[Mitford Murders 03] - The Mitford Scandal

by Jessica Fellowes

  Pam, as usual, took her sister’s teasing mildly. ‘You mean John Betjeman? Dear thing, he’s just asked me again to marry him. I’ve asked for a month to think it over.’

  Nancy’s green eyes darkened. ‘What? He’s proposed twice?’

  ‘He keeps coming back to stay in spite of the ghost,’ said Diana. ‘John told Bryan if it wasn’t for Pam he’d have refused all future invitations here.’

  ‘I like it when he brings his kite down. We take it to fly on the hills,’ Pam said in reply, but it was with finality. This was not a subject she was going to discuss, and she put down her plate, having eaten a slice of fruitcake in three mouthfuls.

  There followed a short silence in which Diana concentrated hard on finding the right place for her jigsaw piece. ‘I met someone rather interesting last night,’ she announced, having clicked it in. Jonathan chortled with delight and Diana kissed him. It crossed Louisa’s mind that she saw Diana do that rather less with baby Desmond, who was in Nanny’s arms being shown the sights of the garden through the window.

  Nancy and Pam looked at Diana; Hamish looked bored.

  ‘Yes, Sir Oswald Mosley. I was put next to him at Barbara’s dinner.’

  ‘Isn’t he meant to be a frightful cad?’ said Nancy at the same time as Unity exclaimed, ‘I’ve read he’s a marvellous speaker.’

  ‘Probably both of those things,’ said Diana. ‘Though it didn’t work on me. I expect some might say he was good-looking … ’

  Just at that moment, Bryan came into the room. ‘Sorry I’m late down. I was keen to finish my thousand words for the day.’ He kissed Diana, who did not return it. ‘Nancy, darling, how lovely to see you. And you, Unity. How was your journey down? Not too troublesome, I hope.’ After this, Diana did not mention more of Mosley, nor did her sisters ask any further questions. Instead, they talked in a general way about Tom and his studies in Berlin. ‘He writes such fearfully straight letters,’ said Nancy. ‘One wonders what’s actually going on in that clever head of his.’

  ‘It’s not looking any better in Germany,’ said Bryan. He looked in Hamish’s direction as if hoping to spark off some conversation but failed to make him bite. ‘Still, I suppose his money stretches quite far there. The deutschmark is worth about two-thirds what it was in 1929.’

  ‘You liked Austria when you went there with Tom, didn’t you?’ asked Diana.

  ‘Terribly, yes, it’s a beautiful country. Marvellous hunting and everyone so well organised. But I’m not cut out for all that sturm und drang.’

  ‘I should love to go,’ said Unity. ‘But I expect Farve would rather I went to France or Italy. Only Tom was given permission to learn German.’

  The telephone rang in the hall and they heard a footman answer it. He came in and whispered to Bryan who went and took the call. ‘Who was that?’ asked Diana, as he came back into the room, before she had quite noticed that his face was ashen. ‘It was Ralph,’ he said. ‘Lytton has died.’

  Tears immediately sprang to Diana’s blue eyes. Bryan stepped towards her but she took hold of Jonathan and hugged him close. ‘Poor darling Lytton,’ she murmured, rather to the boy’s confusion, who was not in need of comforting. The sudden change in the atmosphere sent his bottom lip quivering and Louisa stood, ready to take him back to the nursery.

  ‘Lytton Strachey?’ said Nancy. ‘That is sad.’

  ‘We knew it was coming but even so, Dora will be in pieces,’ said Diana.

  Dora Carrington, the artist, thought Louisa, remembering her slight figure with the blunt, blonde bob sitting on the sofa in Venice.

  ‘Is that his wife?’ asked Unity innocently. Diana and Nancy exchanged a glance.

  ‘No,’ said Nancy in a rather worldly tone. ‘She was very much in love with him. She’s married to Ralph Partridge but everyone knew – even Ralph – how much Dora loved Lytton.’ She turned to Diana. ‘Everyone thought she’d poisoned you that first weekend you went to stay at Ham Spray House because Lytton was so taken by you.’

