Louisa spotted Clara in the crowd, who caught her eye and gave her a small wave. This was almost the sort of thing to close the door but Nancy had explained that Clara would be forgiven almost anything. ‘She can’t be expected to know and being American she’s classless,’ said Nancy, who always told these things to Louisa in the same tone that Nanny told Decca why she needed to eat her carrots. The rhythm was one of patient teaching but there was something hectoring in it too. Eating carrots so you could see in the dark and Americans being classless were presented as unarguable facts. Which left Louisa confused as to what to do with the now contradictory information she had been spoonfed by her mother. She still couldn’t get used to telling the children to say ‘what’ instead of ‘pardon’. There was a gap in between the two worlds and sometimes she got vertigo at the thought of it opening wide enough to fall into.
A few of the guests had flushed faces already, though whether they were too hot in their costumes or had drunk too much wine – a glass or two with their dinner before arriving for the party would have given them a head start on the champagne – Louisa couldn’t tell. Pamela, she was relieved to see, did not have a glass in her hand. She was nervous enough without wine adding to it. Nancy was dancing with Oliver Watney, who looked pained by the event, but she wasn’t looking at him anyway, apparently carrying on several other conversations as they wheeled around the floor. Louisa recognised two or three others who had been down for the weekend at other times: Brian Howard, a sickly-looking man with sunken eyes but he made Nancy roar with laughter; Patrick Cameron who was regularly wheeled out as a dance partner for Nancy and now for Pamela too. Excitingly, there were two girls who had been in the papers frequently, the Jungman sisters, who were older than Nancy and daringly captivating with their beautiful faces and zest for mischief. They had come tonight as a pair of milkmaids, complete with buckets that threatened to slosh onto the floor. Lord Redesdale had already been spotted watching them with his eyes popping out of his head, his wife’s restraining hand on his elbow.
Louisa felt a nudge at her back and a dry whisper in her ear. ‘Louisa, you’re wanted in the kitchens.’
‘Yes, Mrs Windsor. Right away.’
She ducked down, out of the party, back to where she belonged.
CHAPTER SIX
A few hours later, after Mrs Stobie had gone stiffly to bed, grumbling that she was getting too old for this sort of thing, Louisa and Ada were standing by the kitchen sink. The borrowed maids had done most of the clearing from the ballroom as well as the washing up, so there wasn’t too much left to do. The kedgeree and bacon had been cooked and left in the oven, which would be sent up with coffee and toast for the breakfast at about two o’clock. Aside from this, Louisa knew her main task of the night had yet to be completed.
Louisa hoped Dulcie would arrive soon, as they had privately arranged. This was to be some time earlier than the official half past two that had been agreed between Lady Curtis and Lady Redesdale. Charlotte’s mother had requested that her maid collect Charlotte and take her back to the Watneys’, in order to ensure that her daughter did not remain in mixed company at a late hour. Dulcie was to walk from the Watneys’, only half a mile next door, but Hooper would be on hand to drive them back. This was the compromise reached as Charlotte did not want the embarrassment of a chaperone at the party, when none of her friends would have one there. It also meant that Dulcie and Louisa had only a short measure of time to complete their task.
Only a few minutes before, Mrs Windsor told Louisa that Lady Redesdale had rung for two mugs of cocoa to be sent up to her room. This meant that the party for her mistress, and the other guests of her generation, was over. The savouries had been served and the housekeeper had already set out the tray of glasses with bottles of whisky and port in the drawing room for the younger ones to help themselves. After taking the cocoa up, Mrs Windsor would not go to bed – she would be the last to do so – but would read alone in her sitting room.
By this hour, there weren’t too many people left. While Nancy had been successful in bringing down her friends from London, as well as a few more from Oxford, the greater number had come from Lord and Lady Redesdale’s own address book and were, accordingly, of a disposition where a delayed bedtime was a disruption akin to snowfall in the month of May. Besides, they knew that after midnight was for the young and had no desire to impede. Disappointingly, the most dazzling elements had departed too: Brian Howard had promised to deliver the Jungman sisters back to London that night as their cousin was marrying the next day and they had to attend the wedding. Louisa and Ada, with a couple of the other maids, had stood on the drive when they left, unable to resist having a final peep at the star-dusted figures, shrouded in long coats with fur collars. The milk buckets had been slopped out thoughtlessly on the drive before they got into the car, the white liquid pooling in the gravel. Hooper wouldn’t be happy to see that in the morning.
