The Mitford Murders

by Jessica Fellowes

  Marjorie was wearing a blush-rose dress with dark red piping and tiny buttons all down the front. While it couldn’t be described as a flapper dress, it had a looseness to the fit that showed it didn’t rely on a corset. With white stockings and shoes with small heels, Marjorie may have been only seventeen years old but her sophistication was there for all the world to see. Louisa knew that Nancy’s plain yellow cotton skirt could not say the same, though she had been pleased that morning with the cheeriness of its colour.

  ‘Well, your parents are progressives is all I can say,’ said Nancy.

  ‘Let’s go upstairs and look at the shells,’ said Louisa, keen to divert Nancy’s attention, but she wouldn’t be dissuaded.

  ‘Can anyone buy a ticket to this dance, then?’ asked Nancy, as they followed Louisa up the enormous staircase.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Marjorie. ‘Seeing as the money is all in a good cause. My godmother is organising it. That’s really the only reason I’m allowed. My father won’t be letting me go to anything else.’

  Nancy slowed down to let Louisa go ahead a little further and then she whispered to her friend, ‘Can you get me two tickets? I’ll get you the money. I’ve got some saved from my last birthday.’

  Marjorie was doubtful. ‘How will you explain to your parents where you are?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, I’ll find a way. Will you do it? Will you get me the tickets?’

  ‘Fine, then. But don’t tell anyone I did it for you. I’ll be in a whole heap of trouble otherwise.’

  ‘Promise,’ said Nancy. ‘Oh, Marjorie! Just think – it could change our whole future!’

  ‘I wouldn’t put quite so much on a few dances with some stiff old men and wounded soldiers. There’s almost no one left to come to a ball, you know,’ said her friend, though Nancy’s smile was contagious, and the two girls skipped up the stairs to catch up with Louisa.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A few mornings before the dance, Louisa was up early as usual, woken by baby Debo’s mewling, though the placid mite was easily quietened with a bottle. They could hear the trundling of cars outside, the alien sounds of a city coming to life, and the sun had warmed the cushions by the window by the time the children’s porridge had cooled enough to eat. Decca had resisted a brush through her thick tangle of blond curls and had roped Unity into a climbing game around the nursery in their nightdresses, while Pamela and Diana got themselves dressed. Nancy slept on and probably could have carried on until midday, had Louisa not learned to give her a shake.

  Lord Redesdale expected his oldest daughters to be dressed and ready for breakfast by 7.55 a.m., when he would sit at the table staring at his pocket watch, counting down the seconds until the maid came in with the toast. With his short dark-grey hair and trim moustache, he maintained a military atmosphere of punctiliousness even when surrounded by children. After breakfast – a prompt ten-minute affair if the children did not poke their fingers into the butter or spill milk on to the tablecloth, causing more fireworks – Lord Redesdale would retire to the study. The day before, Nancy had burst in and was delighted to discover him exactly as she had suspected: in the armchair, his newspaper having fallen across his face, a loud snore vibrating the pages. Entering without knocking was now strictly verboten.

  On this morning, as on every other, he would emerge shortly before noon to go to his club, where he would have a light lunch and a heavy snooze by the fire, then return home for tea and a final nap before changing for dinner. Where the urban made him soporific, in the country Lord Redesdale would walk for hours in the winter, his dogs at his side, and in the summer could happily spend whole days fishing in the River Windrush that ran through their garden.

  Nancy told Louisa that her father had remarked loudly at tea two days before that, as far as he was concerned, the parties in London were full of the most ghastly reprobates with whom he could not find a single scrap of conversation he wished to have. Lord Redesdale did not like London.

