The Queens of Crime
46 pages • 1-hour read
Marie BenedictThe Queens of Crime
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Chapters 14-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of gender discrimination, pregnancy loss and termination, murder, and death.
Chapter 14 Summary: “March 23, 1931—Boulogne-Sur-Mer, France”
Dorothy meets her husband, Mac, at the Vole Hole, a bar popular with the reporters on assignment in Boulogne. The male reporters speculate that May and Celia were involved in the French drug trade and were murdered because of it. Dorothy reasons that if the girls were in search of morphine, they could have obtained it at the English hospital where they worked rather than traveling to Boulogne. She leaves the bar, disgusted by the gossip. While waiting for dinner with the Queens, Dorothy learns that May was spotted crying in the park on the day she disappeared.
Chapter 15 Summary: “March 24, 1931—Boulogne-Sur-Mer, France”
Mac is called off the May Daniels story to report on the extradition of Lord Tarrington, a British aristocrat in hiding in Boulogne. Dorothy regrets that she’ll lose her easy access to reporters investigating May’s disappearance but is grateful that she’ll have more free time to pursue her theories. She meets with the other Queens of Crime, who are infuriated that the media is reporting theories that May and Celia were involved in the drug trade. Dorothy is embarrassed to see that Mac’s article is among those blaming May for her own death. The Queens vow to change this narrative.
Chapter 16 Summary: “March 24, 1931—Boulogne-Sur-Mer, France”
Dorothy and the others leave Old Town and walk to the train station where May was last seen. Dorothy tries to imagine how the girls felt and what they discussed after their day of tourism and shopping. At the train station, they find the bathroom where May disappeared while Celia waited outside. The women can find no means of exit and can’t figure out how May escaped or was taken out of the bathroom. They discuss famous locked-room mysteries by themselves and others, but none provide any clues.
Chapter 17 Summary: “March 24, 1931—Boulogne-Ser-Mer, France”
Dorothy privately suspects that May didn’t escape from the bathroom but instead disguised herself and snuck past Celia without noticing. To test her theory, she asks the women to wait for her outside the restroom while she investigates one last detail. In the bathroom, she puts on a new hat and cloak and tucks her hair up to disguise herself. She exits the bathroom with a large group of women and walks by the Queens of Crime undetected. She reveals herself and her theory: that May used the hat she secretly purchased to sneak past Celia.
Chapter 18 Summary: “March 24, 1931—Boulogne-Ser-Mer, France”
Dorothy and the others wonder why May would have wanted to leave without telling her friend. They stop at a pharmacy in Old Town, the only shop they haven’t yet visited. The shopkeeper reveals that she spoke to the girls on the day May disappeared. May asked for anti-nausea medication but rejected one designed for seasickness. In addition, the shopkeeper shares rumors of the autopsy, which determined that she was strangled, and the soil analysis, which revealed a large amount of her blood where the body was found. Dorothy and the others speculate that the blood was caused by a miscarriage or a failed abortion.
Chapter 19 Summary: “March 27, 1932—London, England”
Upon returning to England, the women split up and devote their efforts to meeting May’s family and friends, especially Celia. Dorothy and Ngaio visit May’s sisters in a middle-class suburb in London. Dorothy and Ngaio don’t reveal their true identities, claiming that they’re working on a sympathetic report on May’s disappearance. Given the rumors about May in the press, the women are reluctant to speak to writers, but they reluctantly agree when Dorothy argues that a positive public perception of May would force the police to take her case seriously.
Chapter 20 Summary: “March 27, 1932—London, England”
The sisters’ portrait of May suggests that she was a caring, selfless young woman who pursued a career in nursing despite the public objections of their neighbors, who considered the job beneath her. They insist that she never had a boyfriend and that she wouldn’t have lied about having one. The sisters visited with May shortly before her disappearance in Boulogne. They believed that she planned to spend one night with Celia in London before traveling to Brighton. Dorothy is surprised, noting that no reference to London appears in the official police reports.
Chapter 21 Summary: “March 27, 1932—London, England”
The sisters allow Dorothy and Ngaio to go through a box of May’s things from her home in London and her hotel in Brighton. Dorothy grows emotional and chastises herself for creating stoic, emotionless detectives in her fiction. Inside the box are two expensive, modern dresses. The sisters are shocked that May would wear such daring dresses and confident that she couldn’t have afforded them. Inside the pocket, Dorothy finds theater tickets from a few months before May died. In May’s Bible, she finds a photo of May with Celia and another girl. An article from two weeks before May’s disappearance is also in the Bible. The article is about a missing violinist.
Chapter 22 Summary: “March 28, 1931—Birmingham, England”
Dorothy travels via train to Birmingham, where Agatha Christie has arranged to interview Celia McCarthy. Dorothy tries to write on the train but finds that the real-life mystery bleeds into her latest novel. When she arrives in Birmingham, she learns that Agatha hasn’t arranged to meet Celia. Instead, she learned Celia’s nursing schedule and has contrived a chance meeting. The women follow Celia from the hospital, and Agatha runs directly into her. When Celia rejects her offer to buy her tea as an apology, Agatha insists, revealing her true identity.
