On the 6th of October, 1926, a young woman went into the cloakroom on the key at

Boulogne in France. Her friend was waiting for her outside, expecting her to come out again

quickly because they were due to catch the boat back to England in 10 minutes time. The

seconds ticked by and the boat left, but still the young woman didn't appear.

She was never several miles away. An umbrella and a syringe of morphine were lying nearby, and it looked as if she'd been strangled.

No witnesses came forward, and the police were baffled.

British and French journalists descended on the town, eager to try their hand at investigating this riddle.

Among them was a newly married Dorothy L. Sayers, a detective novelist with a keen interest in the crimes of her day, excited to test out her sloothing skills on an actual case.

But when she got there, she found that not every crime has a neat beginning, an intriguing middle and a satisfying ending.

Real life is a whole of Nurse Daniels.

Welcome to She Done It. I'm Caroline Crampton. This is another installment in my series about the real life crimes that inspired the writers of classic detective stories.

In this episode, we'll learn about Dorothy L. Sayer's frustrating

adventures in France trying to crack a case that was captivating Britain and how she managed to

weave elements of it into her fiction.

But to understand that, we need to go right back to the beginning.

Who was Nurse Daniels?

And why did her disappearance and death cause such a sensation.

Winifred May Daniels was 21 years old when she disappeared. She was a nurse probationer at a hospital in London, and according to the interviews given by her family after she vanished, she was a happy, cheerful person, who wasn't prone to getting upset easily.

One friend described her as level-headed and cool,

and not in any way hysterical.

She wasn't famous or notorious,

but she did live during interesting times,

...