On this particular night, Diana had gone to Barbara St John Hutchinson’s twenty-first birthday party. Louisa knew that whatever was happening in the world that day – The Times had run another story on the rising unemployment figures across Europe – Diana would have been served champagne and oysters, fine steak and chocolate cake. (Luke had told Louisa this was the fashionable menu and that even he had become ‘heartily sick of oysters’.) Louisa and Luke had remained friends, bonded even more closely after Kate’s body had been discovered with the note confessing to the murders of Shaun and Clara. It had been a relatively neat ending to a messy time, and she had been grateful that at least there were no children left behind by the tragic Mulloneys. The three dead – Clara, Shaun and Kate – had been young and indulgent when alive, seen now as relics of the Bright Young Things that had since become outmoded: the mood of the newspapers had been that they had more or less deserved what had happened to them, Luke’s voice amongst them. He had graduated at last to writing full-length articles, though they were mainly about the interior designs of the rich and infamous. His frustrations were still apparent, but it nonetheless niggled Louisa now and then that Luke had done so well out of others’ misery.
Louisa got up to wash her cup and as she did so the bell rang indicating that Diana was home and back in her room. ‘Good night, May,’ said Louisa and went up the stairs in a reasonably peaceful mood. Diana was sitting at her dressing table, already wiping off her make-up with cold cream and cotton wool. Louisa came up behind her and pulled out the hair pins before she started to brush her mistress’s short golden hair. ‘How were the boys tonight?’ asked Diana.
‘Good little things as always,’ said Louisa. She really did love them.
‘Desmond doesn’t sleep as well as Jonathan did at that age.’
‘Maybe not but Nanny gave him his milk and he seemed to go off without much fuss. Nanny let me read Jonathan a story at bedtime. You know how he loves Winnie-the-Pooh.’
‘I am glad,’ said Diana. She was alone tonight, Bryan having opted to stay at Biddesden; Louisa believed he was attempting to write another novel, though he never attained anything like the success of his friends.
Her hair brushed, Diana stood and as Louisa was unbuttoning her dress at the back – a slightly complicated concoction of a column of tiny pearl buttons that ran from nape to waist – she asked if there had been anybody interesting there that night. It was their usual conversation. ‘Not especially,’ said Diana. ‘I spent most of the evening talking to Victor Rothschild. On my other side, Barbara put me next to a man you might have read about in the newspapers, Sir Oswald Mosley.’
‘The politician?’
‘Yes, he used to be quite high up in the Labour Party, practically PM-in-waiting, then he resigned and left to form his own – the New Party. Now he sits behind the Tories. I told him I was a Lloyd George Liberal and I don’t think he was terribly impressed. One’s heard all sorts of scandalous rumours about him.’
Louisa was careful not to press on this. She had learned that a servant was better protected not stirring up gossip with their masters; although, it almost went without saying, there was an underground grapevine that rivalled anything Luke’s former column could have ever dug up. Occasionally, when they stayed in other houses, Louisa would pick up stories from the other lady’s maids she was seated beside in the servants’ hall for their supper. She’d heard of this Oswald Mosley, too, and not from the newspapers, but wasn’t going to say anything now.
‘He’s married to a very sweet little mouse, Cimmie Curzon. She was there tonight, too. Everyone says he’s a lady-killer who has torrid affairs with just about any woman who crosses his path.’
‘Better be careful then, ma’am.’
Diana dismissed this. ‘No danger there, I promise you. He is rather dark and good-looking, I suppose, but his magic didn’t work on me. He told me that he’d spotted me in Venice and at a ball last summer but he could easily have made that up.’
‘It’s possible.’ Louisa took Diana’s clothes and went to the dressing room next door to hang them up, while Diana took her underclothes off and slipped her nightdress on. ‘Would you like some milk tonight?’
‘No, thank you, Lou-Lou. I’m going to go right off to sleep now. You know, Sir Oswald said he had some very certain ideas about how to fix things. He says he knows how to cure unemployment.’