  Nor did Nanny Blor. Louisa had become increasingly fond of this solidly built woman, a reassuring presence that she truthfully had not had before. Though wrinkles creased Nanny’s forehead, her red hair still flamed and her zest for the children never waned. She bustled about the nursery distributing both kisses and firm instructions in equal measure. It was quite clear to Louisa that the children loved her, perhaps more than their mother, around whom they were reticent. In London, Nanny grumbled that the air was filthy from the motor cars, the rented house meant she was constantly worrying about the children’s sticky fingers making marks on the furniture and the garden was too small for the necessary daily perambulations. So every morning and afternoon, the children were rounded up and taken off for a quick-march stroll around Kensington Gardens. Louisa suspected that, for all her bluster, Nanny Blor secretly rather enjoyed pushing baby Debo in her huge Silver Cross pram, knowing she could well hold her own against the snobbish Norland nannies. Their uniform held less water than her status as a nanny in charge of a baron’s brood. Of course, the nanny who revealed that she worked for an earl or a duke would provoke a large sniff and the comment that she really had to be getting on as she had better things to do than standing around chatting all day.

  It was on one such walk, taking their usual route past the Peter Pan statue that Pamela was particularly fond of – ‘Those dear little rabbits,’ she would sigh each time, and Nancy would grimace on cue – that they started discussing again the Florence Shore case. Nanny had had a letter from Rosa that morning, which had prompted it.

  ‘There’s been nothing in the news lately, has there?’ asked Nancy.

  ‘Not so far as I know,’ said Nanny, ‘and Rosa hasn’t mentioned anything for a while. She keeps an eye out and tells me.’

  ‘To think that the man who did it is still out there,’ said Nancy in deliberately dramatic tones, pretending to peer behind a tree. ‘He could be lurking around any corner …’

  ‘That’s enough of that, Miss Nancy,’ said Nanny, pulling Unity to her a little closer.

  ‘Sorry, Nanny,’ said Nancy. She never said sorry to anybody but Nanny. ‘The policeman thinks it was someone she knew anyway. Doesn’t he, Louisa?’ Nancy went on.

  Louisa, who’d been thinking that she would rather like to see Guy again, nodded. He must be in London, she supposed, but she hadn’t the nerve to let him know that she was there too.

  ‘I think it must be about money. It’s always about money,’ Nancy said with conviction.

  ‘She had a bit of money,’ said Nanny Blor.

  ‘Did she?’ said Nancy. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Rosa told me. She might’ve been a nurse but she came from a good family,’ said Nanny. ‘I’m not saying any more, I’m not a gossip.’ Nanny set her face forwards in a way that was supposed to mean the subject was closed.

  ‘How would Rosa know?’ persisted Nancy.

  Nanny hesitated, then said, ‘I think our lawyer might’ve mentioned it to Rosa.’

  ‘Your lawyer?’ Nancy’s voice was incredulous.

  ‘Yes, our lawyer,’ said Nanny sharply. ‘I’ve got interests, you know, outside of you. Flo recommended him to me and Rosa when our father died.’

  ‘Where is he? Is he still your lawyer?’

  ‘What’s it to you, Miss Nancy?’ said Nanny, but she could never resist for too long. ‘Yes, he is still our lawyer. He’s in London; he has an office in Baker Street.’

  After that, it was small beer for Nancy to get his name (Mr Michael Johnsen) and his office address (98b Baker Street). When they got home, Nancy grabbed Louisa and stole them into the study, safely free of Lord Redesdale until teatime.

  ‘Let’s telephone this Mr Johnsen and arrange to see him tomorrow morning,’ said Nancy, her eyes shining. ‘We might find something out that could really be of use.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Louisa. ‘I’m not sure we should be interfering like this.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll only tell us what we’re allowed to k
now. It’s not against the law. And if we do find anything out, then you’ve got a good excuse to get in touch with Mr Sullivan, haven’t you?’

  ‘Who says I want an excuse?’ said Louisa, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling.

  The following morning, having promised Lady Redesdale and Nanny Blor that Nancy needed Louisa with her to go to the Army & Navy store to buy some more white gloves, the two of them stole off to Baker Street on the underground train. By 11 a.m. promptly, they were sitting in Mr Johnsen’s office on leather chairs that felt rather too big, across from his desk that couldn’t be seen for stacks of papers and folders, most of which threatened to topple over.

