The Mitford Trial

by Jessica Fellowes

  ‘Where is Mrs Fowler?’ asked Louisa. ‘Do you know her part in this, if any?’

  ‘No.’ Guy cast his eyes in the direction of the other door. ‘She’s in the bedroom and she’s not in a good way.’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t think she is.’ Louisa started to move through the room slowly, as if avoiding cracks in a pavement.

  ‘Have you been in here before?’ asked Guy.

  ‘For less than a minute. I happened to bump into Mrs Fowler earlier this evening and brought her back here, but she dismissed me as soon as we got here.’

  ‘Why didn’t you mention this?’

  ‘There hasn’t been a moment, has there? It’s not as if I knew it would be important and you were asleep when I got into bed.’

  Guy couldn’t argue against this. ‘Tell me: when you saw her, what was her mood?’

  ‘She was upset. She’d had a row with Mr Fowler and she wasn’t very clear, but she seemed to suggest that he wanted her to do something awful…’ Louisa trailed off, embarrassed to spell it out.

  ‘To do what exactly?’

  ‘To go to bed with the man he owed money to, to clear the debt somehow. She didn’t want to do it.’

  ‘I should hope not,’ said Guy, eyebrows raised.

  Louisa gave him a world-weary look. ‘It happens. I got the feeling it wasn’t because she was morally against the idea, though I suppose it could have been. I think it was more to do with her affair with Jim.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Guy, ‘there was that fight in the bar earlier. Perhaps it continued later and got out of hand?’

  Before they could discuss it any further, there was a timid knock at the door and Logan came in.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Come in. What’s the report?’

  ‘The doctor says it’s not looking good, sir. He’s lost a lot of blood and they can’t see him regaining consciousness. It’s a matter of hours, he says.’

  Guy ran his hands through his hair. ‘Right. Would you mind staying by the entrance? If anyone wants to come in, ask me first.’ Guy turned to Louisa. ‘In short, then, in a few hours it’s a murder inquiry.’

  ‘Oh God.’ She looked unsteady and he put his arm around her shoulders. ‘He wasn’t a nice man, I don’t think, but I wouldn’t have wished this ending on him. They have a son, a six-year-old boy. I think there’s another boy, too, from her previous marriage. What will happen to them?’

  ‘I don’t know, but perhaps those boys are the reason we need to find out the truth.’

  ‘We?’

  Guy kissed her on the cheek. ‘Force of habit. But as we’re both here, I don’t see why not? I’d like you to assist me, if you can. You see things I miss. We could be unbeatable together, don’t you think?’

  She gave a small smile, but she cast her eyes away as she did so.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  An hour later, Louisa was curled up on the sofa fast asleep, the pillow that had been intended for Joseph Fowler under her head. It was four o’clock in the morning, and though the ship’s interior was warm, Guy felt a cold shiver run through him, a combination of tiredness and the expenditure of nervous energy that had been propelling him for the last few hours. His stomach rumbled; supper seemed like a long time ago and breakfast even further away. If he could have a cup of hot coffee he could keep going easily. Not much chance of that, somehow. He’d searched for the mallet all over the sitting room, not that there were many places to look: under the sofa, in the drinks cabinet, behind some books on a shelf. Then he had tried the hall, such as it was, with its coats hanging up and a couple of cupboards for shoes. Finally, he had looked in the bathroom again, but that had yielded nothing of interest beyond Joseph Fowler’s sock garters and Ella’s numerous face creams. (Though the jacket and waistcoat were still sopping wet – why had they been rinsed out in the bathroom and not sent to the laundry?) If the confession about the mallet was true – it struck him as an odd thing for Ella to have had to hand; he needed to find out where it had come from – it must have been thrown overboard. He made detailed notes about the position of the furniture, the blood spatter, the damp patch, the spilled drink. He tried to imagine all the different questions DCI Stiles would ask about the situation and answer them as comprehensively as possible. There was someone – Guy was uncertain of his rank – keeping guard outside, and the maid was asleep in the chair beside Mrs Fowler, who was also sleeping, but fitfully, judging from the jerks of her body he’d seen when he’d put his head around the door. If she was the person who had attacked her husband, he didn’t think she’d be doing the same to anyone else tonight. Perhaps he should rouse Louisa and get them back to the cabin: a couple of hours’ kip might be in good order.

