PROLOGUE
Detective Chief Inspector Lilian Wyles stood behind her father as he sat in his wheelchair, facing the front window of their second floor sitting room in their home on the east side of London. She didn’t want to disturb him if he was napping, but she couldn’t tell if he was awake or not. Her mother was downstairs, starting the day with Cook and their housemaid Ada. It was early morning, and Lilian was dressed for her job at the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. She had a few minutes before she had to leave and wanted to spend that time chatting with her father. He had been the most supportive of her career in the police force, despite how few women were on the job, always giving her encouragement when she most needed it. He had wanted her to be a barrister, and in fact she had begun to study the law after boarding school, but the Great War had interrupted her plans, as it did to so many people. He was extremely proud when she was promoted to the CID and when she became the first woman detective chief inspector.
Lilian’s father was her true advocate and the person she felt closest to, which made it more difficult for her to watch him decline in health these last few years. There was no real diagnosis, but his body and mind seemed to be breaking down concurrently, and their cheerful talks and serious discussions were now fewer and farther between. She stepped forward and put one hand on his shoulder, feeling the thick wool of his cardigan. He reached to touch her fingers for a moment, but then let his hand drop back into his lap.
“I’m off,” Lilian said, her voice soft and purposefully cheery. Her father continued to stare out the window at the blue sky that was slowly filling with clouds.
“Do good and do well,” he said.
“Always, Father, always,” she replied and gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze before she turned and left the room, his deep voice resonating in her ears.
CHAPTER 1
Agatha Christie stood in a shaft of sunlight thinking about new beginnings. “I bear a charmed life,” she quoted King Lear to herself. But then, things didn’t turn out so well for him, did they? She was in the foyer of Greenway House, the Devon estate she and her husband Max had recently purchased in this early spring of 1938. They had been searching for a new summer home ever since their view of the sea in Torquay had become obstructed by new buildings. One couldn’t always fight progress. It was late winter when Agatha had seen that Greenway was for sale, a dream house she had admired since she was a child. They had moved in quickly, thinking it would be best to be onsite for the redecoration, and the house was still a flurry of activity.
She moved aside as burly workmen walked past carrying newly purchased furniture. There was so much to do to prepare for summer, and she couldn’t possibly put her writing schedule on hold.
Her latest mystery novel, Appointment with Death, had just hit the bookstores on the heels of the huge success of Death on the Nile, and in the midst of moving and redecorating, she had been sketching out the next book that should be published in December, a murder mystery with Hercule Poirot that took place at Christmastime.
Agatha picked up the short stack of envelopes and cards that had arrived that morning in the post. She looked through them and stopped when she came upon a rich creamy envelope. She turned it over and saw it was from Lady Stella Reading, the widow of the former foreign secretary. Agatha sighed. She had been expecting this formal invitation, but in the back of her mind she had been pretending it might not actually arrive.
Agatha’s friend Dorothy L. Sayers, another mystery writer, had recruited her to be one of the hosts of a fundraiser organized by Lady Stella—a gala ball to help raise money for the Women’s Voluntary Service, which had been formed to help prepare Britain for the possibility of war. Herr Hitler’s army had just marched into Austria, and no one knew how much farther he intended to go. Britain needed to be prepared.
Agatha wasn’t fond of public appearances, but Dorothy had convinced her to be one of the hosts to help sell more tickets for such an important cause. And she trusted Dorothy, who was one of the smartest people Agatha knew. She’d had a real education, a degree from Oxford, so modern, unlike Agatha, who had been schooled mostly at home.
The plan was that the four top-selling mystery writers of the decade would act as hosts of the ball. Agatha knew she would have to put up with a noisy crowd of people, but she saw it as a chance to spend a weekend with Dorothy and to finally meet the other two—Ngaio Marsh, a New Zealander now living in London, and Margery Allingham, a decade younger than the rest of them, both writers she admired. It was a brilliant marketing ploy: Donate to the cause and meet the Queens of Crime. The label made Agatha laugh. Really, it sounded more like they were a crime syndicate rather than best-selling novelists.
Agatha picked up a letter opener shaped like an ancient Turkish dagger, slit open the envelope, and pulled out the invitation, beautifully hand-lettered on heavy card stock. The ball was to be at Hursley House, the country estate owned by the baronet Sir Henry Heathcote near Southampton. She didn’t really know him, although she’d met him more than once.
Sir Henry was a distinguished aristocrat, a former member of Parliament, and popular for his conservative speeches on a certain sort of upstanding image of Great Britain. Not to her taste, if she were honest, but it was
good of him to host the ball at Hursley House.