There had been one minor drama earlier, when Clara’s friend Phoebe Morgan, a raven-haired beauty dressed as Cleopatra, had tripped over one of Lord Redesdale’s dogs in the passageway and sprained her ankle badly. Not wanting to miss out by returning to the Watneys’ early, where she was staying, she was now propped up on the sofa by the fire, a cold press on her leg, a hot toddy in her hand.
‘Perhaps I ought to see if she needs anything,’ said Louisa. She hoped the treasure hunt would have started before Dulcie arrived.
‘What you mean is, perhaps you could go and have a snoop at the party,’ teased Ada.
‘Back in a tick.’ Louisa playfully whipped the drying-up cloth on Ada’s arm.
As she crossed the hall, she could hear that somebody had set up the gramophone player in the drawing room and the scratchy crackle of the latest music could be heard. Louisa pushed open the door and was greeted by a fug of heat and cigarette smoke. Sebastian and Charlotte were dancing, rather more languidly than the beat from the song playing, Charlotte’s head leaning on his chest, her eyes closed. On one sofa by the fire, watching them closely, was Phoebe, her leg up but the colour back in her cheeks, with two others squeezed beside her. On the opposite sofa was a jumble of bodies that Louisa mentally untangled into a further four people. Wigs had been discarded and the women had shaken their hair out, though Nancy still had on her mantilla and Adrian his vicar’s glasses and hat. He appeared to be in the middle of explaining something, puffing intermittently on the stub of a fat cigar, his posture giving him the look of addressing the entire group, even though only Nancy was listening with any great attention.
Clara, as pretty as a Toulouse-Lautrec portrait even at the end of the party, was talking quietly to Ted. He was in costume, as Dracula Louisa supposed, but it was impeccably made, a thick velvet cape tied around his shoulders over a dress suit. Nancy had been beside herself at his acceptance of the invitation, written on almost card-thick writing paper with the ancient De Clifford crest on the top.
Louisa hesitated, wondering if she should make her presence known with a cough or go in and quietly collect some empty glasses, when Nancy saw her and called out, ‘Lou-Lou!’
Louisa smiled. It had been a while since Nancy had called her by her old pet name.
‘Just the person, come here. We’re going to do a game and we’re down one because of poor old Phoebe. Will you make up the numbers for us?’
Louisa looked to see if there was someone standing beside her. ‘Me, Miss Nancy?’
‘Yes, you,’ Nancy said, waving her over. Louisa’s stomach turned over. She felt suddenly dowdy in her plain dress and thick woollen stockings. She had never worn a scrap of make-up in her life. The faces and bodies around her seemed to blur into a rainbow of sequins, feathers and red nails. Nancy stood up, clapping her hands and calling everyone to attention. Sebastian and Charlotte broke apart and each took a perch on the opposite arms of a sofa. Pamela, whose birthday it was, after all, gave a wide yawn and looked across at her sister apprehensively. Her own friends had left – most of them still seventee
n and chaperoned by their mothers – and Louisa guessed that Pamela had been on the verge of trying to go to bed herself, only she wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on anything happening at her own party. Nancy would crow about it for weeks.
‘We’re going to do the treasure hunt now,’ said Nancy.
At this, Charlotte gave a big sigh. ‘Really, must we?’
‘Yes! All of us.’ Nancy addressed the room, the pleasure of being the star of the show written on her face. At least, Louisa hoped it was that and not champagne. Nancy suffering the effects of a late night was rare but it was not a pleasant thing for the house the following morning. ‘There are eight of us to play now Lou-Lou is here, so we can work in pairs. You all know how it works. When you’ve found your answer, bring it back here and Seb or Phoebe will give you the next clue. We’ve got eight clues and everyone gets the same ones, but in a relay so that no one is looking for the same thing at the same time. Winner is the first to do all nine.’
