[Mitford Murders 03] - The Mitford Scandal

by Jessica Fellowes

  Immediately Diana would reply: ‘I am. You don’t have to, of course.’

  ‘But then, who will you be with?’

  Diana would tease – whether as part of a long-standing Mitford habit or deliberately to infuriate her husband, Louisa did not know – ‘I shall telephone and find a suitor. I’m sure either Evelyn or Cecil would oblige. Luke is always a stalwart, too.’

  Luke had, in spite of being caught with his hands in the till, as it were, when he sent through the story about Clara to the Daily Sketch, continued his friendship with Diana. He was good-looking, amusing, a tame pet almost, and always available to her request for a chaperone. Bryan knew he was S.I.T. (‘Safe In Taxis’), so could not object on jealous grounds. All the same, he chafed.

  ‘Darling,’ he would begin again, in placatory tones. ‘I only want to enjoy my wife for myself. A play, a dinner and then back home to listen to a gramophone record or we could read our books by the fire.’

  Diana would put down her hairbrush or lipstick, whatever she happened to be holding, and turn to her husband with a calm but unmoved look. ‘We can do that any night, and tonight is the Red Cross Ball/the Astor dinner/the Prince of Wales’s cocktail party … ’ And that would be that.

  A compromise was to have the dinners at home with guests, which thanks to Diana’s excellent cook, Mrs Mack, never failed to please. Mrs Mulloney came for dinner only three weeks after the fated Venice trip. Nancy and Luke were also in attendance, as well as Evelyn Waugh – who practically trailed Diana’s every step these days, sitting on her bed as she read her morning letters and accompanying her to the shops – not to mention some other luminaries that Diana refused to call ‘Bright Young Things’. Though that, Louisa knew, was very much what they were.

  Louisa did not serve at these dinners – that job fell to the elderly parlourmaid May, with Turner occasionally helping out if they needed the extra hands – but she would find as unobtrusive a spot in the kitchen as she could and get on with some mending, so that she could enjoy the bustle and noise. It made her evenings less lonely. On the night that Kate was there for dinner, Louisa was not entirely surprised to see Luke come down to the kitchen looking for her, around the time the women upstairs must have left the dining table to retire to the drawing room with coffee.

  Louisa and Luke did not meet as friends alone, as such, but whenever Luke came to the house to see Diana, he made a point of seeking her out. She appreciated the effort, and though she was wary now not to give him anything that she thought would end up in his social column, they still shared a certain gossipy appreciation of the life he was living. ‘Our generation has freedom,’ he was fond of saying. ‘I can do things my father would never have done, or would belt me for doing. I’ve got to make the most of it!’ Louisa enjoyed hearing him say these things, so full of celebration and verve, but it also made her feel remorseful. Was she ‘making the most of it’? She suspected not.

  Luke came up to Louisa, snatching two small chocolates off a plate that was waiting to be taken upstairs as he did so, and knelt beside her chair. ‘You won’t believe what’s happened,’ he said as he handed her one of the sweets.

  ‘What?’ Louisa put her mending down and smiled. Had one of the women come out without realising they had a rip in their stockings? Or had there been talk at the table of an MP’s latest indiscretions with his private secretary?

  ‘Kate was left alone with Clara the night she died.’

  Louisa stopped chewing. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I was sitting on Nancy’s right, Kate was opposite us and I don’t think they thought I was listening to them because I was supposedly listening to the woman on my other side. But she was a terrible bore and my ears were twitching for something more enticing.’

  ‘Go on.’ Luke had a writer’s habit of building up every story when she just wanted to get to the facts.

  ‘Apparently there’s been a letter to Nancy from Clara’s parents. They want to know everything about what happened in her final hours. They’re not, understandably, entirely at ease with the idea that their daughter would die so suddenly for no apparent reason.’