  ‘My piling system,’ said Mr Johnsen with a nervous giggle, smoothing his hair back with the flat of his palm. His suit had shiny patches at the elbows and his stomach betrayed a habit of long lunches. ‘It’s not often I see a peer’s daughter in here,’ he said and looked as if he might giggle again but stifled it. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Nancy had drawn herself up to her fullest height, crossed her legs elegantly at the ankle, as Louisa knew her mother had asked her to do a thousand times, and laid her gloves neatly across her lap. She looked up at the solicitor coquettishly.

  ‘You see, it’s like this Mr Johnsen,’ she began, and Louisa realised, both aghast and admiring, that Nancy was flirting with him. ‘It’s rather unorthodox, I know, but the late Miss Florence Shore was a dear friend of our nanny’s twin sister and she thought she’d be mentioned in the will. A Mrs Rosa Peal. She lives in St Leonards so couldn’t possibly come all this way to London to ask you, and seeing as we are here, we thought we could do the favour, do you see?’

  Mr Johnsen nodded and smiled nervously, showing small, grey teeth poking out from beneath fleshy pink lips.

  ‘I gather the will was read last month, so –’ Nancy gave her most winning smile here and Louisa swore she could see beads of sweat breaking out on Mr Johnsen’s forehead – ‘could you let us know if our friend is in it? I assume you managed to look it out for me?’

  Mr Johnsen’s hand went straight to a pile just on his left. ‘Yes, I did, Miss Mitford. It’s a public record now. Strictly speaking you should apply to the probate registry, but seeing as you’re here … If you don’t tell anyone, I won’t.’ Here he gave an attempt at a wink, which failed. He looked as if he was trying to blink smut out of his eye.

  Nancy put a hand on the desk and leaned forwards. ‘We won’t say anything, Mr Johnsen, you can be sure of that,’ she said reassuringly. Then she sat back and held her hand out for the paper.

  Louisa, who had been almost entirely ignored by the two of them up to this point, drew her chair up to Nancy’s a little closer and they read through it.

  The nurse’s estate was indeed an impressive sum for somebody who spent her years working in public service and living modestly in a nursing lodge: £14,279. Her brother, Offley, was executor, in charge of distributing what looked like a rather long list of small gifts to various godchildren and friends – twenty-five pounds here, one hundred pounds there. A carriage clock that had been given to her by her godmother and namesake, the famous nurse Florence Nightingale, was left to a cousin’s daughter. As they’d expected, there was no mention of Rosa Peal.

  ‘Look, here,’ said Louisa, ‘an instruction for a residuary estate of three thousand six hundred pounds to be invested into a trust fund for her cousin, Stuart Hobkirk. That’s a generous sum, isn’t it?’ She looked up but the solicitor wasn’t listening; he was taking a pinch of snuff as discreetly as he could.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nancy, ‘after her brother, he’s been left the most. And look, she left him a diamond pendant. That’s quite a bizarre thing to leave a man.’

  ‘Not, perhaps, if it was something that she often wore and wanted him to remember her by,’ said Louisa.

  ‘You mean, it might have been a love token?’ said Nancy, and the two of them raised their eyebrows at each other. Curiouser and curiouser.

  Then Louisa noticed the date besides the dead Miss Shore’s signature: 29 December 1919. She pointed to it and whispered to Nancy, ‘Don’t you think that’s rather close to the day she was attacked?’

  Nancy clamped her lips together, as if to stop herself from squealing, and nodded excitedly. Then she changed her composure again and turned to the solicitor, who had sat back down behind his desk and was watching the two young women. ‘Thank you, Mr Johnsen. You’ve been most kind. It’s rather strange but Mrs Peal does not appear to be mentioned here. Might she have been in an earlier will?’

  ‘Perhaps, but only the last will is the one that counts, I’m afraid,’ he replied. ‘I might have a copy of an earlier will but it doesn’t make any difference what she wrote before if she changed it sound of mind.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Nancy, sounding uncannily like her mother. Her ability to assume an adult’s pose of confidence was never less than impressive. ‘Well, then, we had better be on our way. Thank you so much for your time.’ She stood, and Louisa did too, as Mr Johnsen, attempting to button his suit jacket over his straining stomach, ran out from behind his desk to get to the door before them and open it.

