[Mitford Murders 03] - The Mitford Scandal

by Jessica Fellowes

  Louisa believed it was her duty to throw as many rocks in the path as possible. ‘I’ll have to give notice at the dress shop. It might be weeks before I can start.’

  ‘Then you can start on the first day of my marriage – on the thirty-first of January. It’ll be a new beginning for all of us and absolutely heavenly.’

  So that was that. Once more Louisa was unto the breach of the Mitfords, and she wondered what battle she would find she had been drafted in to fight this time.

  CHAPTER SIX

  After the church service was over, the wedding party had either gone on foot or been driven to the Guinness house at Grosvenor Place, some preferring not to chance their luck with the gathering grey clouds. Louisa had stayed beside Nanny Blor, enjoying the sedate pace and the chance to overhear the chatter of the guests. It wasn’t often that she walked unnoticed amongst such people; Nanny Blor was uncharacteristically quiet and Louisa thought she, too, might be tuning in, as if it were one of her favourite radio programmes. Diana’s looks – her golden hair, her clear, creamy complexion – were much commented on by both the men and the women, though it was not the men who noticed the parchment satin of the dress she had worn, nor the antique Brussels lace veil, nor even the unusual bouquet of hot-house lilies. They tended instead to making spiky remarks about the fact that Diana was not marrying at her own family house – was it not big enough, nor grand enough? The queries were arch. Lord Redesdale would have been incensed to hear such ‘sewers’ dismiss his ambitious build, though Louisa knew the family hated the new house after their beloved Asthall Manor had been sold. Nanny Blor had told her it was so cold in the bedrooms that her wash bowl often froze over in the night.

  Walking around them, too, Louisa spotted some of the faces that she had seen at the Guinness party last summer, her memory reinforced by the times she had since identified them in the society pages of the newspapers: the biographer Lytton Strachey; the artist Dora Carrington; Evelyn Waugh, the ‘promising novelist’; the glamorous Mr and Mrs Mulloney; Lady Lascelles and the woman who worked for the Queen, she couldn’t quite think of her name. She ticked them off in her mind and then caught herself wondering if she was after Luke Meyer’s job – she had spotted his byline in the papers too – which also led her to wonder if she’d see him today. She rather thought she’d like to. Now that she was part of Diana’s household, she felt bolder about such possible friendships.

  As they approached the house, Louisa saw the crowd of newspaper photographers on the pavement and felt Nanny Blor nudge her in the ribs.

  ‘I told Miss Diana this morning that no one would be looking at her but I wonder now if perhaps I wasn’t wrong, just this once?’ Nanny’s eyes widened in her soft face; she was loved by the girls as much – if not more – than their mother, and it wasn’t hard to see why.

  ‘I think, Nanny, just this once, you were.’

  They stood to one side and watched as the girl they had known since she was a child smiled prettily before the flashbulbs even as the drizzle started, her arm firmly tucked inside her husband’s, his countenance rather more solemn and reluctant in the face of this attention.

  Once inside – Nanny Blor had to be persuaded to walk through the front door and not the side entrance – a crowd of over a hundred and fifty had already gathered in front of them, and the abundance of hats made it hard to see across the room: wide brims with flowers and lace for the women, though the men had thankfully removed their black silk chimneys. In spite of the complete change in atmosphere since Louisa had last been there – now it was daytime, winter and a wedding – she was still unnerved to see the mended skylight through which Dot had fallen to her death. Nanny had left her to go and find the girls, when Louisa suddenly felt someone bump against her, then a cry and a smash as two full glasses of champagne fell to the floor. Instinctively, she bent down to gather the shards as quickly as possible and when she stood up she saw the embarrassed face of Mr Meyer.

  ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry,’ he gabbled. ‘Here, please … let me.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said, still not looking at him, ‘I’ve got them all now.’ She straightened up. ‘Hold out your hands.’ Mr Meyer obeyed, and the wet shards were placed on to his open palms. She warded off any protestations. ‘I’m sorry, but after you crashed into me, it’s the least you can do. Look at me. I’m soaked.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry, again. Please, tell me what your name is.’

  ‘Louisa Cannon.’

  ‘Luke Meyer. I’d shake your hand but … ’ He shrugged his shoulders and something in the air was punctured. He looked at her again. ‘Forgive me, but have we met before?’