  ‘With her famous rabbit pie,’ agreed Diana. ‘She shoots the rabbits herself. I was terribly sick and so horribly embarrassed. I’m sure she was nothing to do with it because she was so sweet to me the whole time. Poor Dora.’ Diana held Jonathan out to Louisa. ‘I think the boys had better go back up.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Louisa, reaching out to take his soft, pudgy hand.

  Poison and shot rabbits. Sometimes she thought she would never understand the inner lives of the people she worked for.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Mary Moon jumped at the chance to help Guy with his inquiries. A policewoman, Lilian Wyles, had recently been promoted to chief inspector, though not in Guy’s office. ‘It makes me think that perhaps it’s not completely hopeless,’ said Mary to Guy. ‘I hear she’s only doing cases with women victims but it’s surely a signal that they’re willing to take us more seriously? I have to show them what I can do.’

  ‘Yes, let’s hope this can help,’ said Guy, knowing what he’d heard the men say about Wyles’s appointment; it hadn’t been complimentary to either her skills or her looks, and there was a general agreement that it had been a way of paying lip service to the ‘difficult and demanding’ Lady Astor, MP. But he was pleased to have Mary to help him. First of all, they needed to interview Gloria Holmes.

  Gloria had given her address to the inquest, a shabby street in the East End and easy enough to find. Guy took Mary with him on the basis that a strange man turning up on a woman’s doorstep in the evening – he had to do it outside his working hours, seeing as there wasn’t officially a case to be investigated – would be better done with a woman at his side. As luck would have it, Gloria was in when they knocked on the door. As was her entire family, all gathered in the front room, each one as rotund as the last: mother, father, two brothers, a younger sister and a baby. Guy was unclear on whose baby it was, as it was passed gurgling happily from arm to arm. Eventually, Guy managed to persuade them to leave and allow him and Mary to interview Gloria alone, which, with a great deal of grumbling, they did. The sound of them all squeezing into the kitchen was hilariously audible and there was no doubt they were listening in: every question Guy asked was answered with a brief hubbub of murmurs from behind the door.

  Gloria confirmed the facts as she had stated them at the inquest, without any deviation. ‘How was her mood when Mrs Mulloney returned in the afternoon?’ asked Guy.

  ‘I don’t know,’ answered Gloria. ‘She went straight up to her bedroom and I didn’t see her again.’

  ‘You stated that you prepared her a light supper. Could you tell us what it was, please?’

  ‘Some cold chicken with mayonnaise and a slice of buttered bread, sir.’

  ‘Did you leave her a drink?’

  ‘She asked me to uncork a bottle of red wine and leave it in the drawing room with two glasses and her tray.’

  Guy wrote this down. ‘And did you see her when you left at six o’clock?’

  ‘No, sir. She was upstairs in her bedroom. I called out that I was going and that I’d be back next morning.’

  ‘Had she been affected by her husband’s death the year before?’

  Gloria’s plump cheeks were sucked in. ‘I don’t know, sir. I never heard her cry or nothing.’

  Guy looked down at his notes and Mary jumped in. ‘Were you surprised by that, Gloria?’

  ‘No, miss.’

  ‘Can you tell us why?’ urged Mary. ‘You worked for them for seven years. You must have got to know them pretty well.’ Gloria squirmed in her chair and the murmurs were even louder than before. ‘Mr and Mrs Mulloney weren’t like any married couple I know. They went out together every night but they rowed something awful at home. You never heard the likes of it. Most mornings I was clearing up broken glass. Even in the day, there’d be terrible shouting. Made me want to hide, it did. I tried to leave but Mr Mulloney … well, he always managed to talk me round.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Mary thought she saw something in
Gloria’s face that demanded further questioning.

  Gloria lowered her voice. ‘He could sweet talk me, could Mr Mulloney.’

  ‘Did he make a pass at you?’

  But this was too much for Gloria, with her entire family’s set of ears pressed to the door. She shook her head and wouldn’t say any more.

  Guy and Mary tried to press her further but the interview had come to an end, and they politely thanked her and excused themselves.

  Out on the street, Mary and Guy walked back to the underground station. ‘Do you think she was having an affair with Mr Mulloney?’