  ‘Have they reported anything to the police?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think they have written to Nancy as a friend of Clara’s, to ask her what happened. The point is, Nancy said to Kate, “Should I tell them you and I went to see her, or should I keep quiet?”’

  ‘Why would she say that?’

  ‘I don’t know but then Kate said: “Don’t tell them I was left alone with her when you went to the bathroom. They’ll only make something of it if they find out about Shaun and Clara.”’

  Louisa didn’t reply to this but she felt afraid. What had Nancy got herself caught up in?

  ‘I’d better go back upstairs,’ said Luke. ‘Got to join the men for the port. Not that they want me there. They want to talk about Wall Street and I want to talk about Bond Street.’ He grinned at her but Louisa was still too shocked to return the gesture.

  After he had left, she sat there for some minutes, not moving. The conclusion she’d reached earlier had only been reinforced: she would have to investigate further. Could it be that Kate was guilty of Clara’s death, possibly even Shaun’s too? If she was, then Louisa would reel her in.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  A week later, Louisa had put Diana’s breakfast tray down with the morning post and was running her bath when she heard her mistress call out for her. She quickly turned the taps off – she’d once left it too long and it had flooded the floor, causing a dreadful row – and went to see what it was. Diana was waving a letter around. ‘It’s from Naunce, apparently Clara’s family did have an autopsy after all and now they say it was an opium overdose. So much for claiming they wanted a quick burial.’ Louisa didn’t know how to react to this.

  ‘Idiot girl. I’m sorry, Louisa, but she fooled you. She hadn’t had it stolen at all. Her kind are sly, you know.’

  The ugliness of this remark took Louisa aback for a moment. Besides, she knew different. She’d been with Clara, she’d seen her distress. There was absolutely no possibility that she had opium hidden on her, and Louisa certainly didn’t have any in her bedroom, where Clara had spent her final hours. She wondered what to do with these suspicious – at this stage, they could be no more than that – and decided that she had to say something. She was due to leave London for a few days to stay with her mother and aunt in Suffolk. Before she left, she sent a note to Guy at the station, saying nothing save the detail of the autopsy result and her own knowledge of that evening, together with the conclusion she had drawn. If there was anything to take further, then he could deal with it.

  While Louisa was away, Bryan and Diana had planned to drive out to the country to look for a house. Most weekends they borrowed a Guinness place in Sussex but now it was deemed necessary for them to have one of their own. Louisa reserved judgement on this but she could see that, with her baby due in a few weeks, Diana was at last embracing Bryan’s notion of happy families in the wilds of the English countryside she had once been so desperate to escape.

  Louisa’s time in Suffolk, in the pretty village of Hadleigh, with her mother and aunt fussing over her and cooking her favourite dishes, helped her find perspective again. She knew she was obscurely influenced in London by the people she worked for, and the people they spent time with, not to mention her friendship with Luke, which was both enjoyable and unsettling. Without a close friend or Guy to confide in, she found it harder to hold on to those parts of her she knew to be true. Though she had grown up in London and would always love the solace of the crowded pavements and familiar bus routes, she found a peace in the country walks and the beauty of winter there, which had bewitched her since her first morning with the Mitfords. Her mother was also happy to remind Louisa of her good fortune with her work: ‘I had backbreaking, thankless years as a washerwoman. You’ve gone up in the world and I’m glad of it, my girl.’ After three nights of family gossip, helping her mother mend the chick
en’s coop – a side of the fencing had fallen and looked dangerously vulnerable to a fox’s attack – and long, dreamless sleeps from the fresh air, she was ready to return to her work.

  She also had had time to think about the deaths of Shaun Mulloney and Clara Fischer. She was afraid for Nancy, who had so decisively warned Louisa off investigating Clara’s death, together with her concealing the fact that Kate had been alone with Clara for a certain amount of time before her death. Had she become caught up in something dangerous? Nancy was a difficult person to confront. Years of sparring with their hot-tempered father and barbing her younger sisters had made Nancy a formidable verbal opponent. Louisa needed to ask her directly what had happened that night but was certain that she would be dismissed before she could finish asking the first question. Nancy and Diana had grown closer in the last year; it wasn’t inconceivable that Nancy could convince Diana to sack Louisa for impertinence. Even if Louisa knew she wanted to find another line of work, she wanted to get to the bottom of this first. And she would not be helped by being dismissed without a reference.