  ‘Sort of. It was when …’ She glanced upwards.

  ‘My goodness, so it was. That’s what I was looking at when I crashed into you.’ He dropped his voice and stage-whispered to her. ‘It’s quite odd somehow to be here, after that happened, isn’t it?’

  She nodded, not trusting herself to say any more. She didn’t want to be disloyal to the family of the man who was her new employer.

  The two of them walked into another room where they found a footman to take away the debris and fetch them their drinks. While they waited, they both naturally stood with their backs to the wall, looking at the other wedding guests. ‘Are you bride or groom?’ asked Luke, the familiar wedding question to denote which side of the aisle a guest would sit on.

  ‘Bride,’ said Louisa, ‘but I’m not a friend. That is, I sort of am.’ She shook her head as if to throw off the confusion. Luke gave her a sympathetic smile; was he an outsider here in the same sort of way she was? ‘I work for the family. I used to look after the children, and Mrs Guinness has asked me to be her lady’s maid.’

  ‘Did you know her in the nursery, then? I mean, she’s not long out of it.’

  Louisa nodded. ‘Yes, I did. Oh, here are our drinks. It was a pleasure to bump into you.’ She smiled again and started to turn away but as she did so, Nancy came up to them, in her gold-tissue bridesmaid’s dress.

  ‘Hello, Lou-Lou.’ She jabbed Luke in the chest. ‘Cheer me up.’

  Luke poked her back. ‘Whatever for? It’s your sister’s wedding and, according to all the papers, the pinnacle of all society events of 1929 even though it’s only January. Where are the rest of your sibling gang? Don’t you usually attack them for fun?’

  ‘Two of them are ill. Unity is too young and dull for any conversation. Pamela isn’t rigged up in this dress and she can’t sympathise.’

  ‘Why wasn’t Pamela bridesmaid too?’

  ‘Because she’s engaged to Togo.’ Nancy corrected herself at Luke’s bemused face: ‘Oliver Watney, he was the boy next door. Literally.’

  ‘Brewing family?’

  ‘You’re quick. Yes, there’s money in beer. It’s so unfair,’ sighed Nancy. ‘I’m engaged too but no one takes it seriously.’

  ‘The lack of a proposal or engagement ring will do that,’ said Luke drily. Nancy pretended to ignore this remark and Louisa felt rather sorry for her. After Diana’s engagement had been announced, Nancy had been quick to announce she had her own fiancé, a Mr Hamish St Clair Erskine. The rumours had swirled thick and fast, even reaching Louisa’s ears. She heard he had a reputation as an amusing and amiable chap but also one who batted for the other side. In short, Nancy’s considerable charms were not likely appreciated by Hamish.

  ‘It’s more than you’ve got,’ Nancy said waspishly but Luke did not rise to this.

  ‘I know. I disappoint everyone, except myself.’ He gave Louisa a sidelong look. ‘Can you believe, my aunt thought I’d propose to Diana? There’s more chance of pigs taking passengers on a flight to Paris. Speaking of which … ’ He turned to Nancy. ‘Where’s your brother Tom?’

  ‘Just back from Vienna, where he’s been learning German. He’s here somewhere, probably boring someone silly with his rhapsodies about the Rhineland.’ But she said this with affection.

  ‘Didn’t he know your fiancé Hamish at s
chool?’

  Nancy bristled at this and Louisa sensed dangerous territory. ‘Possibly, I don’t ask him about all his childhood pashes. Are you still obsessing over yours? Poor thing.’ She drained her glass. ‘I’m going to find another. Goodbye, Louisa. Mr Meyer.’

  Luke pulled a face at Louisa. ‘I know one shouldn’t but it’s hard to resist.’

  Louisa tried to give him a look of admonishment, and failed.

  ‘I’d better go, too. I’m here with my aunt and she doesn’t like it if she loses sight of me for too long, and it’s only because of her that I’ve been invited in the first place.’

  ‘Are you not a friend of Mrs Guinness?’ Louisa knew it wasn’t strictly her place to ask such a question but there was something about him that bridged the gap, somehow.

