“What do you mean?” Margery asks, her eyes wide.
“Miss Daniels’s body was discovered yesterday.”
Margery and Emma gasp, and Agatha retreats further into her upholstered chair. After letting out a low whistle, Ngaio asks, “Where was she found?”
“In a wooded parklike area around a mile from the town center of Boulogne.”
“How did she die?“Agatha asks quietly.
“The coroner’s inspection has not been finalized yet, so we don’t know how or when,” I answer. “But it certainly seems like some form of foul play.”
“Poor girl,” Agatha says with a sad shake of her head. “But I still don’t see how we would be involved in all this.”
“What if I suggested to my husband that I join him in Boulogne to add my ‘unique mystery writer’ perspective to his coverage? Even propose a joint article for his editor? It would give me access to the crime scene, the police, and all the investigation files—and you all could join me.”
“How would your husband feel about the lot of us tagging along?” Ngaio asks. “I can’t imagine it would make him very popular with the other journalists on-site. Reporters are a boys’ club well beyond anything the Detection Club men could ever envision.”
I picture my burly, gregarious Scottish husband with a gaggle of women in tow. He’d probably be a good sport about it, but it wouldn’t serve his purposes—or ours—for our detective work to be known.
“I wouldn’t tell him. Not at first, anyway,” I reply. “I’d go with Mac to Boulogne, and you four would travel separately. Once there, we’d reconnoiter and begin our investigation.”
Emma, the very last person I imagine would be inclined to dirty her hands with anactualmurder, locks eyes with me and says, “Wemust,Dorothy. The girl deserves it. I think we know too well that a woman’s fate often poses such complex problems that it requires other women to find the solution.” She then turns her gaze upon each of the Queens in turn and says, “And we deserve it as well. We will find this poor creature’s murderer, and we will stride into the next Detection Club meeting to a hero’s welcome.”
Chapter Eight
MARCH 22, 1931
THEENGLISHCHANNEL ANDBOULOGNE-SUR-MER,FRANCE
I stare out at the eternal roil of the dark-blue channel waters. The salty air leaves my skin a bit tacky and moist, but I do not care. The breeze is cold but wonderfully fresh after the heavy gray smog of London, and I feel invigorated.
Glancing down at my notebook, I study the columns of information I’ve written, using the process I routinely adhere to when beginning a new novel and organizing my characters, setting, and plot. Except here, the data I’m categorizing are not the elements of a fictional mystery or the latest developments in the lives of Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey. No, they are the very real details of May Daniels’s vanishing and the discovery of her body. I only hope that Emma is right, that we can help solve this terrible puzzle. The more I learn, the more I believe that this young nurse merits closure and retribution.
I feel a tap on my shoulder. Glancing up, I see my husband, his eyes sparkling in the reflected light and crinkling at the corners. “Care for a cocktail before we reach shore?” he asks.
Smiling at my husband of nearly five years, I nod and follow him to the small bar just inside the deck. As we wait for our orders to be filled, I stare over at Mac. Silver gleams in my husband’s ginger hair as he stands tall, gazing out the window over the ship’ssunny prow to the whitecapped waves. I’m reminded of the early days of our dating life, when the adventuresomeNews of the Worldcorrespondent lured me in with his witty zest for life and his journalistic output on motor racing and crime. I’d been skeptical of his interest in me at first—I never did have much luck with men—but he’d won me over once and for all with his wordsmithing and beautifully crafted memoir about his experiences in the Great War, entitledHow to See the Battlefields. Cracks have emerged over the years, as with any relationship, but the tenuous rapport he has with his two daughters from his first marriage and his occasional dark bouts, when British Army wartime memories flood him and the drink takes hold, are nothing I cannot handle. They are a small price to pay for his adoration of me and support of my writing career, a rarity among men. What remains to be seen is how we might fare in the matter of our ownchildren,a step he is keen for us to take.
Carrying our drinks, we step out onto the deck. With my free hand, I reach for his, and Mac looks at me with a smile. We’ve spent too much time apart lately—not by choice. Until recently, I’d worked at Benson’s advertising firm—creating the triumphant “Guinness is good for you” campaign—which necessitated that I stay in our London flat. Because he’d buckled down to write another book, Mac had largely decamped to our Newland Street town house, in the Essex town of Witham, until this assignment came up. Perhaps this trip could not only help us nab a killer but also provide Mac and me with several much-needed days together. Although, now that I think on it, the two goals make strange bedfellows, particularly with the Queens of Crime in tow.
We chat about our shared assignment. Mac’s editor had liked my idea of a piece on the murder of May Daniels from a mystery novelist’s perspective. So in addition to the daily coverage Mac will be undertaking, we will write a couple of companion features about the investigation from our two points of view—a crime reporter and a writer of detective fiction. The editor told Mac he envisionedprinting the articles side by side in the expanded weekend edition with a tagline about married sleuths.
The horn sounds, signaling our approach to shore. The boat shifts, and I’m gifted with a stunning view of Boulogne, still sunny even though the light is waning. The ancient port town contains fortifications that abut a steep hillside dotted with white terra-cotta-roofed buildings and the enormous Basilique Notre-Dame de Boulogne looming over it all.
“Captain Fleming? Mrs. Fleming? We are about to arrive,” a sailor announces. We tear our gaze away from the view and head inside the cabin to gather our belongings.
As the ferry slows and finally stops, a rocking motion overtakes the vessel. I have to stop my bag from sliding down the aisle. Mac lunges for it in the nick of time, but in the process, we collide and nearly fall to the floor. We look so ridiculous that I burst into laughter, and my husband joins in.
Suitcases in hand, we make our way onto the gangplank, where I glimpse Boulogne again. The vista is so lovely that one could nearly forget it was one of three main ports used by British armies on the Western Front. Mac pauses at the sight, and a pit forms in my stomach. Will our return to Boulogne evoke memories of the times he’d passed through it during the war? Occasionally his war experiences boil over the surface, which is perfectly understandable. Two of Mac’s brothers died during the war. Another was badly injured, and Mac himself was gassed and shot at.
I wait for a deeply furrowed brow or the rattle of a telltale cough. This signals not only a flare of his lung condition, acquired from poison gas exposure, but also an attendant dip in mood. Yet Mac seems surprisingly cheery.
We step from the gangplank onto the cobblestone walkway toward the Gare Maritime, the harbor station through which all ferry passengers must pass upon docking in Boulogne. Just as Mac and I are about to enter the building, I spot the familiar faces ofAgatha, Emma, Ngaio, and Margery walking off the ferry toward the Gare Maritime as well. They’d been on the same boat, but we’d intentionally kept to different sections so Mac wouldn’t encounter them. Despite these precautions, Margery begins to raise her hand in greeting to us—an automatic gesture, no doubt. When my steely gaze stops her short, she quickly lowers her hand and looks away.
I cannot take any chances, so I quickly steer Mac through the customs line and out of the station toward town. The scent of fish is heavy in the air, wafting from the stalls that sell the day’s catch. Women operate the stalls—the husbands and sons, I’m guessing, are still fishing—and call out their wares. But I can barely hear their voices over the cry of the seagulls circling the market. My attention elsewhere and clumsy as always, I bump directly into a bespectacled gentleman wearing a black bowler hat as he crosses in front of us.
Mac offers our apologies, but the man starts laughing. “Well, if it isn’t Mac Fleming! I don’t have to ask what brings you to Boulogne.”
“As I live and breathe, Frank Routledge!” Mac recognizes the man and claps him on the back as they shake hands. “It’s been an age, although I’m not surprised that recent developments drew you here as well. How’s theBirmingham Gazettetreating you?”
