931
MANCHESTER,ENGLAND
Agatha had forewarned me about Abney Hall. I’d heard about the vastness of the entry. She’d informed me about its many-peaked Victorian roof and the ornateness of its interior decor. Her descriptions of the gardens prepared me to observe their elegance from every window. But as I stand within these walls, I am, in fact, unprepared. Because no one warned me that stepping into Abney Hall is tantamount to entering the pages of Agatha’s books.
I see bits and pieces of her fictional country homes all around me. A hint of Styles, as described inThe Mysterious Affair at Styles,in an Abney Hall fireplace. An echo of Chimneys, as detailed inThe Secret of Chimneys,in Abney Hall’s elaborate wood-paneled walls. When a servant appears to take our coats wearing a uniform straight out of the pages ofStyles,the line between fiction and reality blurs.
“It’s unnerving, isn’t it?” A raspy voice calls over to me, and I follow the sound with my eyes. An attractive woman in her fifties, outfitted in a burgundy silk dress and ropes of pearls, leans against a doorframe, languidly smoking a cigarette.
Is the woman speaking to Agatha or me? Agatha doesn’t reply, so I settle on an innocuous response. “Abney Hall is spectacular.”
“I can hardly accept that as a compliment, because I’ve had absolutely nothing to do with creating it. It was the brainchild of myhusband’s grandfather, who had it designed and decorated in the latest Victorian fashion, and I don’t believe it’s been altered since,” the woman says with a cheerless smile. “But where are my manners? Lovely to see you, Agatha darling.” She leans forward for a buss on the cheek. Then with an outstretched hand, she says, “I am Agatha’s sister, Margaret Watts, although everyone calls me Madge. You must be Mrs. Sayers. Or is it Mrs. Fleming? Or Miss Fleming? Or Miss Sayers?”
We shake hands, and I say, “I’ll answer to any, but I’d prefer it if you call me Dorothy. I’ve heard so many lovely things about you from your sister.”
“Lovely things?” Madge jeers. “I’d be shocked. We sisters are known for our competitiveness. And Agatha hates it when I mother her.”
Indeed, Agatha has made this precise observation before. When she first described a lonely childhood—the youngest sibling by nearly a decade, with only books for company—I felt a kinship with her. But she then related a childhood tale in which Madge challenged her to write a story in the vein of Gaston Leroux’s 1908 classic locked-room detective novel,The Mystery of the Yellow Room,and goaded her into action by pronouncing that, in fact, Agatha was incapable of writing it. I knew then that our upbringing had very different influences; my parents and cousin Ivy had nothing but encouragement and support for me. Although Agatha softened this judgment by admitting that her sister had been the first person to help with her “troubles,” I sense only tension between the sisters now.
Madge gestures around the drawing room and asks, “Do you find the resemblance between Abney Hall and the settings of Agatha’s novels as uncanny as I do?”
I laugh. “It is rather striking—and quite the compliment. I believe imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
“That’s one way to look at it, I suppose,” she replies, exhaling smoke. Pivoting away from us, she begins walking into an adjoiningroom. She calls out over her shoulder, “I thought we could take tea in the Terrace Room.”