‘I see. Good night, ma’am.’
Louisa closed the door with the feeling that something was scratching at her below the skin, a niggling discomfort that something had got in that would not now leave them alone. A portent that the settled routine of the household was soon to be fatally disrupted. She was right.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Guy and Sinéad sat opposite each other in the Lyons’ Corner House on the Strand. It had become something of a ritual every Tuesday evening. In fact, they had done this now for so long that they had forgotten the routine had begun as a treat. Sinéad was fond of the café, a place which she felt was smart enough to impress but not so much as to be overwhelming. Guy had once tried to take her to the restaurant at Fortnum & Mason and she had been so nervous that she had spilt milk all over her lap, which had made her embarrassed and cross. In her temper, she had stood up to leave and then knocked her full cup of tea all over the table. It had taken her about a week to forgive Guy for that.
On this particular Tuesday, the waitress brought over their regular order – one pot of tea, two cups, lamb stew with mashed potatoes for Guy and cold ham pie for Sinéad – and they sat silently as she clinked the china and set out the cutlery. Sinéad’s neat brown bob was tucked behind her ears. Guy had always admired her clean, fresh look; she never had a loose button or stray thread, her stockings were diligently mended, her shoes carefully polished. She was proud and capable, and she would make any man a wonderful wife. But his? Guy was no longer as certain as he had been.
Guy poured the milk into Sinéad’s cup and his, then picked up the teapot as she was digging around in her leather handbag. Guy knew she polished it with care every Sunday night. ‘I got a letter this morning,’ said Sinéad.
‘Oh?’ said Guy. Sinéad received letters, several of them, most days. How she found the time to write back he never knew but there seemed to be about nine different ongoing, constant conversations that she was having with her family back and forth over the water.
‘It’s from Mam. She’s not well.’
Guy finished pouring the tea and set the pot down. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Does she say what the matter is?’
‘No, she never would. She says it isn’t much but I know her, she won’t complain. She says it’s just a funny thing with her heart, it skips a beat now and then. Makes her out of puff and she can’t walk from the house to the end of the road without wanting to sit down for a rest and—’ Sinéad burst into tears.
Guy put his hand out across the table, trying to reach for hers, but she waved him off and dug in her handbag again until she had retrieved a white handkerchief. Perfectly ironed, of course, with a shamrock embroidered in the corner.
‘I’m sorry,’ she sniffled. ‘It’s just that I know Mam. She’s saying it’s nothing but that’s only because she won’t want me to worry. But she’s all on her own and I can’t help but worry.’
Guy was puzzled by this. ‘I thought your four sisters were still back home.’
‘Oh, Mary’s busy with the church, every day up there and cleaning it and arranging the flowers. Clodagh is pregnant with her third, Bridget is working in the shop and Susan is useless. She does nothing of any help. I’m the only one that Mam can rely on and I’m all the way over here.’ She looked at Guy pitifully.
‘Why don’t you go back home for a bit, then. Aren’t you due some holiday from work?’
‘Yes, but … ’ Sinéad had dried her eyes now and blown her nose. Her cheeks were flushed red but she had recovered. ‘Guy,’ she said and his heart lurched. He knew what was coming. ‘I miss home. It’s not just
my mam. I can’t settle into London, like. I don’t like all the traffic, all the fast girls and everyone rushing about all the time. I miss the country, I miss the sea, I miss going to the pub and knowing everyone there. I thought I wanted the bright lights but it turns out … I don’t.’
Guy felt deep sadness at these words, because Sinéad was a good woman and she did not deserve to have less than happiness. At the same time, he felt something like a pang of hope and excitement at the change that was about to happen.
‘You want to go home for good, you mean.’
Sinéad nodded sadly. ‘I know you can’t come with me. I know you’re in love with someone else.’
This blindsided Guy. They had talked before about how he could not leave England because of his career and he had expected her to say that. He didn’t want to acknowledge what she had just said – he wasn’t even sure how true it was, he couldn’t think of it now.
