The Mitford Trial

by Jessica Fellowes

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The train for Paris was leaving Victoria station at five o’clock in the afternoon. It was a Sunday, and Guy was able to come see Louisa off, but she wasn’t certain that this was necessarily a good thing, not for him. It was bittersweet to have him on the platform: nobody had ever been there for her before, nobody to leave behind that would mind her going. She wished only that her going didn’t feel so definite, even terminal, when they both knew she would be back in a few weeks. He looked terribly sad as he stood there, and she fought an impulse to run back, grab her suitcase and throw herself into his arms.

  Instead, Louisa stood on the step of the third-class carriage and beckoned him towards her. In his hat and suit – he’d worn it because he knew he’d have to shake Lady Redesdale’s hand at some point that day – he looked handsome. It was a funny thing, but since they’d married he’d become more and more good-looking in her eyes. She wondered if it was because she hadn’t allowed herself to look at him properly in that way before, or whether it was because she had traced all his contours with her fingertips and knew what lay beneath those clothes, that he could stir an excitement in her. She knew how much he loved her and that made her feel protective of him, too. He was hers, and she wasn’t about to let him forget it.

  ‘Come here, Guy,’ she whispered.

  He checked the platform. Lady Redesdale, Diana, Unity and Jessica boarded their first-class carriage further up the train. Lord Redesdale and Nancy came to wave them off but departed fairly quickly, with Nancy saying she was going to take the ‘poor old human’ off to luncheon at the Ritz so that he could drown the sorrows of his absent wife and daughters in champagne. He hadn’t looked especially sorry but had cheerfully taken his leave, muttering something about his dogs and a fishing trip when Lady Redesdale started to remind him of instructions for the servants.

  Louisa’s coat was unbuttoned and she pulled Guy closer, put his hands on her waist, then tipped her head up so he could kiss her. When they broke apart, he was smiling.

  ‘I’ll have another, please,’ she said.

  ‘The guard will blow the whistle in a second,’ he said, but he bent down once more.

  ‘I love you, Guy Sullivan. Don’t you forget it. And I’ll be coming home to you soon.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise. And you do the same. Don’t go getting distracted by any of those young policewomen, you hear?’

  He shook his head, though they both knew this was a joke. Then, his hands still firmly on her, he spoke again, a worried crease on his brow. ‘I still don’t understand why you’re doing this. Is it because you think you need us to be apart for a while? Tell me what I need to do to make things better, Louisa. I don’t think I could stand it if I lost you.’

  She took his hands and held them. The guard blew the whistle. ‘It isn’t you, Guy. It’s something I need to do. I’ll come back and I won’t be going away again. Come on, now.’

  There had been more than one conversation about this upcoming trip, in each of which she had done her best to reassure Guy, telling him that she had accepted the offer from the Mitfords because it would earn good money. In sorrow, she realised his insecurities remained.

  With seconds to go, she took an affectionately chiding tone. ‘It’s not for long.’

  The guard blew the whistle again, and this time Guy stepped back and closed the door. Louisa leaned out of the window and waved to him until steam and distance meant they could see each other no more.

  The train journey ahead was not going to be a difficult one. The carriage attendants would unpack the overnight cases. Other than helping the Mitfords change for dinner, Louisa would not lay eyes on them until they arrived in Paris the following morning. Louisa had done the journey a few times before, when she had worked as Diana’s lady’s maid during the early years of Diana’s marriage to Bryan.

  Arriving the next morning in the warm sunshine, Louisa felt heat and happiness seep into her bones. The air already carried the weight of its high temperature, as if the paving stones had been slowly cooking for weeks. Lady Redesdale and her daughters were booked in for two nights at the George Cinq hotel, with Louisa on a put-up bed in Unity’s room. Over those few days, Diana filled her suitcase with dresses she had ordered some time before and Lady Redesdale bought Unity a few token items for the cruise and checked the arrangements made for Jessica’s stay. There was an unsentimental farewell between the sisters: each, in their own way, thought Louisa, knew the thrill of the freedom that Jessica had gained, limited though it was by the instructions to go outside only with one of the rather elderly women who taught at the finishing school.

