Today's Reading
CHAPTER THREE
February 10, 1931
London, England
"Welcome to the murder game!" I hear Agatha announce from the doorway.
The women file into the library at the University Women's Club, each one true to type yet distinct nearly to the point of being humorous. Diminutive, elegant, silver-haired, jewel-and fur-laden Baroness Emma Orczy, the Hungarian-born aristocrat best known for her hugely successful Scarlet Pimpernel novels, sweeps across the room in a full-skirted sapphire dress of a style popular two decades ago. The angular New Zealander Ngaio Marsh, writer of the well-regarded Inspector Alleyn mysteries, is striking in a brown tweed skirt suit—complete with a tie—that looks for all the world like a man's pantsuit, at least from the waist up. Effervescent, bright-eyed, dark-haired Margery Allingham, who pens the clever novels about gentleman sleuth Albert Campion, breezes into the library in a simple belted lavender dress à la Mainbocher, a little ahead of the weather in its springtime color but refreshing nonetheless. Agatha takes up the rear, wearing an unfortunate sacklike dress in mottled brown.
Agatha and I could not have crafted a better cast of characters if we'd invented them ourselves over the long afternoon we spent selecting them for this special group. Still, I wonder, can they possibly fulfill the aspirations Agatha and I have for them? Time will tell, and today is only the beginning.
The sound of a staff member locking the library door from the outside echoes in the high-ceilinged space. I watch the women through narrowed eyes, hoping they don't notice. I'm meant to be dead, after all.
Lying supine on the floor of the library, I play the part of victim in this Victorian parlor game in which the participants must solve a locked-room murder. My arms are splayed, my legs are askew, my mouth is agape, and a red silk scarf spreads around my head in an approximation of blood. I am meant to be frozen in the very moment when the act of violence was perpetrated upon me in a crime I carefully plotted for the women to solve.
The perfect icebreaker—that's how Agatha and I think of this murder game. Not to mention that it's the ideal way for us to assess the women and their ability to work together before we issue our official invitation.
The women's expressions are solemn as they circle the room searching for the murder weapon and hover over me to assess my "injuries." What do they really make of this bit of drama? Since my youth as a beloved only child of older parents, I've adored creating plays and theater, a hobby my family indulged, even dressing in the costumes I created. But I've also been accused of excess, particularly at boarding school and at Oxford. Have I gone over the top here? I search for clues in their faces and in their comments to one another. But I see and hear nothing other than enjoyment.
I sense rather than observe someone kneeling next to me. Fingers touch the lustrous faux pearls I'd carefully arranged on my chest. "Does the placement of this necklace seem off ?" Ngaio asks. "If the victim was indeed struck from the back, as the blood suggests, and she fell back toward the floor, wouldn't the pearls have fallen backward instead of forward?"
Heels clack on the ancient wood-plank floor, and I feel more bodies around me. "Good observation, Ngaio," Emma says, the merest hint of a Hungarian accent noticeable in her speech—and then only to the discriminating listener. "And I don't think they'd be twisted in this unnatural manner from a fall backward."
Margery chimes in. "Wasn't there a pendant hanging from the pearls earlier today?"
"By God, you're right, Margery," Agatha exclaims, her voice louder than usual. "We must have failed to notice because we were looking for means rather than motive."
Ngaio calls out, "Good on you," in her distinctive New Zealand lilt. Despite the fact that she's spent the past five years living primarily in London, her cadence and pronunciation remain unaltered. I'm quite certain her accent is a point of pride.
"So now we've got motive—robbery of the bejeweled pendant. But we've still got to discern the method of the murder," Emma says, and I spot her fingers fluttering around her own strand of diamond-clasped pearls as if she fears for their safety as well. She then smooths her silvery coiffed hair and pulls her fur stole tighter around her shoulders. An unconscious effort to ward off danger, perhaps? A victim of a peasant uprising nearly half a century ago, she should know better than anyone that money is no hedge against disaster. "It would help to know the sort of weapon we are looking for. No obvious object has emerged yet."
"Given that the victim died facing up instead of down and there is minimal blood loss from the wound on the back of her head, I'd put my money on a smallish blunt object," Margery ventures, her tone uncertain.
"The infamous blunt instrument so often mentioned in detective novels. Not mine, of course. A bit too obvious for my books," Ngaio mutters.
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