  ‘I couldn’t be certain,’ said Guy. ‘She can’t be ruled out as a suspect because she prepared Mrs Mulloney’s supper and opened the wine. There was a chance for her there to poison the drink easily enough but she lacks the motivation. I don’t think she was very fond of Mrs Mulloney but I can’t see her as a murderer. There was one clue there though.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘She said Mrs Mulloney asked her to leave a tray with two glasses. Either she had someone in the bedroom with her, unbeknownst to Gloria, or she was expecting someone to arrive that evening. We need to find out who that someone was.’

  Mary pulled her hat down a little further against the chafing wind. ‘There’s nothing in the inquest that says anyone arrived that evening?’

  ‘No, apart from Louisa and me, when we discovered the body.’

  ‘Did she see anyone else that day?’

  ‘Yes, I found her appointment book which said that she was due to meet “R” at Chez Franco’s at one o’clock.’

  ‘But you don’t know who this “R” is. Did anyone check through her address book?’

  ‘No,’ said Guy. ‘You have to remember, this wasn’t a murder inquiry. It was merely confirmation of her suicide. After all, she was discovered with a note and an apparently self-inflicted shot to the heart. There was no need to spend police time on it.’

  ‘But there is now,’ said Mary as they walked into the station, each to take their own trains home.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The following morning, Guy plucked up the courage to telephone 10 Buckingham Street. An old maid answered and though she sounded surprised at the request, said she would fetch Miss Cannon.

  Guy heard the click as the telephone was picked up again and his mouth went dry.

  ‘Mr Sullivan?’

  ‘Louisa,’ said Guy, using her first name as if he could jolt her back into intimacy. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you at work.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said. There was a silence. ‘What can I do to help you?’

  ‘Could we possibly meet? I’m investigating something and I think you could help.’

  Louisa sighed. ‘I don’t know … I probably can’t.’

  ‘Please, Louisa. I’ll come anywhere, any time.’

  The hesitation was brief enough to give him hope. ‘Come to Jimmy’s Café this afternoon at half past five. It’s in Lexington Street, close to here. I should be able to get away then.’

  ‘Thank you. I do appreciate it.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’ The line went dead.

  At five o’clock, Louisa walked into Jimmy’s Café. She had had a few rather upsetting days. Diana and Bryan had come to London for Lytton Strachey’s funeral, and this had meant a lot of people dressed in black coming through the house at various hours, all of them – it seemed to Louisa – competing with each other as to who was the most affected by his death. There were histrionic tears, long speeches, and no drink could be drunk unless it was downed in one gulp. One woman had lain on the sofa for three hours refusing to move in her ‘stupor of grief’, though she had miraculously recovered when there was a proposal for everyone to go and have dinner at the Ritz, ‘because Lytton would have wanted it’. Louisa tried not to pass judgement on how other people felt things but she found herself losing patience with the false emotions of the Guinness’s sillier friends. Diana’s grief was genuine, she knew that, and her quiet tears in the bath had made Louisa feel much more pity than anything else. In this rather exasperated and worn out mood, she went to meet Guy.

  He was sitting there already, waiting for her. Of course he was. Guy was nothing if not unfailingly polite and punctual. She had braced herself before seeing him but was pleasantly surprised that her chief feeling was one of comfort. The sight of Guy was like looking at a familiar and much-loved painting on the wall. It couldn’t be anything other than restful and pleasing, no matter what one’s mood had been in the moments previously.

  Guy stood as she approached the table and waited until she had sat down before he did so himself. She removed her gloves and put her bag beside her. It had been two years since they had seen each other. She was sure she must look older, though he looked only the better for the seriousness the lines around his eyes gave him.

  ‘How are you, Guy?’ she said and she knew he was relieved to hear her address him by his first name.

  ‘Very well, thank you,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine. There was a funeral yesterday, of one of Mrs Guinness’s good friends, so things have been quite tense in the house. It’s good to get out.’

  A waitress came up and they ordered a pot of tea.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Whose funeral was it?’

  ‘Lytton Strachey. He was quite a famous writer.’

  ‘You move in elevated circles,’ smiled Guy.