  After Paris followed their second long train journey, which took two days and two nights, the landscape speeding past the window in a blur of green and blue.

  As thrilling as the journey was, Louisa was electrified by their arrival at the dock in Venice, where the Princess Alice awaited them. Its appearance was every bit as glamorous as she hoped it would be, with rows of portholes in the gleaming white hull and two enormous funnels at the top, soon to be billowing steam. Along the top rail stood a line of smartly dressed crew in their starched uniforms. Crowds of people were there, both the passengers as they boarded, with their best hats and coats on, porters scurrying with trolleys to carry the huge cases on, and a swathe of well-wishers there to wave them all off.

  Louisa watched it all, enthralled. It was as if she had stepped into a newsreel or a Hollywood picture and none of it felt quite real. In her pocket she held a piece of paper, folded twice over, on which was written: 308 Hood House, Dolphin Square, London. All she needed now was a reason to send a telegram to that address, using the code she had been taught by Iain. She both hoped and dreaded that she would have cause to do so.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Princess Alice was one of the newest ships in the Empire Line collection and the interiors showed off much in the way of silvered trim and mirrored walls, as well as several modern conveniences of which its owners were very proud. There was an electric lift that went directly from deck C – the deck from which passengers boarded and disembarked at the ports – up to deck A at the top, where the first-class restaurant and sun deck were found. Below deck A were the first-class suites, ballroom and casino, which could be accessed only by stairs, before reaching the second- and third-class accommodation, the crew’s canteen and cabins and, the lowest level of all, the engine and boiler rooms.

  On their first night, tired from the excitement and travel, the four of them had barely taken in their new surroundings before retiring to their rooms for an early night. Diana, who had some experience of travelling at sea – ‘in yachts, quite different,’ she had crowed – advised that they all spend several hours horizontal at the start of the journey, a tip to help them find their sea legs.

  Louisa had requested that she have her own cabin, which had caused some huffing and puffing at first – most servants slept in a dressing room in their mistress’s staterooms, which gave them automatic access to the first-class entertainment and dining decks.

  ‘So much more convenient,’ Lady Redesdale had said. But Louisa had stood her ground. She knew she would need to make notes for Iain and she could not risk Unity finding her pocketbook. So she told them she was too old and too married to share a cabin, and it transpired that Lady Redesdale had the clout to ensure Louisa’s access to the first-class decks when she was with them.

  The arrangement included a telephone in Louisa’s cabin, and whenever Lady Redesdale, Diana or Unity required her help, they could call her on it and summon her to deck B, where their three suites were situated. Lady Redesdale’s cabin had an inner door that led through to Unity’s, but Diana’s was further along the passage. Even with the impending decree absolute, Bryan had insisted on paying for her passage, so hers was the only suite of the Mitford party to have a separate drawing room, with Constable imitations hanging on the walls and a balcony large enough to take breakfast outside. Not that she would: Di
ana had enjoyed her boiled egg and soldiers in bed since the first day of her married life.

  Down in deck D, Louisa’s third-class cabin was small, with no window and a bed that she had to pull down from the wall, but she was glad to have her own washbasin. She hung her clothes up carefully and put her framed photograph of Guy on a narrow shelf. It had been taken on their wedding day and he had removed his glasses for the picture, his eyes squinting slightly as he focused on the photographer. The bed linen had the well-worn sheen of hundreds of hot washes and the thin blanket was an unappealing grey colour, but the room was cool, a relief from the unfamiliar heat outside. In any case, she wasn’t planning to be in her cabin much beyond sleeping there.

  This was prescient. The next afternoon, having returned to her room after luncheon to find a comb (Unity had left hers behind), she had barely come through her door when the telephone rang, a loud, jangling noise. The operator did not wait for Louisa’s assent to take the call but merely told her it was Lady Redesdale on the line and Louisa heard the clunk as the connection was put through.

  ‘Hello? Hello?’

  ‘Yes, m’lady, it’s Louisa here.’

  ‘Oh, come up, would you?’

  The line went dead.

  Louisa walked up the flights of stairs – at least she would get fit on this trip – and opened Lady Redesdale’s cabin door after a brief knock. Inside she found her mistress and Unity standing over by the writing desk, staring at a white card. An empty envelope lay on the blotting pad.