‘I so wanted to marry you, Guy. I did. You’re such a nice man and, oh. Sorry.’ She had been about to start crying again but bit her lip and stopped.
‘So did I.’
Sinéad looked at the untouched pie. ‘I haven’t had a bite but I don’t think I could manage it.’
‘No,’ said Guy. ‘It doesn’t matter. Let’s get you off home. Will one of the girls be there when you get back? I don’t want you being alone.’
‘Yes, Maeve’s in tonight. Thank you, Guy. I feel awful about us but – I’m so sorry, I’m just so happy at the thought of getting back home again. Real home, I mean.’
Guy really did smile then. ‘I know. It’ll be grand.’
‘Oh, you did learn something off me then, the Irish lingo.’
‘I learned a lot. Come on, Sinéad.’ He helped her out from the table and they walked out into the cool evening air and boarded the bus together for the last time.
With the emptiness of his love life, Guy threw himself into his work, keener than ever to prove that his career was something worthwhile. Even if he did still live at home.
Alongside DI Stiles, he had been investigating a sad case involving a man shot by his wife when she had suspected him of having an affair with his secretary. The inquest was coming up shortly and Guy decided to have a preliminary chat with the pathologist on the case, a Mr Stilligoe, who worked out of St George’s Hospital, only a short walk away.
Mr Stilligoe was tall and wide with a parting in his hair that looked to have been made with a ruler and a comb. He was also, for a man who dealt daily with corpses, very jolly.
‘Ah, Sullivan, my good man. What can I do for you today?’ He leaned back in his enormous leather chair, flipping his tie as he did so. Guy explained that he had come to discuss the Jenkins case and Stilligoe started to take him through his findings, all of which aligned with Guy’s previous investigations.
‘There is one thing I find rather puzzling, however,’ said Stilligoe. ‘There was very little blood spatter from the shot.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Guy.
‘Well, he was a relatively healthy man. Forty-six years old, probably drank too much but who doesn’t, eh?’ He gave a loud guffaw. ‘You’d expect, forgive the expression, blood on the walls. It was as if his blood had started to congeal before he was shot.’
‘Sorry, sir. Could you spell it out for me?’
‘I mean to say, it looks as if he was dead before he was shot.’
Stiles and Guy discussed this intriguing theory at some length when Guy returned to the station but it was on his walk home that he suddenly realized that there was another relevant case, too. The case of Kate Mulloney.
It had been two years since she had been discovered by him and Louisa, and a brief inquest had wrapped it up: Mrs Mulloney had left a note confessing to the killings of Shaun and Clara, and had committed suicide. Together with the diary, it seemed that the case of Clara was sewn up and so, too, was Shaun’s, though the knowledge that he had been deliberately killed had been very upsetting for his parents. Her funeral had been held rapidly in Ireland and Kate’s father, patriarch of a powerful Dublin family, had ensured that the stories in the newspapers had been minimal. Guy had tried once or twice to contact them to see if he might not pursue the case of Shaun Mulloney and Kate’s part in it, but the avenues had been closed down, and the father had intimated that if Guy tried to take it further he would find his career as a policeman at an end. They did not want the scandal, having had enough to endure already, and perhaps that was understandable.
Guy remembered that there had been very little blood spatter around Kate Mulloney’s body. Could Stilligoe’s theory mean that she, too, had been dead before she had been shot? Was there a possibility that she had not died by her own hand but someone else’s?
The spanner in the works was that Kate had tried to throw Nancy into the fire, claiming that Nancy was the one who had been left alone with Clara. Why would she do that, if not to throw suspicion off her?
There was another spanner, too: who would want Kate dead? He needed to find out more about who her friends and enemies were. The case was officially closed, he had no permission to open up this particular can of worms – if indeed he was right – but it seemed like his best opportunity for recognition from his seniors, given that he had some access to the people involved. The first step, of course, would be to contact Louisa. A coincidence? Guy decided not to answer that question, even to himself.