‘A proper treasure hunt!’ exclaimed Clara. ‘The ones in London have become so loathsome lately, with all the boys gatecrashing them with their fast cars.’
‘Thank you, Miss Fischer,’ said Adrian drily. ‘We do our best, you know.’
‘Oh, you silly,’ said Clara, slightly pink. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘I’m going to pair up with Clara,’ bossed Nancy. ‘Pamela, you’ve got Louisa.’
Phew, thought Louisa.
‘Ted, you go with Togo – Oliver, I mean. Sorry, Oliver.’ Oliver’s thin face was even more pinched at Nancy’s use of the Mitford nickname for him. ‘That means Adrian and Charlotte together, but you’re brother and sister so that’s all right.’
‘If we must,’ said Adrian, blowing smoke rings above his sister’s head, who regarded him with a stony face. ‘I thought I was pairing with Seb.’
Sebastian gave a sly look at Phoebe on the sofa. ‘There’s been a change of plan,’ he said. Phoebe gave a brief smug smile but Charlotte turned her head away when he said this, showing a sudden interest in a button on her shirt.
‘In that case,’ said Adrian, ‘as we’re such a small number, I think we should work alone. We don’t need two brains when each of us has got a perfectly good one.’ He paused. ‘Some of us have at any rate.’
Was this a way of getting rid of Louisa? She tried not to feel offended and succeeded slightly; he wouldn’t have meant her particularly because he probably hadn’t noticed she was in the room. Even so, she was left with a dry feeling of disappointment, though perhaps she should have been relieved that it wouldn’t get in the way of the commission that still lay before her. Nancy didn’t so much as look at Louisa as she said, ‘Fine. We can all work alone then.’
Louisa knew this was her cue to leave but she wanted to see how it played out. Pamela started fidgeting beside her.
‘Everything all right, Miss Pamela?’ whispered Louisa.
Pamela gave a tight nod and the hint of a smile. ‘Yes,’ she whispered back, her eyes checking that Nancy was facing away. ‘I was rather pleased when you were going to be with me. The rest of them make me a bit nervous.’
Louisa sympathised entirely. ‘Don’t worry,’ she mouthed but didn’t dare say any more as she saw that Nancy had walked across the room to her desk by the window – partly obscured by a screen because Lord Redesdale did not like the sight of her typewriter when he was having a drink after dinner – and picked up a book, Alice in Wonderland. Louisa had read it to Decca and Unity often, each of them enthralled by the idea of sliding down a hole into a world where everything could be the exact opposite of the familiar and logical. It gave her a giddy feeling to think that things didn’t have to follow the rules.
Nancy opened the book and took out a sheaf of papers, on which it was clear to see typed words, if not what the words were. Nancy had bought herself the typewriter only a few months earlier and it was her most precious possession. The other sisters were firmly denied any access, though, as it had turned out, she was rarely heard on it herself. Louisa suspected Nancy liked the machine to be partly on view because she had taunted her family for some time about the novel she was writing, but if she was ever seen at it, she was always writing by hand in an old exercise book. The habit must have been too stuck.
‘As you all know, everyone was asked to contribute a riddle each, which means there will be eight clues you don’t know the answer to and one that you do, though you’ll still have to hunt the house for the answer. Everyone was supposed to use a commonly found object as their clue’s answer though I don’t trust that one or two of you won’t have made that difficult.’ Nancy did a comical eye roll in the direction of Adrian, who grinned in return. ‘I shall now hand them to Sebastian. Darling, would you do the honours and read out the first? I thought we could all race the first, just for fun, and then you can hand out the rest as people come back.’
‘Certainly, m’lady,’ said Seb facetiously. His hair was as burnished gold as ever with not a strand out of place but his eyes were glazed. Was he drunk, or something else? Something about the way Seb stood up and took the clues from Nancy’s hand made Louisa flinch.
He stood, legs apart and firmly planted on the Persian rug. ‘You’ll see me when there are six legs if not hanging on a peg. I can make a beast go faster and a human need a plaster. What am I?’