  It wasn’t to be.

  Logan came in, his young and handsome face rubbed away by the ordeal of the night. ‘Sir, can you come with me? Something’s happened that I think might concern you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s a report of a man … It’s someone who appears to be hiding in a place they shouldn’t be. Given the events of tonight, I thought—’

  ‘You thought right, Mr Logan. Thank you.’

  Throwing a worried look at Louisa, Guy decided it was best to let her carry on sleeping – with luck she wouldn’t wake before his return – and closed the cabin door firmly behind them.

  In the dead of night, the ship was eerily quiet and calm. Logan led Guy hastily along the carpeted passage that seemed to stretch on for miles. Guy had spent some time looking for Louisa when he had arrived the day before – could it be only twelve hours he had been on this ship? – but he had the distinct feeling that he had barely scratched the surface of what was there. It felt, to him, as large as the Titanic, though he hardly dared think the name, let alone say it out loud, like actors superstitiously never saying ‘Macbeth’ backstage. But the solidity of it, the vastness of it, the semi-conscious knowledge that there were ballrooms, luggage rooms, boiler rooms, kitchens, mess rooms, a smoking room, tennis courts, hundreds of guests and even more staff, all somehow floating, even sailing through miles and miles of deep, freezing water with land not even a speck in the distance … it was difficult to comprehend.

  Even as Guy had been thinking all this, Logan had maintained his fast pace, and now they were walking down several flights of stairs, with Guy picturing large sharks with gleaming white teeth on the other side of the metal hull. Eventually they reached what felt like the bottom. It was dark and noisy with the sound of clanking engines and hissing steam. There were workers visible, though not many – they had barely seen a soul on the way down – and they looked dirty, sweat patches on their backs and fronts, wide black trousers with grease stains, their hair slicked back.

  ‘Is he in here?’ Guy said, then realised he had to shout. He repeated himself more loudly.

  ‘We think so – noises were heard,’ Logan shouted back. Then he stopped and leaned in more closely to Guy, in order to talk at a more normal volume. ‘We find stowaways in here sometimes. Someone reported a person they couldn’t identify.’

  ‘Vulnerable?’

  Logan had started to move away. He leaned back. ‘What?’

  ‘You said they were hiding somewhere they shouldn’t be?’

  ‘Yes,’ Logan agreed. ‘It’s dangerous in here. You’ve got to know where you can go safely. Only a selected few know about this place.’ He said, with emphasis: ‘It’s not somewhere to chase a man.’

  ‘Right. I understand,’ said Guy. He felt exposed too, like a soft-shell crab. ‘Is there someone who can help us?’

  Logan didn’t reply to this. He had picked up his fast pace again and Guy knew that too much time had been lost already. They were winding their way through tight spaces, between hissing metal pipes and containers that were piled and twisted around them like sleeping dragons, until they reached a darker, cooler corner. Guy tried not to think about the fact that if the boat sank, they’d be the first to drown, nor did he have any idea how to find the stairs
back out of there.

  Logan stopped and a man came out of the shadows. Guy’s eyes, poor at the best of times, adjusted slowly as he tried to make out more than what appeared at first to be all sinewy, shining muscles and skin. The man said nothing but indicated they should follow him. He disappeared into the darkness but in less than a second had opened a door, revealing light, and gone through it.

  Guy followed behind Logan and found they were in what looked like a narrow passage, dimly lit, with another door at the far end. He couldn’t tell if it was locked or not, but it looked solid and most definitely shut. It was warm but not oppressively hot, and when he turned slightly to the right, Guy realised that what he had at first taken to be a wall was metal shelving that held boxes of various shapes and sizes, each one with a large number painted on the side.

  ‘The ship’s toolkits,’ said Logan quietly.

  There was a vertical gap in the middle of the metal shelving and Guy saw that the wall was several yards further back. They heard a scrape of metal and they all looked at each other.