Once Guy had retrieved the records from the court inquest, he could review who the prime witnesses and suspects in the case might be. Taken from this new angle – viewing Kate’s death as murder rather than suicide – the facts appeared rather differently. Kate’s movements that day had been given by the maid, Gloria Holmes, who worked as a daily when Mrs Mulloney was in London. It was presumably rather an undemanding job, being paid on a retainer, as she had only to be available as and when they were in town. So far as they knew, Gloria was the last person to see Mrs Mulloney alive.
Guy needed to find Gloria Holmes. And Louisa. Of course, Louisa.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The following day, Diana, Nanny Higgs, Louisa and the boys decamped back to Biddesden, a good three-hour drive out through the flats of Berkshire before the land turned soft, undulating and rural. Driving through the wrought-iron gates and seeing the house with its vines all over the front, Louisa breathed in the sensation of having returned home. It was a very pretty house, the inside made even more so by what nobody could deny were Diana’s skills with interior design. Being so young and new when she had first moved into the house on Buckingham Street, she had not had so much to do with the furnishings there, leaving it mostly up to Bryan and whatever they had been given as wedding presents. But at Biddesden, comfortable now with spending money, Diana had freely ordered heavy cream curtains for the five windows of her bedroom, together with a four-poster bed and eighteenth-century chairs covered in white and oyster damask. A gazebo was designed by an architect friend, portraits painted by further acquaintances were hung on the walls, and all those who came to stay remarked on the pretty cobalt-blue painted gates and doors of the farm buildings.
There was only one painting Diana did not dare either to change or move: a vast oil portrait of General Webb on his cavalry charger, the man who had built the house in 1711. It was said that if the painting was moved he would haunt the house by riding his horse up and down the stairs. Pam had stayed in the house for three months while her cottage on the farm was being readied for her, and after one entirely sleepless night spent with an unseen malevolent presence at the head of the bed, at Bryan’s suggestion she moved to another room, where she was left undisturbed.
Though she was down at the farm for the most part, Pam had come up to the house to welcome the party back. Louisa and Nanny Higgs took the boys off to the nursery but at teatime were summoned down to the library with them, where Louisa was happy to see that Nancy had arrived, with her fiancé, Hamish. Unity was also there, now seventeen years old and having lost her awkward manner, another be
auty in the Mitford line-up. Nancy, Unity and Pam greeted Louisa with friendly enthusiasm, though Louisa felt keenly the distance between her and Nancy. (With Pam it was less so, with her working on the farm they were somehow almost equals.) As Louisa sat with Jonathan doing a jigsaw puzzle, Diana distractedly joining them, she heard Nancy talking with delight about the success of her novel, Highland Fling.
‘It’s selling thirty copies a day,’ she was telling her sisters, ‘which is apparently a very respectable number for a debut novel.’
‘Are you going to become a fearful success?’ Diana sounded mocking.
‘I hope so,’ said Nancy, for once not rising to the bait. ‘I simply can’t take any more buses to get about. I’m practically an old woman.’
‘You’re not yet thirty,’ Hamish said.
‘You only say that to feel better about the fact that we’ve not had our wedding yet.’ Nancy said this lightly but Louisa noticed that she turned away quickly as she said it, as if to avoid Hamish’s reaction. They had now been formally engaged – a ring from Cartier had even been produced – for four years, but no date had ever been set, and in the meantime, Hamish had been sent down from Oxford for ‘dissolute behaviour’. It wasn’t looking too hopeful. Predictably, Nancy turned on Pam, a fellow old maid. Her engagement had been broken off, but though she had seemed upset by it at the time, there didn’t appear to be any urgency on Pam’s part to take up with anyone else.
‘What’s this I hear about you and the pauper poet?’ asked Nancy.
[Mitford Murders 03] - The Mitford Scandal Page 19
