The Mitford Murders
Page 18
‘Muv! It’s my letter.’
‘I’m perfectly aware of that. Hand it over to me, please.’
Louisa froze, unable to say anything. She knew what this meant and watched Nancy hand the letter to Lady Redesdale in slow motion. She thought: This must be how drowning feels. Guy flitted into her mind, the letter she had meant to write, and just as quickly faded away. Everything evaporated but the scene unfolding before her.
Lady Redesdale read the signature at the end first. ‘Why is Mr Lucknor writing to you?’
Nancy spoke to the Persian rug. She appeared to be focusing on a blackberry juice stain that was pretending to be a part of the pattern. ‘I don’t really know.’
Lady Redesdale turned over and read the letter from the beginning. ‘What does he mean – he’s sorry you and Miss Cannon had to leave the ball so suddenly? What ball? Louisa, you can speak up, too.’
‘Your ladyship, I’m so sorry—’
‘Muv, please don’t blame Lou-Lou; it’s not her fault, I made her do it,’ interrupted Nancy, looking directly at her mother now, all but on her knees, hands clasped in prayer.
‘Do what?’
‘Go to a ball. We went to a ball. I made Louisa come with me as my chaperone.’
‘When did this happen?’ Lady Redesdale’s expression, thought Louisa, helped her understand for the first time the phrase: ‘a face like thunder’.
‘It was the night we said we were having supper with Marjorie Murray and her godmother. They were there, and it was at the Savoy, but it was a ball. Muv, you can’t be too furious. Lou-Lou was there; I wasn’t alone.’ Nancy’s eyes were growing bigger, filling with tears. ‘Please don’t tell Farve.’
‘We are going to tell your father straight away,’ said Lady Redesdale, her voice glacial enough to cancel summer. ‘As for you, Louisa, we shall be discussing that, too. I suggest you go and talk to Nanny Blor and explain to her exactly what you’ve done. I’m very disappointed.’ There was a weary sigh. ‘Very disappointed indeed.’
She turned on her heels and walked downstairs, Nancy following close behind, looking back at Louisa and mouthing, ‘I’m so sorry.’
Shaking, Louisa went to find Nanny Blor, who she knew would be fussing over Decca and Unity, coaxing them to wear sunhats before they went into the garden.
‘Oh, there you are!’ said Nanny. ‘Do give me a hand, would you, dear? I can’t bend down low enough to tie the hats on the little mites, and they are wriggling so. Decca, darling, do be still.’
‘I don’t want it on!’ squealed Decca. ‘It looks stupid!’
‘No one’s looking at you, dear,’ said Nanny as she placed her hands on her lower back and let out a small ‘oof’.
Louisa bent down and swiftly tied the little girls’ hats on, then said to Nanny, ‘I’m so sorry, Nanny Blor, but I think I’m going to be asked to leave.’ She clenched her jaw and pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, desperate not to cry.
‘Whatever for?’ said Nanny, confusion registering on every feature of her face. Perhaps decades of reading children their bedtime stories had simplified Nanny’s emotions to a picture-book quality. If she felt it, you saw it.
‘I went with Nan—, Miss Nancy, to a ball in London that she didn’t have permission to attend.’
‘Didn’t have permission …’ Nanny repeated, stupefied. The idea of doing something not explicitly permitted by her employers was as remote to her as a man on the moon. Natural laws simply didn’t permit it.
‘Her Ladyship has just discovered it and taken Miss Nancy down to see her father. She said I had to come and tell you. Oh, Nanny, I’m so sorry.’ If she was drowning before, she’d sunk to the bottom of the seabed now.
‘Dear girl,’ said Nanny. ‘I don’t really know what to say. Oh dear, oh dear. I do hope they don’t ask you to leave. I don’t really know what I’ll do without you. And the thought of having to train someone else …’ She found a chair and sank into it, her face collapsing like a punctured beach ball. ‘But you really shouldn’t have done it. What possessed you?’
‘Miss Nancy asked me. Her friend Marjorie Murray was going and she wanted to go with her. She knew His Lordship would never give permission but said she’d go anyway. We thought at least if I was with her that would be a little less bad. And now I know that it wasn’t. And it was an awful evening anyway.’
