The Mitford Trial

by Jessica Fellowes

  Louisa’s heart beat as she arranged for the considerable cost of the telegram to be billed to Unity’s cabin. She’d have to sort out any problems with that further down the line; hopefully it would be sent to Lord Redesdale. Was she right? Was it something Iain would need to know about? The only thing that could be worse would be if she didn’t tell him and he was angry with her for it. That decided the matter.

  ‘Yes, miss? What’s the message?’ asked the telephonist, inspecting her fingernails at the same time.

  ‘Please send: Clouds gathering. Stop. Twenty-four-hour forecast. Stop. From C.’

  The telephonist raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Louisa, ‘that’s it. As soon as you can, please.’

  Next, Louisa went to find Mr Logan. Guy had told her he was the first officer, so she assumed that the best place to find him might be the captain’s office. When she went there, however, the door was firmly shut and though she pressed her ear to the door, she could hear nothing inside. As she was wondering what to do next, a middle-aged man in crew uniform approached.

  ‘Can I help you, madam?’

  She couldn’t help bristling slightly – did she look old enough to be a ‘madam’?

  ‘I’m looking for First Officer Logan,’ she said. ‘It’s a police matter.’

  ‘Are you a policewoman?’ The man couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

  ‘Yes … that is, no, I’m not. But there’s a policeman on the ship, injured, and he’s asked me to find Mr Logan, to ask him something.’

  ‘That funny business, I suppose,’ said the man, chummy now. It was a ship, after all – gossip spread faster than burning petrol. ‘I heard they caught someone. They’re being held in the ship’s cell, cabin E-131. It’s starboard side. Do you know what side that is?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Louisa, disheartened at the thought of all those stairs again. ‘Thank you.’ She started to walk off but turned back. ‘Do you know who they caught?’

  The man tapped the side of his nose with his finger and looked around them in an exaggerated manner before standing up straight and laughing. ‘No idea, miss. You get stowaways and all sorts on a ship like this. If you ask me, it’s a miracle something like this hasn’t happened sooner. Or maybe it has and they’ve hushed it all up.’ He tapped his nose again. ‘You need to watch out for them, they hide all sorts of secrets you couldn’t even guess at.’ Then he winked and walked off.

  They? Who did he mean? Louisa was spooked. Did he know something or was he stirring up trouble, taking advantage of the disturbed atmosphere on the ship? Was it possible that Iain had sent Louisa onto the ship to follow Diana and Unity, while knowing there were other dangers aboard?

  There was only one way to find out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  In the violet darkness of the early morning the ship stirred to life. The guests were largely still in their cabins, some of whom had been disturbed by the events on deck B, but most of whom were sleeping off large dinners and strong drinks from the night before. The ship would not dock until the following morning and there were few reasons to hurry out of bed. But the staff were busy, cleaning the common areas, laying the tables in the restaurants and swabbing the decks, one of the few authentically ship-like activities that went on. Through the portholes, Louisa saw that the dawn had almost broken; the calm sea was gunmetal grey, the sky a clear blue. Seeing the morning made her realise she’d hardly slept, and her dress felt grubby. She’d have liked the time to nip to her cabin to change.

  Having made her way around most of the ship in the few days she’d been there, Louisa had come to understand something of the logistics of how the cabin numbers were arranged, and how the passages and stairwells were interlinked, so without too much trouble she found Cabin E-131, the ship’s cell. Standing outside the cabin was another man, younger this time, in a white uniform with fewer gold stripes and buttons than the captains and senior crew members bore.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Louisa, ‘can you tell me where to find First Officer Logan?’

  The man stayed rigidly upright, as if he were standing guard outside Buckingham Palace. Without moving his head to face her, he said, ‘Cabin E-132.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Louisa, puzzled. She felt like a child in a fairy story, being sent hither and thither by talking woodland creatures to find the gingerbread house. She knocked on the door, the man’s eyes quickly glancing away when she looked up at him, and it was opened by another man in uniform, who looked weary but not hostile.