Chapter 23 Summary: “March 28, 1931—Birmingham, England”
After Agatha insists that their goal is to correct the narrative about May and Celia, Celia agrees to talk. She confirms that the trip to Boulogne was a spur-of-the-moment addition to their trip to Brighton, as Dorothy suspected. Celia also reveals that she and May met in Brighton, meaning that May lied to her sisters about her and Celia’s plan to visit London. Celia says that a wealthy, well-connected man whom May dated that summer gave her the theater tickets and hints that he may have given May the dresses.
Chapter 24 Summary: “March 28, 1931—London, England”
At home, Dorothy finds that Mac has returned from his assignment in Boulogne. Mac shares rumors that the French police plan to close the May Daniels case as a drug-related murder on the strength of the syringe found next to the body. Unless Celia McCarthy testifies or the Daniels family can personally fund the investigation, the murder will be officially attributed to May’s involvement in the drug trade. Dorothy is privately relieved that Mac is no longer reporting on the case since she was growing uncomfortable with his decision to publish these unfounded rumors.
Chapter 25 Summary: “March 29, 1931—London, England”
Dorothy meets with the other women to discuss what they’ve learned. Margery shares that the nurses she interviewed described May as hardworking and reliable, never missing a shift. They didn’t think she had a boyfriend and insisted she didn’t use drugs. Emma’s interview with Mr. Marks, the man who saw May crying in a park, reveals that May had an angry encounter with a man in the park on the day she disappeared. The women wonder whether this was the wealthy man Celia mentioned and whether he got May pregnant, leading to the blood found near her body.
Chapter 26 Summary: “March 29, 1931—London, England”
Mac sends Dorothy news that a written confession to May’s murder has been found. Dorothy and the other women attempt to obtain a copy from the police but are sent away. Outside the police station, they meet the young man who found the confession, a waiter at a nearby restaurant. He describes the man who left the letter as foreign-looking with a strange accent. The boy reveals that the police don’t plan to question him or anyone else in the restaurant as they consider the confession a hoax.
Chapters 14-26 Analysis
This section suggests that Dorothy Sayers and her group of female writer friends are especially suited to investigate May Daniels’s murder because of their experience as mystery writers. Dorothy believes that May’s “disappearance and murder have been carefully orchestrated” (78) and describes the details of the disappearance as “narratives now come to life” (94). Ngaio Marsh similarly describes the case as “textbook stuff” and suggests that the police’s theories are “so heavy-handed” (97) that they can’t possibly be real. Both women agree that May’s disappearance reflects “the stuff of their very own novels” (94). Later, Dorothy attributes Agatha’s ability to scheme her way into an interview with Celia to her career as a mystery writer, saying that she “resembles one of her new characters, an unassuming but secretly crafty detective named Miss Marple” (126). These passages suggest that the narrative patterns the women use in their writing help them see the details of this real-life mystery more clearly. The skills and techniques the women developed as writers ultimately enable them to solve the mystery of May’s disappearance.
Conversely, the novel suggests that the investigation process is making the women better writers. Dorothy and Ngaio grow emotional while listening to May’s sister describe her childhood and adolescence. During the interview, Dorothy wonders if she “ever had my detectives experience these emotions as they study the belongings of the victim” (116). Dorothy worries that in her writing, she has “created cold and calculating investigators who don’t recognize the humanity of the deceased and feel a sense of loss at their death” (116) and vows to change this in her future novels. Later, as she struggles to work on her novel-in-progress, she realizes that “immersing myself in a real-life killing has transformed” (138) how she thinks about the fictional murders. Dorothy’s involvement in the investigation thus has a tangible effect on her thinking as a writer.
Additionally, these chapters reveal growing tension between Dorothy (the narrator) and her husband, reporter Mac Fleming. While on assignment with Mac in Boulogne, she discovers “to my disappointment” (83) that his articles about May Daniels contain “nothing other than the same tawdry opinions” (83) repeated by unscrupulous reporters. Dorothy finds the fact that her husband is “capitalizing on the discovery of the needle near the body […] terribly upsetting” (137). The fact that her husband has been “penning articles that practically ensured the police would stop hunting for her killer” (137) lead Dorothy to begin “thinking about my husband in a negative light” (137). Her growing disappointment with her husband is an important part of her character development.
The novel’s thematic interest in Problems in the Criminal Justice System emerges in this section, also demonstrating the misogyny in reporting and policing crimes in early 20th-century Europe. Dorothy’s disappointment with Mac’s article on May is evidence of misogyny in reporting. Headlines about May refer to a “naughty nurse” and suggest that she was “leading a loose life” (84). Dorothy resents the fact that male reporters covering the investigation, including her brother, write “as if the victim herself were to blame” (83). Agatha similarly laments that young women like May and Celia are too often “judged in the court of public opinion” (129) and denied justice because of that opinion. The novel’s depiction of reporting suggests that misogyny was a powerful force in 20th-century crime journalism.
The novel likewise identifies a pattern of misogyny in the criminal justice system that prevented many crimes from being solved. Dorothy argues that French police are “laying the blame at [May]’s feet” (85) by implying that she brought on her death through her involvement in the illegal drug trade. Although no evidence proves that May used drugs, the journalists exploit common prejudices against young, single women to make May seem guilty. At the same time, the male police officers don’t take “everyday women” seriously and don’t find the testimony of “Madame Brat, the millinery salesgirl, or [the] shopkeeper worth recording” (99). Because they dismiss these women’s observations, they miss important clues that Dorothy and the other women absorb, leading them to solve the mystery.
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