‘Why was it so awful? Do I want to know?’ Nanny had started to recover herself.
‘I … well, I saw someone I didn’t want to see and we had to leave in a hurry,’ said Louisa, tripping over her words. ‘Please don’t let them sack me. I can’t go back home.’
Nanny looked at her sympathetically. ‘I do know something of what you’re feeling,’ she said. ‘I’ve met plenty of girls in my time who had high hopes of bettering themselves with a job in service. I should know. I made that decision myself, all those years ago. I’ll see what I can do, though I can’t make any promises. His Lordship’s ever so strict when it comes to his daughters. But come on, there, there.’
Louisa bent down into Nanny’s arms, accepting her embrace, inhaling the comforting fragrance of pear drops. She gulped her sobs down and stood up, embarrassed, feeling Decca tugging on her skirt. Unity was still standing on the rug, watching them, her hat on but untied again.
The next few days were agony for all in the house as Lord Redesdale variously shouted at the dogs for lying down in the wrong places, Ada for coming into the dining room at the wrong minute and, for quite a protracted amount of time, at a stuck needle on his gramophone player. Nancy, whom her sisters had been told not to talk to, was also completely ignored by both parents – ‘Sent to Coventry,’ as she called it, a fate far worse for her than a constant stream of fury.
Louisa tiptoed about in the nursery, hardly daring to go downstairs, so Nanny had to be the one to take the girls to the drawing room for tea, huffing and puffing her way back up.
Eventually, after three days of this, Lady Redesdale summoned both Louisa and Nancy to the morning room after breakfast. The two girls stood before her as she sat at her writing desk.
‘Louisa, His Lordship and I have decided that although this was a serious misdemeanour,’ she gave a fierce look as she said this, ‘we are under no illusions as to the persuasive powers of our eldest daughter. Also, Nanny Blor needs you. So you will stay but we will be keeping a close eye on you from now on.’
Louisa nodded. ‘Yes, my lady. I understand. Thank you.’
Lady Redesdale turned to her daughter, whose face carried a sullen pout. ‘As for you, Nancy, we have decided that it would be best if you went away to school. You will go to Hatherop Castle, an hour from here. We can only hope that they manage to teach you the good behaviour and manners required for you to get on in life, in a way that we have clearly utterly failed to do. You’ve been saying for years that you wanted to go to school. Well, now you’ve got what you wished for.’
‘But, Muv, I—’
‘Whatever it is you’re going to say, I don’t want to hear it. You will begin at Hatherop after the summer,’ said Lady Redesdale, before turning away. ‘You can both go back upstairs now.’
Louisa’s heart was still hammering from the state she had wound herself into as they’d stood before Lady Redesdale. The relief she felt that she would not, after all, be banished back to London, where her only options were a life as a washerwoman or as a—No, she wouldn’t even think the word … She was safe, for now.
For Nancy, however, whatever she was feeling, it was not relief. She wailed as they climbed the back stairs. ‘Your father and I,’ she mimicked. ‘This was all Muv’s doing, I know it! Farve would never stand for any of us to go to school – all hairy bluestockings playing hockey, he says. This is Muv. She can’t stand it that I finally have a friend in the house, so she has to send me away.’ They reached the landing and Nancy grabbed Louisa’s arms. ‘What shall I do? Roland is never going to be able to write to me there. You’ll have to write to him for me, Lou.’
‘I know,’ said Nancy, relenting at once, knowing the gravity of Louisa’s words. ‘And I need you here. So we won’t do that. I shall think of something. Oh! She’s so infuriating! It’s true that I wanted to go to school, but that was because it was such hell to be here, learning nothing, with no one to talk to. It’s not been like that since you got here.’
‘You shall have to make the best of it,’ said Louisa. Calm had at long last returned to her. ‘It won’t be for long. And I will still be here. Now, let’s go up and tell Nanny the news. She’s been in a state for days.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Mrs Windsor burst into the nursery, her face black with fury. Nanny and Louisa had just finished getting the younger girls ready to go down to the library for tea.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Windsor,’ said Nanny Blor equably, completely ignoring the sudden froideur in the room.
