Death of a Flapper: A 1920s Cozy Historical Mystery (Abigail Dixon Mysteries) Read online

  Death of a Flapper

  An Abigail Dixon 1920s Paris Mystery

  Nancy Warren

  Contents

  Introduction

  Inspiration

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  A Note from Nancy

  Also by Nancy Warren

  About the Author

  Introduction

  In the city of light, darkness lurks

  Women’s pages reporter Abigail Dixon travels to Paris seeking her big break in hard news. When the dowdy reporter is sent to interview a famous fashion designer she wonders if she’s made a terrible mistake. But Abby finds herself in the middle of a hard news story when her despised stepmother is murdered in the couture house. Even worse, Inspector Henri Deschamps believes she’s the prime suspect.

  With only high school French to defend herself, Abby’s in despair until a chance meeting with young reporter Ernest Hemingway convinces her to use her skills and clear her name by finding the real murderer.

  With help from new friends like Coco Chanel, Abby is transformed into a Parisian sensation. Can she enjoy her new bobbed hairstyle before losing her head, since the French still punish murderers with the guillotine…

  Experience this glamorous cozy mystery series from USA Today Bestselling author Nancy Warren. Each book is a stand-alone mystery, though the books are linked. They offer good, clean fun, and, naturally, 1920s adventure and intrigue.

  The best way to keep up with new releases and special offers is to join Nancy’s newsletter at nancywarren.net.

  “It was in Paris that the fashions were made, and it is always in the great moments when everything changes that fashions are important, because they make something go up in the air or go down or go around that has nothing to do with anything. Paris is the real thing in abstraction.”

  Gertrude Stein, Paris, France

  Chapter 1

  Paris

  February 5, 1925

  Abigail Dixon strode along Rue de l’Opera, headed for her new job as a reporter with the Chicago International Post. On either side of her, tall, ornate townhouses ribboned with lacy black balconies led up the avenue to the Opera Garnier, a fantasy of carved arches, green domed roof and statues that gleamed gold in the cold, gray light.

  The streets echoed with the noise and chaos of electric trams, automobiles, buses and bicycles all in a hurry. She passed a boulangerie and through the steamed windows spied a line of customers chatting while they waited for the pleasure of a long baton of bread. The door opened and out came a man in a cap, a baguette under his arm. The yeasty scent of bread mixed with the familiar acrid smell of coal fires.

  Paris! She’d think she was dreaming, except that in her dreams, she was never this cold. Her breath came in icy gasps and emerged in white puffs, but she hadn’t been tempted to ride the great lozenge-shaped buses. There was too much to see, and she had too much energy to sit still. On her walk, she’d caught glimpses of the Eiffel Tower, the tallest structure in the world, a reminder that both her life and career were on their way up.

  She walked so quickly, she nearly passed her destination. The front page of today’s newspaper was pasted to the window. She skimmed the headlines: “Exposition of Paris Will Be Keen Magnet.” “Boudoir Bandit Gets $20000.” “Al Capone Takes Over Chicago Bootlegging.”

  She stopped a gentleman walking by in a black overcoat and Homburg and pointed to the front page. “Pretty soon you’ll see my byline on that paper. Watch for me. Abigail Dixon.”

  The man stared down his long nose at her. “Les Americaines, mon Dieu!” His French contempt was so thick, he sounded like he had pommes frites stuffed up his nose, wine fumes in his lungs, and tiny escargots rattling in his windpipe.

  Undaunted, she pulled open the heavy glass and brass door and entered the newspaper building. She assured a suspicious young man at the front desk that she was neither a hysterical young woman looking to tell her story to the press, nor a radical with a bomb hidden in her handbag. She was a journalist with an appointment. She presented the letter of introduction from Charles Abernathy, her editor in Chicago for the past two years, addressed to Mr. Walter Strutt, managing editor of their sister paper in Paris.

  She followed him up a flight of stairs and into a newsroom whose barely controlled mayhem looked and smelled so familiar, she felt she’d been transported back to Chicago.

  The noise hit her first. The rhythmic clatter of typewriters, the sound of voices speaking urgently into telephones, the column printer grumbling out an article from Reuters all seemed to say, hurry, hurry, hurry. Abby’s pulse picked up the rhythm. She longed to sit at one of the desks and get to work.

  She smelled cigarette smoke, stronger than the tobacco they smoked at home, the smoldering coal in the marble fireplace at one end of the room and, as a top note, the acrid smell of deadline-induced sweat.

  The room was rectangular, with high ceilings and long, elegant windows at odds with the jumble of desks, leaning stacks of newspapers, and the six men at work on phones, typewriters or with pencil and paper. There was a single woman in the room, a black telephone receiver wedged between her shoulder and her ear as she scribbled notes.