  ‘Not really. I mean, I’ve seen her at parties and Nancy and I gather gossip for our editors. My aunt is Lady Boyd, she knows Lady Redesdale a little – I gather they go back as far as the days when Aunt was plain Rachel Meyer – and so she got me in. I owe my career, such as it is, to her.’

  ‘What is your career?’

  ‘Diarist, for my sins. I’d like to be a proper journalist, writing scoops, but I haven’t managed it yet. My editor caught the whiff of my social connections so that was my work cut out for the Season but I’m always looking out for a big story.’ He gave her a wink. ‘Let me know if you hear of anything, won’t you? Maids are frightfully useful for that sort of thing, eyes upstairs and down.’

  Was he joking? He must have seen something on her face for he quickly changed tack. ‘Of course, I mean, I’ve very much enjoyed meeting you. Not for that reason.’ He looked as pink as when he’d dropped the glasses and she decided to let it go.

  ‘Of course, Mr Meyer. I’ll let you get back to your aunt. In fact, I should probably find out if Mrs Guinness needs me, it will time for her to leave soon. We’re off to Paris for the honeymoon.’ She couldn’t help allowing her delight to show on her face, even letting him in on the secret of how she felt. ‘I’m terribly excited.’

  ‘Gay Paree!’ he exclaimed. ‘Have a wonderful time, Miss Cannon.’ He gave her a small bow and walked away. She wondered if he was going to play a part in her life from now on; something told her he would.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As Guy saw her coming down the road, his heart lifted as it always did at the sight of her neat figure, tightly belted in a brown wool coat, a cloche hat pulled low but not enough to hide her brilliantly blue eyes. He stretched one of his arms out open wide and she ran to him for the last few steps, nestling her head right into his chest as he hugged her close and bent down for a kiss. That made her cry out and she pushed him off gently. ‘Give over! Not in the street.’

  ‘We’re engaged, aren’t we?’ Guy tried not to sound gruff.

  Sinéad stood back up and wagged a finger at him. ‘Even so. My mam would have a fit. There’s no one doing that sort of thing in the streets of Killarney.’

  Guy smiled. ‘There’s a lot of things they don’t do in the streets of Killarney that I’d like to do with you.’

  ‘Oh!’ She smacked him on the arm but she could never keep up being cross with him for long. ‘What are we doing now, then?’

  Sinéad Barry, twenty-one years old and as Irish as soda bread, was Guy’s fiancée and always wanting to know what was happening next. For the moment, she was living in the house in Regent’s Park where she worked as a tweeny, a maid of all work, but as soon as they were married they’d have a house in Hammersmith, he hoped, not too far from his parents. The fact that they had not settled on where to live was the reason they hadn’t set a wedding date yet, though it had been five months since Guy had presented her with a gold Claddagh ring and telephoned her pappy to ask permission for her hand in marriage.

  Guy looked at his watch. ‘It’s six o’clock. We could go to the pictures, I thought. I looked in the paper and there’s a new Louise Brooks film on at the Regal in Marble Arch.’

  ‘I love Louise Brooks.’

  ‘I know you do.’ He cupped her chin and tried again for a kiss. She didn’t resist this time.

  Monday morning and back at work, Guy reviewed the various open cases that were on his desk. Most were typical for a CID junior, perfect fodder for someone who needed to prove himself to his superiors. Someone like Guy. He frowned and read over the notes of the one on the top of the pile.

  Reported missing 15 June 1928, Miss Rose Morgan, seventeen years old. Last seen by Elizabeth Tipping and Nora Taylor at 10 Grosvenor Place; she had been ‘borrowed’ to work at the party for the evening. Employed at 11 Wilton Crescent. Personal items, including bank book, were left behind in her shared room.

  Description: Five foot five inches. Brown hair, blue eyes. Last seen wearing a plain maid’s dress of black with a white apron; her straw cloche hat and a green duster coat had been taken from the peg. Black boots. No distinguishing marks.

  She could be anybody.

  Mother and father live in Osmotherly, Yorkshire. They initially reported her missing after her employer – Lady Delaney – said she had not returned from the party. They have not heard from her. They have persistently requested that a search be maintained.