Mrs Windsor glared at Louisa. ‘Telephone for you,’ she said with her jaw still clenched. ‘A Mr Sullivan. Don’t let it happen again.’ She stalked out.
Louisa flushed and ran downstairs to the telephone cupboard, off the hall. Thankfully the housekeeper had gone elsewhere to work off her temper.
‘Mr Sullivan?’ Louisa whispered into the telephone. The handle felt heavy and she wasn’t entirely sure how to know if it was working.
‘Miss Cannon,’ said Guy, his voice echoing slightly, ‘I’m sorry to telephone but, well … I thought I might as well try.’
‘Try what?’ said Louisa, looking about her in case Mrs Windsor should suddenly appear like a pantomime witch. If she arrived in a room in a puff of smoke above a trapdoor it wouldn’t be in the least surprising.
‘You remember I told you about the suspect, Stuart Hobkirk? I went to look at his painting in the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy and it seems there is a gallery in London showing some more of his work. It opens in a few days’ time. Is there any chance you could come with me?’
‘Why?’ said Louisa.
Guy was taken aback. That wasn’t the question he’d been expecting. ‘I’m not supposed to be questioning him. If you were there, it might look better.’
‘You could put the blame on me, you mean?’ She shouldn’t really tease, but it was irresistible.
‘I didn’t mean it quite like that, but I suppose so. And, also …’ He hesitated, but not for too long. ‘I’d like to see you. I know it’s a long shot but I had to ask.’
Louisa could hear Guy breathing at the other end. Not for the first time, she thought what an extraordinary thing the telephone was. He was miles away.
‘We’re going to be in London for a few days soon, as it happens,’ she replied, sounding as casual as she could. ‘But I’d have to talk to Nanny Blor to get the time off.’
‘Yes, of course. I understand. But you really think you might?’
Louisa laughed. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘It’s next Thursday, in St James’s. We could meet outside Green Park station at six o’clock?’
‘I’ll do my best to be there. Goodbye, Mr Sullivan.’ Louisa hung up the telephone and wiped her hand on her skirt. It was sweaty but she told herself it was caused by nothing more than the warmth of the room.
Their stay in London was only ever intended to be a short one, largely for the purpose of buying the things Nancy needed for Hatherop Castle. She had been placated in the last few weeks by the idea of the friends she would make at the school and the new library of books she would have at her disposal. A long list of items had been drawn up to fill the trunk and Louisa was to accompany Nancy and Lord Redesdale to his favourite shop in London, the Army & Navy, where they would find everything they needed.
On the first night, Louisa and Nancy were in the kitchen, making themselves a hot chocolate to take upstairs to bed, when they heard a commotion at the front door. They peered out into the hallway and saw Lord Redesdale remonstrating with a young man in his twenties, with tousled hair and unfocused eyes. He was stumbling and slurring his words in anger.
‘It’s Bill,’ said Nancy.
‘Who’s Bill?’
‘Aunt Natty’s boy. The one who lives in France, though I think he lives here now.’
Louisa watched Lord Redesdale try to push Bill out of the front door, but he was resisting, becoming increasingly agitated. ‘I think he’s drunk,’ said Louisa. ‘We’d better leave them to it.’
The two of them crept up the back stairs to their rooms and nothing was said of it again, until some months later.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The following Thursday found Guy standing, rather nervously, outside Green Park station. The air was warm and there was a hopeful jaunt to the steps of the commuters, a feeling of summer in the air. The birds and the bees, thought Guy. After a few minutes, as he was beginning to wonder whether Louisa would show up and how long he should wait, he saw someone running down the road, her hand holding her hat down, her skirt flapping behind. She kept up the pace until she was almost beside him and he realised it was Louisa.
‘Mr Sullivan!’ she panted. ‘It’s me.’ She laughed at his squinting eyes behind his glasses, a friendly, familiar sight now.
‘Gosh, yes, so it is you,’ said Guy, and felt a wave of pleasure rush through him. ‘I’m so pleased you came.’