  ‘Mr Logan? I’m Mrs Sullivan, the wife of DS Sullivan, who I believe you met earlier…’

  ‘Come in.’ He stepped back and Louisa followed him into what was a small cabin with no bed, only a desk and a chair. There was an interlocking door at the side, which she presumed led to E-131. ‘How is he? That was a nasty bang to the head he got.’

  ‘Fine, thank you. The doctor says he can get up for breakfast in a couple of hours, but he’s not to overdo it. I’ve come down because my husband was eager to know what happened last night. As am I.’

  ‘Please, won’t you take a seat?’

  Louisa sat down and realised too late there was only the one chair. Now Mr Logan would be standing and talking to her, which felt awkward, but it was too late to stand up again.

  ‘I do hope you will forgive me for having called your husband to the situation, but it seemed necessary at the time and I think we were proved right.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Logan, I do understand the difficulty of these things.’ She felt calm and grown-up now. It was some time since anybody, other than Guy, had spoken to her as an equal and worthy of respect. It made her warm to him quickly while also making her feel self-conscious.

  ‘There were reports of someone in the boiler room and, more seriously, in the tool room, which sits beyond it and which few staff are even aware of. As you can imagine, it contains some expensive and specialised equipment. We know that there are crew who sometimes feel the need to get away for a little while and this is – unofficially – tolerated. But the tool room can be accessed only by unlocking a padlock, and there is a list of people who are given the code to do this. Furthermore, anyone who goes in there must sign a record that is hanging outside the door, and inside, a logbook for any tools that are removed. In short, it is a highly supervised area.’

  ‘I see.’ Louisa’s neck was starting to ache from looking up at Mr Logan. He seemed to notice this and perched on the desk casually, reducing both the gap and the formality. She breathed out.

  ‘The thing is, Mrs Sullivan, I don’t have much experience of handling criminals. We have had the occasional petty thief on board. Most memorably, an elderly lady who stayed in first class and was fond of pocketing light bulbs. Perhaps you’ll understand if I was hesitant to apprehend a man who had been responsible for a brutal attack on one of our guests only hours before.’

  Louisa understood.

  ‘I fetched your husband and we made our way down to the boiler room. It’s a hot and dark place, not the most pleasant of places to work, and it’s possible that the heat was overpowering. It may have made your husband weaker than usual.’

  Louisa saw he was trying to excuse any possible shortcoming on Guy’s part and she liked him for it. It was a gentlemanly thing to do.

  ‘When we entered the tool room, we could hear there was a man in some distress in there, and items had been thrown. I imagine he was feeling cornered and under attack. Our concern was for him to cause no further damage to the equipment, or to himself or any of us. But he pushed over a shelving unit and a large, heavy box fell on DS Sullivan and he was instantly knocked out. Mr West, a fellow crew member, and I attended to your husband to check that he had not been badly hurt, and in the commotion the man – whoever he was – ran out.’

  ‘He ran out? Then where is he?’

  ‘That’s just it, Mrs Sullivan. I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know? Who is in Cabin E-131, then? With the guard standing outsi
de?’

  ‘Nobody. The room is empty. But the last thing I need is anyone knowing we have an escaped assailant on the ship. I thought it best if guests believed he had been caught.’

  ‘You mean, there is an escaped assailant on the ship?’

  Mr Logan stood up, the informality of his perching on the desk now too much at odds with the horror of what he had described. ‘Yes, Mrs Sullivan. We are taking measures—’

  ‘What measures?’

  ‘We have informed certain key members of the crew, who are on the lookout.’

  ‘But isn’t it likely that the man you are after, if he went to the tool room, is a member of the crew?’ As she spoke, Louisa knew she had the answer already.

  ‘Yes, I expect you’re right,’ said Logan. ‘I’m an idiot for not thinking of that. What do I do now?’

