The Mitford Murders

by Jessica Fellowes

  Florence Shore’s brother was angry about the will. This was news indeed and meant another suspect Guy was certain nobody else from any of the police forces had considered. He wanted to ask more but the baroness pushed the cat off her lap with a grunt and picked up her opera glasses. The interview was over.

  ‘Thank you, Baroness,’ said Guy. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘Are you going to catch the man that did it?’

  ‘I sincerely hope so,’ said Guy. ‘I’m doing all I can.’

  ‘But you’re doing it alone, I take it? The case has been closed, as I understand it?’

  Caught, Guy could only nod. ‘Officially, yes. But that doesn’t mean he’s not out there. Someone did it, and I mean to find him.’

  The baroness nodded and returned to her article. She said not another word.

  Guy stood awkwardly and tipped his hat, which he hadn’t dared to remove throughout the interview. ‘Goodbye, Baroness. Thank you for your time.’

  He departed through the French windows, sidestepping the sleeping cat, and let himself out through the front door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Back at work, Guy asked Jarvis if he might have a day tidying the papers in the vast filing cabinet that sat in the corner of the office. When anyone opened one of the drawers, it moaned and clanked like Frankenstein’s monster awakening for the first time. Jarvis appeared rather baffled by this request but said he didn’t see why not, there was nothing else urgent to attend to and it probably had to be done.

  This bought Guy time to sit and think through the matter of the Shore case as he sifted and straightened the notes that had been variously jammed into the metal beast. Not to mention that copies of the Shore case statements were in there, too. It wasn’t long before he found a telephone number for Stuart Hobkirk in Cornwall – not for a home address but for an artists’ studio that it seemed he worked in daily. There was a short statement that someone had taken from him in which he stated he was in the studio on the day of Shore’s murder.

  At 4 p.m., there were few people around and Guy took the opportunity to telephone Mr Hobkirk. He decided to do it now, denying to himself that Jarvis would not be pleased if he knew.

  The telephone was answered after a few rings and the voice at the other end said he would fetch Stuart. Guy could hear disembodied shouts, a clatter like a door with a loose glass pane shutting and then heavy footsteps on a wooden floor.

  ‘Stuart Hobkirk speaking. Who is this?’ The voice was deep and then there was a long bout of coughing, followed by a thump of the chest. ‘Sorry,’ said Stuart. ‘Bloody smokes.’

  ‘This is Mr Sullivan,’ said Guy. ‘I’m from the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Police. I was wondering if I might ask you a few questions?’

  ‘What?’ said Stuart. ‘About my poor cousin, I suppose? I’ve already spoken to you lot.’

  ‘Yes, I appreciate that, sir. But other lines of enquiry have opened and we need to follow them up. It’s simply a matter of confirming one or two things.’ Guy hoped he sounded more assured than he felt.

  ‘Are we really going to have to go over it all again? I’m sure everything I’ve got to say must be written down somewhere.’

  ‘Could you confirm for me that you are Florence Shore’s cousin?’ said Guy, ignoring his protests.

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Stuart.

  ‘Could you tell me where you were on the twelfth of January of this year?’

  Guy could hear a match being struck and Stuart inhaling on a cigarette before he answered. ‘I was here at the studio, painting, as I always am practically every day.’

  ‘Were others in the studio that day?’

  ‘Yes,’ snapped Stuart. ‘Have you got what you need now?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Guy. ‘May I have some names of the other people who were there?’

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘Only to ask them to corroborate your statement, sir.’

  Stuart exhaled and Guy imagined the grey smoke snaking down the telephone line. He did his best not to cough at the thought of it.

  ‘Well, the thing is, I’m not entirely sure I was at the studio that day. I think I may have been at home alone. I sometimes work there, when the light is good.’

  ‘I see,’ said Guy. ‘Would anyone have seen you there that day? A postman, perhaps? Or a daily?’

  ‘Look, man, how would anyone remember? It was another ordinary day. No postman would write in his diary: “Saw Mr Hobkirk today”.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Guy. Stuart’s temper was going to get the better of him, he could tell.