  ‘Not at all, Miss Mitford,’ he said, almost bowing at the waist. ‘It was a pleasure. Anything you need, please don’t hesitate to ask.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  In the far corner of the Tea Room in Victoria station, Guy sat alone at a table, drinking a cup of tea as slowly as he could. Harry was not at work that day, though he didn’t know why, and he was staying out of Jarvis’s eyeline before he could be sent off to one of the duller, more solitary tasks meted out to his rank. As usual, Guy was returning his thoughts to the murder of Florence Shore, turning over the facts as he knew them, wondering where there was a chink of light, something that the police or the coroner might have missed. He could not stand the thought that a man who had killed a war nurse, in turn someone who had saved the lives of so many men, should go unpunished.

  Idly watching the queue of men and women as they went to pay for their tea, Guy’s eye landed on a man in railway livery; a large white moustache lay beneath his nose, like a polar bear stretched out.

  He knew that man.

  Guy pushed his chair back with a shove and leapt up. ‘Duck!’

  The waitress behind the counter suddenly disappeared behind the till and several people in the queue looked around, puzzled, their heads lowered.

  ‘Mr Duck,’ said Guy and the waitress went bright red. The queue laughed but Henry Duck turned around slowly as Guy braked in front of him. ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘My apologies, Mr Duck,’ said Guy, conscious now of having brought the entire café to his attention, ‘it’s just that …’ He lowered his voice and leaned in closer. ‘You were on the train when Florence Nightingale Shore was attacked, weren’t you?’

  Henry Duck looked flustered. ‘What of it? I’ve already given my statement to the inquest.’

  ‘I know,’ said Guy, ‘it’s just that, well, the case has been sort of closed but I know the murderer has to be out there somewhere. I think I can find him. Would you mind answering a few more questions?’

  Henry pulled out his watch chain and looked at it. ‘I’ve got a few minutes,’ he said. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Guy. ‘I’ve got a table in the corner; no one can overhear us there.’

  ‘I hope I don’t get into trouble for this,’ said Henry, but he followed Guy nonetheless. They summoned the waitress over and asked for two more cups of tea. They talked a little while she fetched a teapot and more milk – the usual station workers’ gossip about passengers that delayed trains – and once she was out of earshot, Guy took his notebook out and adjusted his glasses.

  ‘I heard you at speak at the inquest,’ said Guy. ‘But I wondered if I might ask you again about the man you saw at Lewes station.’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘From my notes here, it says you were in charge of the train from Victo
ria, and when it arrived at Lewes, two minutes late, you got down on to the platform.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Henry. ‘It was a dark and dirty night and there were no lamps at the station, so I walked along the platform holding my own lamp.’

  ‘I know this is repeating your statement but could you tell me again – when you walked down, did you see anybody get out of the train?’

  ‘Yes, a man got out of a compartment behind my van. He got out on the foot-board, shut the door, stretched along to the next compartment and swung off.’

  ‘Did he pass you? Did you see him?’

  ‘Just momentarily. He got down just as I got to him.’

  Guy looked again at his notes. ‘You said you spoke to him, to ask him if he hadn’t been told to get into the front portion of the train, but he didn’t answer you. Was he in a hurry, do you think?’

  ‘No, not ‘specially,’ said Henry.

  ‘Can you recall how he was dressed?’

  Henry took a sip of his tea and Guy noticed with distaste that he ran his tongue over the bottom of his moustache as he put his cup back down. ‘It’s getting harder to remember but he had a dark, drab mackintosh coat on, and I think he wore a cap. Both his hands were in his coat so I don’t think he had either a stick or an umbrella.’

  ‘What about his build?’

  ‘I should describe him as of athletic build,’ said Henry.

  ‘Athletic?’

  ‘Broad shoulders, I suppose. Look, sonny, I’m going to have to go soon, my train leaves in a few minutes.’

  ‘I won’t keep you much longer,’ said Guy. This description did not match that given by Mabel Rogers: her man was thin with no overcoat. ‘We know it’s usual for people to get out like that. There was nothing to call special attention to him?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ said Henry.

  ‘Have you seen him since?’