  Once, this must have been the townhouse of a rich aristo, perhaps one of those who lost their heads in the revolution. Instead of housing rich dukes and duchesses wearing silks and dancing the quadrille, the room now hosted a slovenly crew of American reporters.

  Her excitement dimmed when she faced her new editor. Walter Strutt did not rise when she reached his desk. He was lean, his skin so tight that when he sucked in smoke, she was uncomfortably reminded of the shape of his skull. He was so thin and gray, she suspected he had gastric trouble.

  He squinted at her through his smoke with no hint of warmth or welcome. She leaned across his desk with her hand outstretched anyway, because she had manners even if he had none. “I’m Abigail Dixon. I’m so pleased to meet you.” She thought for a second he’d ignore the friendly gesture. In the end, he squeezed her hand briefly and let go. Somewhat deflated, she sat down on the hard, wooden chair facing his paper-strewn desk.

  He didn’t say a word, just picked up Uncle Charles’s letter and glanced at it as though her arrival was a surprise, though she knew she was expected.

  “What are your interests, Miss Dixon?” he asked, finally. If he was any less enthusiastic, they’d be nailing the lid on his coffin. “The latest hairstyles? Fashion?” He took in her gray tweed skirt and straw-colored woolen sweater, the long brown hair she’d worn in the same simple updo since she was sixteen. “Perhaps pets? Cooking?”

  “Pets? Cooking?” She shook her head so hard the pins threatened to fly out of her hair. “I want to write hard news. Esp
ecially as it affects women.” She leaned forward. “The French Union for Women’s Suffrage is organizing a march. I want to talk to women on the street, cover the demonstration. I’ve already spoken to the organizers.” Pretty darn good, since she’d only been in Paris for five days.

  A young reporter knocked into the back of her chair as he ran past. He glanced at the huge clock on the wall, swore, then sat at one of the desks without stopping to remove his jacket or hat. He flipped open his notepad, then bashed typewriter keys with the index and middle fingers of each hand. It sounded like he was lining up words and shooting them down with a Gatling gun.

  The editor lit another cigarette. “Miss Dixon, I appreciate your enthusiasm.” His tone reminded her of the bank manager’s when he’d explained about the family money being all gone—patronizing and as though he couldn’t wait for the interview to be over.

  “Everybody calls me Abby.”

  “Well, Abby, first, the women’s suffrage vote won’t pass because the Senate will block it.” He sounded so certain, when the vote wouldn’t be held for weeks yet. She checked the urge to ask him sweetly where he kept his crystal ball.

  “But that’s just wrong. American and British women have had the vote for five years. We should—”

  He held up a hand, stopping the flow of her words. “Second, our paper caters to the expat community and to the folks back home. You’re here to write for the women’s pages. Tell the girls about the latest hairstyles and the Paris fashions. We have seasoned newsmen for the hard stuff.”

  The seasoned newsman who’d just arrived got stuck for a word and knocked his fist against the back of his head so his hat wobbled back and forth.

  The Paris office was much smaller than that of its parent broadsheet, but she’d believed that meant more opportunity.

  She held her teeth tight together to stop the rush of words from storming the barricade. When the hasty words had retreated, she unclenched her teeth. Nellie Bly would never have let herself be treated like this. She invoked the spirit of her heroine. “Mr. Strutt, I was top of my class at the University of Missouri’s journalism program. In Chicago, I wrote extensively about how the expanding city is threatening farmland.”

  She drew a tear sheet from her bag and laid it on top of a mound of newspapers and what looked like the remains of an old sandwich. It was her only front-page story, and she was proud of her work.

  The editor barely gave the page a glance. “Look, Abby, I’m going to level with you. The only reason you’re here is because Abernathy assigned you to me. Says you’ve had a bad time back in Chicago and you need a change. I got a dozen reporters with more experience. You take the assignments I give you, turn your copy in on time, fact-checked, spelled right, and we’ll get on fine. Understood?”

  She snatched back her article and pushed it into her bag so fast, the precious page creased. Heat rushed up the back of her neck and prickled at her hairline. “Charles Abernathy told me this was a promotion.”

  Walter Strutt squinted against the smoke as he took another drag on his cigarette. Even the sharp exhale sounded like an insult. “Sure, it’s a promotion. You’re in Paris. The pay is two hundred and fifty francs a month.” He saw her trying to do the conversion in her head and said, “That’s fifty dollars.”

  “Oh.” The same salary she’d been earning in Chicago. Fifty a month didn’t go far back home. She’d heard the dollars would stretch much further here. She certainly hoped so.

  He looked her up and down. “You’re what, twenty-three?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “You’re young. Enjoy everything Paris has to offer. Just stay out of trouble.”

  She wanted to tell Mr. Strutt to find another girl for his women’s pages, but she’d traveled across the Atlantic in third class and, after paying for her first month’s rent, had less than a hundred dollars to her name. She needed this job.