  ‘So the fact is, no one can confirm where I was. But I was in Cornwall. Whatever I was doing, I was hundreds of miles away when my dear cousin was so brutally—’ He interrupted himself with another bout of coughing.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Guy.

  ‘I’m going to hang up now,’ said Stuart, carefully and slowly, as if he was talking to a stupid child. ‘And I don’t expect to be contacted again by any of you. As far as I’m concerned, every time you talk to me you waste a chance to find the person who did it. Leave me alone to get on with my work and my sorrow.’

  ‘Yes—’ said Guy, but the telephone had already clicked silent at the other end.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Three days after the ball, when the girls had been put to bed, Louisa asked Nanny if she might go out for the rest of the evening to visit her mother. Nanny said she thought that would be a very nice thing to do. Lord and Lady Redesdale were out at a dinner, and besides, Ada was about if she should need anything. Then Nancy asked if she might go along with Lou-Lou.

  ‘Whatever for?’ said Nanny.

  ‘No reason, really. Just to keep her company, and so I can get out of the house for a bit. It’s a lovely warm night, Nanny,’ pleaded Nancy.

  ‘Seems to me you’ve been out gallivanting all too much this week. So long as you are both back before half past nine,’ said Nanny, glancing at her book on the table, The Noble Highwayman and the Miser’s Daughter. The bookmark was quite near the end.

  ‘It’s not gallivanting. We’re going to Chelsea, to see an ill woman,’ said Nancy.

  ‘Oh! Poor dear. Perhaps you’d better take her something.’ Nanny rooted around in her apron pockets and pulled out a paper bag with a few red-and-white-striped mints inside. She picked a bit of fluff out before proffering them to Louisa. ‘Here,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, Nanny,’ said Louisa, ‘but you keep those for yourself. We’ll be back soon.’

  The walk from Gloucester Road to Lawrence Street was only half an hour, and with the warmth of the setting sun on their faces, it was pleasant, if not quite enough to chase away her fears. Louisa took Nancy down back streets she had never seen before, weaving them out of the way of the ambling couples and tourists. In Elm Park Gardens, Louisa pointed out a handsome grey-brick block to her young charge.

  ‘That building is entirely flats for women,’ she said.

  ‘Only women live there?’ asked Nancy, looking up at the windows, blank but for their tied-back curtains.

  ‘Most of them have left home to come to London to work,’ said Louisa. ‘We used to do a bit of washing for some of them – bed sheets and so on. They wash their smalls in the little sinks in their rooms.’

  ‘That sounds terribly sad,’ said Nancy.

  ‘I don’t think it is,’ said Louisa. ‘I became quite friendly with a couple of the women there and they used to have parties and things. Some of them were pleased to be working instead of being married, not being chained to the kitchen sink, as they put it. But it’s a hard life – they don’t have much money.’

  ‘I thought you said they were working?’

  ‘Yes, but women don’t get paid as much, do they? No dependents, you see. It’s just pin money.’

  ‘Except it’s not, is it?’ said Nancy thoughtfully. ‘They’re buying their own food and rent.’

  They walked in companionable silence after that, un
til they reached the Peabody Estate. Although only around the corner from the neat terraced houses of Old Church Street, with its smartly painted front doors and well-tended window boxes, Lawrence Street had four-storey high blocks, with grey net curtains visible in the long rows of small windows. The Cross Keys on the corner had a few men gathered outside in the warm evening, drinking beers and pulling on their cigarettes but saying little.

  Nancy took Louisa’s arm. ‘Are we quite safe here, Lou-Lou?’ she whispered.

  Louisa looked at Nancy, then at the men outside the pub. She thought she recognised something of the profile of the man from Christmas and flinched, which Nancy noticed.

  ‘They’re harmless,’ Louisa said. ‘It’s inside my mother’s home I’m worried about. What if Stephen is there?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ said Nancy. ‘He won’t do anything if I’m with you.’