  ‘Hello,’ Guy called out, trying to keep his voice light and friendly. As if anyone hiding behind several metal boxes in the depths of an enormous ship’s boiler room was playing a child’s game, waiting to be found so they could all go and eat ice-cream afterwards.

  ‘You need to come forward. You’re not in any trouble.’ Yet. ‘We think you might be able to help us.’

  There was no sound. Guy had identified the thing of which they had to be afraid: in those toolboxes could be found any number of potentially fatal weapons. If the man hiding here had been the same one who attacked Joseph Fowler earlier, leaving him for dead, who was to say what he might do to anyone else, or even himself, if cornered, with a rope-cutting knife or a thick iron spanner in his hand. Guy was trying desperately to size the situation up and take control when there was an almighty crash, and something heavy fell on him. There was a sharp pain on the side of his head, then nothing.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  When Louisa woke in the Fowlers’ cabin it took a second or two to remember where she was. She had fallen fast into a deep sleep and coming out of it made her briefly dizzy. Someone had turned off the overhead light, but the large lamp on the console table was on and she winced at its brightness. Slowly, Louisa wiped her face with her hands, catching a small gathering of spit at the corner of her mouth, smoothed her hair down and pulled out her dress, which had wrinkled and bunched around her thighs. There was the heavy silence in the cabin that had almost become familiar, the weight of noiseless air and dense water that surrounded the ship. She looked at her watch: it was almost five o’clock in the morning. The sun had not risen yet, but it wouldn’t be long. Where had Guy gone to?

  She wondered if she ought to tell Iain somehow about what had happened last night. It wasn’t connected to Diana or Unity as far as she knew, but she felt confused as to whether she was supposed to tell him only about them or anything that could potentially be of significance. She ought to tell him about Unity and Wolfgang, though. He was an SS officer, wasn’t he? Louisa exhaled loudly and sat up straighter, as if she had been startled by the sound. Oh, where was Guy? She had a vague feeling that she shouldn’t leave the cabin, but remain as a sort of guard. On the other hand, she didn’t want to stay.

  A tiny sound came from beyond the wall behind her and reminded Louisa that Ella Fowler was in the bedroom. This was her opportunity to look closely. She might see something that Guy had missed. There had been a lot of people in here, he’d said – they may not have realised that it was a crime scene that needed to be protected. Things might have been unwittingly moved or brushed aside. At the thought of this task, all of Louisa’s senses simultaneously sharpened. She tasted the bitter dryness of her mouth, absorbed the light and shade of the room, smelled the vase of lilies in the corner and heard the thick silence. She ran her hand over the stiff linen covering on the sofa and pushed herself up to standing. As quietly and efficiently as she could, she scanned every inch of the room, then went down on her knees to look underneath the sofa, revealing only an abandoned cocktail stick and a used tissue. The paintings on the wall did not conceal secret cupboards and the mirror definitely only worked one way. She started to feel foolish, as if she had thought herself in real life and realised it was only a set with props. Even the books on the shelves were artfully placed, with titles that didn’t go together and that no one would ever read: Great Golf Courses of Germany and The Flora and Fauna of Mallorca. One cupboard didn’t open and only after a minute or two did she realise it wasn’t locked but had a fake door – there were no hinges.

  She tried to take note of the things that were real. The impressions on the armchair that showed where Mr Fowler had been sitting when he was attacked. The damp, dark red patch on the carpet, looking more like paintwork in a farmyard. There were fashion magazines on a low table that had been scattered and an upset glass.

  All the while, the dawn slowly started to crack on the horizon, the light gradually fading up through the gap in the curtains that shielded the French windows to the balcony. Why was there a gap in the curtains? Louisa knew they would have been closed for the night by the maid who came to prepare the room for the evening. If either Ella or Joseph had wanted to go onto the balcony to take in the sea air, they would have opened them wide, then closed them when they came back in. The narrow open strip puzzled Louisa and she stared at it as the sun’s cool morning rays turned the sky from dark violet to pink and orange. The handle for the door was visible in the gap and Louisa knew the French windows opened from the middle, but they slid to the side rather than opening out. There were shutters on the outside but Louisa had registered that the maid never closed the ones for either Lady Redesdale or Mrs Guinness. Perhaps they were only intended for use during storms.