  He pushed a paper toward her with fingers mottled by nicotine and ink. “You heard of Paul Joubert? The couturier?”

  “No.” She wasn’t entirely sure what a couturier was.

  “He runs a fashion house. All the girls rave about him. You’ve got an appointment to interview him Monday, get the new trends. Remember, you’re writing for the dames who live here but can’t afford designer clothes, as well as the girls back home. Housewives and factory girls who dream of seeing Paris. You want them willing to spend two cents to read about the new hairstyles and what the society ladies are wearing, so make sure you gush.”

  She took the page with a silent nod. Fashion was for silly women with more money than sense. She was interested in the plight of those who worked in sweatshops ruining their eyesight sewing, not in the rich women who wore the results of their labor.

  She’d write a second piece exposing the working conditions of the factory girls. She’d show Walter Strutt she could write hard news, then he’d have to give her more interesting assignments.

  “Come in after you’ve been to Maison de Joubert.” He glanced around. “We’ll find you someplace to sit.” Then he turned and raised his voice. “Ruth, come on over here.”

  The only other woman stopped typing and rolled her head on her neck, then rose. Her black hair was threaded with gray and was set in tight waves around a pale face. Her eyes looked tired, and most of her lipstick had worn off.

  “Ruth keeps up with the who’s who of Paris. Who’s arriving on what ship, where they’re staying, who they’re entertaining. Who’s back from the Riviera. Ruth will feed you stories she can’t handle herself. Right, Ru?”

  “Sure.” She looked Abby up and down and didn’t seem impressed with what she saw.

  “You hand your first story to me, and after that, you’ll give your pieces to Ruth. When she’s done, you’ll give the finished copy to Emmett.” He waved toward a heavy-set man with food stains down the front of his shirt. Emmett was striking a pencil through copy as though it were a butcher’s knife carving up a carcass. “Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  One of the three phones on his desk began to ring. “You give her the spiel, Ru. You know the one.” And he made a shooing motion, dismissing her, as he picked up the receiver. “Walter Strutt.” He grabbed a pencil and pulled a pad of paper close. “Yeah, Johnny. What ya got for me?”

  Abby stood up and introduced herself once more. Ruth said, “So, Abernathy’s your uncle.” Her expression was as flat as the prairies.

  She’d worked so hard to prove herself in Chicago. Now she’d have to start all over again. “We’re not related. He and my father were friends.” She thought about telling Ruth about the degree and her front-page article and decided to hold her breath for something useful. Like howling into a gale.

  Ruth said, as though reciting a list of rules, “There are thirty-five thousand Americans in Paris. Almost as many British. That’s our readership. If a tidal wave washes away Japan on the same day that an American hostess serves oysters Rockefeller at her daughter’s engagement party, the oysters will lead. Got it?”

  Abby nodded, trying not to sag with the weight of her disappointment. “Oysters Rockefeller. Let Japan sink. Got it.”

  The older woman looked at her and lowered her voice. “If you’ve come to Paris to find a husband, you’d have been better to stay at home. Half the French soldiers in the Great War were killed or maimed. Of the ones who came back, well, if they aren’t broken in body, they are in spirit.” She glanced around the room. “And the boys from back home aren’t exactly the catches of the century.” As though on cue, Emmett, the copy editor, emitted a loud, rumbling burp.

  How many times must she tell them that she wanted to be a reporter? She wasn’t a socialite with marriage on her mind. She wanted a career. She’d hoped the only other woman might understand, but Ruth seemed as contemptuous of Abby as the editor had been.

  Paris was reputed to be forward-thinking and progressive, but from what she’d seen so far, their attitude toward women was from the dark ages. Pretty ironic for a place
calling itself the City of Light.

  Chapter 2

  When she emerged back onto the street, it was still bitterly cold. Abby debated taking the Metro, but she’d seen so little of Paris that she decided she could stay warm if she walked briskly enough. Her irritation was hot under her skin, and that helped.

  She found her way to the Louvre. Another day she’d lose herself inside, but today she needed to move and continued through the gardens.

  At the Pont des Arts, the smell of roasting chestnuts drew her and she bought a paper cone from a street vendor, cupping their warmth in her hands as she crossed the ornate metal bridge over the Seine. The trees were bare and skeletal, but still the view brought some of her optimism back. On the right bank was the Louvre, and on the left was the Institut de France, according to her guidebook, though that seemed a dull name for the lovely, domed building.

  Upstream, Notre Dame overlooked the city, a saintly mother in prayer. There could not be a more elegant city in the world. She paused to look over the edge of the bridge and saw two fishermen sitting silently in a shallow-bottomed boat, their lines draped into the gray water. Ice laced the river’s edges. For a moment she pictured her father teaching her to fish, her mother telling their cook to prepare the trout she’d caught, back in the happy times.