  Louisa nodded and they gave each other’s arms a reassuring squeeze before turning into the large archway that led to the open space in the middle of the Peabody Estate. Children ran criss-cross at speed, chasing and pinching each other. Two young mothers sat together on a patch of grass, their voices chattering like a pair of budgerigars as their babies suckled peacefully. The sun was setting and in the orange light, on the ground below her old bedroom window, Louisa spotted a cat, stretching its paws as it appeared to consider the adventures for the night that was coming. She let go of Nancy and ran over to him, scooping him up in her arms and nestling her face in his warm neck. The cat purred and wriggled gently beneath her grasp.

  ‘It’s Kipper,’ she said to Nancy. ‘He’s not ours, he lives four doors down, but he was my friend here when I was little. He’s so old now, poor thing.’

  ‘I like his name,’ said Nancy, smiling.

  Still holding on to the cat, not minding his ginger hairs slowly shedding themselves over her blue jacket, Louisa walked up the stairs to her old home, Nancy following. The front door was unlocked and Louisa breathed in the comforting smells of soap flakes and boiled cabbage. She noted that Stephen’s jacket and hat were not hanging on the coathooks.

  Putting the cat down, who ran off down the hall, she called out, ‘Ma! It’s me. Where are you?’

  ‘Oh, Louisa! Is it really you? Just in here,’ her mother called back from the front room.

  The two girls stepped inside the warm fug, where Winnie was sitting in an armchair by the unlit fire, a thick woollen blanket over her knees and a shawl around her shoulders, a gaunt figure sitting in the dusk. Louisa was reminded anew of how much older her own ma was than any of her friends’ mothers. She caught sight of Nancy and started to pat down her hair, tucking the stray wisps behind her ear.

  ‘Louisa, dear, you should have told me you were coming and bringing a friend.’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Cannon,’ said Nancy, putting out her right hand. ‘I’m Nancy Mitford. How do you do?’

  Winnie gave a chuckle. ‘Oh, I’m doing very well, just a little cold,’ she said before she gave way to a short coughing fit, leaving Nancy to put her hand back down. When she had recovered, she looked up at her daughter and her friend. ‘Don’t look so serious. I’m right as rain. That is, as much as I ever am.’

  ‘Oh, Ma!’ said Louisa. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’ She bent down to embrace her mother, kissing her on the forehead before Winnie pushed her off.

  ‘Don’t fuss. Let me introduce myself to Miss Mitford,’ she said, putting her hand out, which Nancy retrieved and shook gently. ‘Now, it’s very nice to see you but what are you doing here?’

  ‘We’re in London for a few days. I wanted to see how you were. I’ve brought a bit of money for you, too.’

  ‘What I need is to see you settled down, my girl,’ Winnie said. ‘When I was your age, I—’

  ‘Had a husband to cook and clean for. I know,’ said Louisa. ‘But it’s not quite as simple as that for me, is it?’

  Winnie put her nose in the air. ‘I don’t see why not,’ she said. ‘It was quite simple for me. I saw your father delivering the coal at Mrs Haversham’s and that was that.’

  Louisa looked at Nancy and rolled her eyes. The room was dark and though their eyes had adjusted, it seemed that shadows engulfed the room. She moved to turn on the lamp beside her mother but Winnie put out her hand.

  ‘It won’t come on, dear. I haven’t quite managed to get out to pay the meter. I’ll do it tomorrow,’ she said and tried to stifle another cough.

  ‘Have you not been getting the money from the post office?’ said Louisa. ‘I’ve been putting in most of my wages every month.’

  ‘Oh, I have, dear. Thank you. It’s only in the last little while I’ve not been getting out of the house …’ She looked uncomfortably at Nancy and adjusted her skirts.

  ‘Why hasn’t Stephen paid, then?’ said Louisa.

  ‘Oh, you know what your uncle’s like … He’s not been here for a few days. I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘Staying somewhere with free gas, no doubt,’ said Louisa.

  ‘There’s no point in getting cross. I’m perfectly well. It’s not cold and I’m so tired by the time it gets dark, I’m quite ready to get to bed and go to sleep. Your father and I lived like this before the war, you know. We just had candles and life was a lot simpler and easier, if you ask me.’

  Nancy plucked at Louisa’s sleeve. ‘Perhaps we ought to be getting back? Nanny might be worried.’ She seemed ill at ease.