‘Oh, they owed me some time off, it was easy,’ said Louisa, only lying a little bit. Nancy had kicked up a fuss, wanting to come out with her, but Louisa had wanted to do this one by herself.
They walked towards St James’s, the pavements teeming with busy men hurrying along in their suits and hats despite the heat, umbrellas wielded with the self-importance of silver-topped canes. Guy started to tell her about the exhibition they were going to.
‘It’s a show of artists from St Ives in Cornwall, and he’s one of them. It’s the opening night tonight. I’m sure he’ll have to be there.’ He was a little afraid that Louisa might think he had got her out on false pretences.
‘Yes,’ said Louisa, ‘I expect you’re right. I’ve never been to an opening party before. Do I look smart enough?’ She stopped in the middle of the pavement and stood before him, inviting judgement.
Guy took in her brown eyes, rosebud mouth and slim figure in a blue cotton jacket, her narrow ankles and small feet in polished shoes that had heels to lift her just an inch. He thought she was perfect.
‘Well?’ prompted Louisa.
Guy said nothing but held out his arm for her to take and together they walked the last few hundred yards to the party.
There was already a crowd of young people gathered inside, drinking wine and chattering loudly amongst themselves. He accepted a glass for himself from a waiter, Louisa refused, and the two of them stood about trying to look as if they were meant to be there, but feeling like potatoes in a bowl of roses. Louisa was agog at some of the dresses, which seemed to be made of the tracing paper that the children used to copy pictures in Lord Redesdale’s book of Renaissance art. In the corner was a man she was sure was wearing lipstick.
After ten minutes, Louisa beckoned Guy to bend his ear towards her.
‘We’re not going to recognise Mr Hobkirk by magic,’ she whispered. ‘We had better ask someone where he is.’ She giggled and Guy hoped he wasn’t blushing.
He asked a couple standing close by and the woman, wearing a black chiffon dress with red roses printed alarmingly over her breasts, pointed the artist out for him with her long cigarette holder.
Stuart Hobkirk was a man in his fifties but looked younger. He had the appearance of someone who had spent plenty of years as a starving artist even if he was well fed now. Thick blond hair was swept off his face and his velvet jacket fitted him neatly. He was smoking, surrounded by five or six similarly dressed, rather louche types, all hanging on his every word. Guy saw he was going to have to choose his moment carefully.
Event
ually, Stuart finished his anecdote and started to walk away from the knot of fans towards a waiter. Guy stepped forwards and interrupted him just as he was exchanging his empty glass for a full one.
‘Mr Hobkirk?’ said Guy, hand outstretched.
‘Yes?’ said Stuart, with the air of a man who was summoning the patience to listen benignly to someone tell him again how marvellous he was.
‘My name is Mr Sullivan,’ said Guy, ‘from the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Police. We spoke on the telephone before, about your cousin Florence Shore.’
Stuart’s expression changed to one of displeasure. ‘I don’t think this is the time or place.’
‘Please, sir,’ said Guy, ‘just a minute of your time. I know it’s not very convenient and I apologise, but it’s important that we talk now.’
Louisa had been standing close by, choosing to remain quiet, but she smiled at Mr Hobkirk encouragingly.
‘Very well, then,’ said Stuart, stamping out his cigarette on the floor and taking a gulp of wine. ‘We’d better sit down; I can’t stand for long, as you can see.’
Guy and Louisa now noticed he held a walking stick, and as Stuart moved towards a small sofa at the side of the room, he had a distinctive limp in his left leg.
Louisa’s stomach sank. He couldn’t possibly be the man who had jumped down from the train. He couldn’t jump down from anywhere.
Guy and Stuart sat, with Louisa standing next to the sofa. She felt like a guard dog.
‘You mentioned before that you were at home alone, painting,’ said Guy.
‘Yes,’ said Stuart, clearing his throat.
‘I know you said there was no one to corroborate this but it is rather important that you try to think of someone,’ said Guy.
‘Why? Am I a suspect?’
Guy wasn’t sure how to respond to this, but his silence was all that was needed to encourage Stuart.
‘Look, the thing is, I couldn’t say anything because I was at a party. Yes, before you ask, it was during the day. It had started at the weekend and carried on.’