  Still chewing this over in her mind, Louisa was walking from the Underground station on her way home when she turned the corner into Buckingham Street and ran smack into Guy. Too stunned at first to say anything she stepped back and couldn’t think, momentarily, what it was she felt or wanted to do. It had been over a year since she had kissed him and it had taken all her strength to forget about him. Yet, she had sent that note. She had tried to deny to herself that she wanted to see him but of course, she did. Without saying anything she gripped her case a little tighter and carried on walking.

  ‘Louisa!’ Guy shouted. ‘Please.’

  Louisa stopped but didn’t turn around.

  Guy walked round to the front of her, forcing her to look at him.

  ‘Louisa, I know what happened last time we met. I’m so sorry. I’ve never stopped being sorry.’

  Still, Louisa could not bring herself to speak. She didn’t know what she would say. She couldn’t remember if she was angry or sad or what. The feelings wouldn’t rise in any recognisable order, there was only a jumbled tangle stuck in her chest.

  People were walking past them, some tutting in an irritated way at the two of them blocking the pavement.

  ‘I’ve been waiting here for hours, hoping to see you. I thought you would come out to run an errand before long.’

  ‘I’ve been away,’ she said, her voice husky as if she hadn’t spoken for weeks.

  ‘I can see. Your case.’ He made an attempt at a chuckle. ‘That’s how good a policeman I am.’

  Louisa was desperate suddenly to stop being angry or neutral or whatever it was, and share his bad joke with him. But this thought immediately entered the boxing ring with the memory of Guy telling her that he was engaged to someone. It had been a year, he was probably married now. She tried not to look at his hand, to see if he was wearing a wedding ring.

  ‘Why are you here, Guy?’

  ‘Because of your note. I wanted to make sure … well, I had to find out if you were all right. And to thank you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The American actress.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, though she didn’t really.

  Guy looked at her with equal puzzlement. ‘The CID have been brought in to investigate her death. Thanks to your note. I thought you knew.’

  ‘Obviously not. I’ve been away, remember?’

  A fat drop of rain fell on to Louisa’s head. Then another. Six drops and she’d have to get inside or she’d be soaked.

  ‘The thing is, Louisa … ’ Guy looked at her with tears in his eyes.

  ‘Yes?’ The rain started but Louisa couldn’t move.

  ‘Nancy Mitford has been arrested.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Louisa said nothing but ran the last few yards to the house, with Guy following her. At the side entrance she stopped and turned. ‘I don’t think you should come in.’

  Guy’s face fell. ‘I want to help.’

  ‘Is Nancy going to be questioned by the CID?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Guy.

  ‘Then surely you and I cannot talk? I was there that night, too. I was alone with Miss Fischer when she died.’

  The rain was pouring now, trickling off the back of Guy’s hat and soaking his coat. ‘It’s not just you,’ said Guy. ‘We’re anxious to talk to any others who went to her room that night.’

  ‘Then why haven’t I been brought in for questioning, too?’ Louisa’s chest felt tight.

  ‘That’s partly why I’m here. You will be. I wanted to warn you.’ There were tears in Guy’s eyes but Louisa felt nothing but hot anger.

  ‘Just go, Guy. I will deal with this by myself.’

  She went inside and closed the door firmly behind her.

  *

  Having quickly taken her case to her room and removed her damp coat, Louisa went in search of Diana and found her in the morning room with Lady Redesdale.

  ‘Good morning, Lady Redesdale, Mrs Guinness.’ Louisa always had to stop herself from curtseying to her former employer. She wasn’t the queen but she looked as if she could be.