  ‘I know the man you’re looking for,’ said Louisa. ‘All you have to do is find him. I don’t think he acted alone, and there’s someone I need to go and see while you do that.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  23 May 1935

  Old Bailey, Court Number One

  The barrister walked back to his bench. He did not hurry but shuffled his papers a little before looking back to the judge. ‘I should like to call the first witness for the prosecution: the first officer for the Princess Alice, Mr Greg Logan.’

  Guy watched as Logan walked through the courtroom and into the witness box. He placed his hand on the Bible and, in a clear voice, promised to tell the truth. His uniform and cap gave him a military air, though this was completely false. Guy knew that Logan had joined the ship as a young boy of fifteen and risen through the ranks, as he was dependable, efficient and patriotic.

  Mr Burton-Lands asked Logan to state his name, rank and address before opening the questioning. As his own witness, this was not going to be an interrogation, yet Guy could not yet ascertain why Logan had been brought in first. It soon became clear.

  ‘Mr Logan, could you please tell the court the circumstances in which you first met Mr Jim Evans.’

  ‘It was five years ago, 1930, in Southampton. There was a recruitment day for various positions open on Empire Line cruises, and I had been asked to conduct some of the initial interviews. Mr Jim Evans presented himself that morning. As I remember, he was one of the first in the queue, early in the morning.’

  ‘What position was he after?’

  Mr Logan gave a short cough into his fist. ‘He wanted any position that would be made available to him, sir. He was only fifteen years old and already one year out of school.’

  ‘Had he any previous employment?’

  ‘There was one reference, from a man who had employed him as a general labourer.’

  ‘Was it a good reference?’

  ‘Excellent.’

  Mr Burton-Lands looked pleased at this, which bewildered Guy. This was a witness for the prosecution. Why was he apparently emphasising the good, even excellent, character of the accused?

  ‘What were your first impressions of Mr Evans?’

  Mr Logan appeared to recollect. He had a handsome face and, with his snow-white suit, there couldn’t have been many who could have resisted his charms.

  ‘He was clean and eager, willing to work hard and at any labour. He was immature, I could see that, but I sensed he wanted to get away from his domestic situation.’

  ‘Did you suspect he was running away from something?’

  ‘No, sir. And in subsequent conversations he explained to me that his mother had died when he was young, he had never known his father and had been brought up by his grandmother. He was afraid of falling into bad company in the docks and wanted both employment and discipline.’

  ‘And travel?’

  Logan smiled. ‘All sailors want that, sir.’

  ‘In three years, did Mr Evans prove himself an able employee?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He was reliable, never off sick and always returned to the ship when required.’

  Guy looked at the jury: they were all listening carefully. It was the start of the case, they were always attentive then. It was why it was important to bring out the most effective witnesses first.

  ‘Is that not the norm?’ enquired Mr Burton-Lands with a half-smile.

  Logan coughed again and gave an apologetic look to the jury. ‘We strive for the best on the Princess Alice, but it has been known for younger members of the crew to be somewhat distracted by exotic temptations, sir.’

  ‘Still, Mr Evans pleased you. He worked hard. Did he rise through the ranks?’

  ‘Not at any great speed. He began as a pot-washer in the kitchens, then was made a busboy in the crew canteen, and from there to waiter in the second-class restaurant. He was promoted to cabin steward two years ago after applying for the position and has remained there. It’s not unheard of, but it might have been hoped that he would invite promotion in his last six months.’

  ‘But he did not?’

  ‘No, sir. We – that is the second officer and myself – felt that he lacked the maturity or education to go further at this stage.’

  Mr Burton-Lands turned to face the jury. ‘He lacked the maturity to go further at this stage,’ he repeated directly to them, then he turned back to Logan. ‘Can you explain yourself further?’