  Louisa stepped towards the glass and looked through it to the narrow balcony outside, but it was empty bar a small table and two chairs. She jumped, startled, when the door behind her opened abruptly and she heard someone walking in. She turned around and knew she looked guilty, as if she had seen something she shouldn’t have, but the young man before her did not seem to notice.

  ‘Miss,’ he said, ‘I’ve been sent to fetch you and send you down to the sick bay. It’s your husband.’

  Fear tipped over her like a bucket of cold water. ‘What do you mean? What’s happened?’

  The cabin steward, innocent in his pressed white uniform, looked afraid. ‘I don’t know, miss, sorry. I’ve been told to find you and tell you to get there quickly. It’s on deck E, next to the engineers’ mess. If you take the crew staircase, you’ll reach it quicker. I’ve been told to stay here, to guard the room.’ He looked at her again. ‘Sorry, miss.’

  He didn’t need to say any more, or if he did, Louisa didn’t hear it. She had fled the room and was running towards the crew staircase, deck E and her husband as if his life depended upon it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Guy was awake when Louisa came into the room. The lights were low and there were two single beds with only one occupied, by her husband. She saw him try to shift himself to sit upright, but immediately she put a hand gently on his shoulder, to let him know to rest. With her hand still there, she asked the doctor what had happened.

  ‘He had a sudden blow on the back of his head, I believe. It was a nasty shock and he was knocked out for a minute or two, but I daresay he will be fine now. You’ll need to watch out in case he gets a headache later and let me know if he does as it could be a sign of concussion. Otherwise, he only needs to rest.’ Dr O’Donnell’s thin face was beginning to look in need of a shave and strands of hair kept falling into his eyes. It had been a long night.

  ‘You poor darling.’ Louisa turned to Guy. ‘Do you know who did it?’

  ‘I don’t think it was deliberate,’ answered the doctor. ‘He was in the boiler room – a piece of machinery fell on him.’

  ‘Ow,’ Louisa couldn’t help exclaiming. �
��What were you doing down there?’

  Guy lifted his head a little and spoke hoarsely. ‘Trying to find someone. There’d been reports of a man hiding out in the boiler room and, given what had happened earlier, there was a feeling that I ought to be involved.’

  ‘Did you find him?’

  Guy sank back into the pillow. ‘I don’t know. You need to ask Mr Logan.’ He screwed his eyes shut and opened them again. ‘Doctor, when may I get up, do you think?’

  The doctor looked at his watch. ‘It’s a little before six o’clock in the morning. I’d say you’ll be fine for breakfast at eight. But I do not want you overdoing it.’ He smoothed his hair back impatiently. ‘I need to try to rest too. I’ll be back later.’

  ‘Wait, what about Joseph Fowler?’ asked Guy.

  ‘He’s still alive but only just, I’d say. The nurse is under strict instructions to find me if anything in his condition changes.’ With that, he left the room, closing the door behind him.

  ‘I’ve only got a couple of hours myself,’ said Louisa. ‘Lady Redesdale will want me at eight. Tell me what you need me to do and I’ll do it.’

  * * *

  Louisa ran through the list in her mind again and decided that the first thing she absolutely had to do wasn’t on there. She needed to contact Iain. Although he had instructed her that it was likely anything she had to tell him could wait until her return to London, he had given her an address for a telegram in case anything needed to be urgently relayed. Louisa decided that the events of last night were something Iain needed to know. He had instructed her to report on anything unusual, after all. Tucked into the side of her brassiere was the small piece of folded paper with an address in elegant writing. Louisa went to the telephone room, where the woman at the desk sleepily asked her for the name and address of the recipient: Miss Vita Lowning of 23 Dolphin Square. In the telegram, Louisa could not spell out any details, merely send a coded message that he had told her to use beforehand. It meant that, if he could, he would find a way for her to be contacted so that she could tell him, or a trusted messenger, whatever it was she thought he needed to know. At the time, Iain had stressed that this was only to be used if it was absolutely vital.