  ‘Not me,’ Louisa reminded him, ‘the people I work for.’

  She was ridiculously embarrassed that there was neither engagement nor wedding ring on her finger. Nor on his, but men often didn’t wear one.

  ‘I may as well come straight to the point,’ said Guy. ‘I wanted to see you because I’m investigating the death of Kate Mulloney. You were with me when her body was found, I wanted to know if there was anything about that time you remembered. Perhaps it didn’t seem significant at the time but it might now.’

  This was a shock to hear. ‘I don’t understand. Didn’t the inquest conclude it was a suicide? It was pretty clear to us that that’s what it was.’ The sight of that lifeless body was not one Louisa had forgotten.

  ‘I know, but too many things about it aren’t right. I can’t get it out of my head.’

  She wondered, briefly, hopefully, if he couldn’t get her out of his head either. Might that be the real reason he had contacted her?

  Louisa leaned forward just as the waitress set down their tea things. ‘What things?’

  By the time Guy had finished outlining his suspicions, as well as the interview with Gloria, it was as if he and Louisa hadn’t spent more than a day apart in the last two years. He had also confessed that this was not an official case, only something he was doing in his own time. She had teased him then: ‘You have a habit of that. Perhaps you ought to leave the force and set up a detective agency.’

  He gave her a look that indicated he might have thought of that once himself, and they had both smiled at each other then in a way that forced Louisa to turn aside. Both their shared understanding and the long time they had known each other ran deep. If she swam in those waters alone she would drown.

  ‘In short, there are several things you need to know,’ she summed up, bringing herself back to the surface. ‘You need to find out who the “R” was that Mrs Mulloney met for luncheon that day, in case that person saw something in her mood or perhaps even was the one returning to her that night.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Guy. ‘In police parlance, we need to eliminate that person from our inquiries.’

  ‘Right. Then you need to find out who she was expecting to see that evening, and if anyone turned up. Did the inquest have any statement from the police about whether both those glasses of wine had been drunk?’

  ‘No, but I could probably find out which officer wrote down all the details and find out. Hopefully they would remember.’

  ‘If Mrs Mulloney didn’t commit suicide, but was murdered, that would mean the note confessing to the d
eaths of Shaun and Clara was faked. Have you checked her handwriting from the appointment book against the note?’

  Louisa was quick off the mark here, he said. Yes, the handwriting matched, or was close enough to his eye. But the note was short and it wouldn’t have been too difficult to imitate the penmanship.

  ‘I still don’t see why a murderer would bother to go to that trouble.’

  ‘Well,’ said Guy, ‘we know that Clara Fischer was murdered because of the opium – that she didn’t have – found in her body. Given the affair she had with Mrs Mulloney’s husband, that leads us to the possibility that Mr Mulloney was targeted too. If the suicide and the note were faked, then we have someone deliberately trying to throw us off their scent.’

  ‘And that person could be “R”,’ said Louisa. She had drunk all her tea and had to get back to the house as Diana would be dressing for dinner soon. But she didn’t want to drop this. She was enjoying being in Guy’s company, enjoying using her brain. ‘I think we need to retrace Shaun Mulloney’s steps in Paris first. It’s entirely possible that his death was down to the sesame allergy and nothing more sinister than that.’

  ‘Without exhuming the body, we won’t know for certain. It just seems somewhat unlikely that he would have ordered any food at the restaurant that contained sesame.’

  ‘Unless it was something that didn’t usually contain that ingredient. A French recipe and he hadn’t realized.’

  ‘Don’t you think that if you had such a serious allergy you would be careful?’ asked Guy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Louisa, ‘but I’ve seen those people. They drink too much and they’re careless. They’re rich and young and they believe themselves to be invincible.’

  ‘You’re probably right about that. Can you remember anything else about that evening? About what happened when they returned from the restaurant? Were you there?’

  ‘I saw Diana and assisted her as she prepared for bed. They had returned at midnight and I remember thinking she had drunk rather more than she usually did. Mr Guinness, Mr and Mrs Mulloney went to the drawing room and I believe they carried on drinking there; I didn’t see them, though I heard them a little. They played some records on the gramophone player.’