  ‘We’ve been invited to drinks this evening by the captain,’ said Lady Redesdale. ‘It’s a bore, but I suppose we can’t refuse.’

  Unity took the card out of her mother’s hand. ‘You’ll need your tiara.’

  ‘Not unless it’s white tie, I won’t.’

  Her daughter had already lost interest in the subject of her mother’s jewels and was focusing again on the card. ‘It’s Captain Schmitt,’ she said to Louisa, as if reading the name for the first time. ‘A German captain. Do you think he’ll be very good-looking?’

  ‘That’s certainly not something for you to be thinking about,’ her mother intercepted briskly. ‘Louisa, would you go to the purser’s office and fetch my jewellery case. You’d better bring Mrs Guinness’s too. We’ll need to start dressing in half an hour now we have the wretched drinks. Unity, you can wear your yellow dress.’

  ‘I don’t know why you insisted I brought it. I look like a child in it.’

  ‘You are a child. Don’t argue with me and go and get yourself ready. If Louisa has time she can help you with your hair.’

  At seven o’clock, all three of them had left their cabins, dressed in their frocks and jewels, and Louisa had stayed behind to tidy Lady Redesdale’s cabin. Unity’s had, in a few short hours, already taken on a state of permanent disarray, just as her bedroom was at home, driving Nanny Blor to despair with scraps of paper everywhere and things always going missing. Stockings would be dropped on the floor with no thought as to who might have to pick them up, hair grips would apparently vanish into thin air, and sweeps under the bed would regularly net a haul of blunt pencils, pocket mirrors, combs, ribbons and discarded books. Louisa put away the last of Lady Redesdale’s things and put out her nightdress before she looked at her watch. Supper would not be served in the third-class canteen for another half an hour. She could tidy Unity’s room too, but something in her resisted it, and anyway, there would be a maid arriving soon to prepare the cabins for the night. Instead, Louisa thought she would attend to Diana’s cabin. It wasn’t strictly necessary either, a maid might even be there already, but Louisa could feel that folded piece of paper in her pocket as if it were a heavy stone. She gave the room a final glance and left, closing it behind her.

  She had turned towards Diana’s cabin, away from Unity’s, and perhaps it had been because her head was lowered, or perhaps the lights were dimmer in the passage, but whatever the reason, Louisa bumped heavily into a woman standing at a cabin door, jiggling at the handle.

  They both started to apologise and Louisa was about to move off when she noticed the woman was crying. She was exceptionally pretty, even with the tears streaking her mascara, with a heart-shaped face and a slight figure beneath her cream satin dress, which had a nasty red wine stain on the front.

  ‘He won’t let me in,’ she sobbed.

  Louisa didn’t like to ask who had locked the door, but she didn’t need to.

  ‘Joseph,’ said the woman, agitated now. ‘Please, don’t do this.’

  Louisa hesitated but the door remained resolutely locked.

  The woman let go of the door handle and covered her face with her hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, muffled. ‘We haven’t been introduced and this is terribly embarrassing.’

  ‘Please don’t worry,’ said Louisa, seeing at once the mistake the woman had made. ‘I’m not staying in these rooms. I’m a lady’s maid.’ The words still caught in her throat. She wanted to say: ‘Not just a lady’s maid’, but she could not.

  At this, the woman’s hands dropped down and Louisa could see the relief bloom. ‘Then you probably have a magic trick to help me with this?’ She gestured at the stain. It wasn’t large, but it was noticeable.

  ‘I’m sure there’s something we can do. Come with me.’

  They hastened along the narrow corridor, and Louisa opened Diana’s room – she had keys to all three cabins – and beckoned the woman in.

  ‘Thank you so much. I’m Mrs Fowler. What’s your name?’ Her voice carried no hint of either regional dialect or aristocratic breeding, it gave no clue as to where she had come from, only where she was now. Attractive, fashionably dressed and embarrassed.

  Louisa answered Mrs Fowler’s question, making sure she spoke soothingly as she dabbed at the stain with some white wine from the drinks’ tray in Diana’s drawing room. They adjusted a brooch to cover the worst of it, then Louisa left her in the bathroom to fix her face. In a few moments, Mrs Fowler came out and there was no trace of the distress remaining.