The four writers were invited for the whole weekend, which was convenient for her, as it would take Agatha more than four hours to drive there from Greenway. Agatha’s husband Max already had a trip planned that weekend, a speaking engagement at the Society of Antiquaries, so she’d be going on her own.
She would try to think of it as a little adventure, not a chore. She shuffled through the last of the post and wondered what else she could do to procrastinate before resuming work on her most recent Hercule Poirot story. Sometimes she wondered if she was getting tired of Poirot—he certainly annoyed her more than occasionally, the old fusspot. But people seemed to like him, and surely she had a few more mysteries for him to solve before he retired.
She knew she should get to work, but she always had to force herself to get started, and with her mind distracted at the thought of appearing at the gala, at the very least tea and biscuits were called for. She made her way to the kitchen. As she moved down the corridor, she couldn’t help feeling that there was something about this fundraiser that was weighing on her. It wasn’t just the usual antipathy at the thought of a public appearance; there was something else, quite far back in her mind, too fuzzy for her to make out. The thought of spending the weekend at Hursley House with the baronet Sir Henry Heathcote made her uneasy, but she couldn’t for the life of her pinpoint why.
CHAPTER 2
“Here’s another stack, Stella.” Dorothy L. Sayers slid an opened pile of RSVPs for the gala ball across the green felt card table to her friend Lady Stella, the Marchioness of Reading, who had been dedicating her life to good works since her husband passed. Dorothy took a moment to straighten her pince-nez, smoothed a loose strand of dark hair back into its bun, and began opening the next pile.
“Your advertising experience has certainly been useful, Dorothy,” Lady Stella said as she alphabetized the RSVPs into a box. The two women sat in Lady Stella’s drawing room sorting the envelopes that had arrived in the last few days. Stella gathered the RSVPs and made a note of each donation in a ledger. “It was a brilliant idea to have the Queens of Crime as hosts for the ball. Look at all these cheques!”
Dorothy smiled as she watched Stella lean over the account book, her chin-length dark wavy hair, her bright eyes. Dorothy had never seen her so excited. This is exactly what her friend needed. Since Stella became a widow, Dorothy had been quite worried about her more than a few times. But seeing her so engrossed in this project, organizing and raising money for the Women’s Voluntary Service, Dorothy knew that her friend was going to be fine. Stella had needed a mission, and now she had one, an important one. If they were going to have to defend their island nation from Hitler—although Dorothy still could not believe that was actually going to happen—then the women of England would need to be organized to take care of the home front.
“I’m looking forward to all this secretarial work being done and just enjoying myself at the party,” Dorothy said. “I haven’t been to a ball in years.”
“I’m so glad all four of you consented to host. Two or three Queens of Crime would certainly not have had the same success.” Stella furrowed her brow as she recorded the numbers, double-checking her arithmetic.
“Stella!” Dorothy laughed. “Anything less than four Queens wouldn’t have been good enough for you?”
Stella sat up straight. “No, Dorothy, that’s not what I meant! But the four Queens idea fed into your advertising brilliance.” She turned over one of the invitations to admire it. The card had a colorful drawing of four playing cards, the queens of hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs, each tiny queen face a caricature of a writer: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham.
“How could I not take advantage of the title the publishing world has given us?”
“Well deserved, I say, since you are the four top-selling writers of the decade. But how did you ever convince them all to do it?”
“Once Agatha agreed to host the gala, Ngaio and Margery jumped at the chance.” Dorothy resumed slicing open the RSVPs with a silver monogrammed letter opener. “Agatha so rarely does this kind of thing, and they’re both fans, actually.”
Stella stopped what she was doing and looked at Dorothy. “You know, I never thought of that, writers being fans of other writers. But of course they are.”
“We all are, you know,” Dorothy said. “Fans of Agatha’s. She is the Queen of Queens.”
Dorothy continued to open envelopes and thought about the ball. It was true that she hadn’t been to one in years. Her husband’s health had continued to decline, time exacerbating the gassing he experienced in the Great War, and his occasional moods and drinking hadn’t helped. She rarely allowed herself to wallow in self-pity, and she loved Mac, but she had to admit that marrying a man eleven years her senior whose health was so damaged had been more of a burden than she had
anticipated. Still, he was an excellent cook, her ample figure in evidence, and when things were going well, there was no better friend and companion.
She stacked the last of the RSVPs and decided that she would push aside any lingering guilt about leaving Mac for a few days and allow herself to enjoy this gala ball and in fact the whole weekend. She would forget her troubles for once, and why not? She’d be with like-minded women at a first-rate celebration doing good for her country. What could be better? ...
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