  There then followed a list of her eight brothers and sisters, of which only three had been successfully contacted by the police so far. Miss Rose Morgan was not quite the youngest, there being one more sister after her still living at home, but the rest were older and married, and all living in Yorkshire. The local police were supposed to be following them up and sending back reports but Guy suspected they were being slow. It was likely that none of them had telephone lines and had to be sent letters; just as likely that they were either illiterate or saw no need to go to the effort of writing to the police that there was nothing to say. When Guy had tried to talk about the case with Stiles he’d dismissed it. ‘You’ll probably find her in Gretna Green,’ he’d said. ‘She’s got a chap, don’t you worry about that. Find him and case closed.’

  But there was no sign of a boyfriend and Guy had spoken to all of the maids she’d worked with at Wilton Crescent, as well as the housekeeper, a stern old bird with eyes that looked like steel fishhooks, and none of them could recall her mentioning anyone. Nor had she ever spoken of any desire to leave her job and go elsewhere.

  However, there had been one maid, a slip of a girl called Lucy, who had mentioned something that jarred. And it was this that made Guy inclined to stay on this case and not give it up as just another missing person, where the person was all too likely to show up in a Brighton hotel with a seedy older man she’d been in bed with for a fortnight.

  ‘She’d been learning French,’ Lucy had told him. ‘She’d never say why. I asked her and there was no holiday she told me of or anything like that. You’d just hear her repeating these French words over and over, while she swept the floor or scrubbed the dishes. She had a little pocketbook she would look at from time to time, where I suppose the words were written down but I never got to have a look. She was embarrassed about it, I think.’

  A girl of no particular consequence, a maid who had in all likelihood run off of her own accord precisely because she didn’t want to be found, was not important enough for Guy to be able to have any checks made at the ports. He had tried to get passenger lists from the ferries but they were reluctant when he didn’t know on which day she had travelled. The brisk clerk at the end of the telephone had pointed out that there would be thousands of names for them to search through and who was to say there wouldn’t be several R. Morgans? Guy had pushed him nonetheless to check the lists but no answer had come.

  Instead, he was going to have to look elsewhere to find the path that Miss Rose Morgan had travelled on and it crossed his mind that there was one person who might be able to help him. Someone who had been on the servant grapevine and knew something of the acts a desperate woman might take. Louisa Cannon. The only problem was, as far as Guy was concerned, Louisa was a missing person, too.

  CHAPTER
EIGHT

  At Victoria Station, Louisa walked thirty yards behind Mr and Mrs Guinness as they were led to their carriage on the Golden Arrow boat train. She felt rather shy of them now, even if Mr Guinness – she couldn’t quite say ‘Bryan’, even in her own head – was very courteous to her, as he was to everyone. But they were newlyweds, the last thing they must have wanted was someone on their tail, even if Louisa had been expressly asked to come with them. In spite of these mixed feelings, Louisa was thoroughly enjoying the thought of the journey ahead of her. She would not be on the Golden Arrow, the all-first-class boat train that the Guinnesses would travel on. Louisa had instead a third-class ticket on a parallel service. There would be a train to Dover, then a ferry, before the final leg from Calais to Paris. It would be extraordinarily quick too: it was only five o’clock in the afternoon, and they would be in Paris for breakfast. Louisa’s transport might not have had the luxuries her new mistress would be enjoying – the white tablecloths and waiters, the dressing for dinner and the bed made with real linen – but it was travel nonetheless. Merely the sight of a changing view, the knowledge that she would be crossing water and waking to a country that spoke another language gave Louisa a sensation as nerve-making and thrilling as the feeling of falling in love described in novels.

  On the platform there were two short red carpets and gold rope hanging between two stands to mark the Guinness’s carriage door, which made Diana squeak with pleasure. As she stepped up, she turned back to wave to Louisa and gave a broad smile: ‘We’ll see you in Gay Paree!’

  Louisa gave a brief wave in return and once she had satisfied herself that every piece of their luggage had been counted in correctly, was shown to the carriage where her mistress would be sleeping. She unpacked the overnight case, setting out the contents in the narrow bathroom for their own private use and finally disembarked to walk to another platform for her own train. On board, she sat with her back to the engine and revelled in the comfort of time alone with nothing to do and nowhere else to be. Louisa pulled out her book of short stories by E. M. Forster and settled back to watch the scenery change. By the time they had arrived in Paris she had read not a single word.