  ‘I can’t thank you enough,’ she said. ‘I had better return to the party now or it will be over. Whose room is this, by the way?’

  ‘Mrs Guinness,’ said Louisa, knowing the effect this would have.

  ‘Oh.’ Louisa saw the shame return to Mrs Fowler, and tears sprang to her eyes again.

  ‘Please don’t worry. I won’t say anything to her.’

  Mrs Fowler shook her head. ‘No. I couldn’t stand it.’

  ‘Truly, it’s fine.’

  ‘You’ll keep my secret?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Reassured, Mrs Fowler departed. But Louisa couldn’t help wondering whether the secret was something bigger than a stained dress and a locked door.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Left alone in Diana’s cabin, Louisa tidied the bathroom – Mrs Fowler had helped herself to the powder puff and a red lipstick – then summoned the courage to do that which she had planned before she’d met her fellow passenger in distress. She was at least safe in the knowledge that even if a maid were to come in, even Diana herself, she wouldn’t look suspicious. She had been hired, after all, to look after Diana’s wardrobe, take shoes to be cleaned and jewels to the purser’s office, where they were locked in a safe. There was nothing at all out of the ordinary about her straightening the books on her bedside table or the papers on the bureau. But still Louisa’s heart hammered like a woodpecker the whole time. She may not have been guilty of anything underhand – yet – but she wasn’t convinced she looked innocent. Her cheeks felt hot enough to fry eggs. Nor was she even sure what she was looking for. Iain had said they were interested in any relationships Diana might be forming with European fascists, but the more Louisa considered this, the more ridiculous it seemed. Sir Oswald Mosley had met Mussolini, she knew, but Diana hadn’t.

  She opened a drawer in the bedside table and saw there were a sheaf of letters bound with a red ribbon. Louisa recognised the handwriting: she had come to dread the arrival
of these letters when she had been a lady’s maid to Diana only the year before. Diana sat next to Mosley at a dinner party at the beginning of 1932, eighteen months ago, and it wasn’t long before it was clear to anyone close to her – if not, sadly, to her own husband Bryan – that she had developed a full-blown crush on him. Louisa was sure things were kept above board and proper for several months, but there had been lots of notes and hastily arranged meetings, apparent coincidences when they had both turned up at the same party. Increasingly, Diana chose to stay in London rather than accompany Bryan to their country house at the weekends. That was when Louisa noticed the repetition of a certain handwriting on the envelope, and how its arrival on the breakfast tray signalled a change of plans by Diana, a different party that she was going to attend. She’d be late home on those evenings, full of unstoppable admiration for ‘Sir O’ and his ideas that were going to save Britain from the quagmire of the Depression. Barely six months after Diana met him, she was calling him ‘the Leader,’ and six months after that she had left Bryan.

  Looking about her first, Louisa took the letters out of the drawer. She couldn’t hear anything, but then everything in the cabin was deadened by the thick carpet, and the passage outside was carpeted too. She considered standing by the door of the cabin so that she could quickly be alerted if anyone arrived, but she wasn’t sure she could dash across the room to put the letters back and close the drawer by the time the handle had stopped turning. What if she took one out and read that first?

  Since Louisa had first come into the room, the sun had set and now it was almost completely dark outside. She realised she was standing in a room with almost no light, and that would look suspicious. Holding one letter, she put the others back in the drawer, then went around the bedroom and the drawing room, turning on the lights. She was steady on her feet and had been surprised at how little one was aware of the fact that they were sailing at sea but for intermittent rolls that gave Louisa the same sensation as a lift just before it stopped, a mild feeling of one’s stomach arriving later than the rest of the body. What with that, her heart on overdrive, the heat and the stuffy atmosphere, Louisa felt nauseous, and when she looked down at the letter she saw that her sweaty hands had smudged the ink. She was standing in the middle of the drawing room wondering what the hell she was going to do about it when she heard the main cabin door close with a heavy clunk. There was a short hallway and whoever it was would emerge in a few seconds. Quickly, she stuffed the letter into her pocket and bent down over the coffee table, as if she were rearranging the large books on it.