  ‘Wait here,’ said Louisa. She darted upstairs and felt underneath the bed she and her mother had shared. Yes, it was still there, in the far corner, dusty and undiscovered. She came back down, wiping it with her sleeve, and handed it to her mother.

  ‘What’s all this?’ said Winnie.

  ‘Coins I saved,’ said Louisa. ‘There should be enough there for you to pay the gas meter.’

  ‘Where did this money come from?’ Winnie asked suspiciously.

  ‘It’s just odds and ends I put away, Ma,’ said Louisa. ‘Please, take it.’ She bent down to kiss her mother on the cheek, feeling her papery skin beneath her lips and smelling her stale breath. She whispered, ‘I’ll send you more money soon, Ma.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said her mother. Louisa could hardly hear her, though her face was right next to hers. ‘But don’t worry about me. You look after yourself, my girl, then I won’t have to worry about you. I just want to see you married and in a nice situation.’ She stopped and took a couple of deep breaths – it was more than she’d said in one go for a long time – then spoke more firmly. ‘You could have this flat, you see, as my next of kin. The Peabody Trust people, that’s how they do it. You’d be nicely set up. And all my old jobs, I know my women would take you on.’

  Louisa tried to blink back the tears that threatened to fall on to her mother’s face. ‘Yes, Ma,’ she said. ‘I will. Goodbye. I’ll write soon. I’m sorry I didn’t before but I couldn’t let Stephen—’

  ‘I know,’ said Winnie hoarsely. ‘Goodbye, my dear.’

  As Louisa stood up, she saw her mother pull the blanket a little higher and turn her face to the wall, closing her eyes. Louisa and Nancy walked out of the flat, closing the front door gently behind them.

  As they were crossing the grass, Louisa was just turning to say something to Nancy – she had been upset to see her mother looking so frail – when she heard a dog barking. She looked over and saw Socks run in through the archway, ears up. He’d probably seen Kipper, his old foe. Stephen wouldn’t be far behind. Before his heavy footsteps could approach too closely, Louisa grabbed Nancy’s hand, a finger to her lips to make sure she stayed quiet, and pulled her out through a side door into the dark streets. A narrow escape but how many more times would she get away with it?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  On his return journey to London from Tonbridge, Guy’s mind was racing. Before he could draw his conclusions absolutely, he knew he needed to rule Florence Shore’s brother out. Back at the police station, he telephoned the transatlantic liners that had arrived
in England from America in the three months before January 1920 and asked them to send their passenger lists. They took only a few days to arrive and, as he suspected, the name Offley Shore was not anywhere to be seen. So far as Guy knew, Mr Shore had not even been able to make it to his sister’s funeral service.

  This meant one thing: Stuart Hobkirk was the chief suspect. The only suspect.

  What Guy needed was to bring Mr Hobkirk in for questioning, but he could not do this without Jarvis’s permission. Guy left a message with his super’s secretary, requesting an appointment. Then he went and sat at a desk, chewing his pencil and twitching his feet.

  ‘Put a sock in it, will ya?’ said Harry. ‘Some of us are trying to read a newspaper over here.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Guy. ‘I can’t concentrate on anything.’

  ‘Nor can I but it’s never worried me,’ said Harry with a snort and went back to checking the racing tips.

  When there was nothing left of his pencil, Guy was summoned to Jarvis’s office. It was stuffy in there – he never opened a window – and although it was not yet 5 p.m., Guy saw that Jarvis had poured himself a large whisky. The day’s work was done.

  ‘Sullivan.’ Jarvis was in an affable mood. ‘What can you do for me?’ He guffawed at his own joke.

  Guy stood before the desk. A clock ticked loudly and he felt sweat trickle behind his ears. If he didn’t hurry, his glasses would steam up.

  ‘It’s about the Florence Shore case, sir. I think there may be an important development.’

  Jarvis sat up straighter. ‘Do you? How’s that, then? I’m not aware of having sent you on anything to do with the Shore case. The Met are looking after it, if at all. Case is closed so far as we’re concerned. Has someone come forward?’

  ‘Not exactly, sir.’ Guy concentrated hard on keeping his hands clamped behind his back, though he longed to wipe his brow.