  ‘Hello, Cannon,’ said Lady Redesdale. She had lost none of her composure, sitting erect on the sofa beside her daughter, dressed plainly, her hair still dark though she was almost fifty years old. There’s an old wives’ tale that if a woman loses her looks while pregnant, she is going to have a girl; it seemed as if Lady Redesdale had borne the cost of her own six good-looking daughters.

  ‘Thank goodness you’re here,’ said Diana. She, too, had learned a lesson from her mother in emotional repression but Louisa could see genuine gladness in Diana’s eyes that she had returned. In the hall, as Louisa had tried to find her mistress, May the parlourmaid had whispered that Mr Guinness had gone to his Railway Dining Club, which took place on the train to Birmingham. This explained why Lady Redesdale had been summoned to the house in the wake of the news about Nancy.

  Louisa thought it would be best if she didn’t reveal that Guy had already told her what had happened. It might look as if she had an inside track to either the crime or the police that would put her out of favour.

  ‘Is everything not as it should be, ma’am?’

  Lady Redesdale sat up even straighter, though her spine was barely discernible from an iron poker. ‘Nancy has been arrested and taken in for questioning at Knightsbridge station. Lord Redesdale is there with her now.’

  Louisa allowed herself to look surprised but didn’t over-egg it. Neither would have appreciated histrionics and they would have plenty of that to deal with from others. ‘May I ask what she has been arrested for?’

  ‘For the murder of Clara Fischer,’ said Lady Redesdale but there was a catch in her voice.

  ‘It’s absolutely absurd,’ said Diana.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Louisa, her detached manner harder to maintain. ‘How could she possibly have done it? I was there most of the time. I don’t think Miss Nancy was even alone with Miss Fischer at any point.’

  ‘She visited Clara with Kate Mulloney during the evening,’ said Diana.

  ‘Yes, at around midnight, when I was with you.’

  ‘It seems Mrs Mulloney alleges that Nancy was left alone with Clara and that she had the opportunity then, to slip her something.’

  Now Louisa was surprised, and she must have shown it. ‘Mrs Mulloney says that Nancy did it?’ she repeated, agog.

  Diana nodded. ‘The worst of it is, it’s her word against Nancy’s.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Louisa. ‘And Mr Meyer can prove it.’

  ‘Are you sure, Cannon?’ Lady Redesdale was looking at Louisa with an ice-cold stare. ‘You have brought murder to our door before and this is not reassuring me.’

  ‘Lady Redesdale, I know how it must look. But please believe me, I don’t invite these elements into my life. It’s simply that they happen and I cannot help but look into the solution.’

 
Lady Redesdale merely raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I think we had better telephone Luke and ask him to meet us at the police station.’ Diana stood and went into the hall, where she could be heard asking the operator to connect her to a Belgravia telephone number. Louisa, uncertain what to do with herself, said she had better go and fetch Mrs Guinness’s coat and hat.

  Less than ten minutes later, Louisa was sitting in the front passenger seat of the Bentley next to Turner, with Lady Redesdale and Mrs Guinness beside each other in the back, on their way to the Knightsbridge police station. The wipers thwacked back and forth, and Louisa was grateful for the sound of the rain pelting on the roof, drowning out the heavy silence inside the car. Diana had spoken briefly to Luke and asked him to meet them there, which, she told Louisa, he had agreed to do. Louisa had already explained that Luke had overheard a conversation between Mrs Mulloney and Miss Nancy at the dinner that would confirm Miss Nancy’s version of events. At the station, Turner pulled up outside and opened the door for Lady Redesdale, who hurried in quickly, her head bowed – managing both to avoid the rain or anyone in the street recognising her. Diana and Louisa followed close behind. In the waiting area sat both Lord Redesdale and Luke Meyer, neither of whom knew each other, hence both were surprised to find that the trio of women who came in greeted the other man.