  ‘It’s hard to put an exact reasoning upon it, but he seemed still more like a boy than a young man. He requires precise instructions, which he follows to the letter, but he rarely takes it upon himself to extend his responsibility.’

  Mr Burton-Lands turned to the judge. ‘No further questions, your honour.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The minutes had been slipping by fast and Louisa needed to go to see Mrs Fowler before Lady Redesdale awoke. Guy had said it was important that someone spoke to her soon, in the crucial early hours when her memory of the night before would be at its freshest. Not to mention that he still needed to find the weapon of attack. There was a hollowness in her stomach and she felt almost nauseous from hunger, but she would have to hang on for a little longer.

  Back on deck B, Louisa hurried along the passage that now felt as familiar as a childhood home, the effect intensified by the fact that all the passages in the ship looked the same – mile after mile of dark red patterned carpet with evenly spaced doorways and lights along the cream textured walls that narrowed in the distance. Her light-headedness made her feel as if she were in a disturbed dream and in the seconds before she found door B-17, her chest tightened from the claustrophobia of it. Nodding at the young cabin boy who was standing by the door, Louisa let herself in with a gentle knock. There was nobody in the drawing room and the lights were all still on, though the room was otherwise dim, a single shaft of sunlight coming through the narrow gap in the curtains. Whether it was a domestic instinct or something else, Louisa decided she would turn the lamps off and draw the curtains, though she wouldn’t tidy anything up. There was absolute silence in the cabin and she briefly wondered if she should make her presence known, then decided that whoever was with Mrs Fowler knew that only permitted persons were gaining access and if they were catching some sleep they could have a few minutes more. Louisa went first to the curtains and pulled them apart, only to be briefly blinded by the sudden brightness of the Mediterranean sun. When she opened her tightly squeezed eyes again, flashes of light danced about. When they cleared, she saw something that made her gasp.

  The balcony was small but oddly shaped, with the sides angled, the space mostly occupied by two heavy wrought-iron chairs and a table, the type commonly seen in modest country gardens. What Louisa had seen behind the chair on the left, wedged in the corner, was a wooden mallet with the unmistakeable stains of blood. Checking behind her, Louisa stepped outside and picked it up carefully by the long handle. It couldn’t be left outside in case rain came and washed away the evidence. As it was, it was a miracle that the sea had been calm in the night. Louisa wondered how it could have ended up in the corner. Perhaps the culprit had intended to throw it overboa
rd and not realised that it had landed there. In the light it was visible, but it would have been easily missed when it was still dark. Or someone could have deliberately put it there, planted the mallet in a place that was hard but not impossible to find? Why, she could not guess at yet, but it was a possibility to be explored.

  It was too large to put in her pocket, and too conspicuous to carry around with her. Gingerly, Louisa looked for somewhere to put the weapon and decided it would be best hidden in the drinks cupboard, which could be locked. Louisa put the key in her pocket: she would give it to Guy as soon as she saw him. The thought that this block of wood had almost killed someone made her shudder. The mallet had to have come from the tool room, but had it been taken deliberately, knowing what it would ultimately be used for? Ella’s confession to the attack had been almost dismissed by her and Guy because of her drunken condition. But the close proximity of the weapon gave it more credence, particularly when tied to Ella’s affair with Jim. Evidence, she could say. The responsibility of this conclusion weighed heavily upon Louisa.

  There was a stirring from the bedroom and Louisa started. It no longer seemed wise to conceal her presence. She stepped into the hall and knocked gently on Mrs Fowler’s bedroom door. Blythe opened it.

  ‘Louisa?’

  ‘Blythe. I didn’t realise you’d be here.’

  Blythe’s washed-out face told the tale. ‘I didn’t have much choice. She called me last night and I’ve been stuck here since. I’ve not slept a wink while she’s been tossing and turning, calling out things I can’t make sense of.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She was. It can’t have been pleasant and it was, after all, well beyond the call of her duty as a cabin maid. ‘Does the housekeeper know you’re here?’