There was a moment’s silence then Seb picked up his glass, sloshing with whisky, and raised it in the air. ‘Good luck, everyone, and may you all return the heroes you are.’
There was a cheer and each guest stood up, whispering and talking excitedly. Louisa exited the room with Pamela. ‘Do you know what it meant?’ she said.
Pamela’s response was quick. ‘I think I do!’ she said happily. ‘Thanks, Lou-Lou.’
Louisa smiled with more confidence than she felt. The task was yet to be completed and she was deeply uncertain now that she had done the right thing in committing to it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
With the treasure hunt under way, there was the sound of footsteps and giggles echoing around the ground floor of the house as each of the players ran off looking for the answer to the first clue. Louisa took her chance to head upstairs and check which of the female guests’ bedrooms were still empty. All Dulcie had asked for was a room to meet Adrian Curtis in. ‘It has to be single woman’s room because that way he’ll accept an invitation to go up,’ Dulcie had explained. Louisa had her hopes pinned on Iris Mitford, Lord Redesdale’s sister. She was generally put in a bedroom that was in the same passage as her brother’s dressing room but with a large bathroom between the two. Known as ‘the buttercup bedroom’ for its yellow walls, it was one of the smallest but the only one Iris would sleep in, having once claimed it to be the only room she believed wasn’t haunted. Louisa knew that Lady Redesdale and her sister-in-law habitually had a long chat together at the end of the night in her ladyship’s bedroom and Louisa felt sure that after a party they’d have even more to gossip about than usual. The passage was empty and Lord Redesdale’s light was on, so he must have been changing. Once he had gone to bed in his own room he’d be asleep shortly after. Iris’s room was dark but there was no sound within. It was empty.
Good. The hot chocolate must have been taken up by Mrs Windsor ten minutes ago and Louisa estimated that they had under an hour to make this plan work. She had hesitated to go along with it at first, but when they’d worked it out over their drinks at the Elephant and Castle, the request had seemed, if not quite innocent, then certainly nothing too awful. Dulcie had explained that she only needed a chance to talk to Adrian, who was refusing to see her alone. ‘At home he protects himself with company at all hours,’ she’d said, ‘and I don’t know when we’ll get to Oxford again. Besides, you’ll know the geography of the place.’ Why Dulcie needed to talk to Adrian Louisa hadn’t liked to ask: some things shouldn’t be spelled out but were easily guessed at. He was an arrogant young man and she a pretty maid. They wouldn’t be the first or the last.
Louisa quick
ly walked down the back stairs to the kitchen, now empty and with the swabbed-down look of a ship’s galley. Ada had left, mopping the floor as she walked backwards to the garden door before going home. The mop had been left leaning just inside and Louisa retrieved it, picking up the bucket of grey water. As Louisa crossed back to the sink, she heard a soft knock and although she had been expecting it, such were her nerves that she jolted, sloshing water onto her dress.
‘Bugger,’ she said. Another Mitfordism, one of Lord Redesdale’s, that she had picked up. Her mother would have boxed her ears at the shock of it.
Carefully, she put the bucket down and went to open the door. Dulcie pushed in quickly, as if someone outside might have been watching her. She looked around, checking to see who was in the kitchen.
‘Is anyone else here?’ she whispered. Her skin looked translucent; even the freckles seemed to have disappeared and she was sweating slightly, though the half-mile walk from the Watneys’ house would have done that, even on a cold night like this one.
‘No,’ said Louisa, feeling strangely calm and in control now that it was actually happening. The bald fact was that she was about to let a girl who had once run with a gang of thieves into a guest’s bedroom without anyone else’s knowledge. It was not exactly the kind of thing Mrs Windsor would do. ‘Lady Redesdale has gone to bed and her sister-in-law has joined her. They’ve had hot chocolate sent up to them. You should have a clear three-quarters of an hour.’
Dulcie looked at her watch, which hung loosely on her narrow wrist. It looked too big for her and rather smart, a man’s watch perhaps. ‘In that case, you’d better show me to the room now, and I’ll wait for him there. Where are the other servants?’
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