She did as she was asked and when she re-entered the room, Nancy was sitting on Diana’s bed and Bryan was no longer there. He had probably gone to the adjoining smaller room to get dressed.
Louisa stood at the end of the bed and the two sisters turned to look at her. ‘What do you think happened?’
‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Louisa. ‘It seems she died in her sleep. It must have been the withdrawal, though it seems very quick.’
‘I had no idea you could actually die from not having drugs,’ said Diana.
‘I went to see her last night,’ said Nancy. ‘She was in a very bad way. Kate and I stayed with her for about half an hour, when Louisa had to leave her to bring your hot milk.’
Diana ignored this jibe.
‘Does anybody know Clara’s family? Someone will have to be told.’
‘She lives, that is – she lived – in London for the last few years. I don’t know where she came from to begin with. Oh, dear. What a ghastly thing. I knew she was an inveterate drug-taker and I was simply furious with her for that, but she didn’t deserve this.’ Nancy shivered. ‘I’m going to go back to my room and get dressed. I will go and tell Kate.’ She stood up and seemed to think of something. ‘You know, it’s funny. I’m not sure Kate was terribly fond of Clara. She made an odd comment while we were there.’
‘What comment?’
Louisa’s ears pricked up at this.
‘She said something about Clara being a husband-stealer, and getting her just deserts. I thought she was being bitchy, you know how she can be. But what if there had been something between Clara and Shaun? I have to say, I wouldn’t put it past Clara. Remember her and Ted?’
‘It’s almost exactly a year since Shaun died,’ said Diana. ‘What a horrible coincidence, if Clara was doing something like that.’
‘Unless,’ said Louisa, ‘it wasn’t a coincidence at all.’
‘What are you saying?’ Diana had pulled herself up to a better sitting position. Her pregnant stomach was not yet so large that it was making her uncomfortable but she had complained once or twice of looking like a snake that had swallowed a football.
‘Sorry, Mrs Guinness. I said that without thinking. It was just what Miss Nancy said about Mr Mulloney. You see, once or twice, last night, when Miss Fischer was in a very bad way, she was calling out for a name but I couldn’t quite make out what it was.’
‘Could it have been Shaun?’ Diana’s blue eyes were wide with what looked dangerously like glee.
‘I don’t know, I couldn’t be certain. It sounded more like “Rhodes” or “Rose”.’ Without warning, Louisa thought of Guy and remembered he had been looking for the missing maid, Rose Morgan. Could it have been the same person?
‘Careful, Bodley,’ said Nancy. ‘We mustn’t say anything to Kate unless she says something first.’
‘Of course I won’t,’ replied her sister imperiously. ‘Speaking of which, we mustn’t let Luke know either.’
Diana turned to Nancy when she said this and there must have been a look on her face because Diana said, ‘I like Luke, he’s great fun. But I don’t trust him not to telephone his editor if he hears something juicy like this.’ She pointed her finger at her sister. ‘I don’t want you telephoning your editor either.’
‘Don’t be absurd. The Lady wants tips on the right sort of hat for a shooting weekend, not amorous tittle-tattle.’ But she had a look in her eye, one that Louisa had seen before: it never boded well. ‘I’m going now. Let’s meet downstairs in an hour, perhaps by then the doctor will have given a more definite answer.’
Diana bore a weary look on her face that made her seem much older than her nineteen years. ‘Now that she’s dead, perhaps Kate will say something of her suspicions about her husband.’
‘I thought I was supposed to be the novelist in this family,’ said Nancy. ‘You’re looking for intrigue where there is none. Just a very sad, rather predictable tale.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
When Diana and Louisa went downstairs, they found the rest of the party gathered in the hotel’s large drawing room that overlooked the beach. People were talking quietly to each other yet there was a charge in the atmosphere, a sense of drama that had rather added spice to the proceedings. Although it was not yet eleven o’clock in the morning, some of the party had already started on the cocktails. Lady Boyd sat a little away from the group, the only one with a silver teapot and china cup beside her. Tom and Bryan were standing by the mantelpiece, smoking, engaged in what looked to be serious conversation. Kate Mulloney, in a vivid blue shirt and wide black trousers, sat at one end of a sofa, with Nancy beside her and Luke perched on the arm. She looked calm – her Eton crop glossy black, her lips red – but Louisa could see the tremble of the cigarette she held. ‘We mustn’t allow an autopsy,’ she was saying, as Nancy listened.
‘Why ever not?’ Diana’s voice, clear and authoritative. ‘Her family will want to know what’s happened.’
‘They won’t when they discover it’s opium,’ Kate shot back, though she kept her tone low. ‘I had to do the same for Shaun. His family would have been destroyed by the scandal. We need to make sure the police allow her body to be sent straight back to America. She was suddenly, dreadfully ill. That’s all they need to know.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Nancy. ‘Clara had no opium, that’s why she was so ill. You’ve got nothing to worry about. Forget about this and let the police get on with their job.’
But Kate’s fingers still trembled.
Louisa could not stay there; she turned to go back to her mistress’s room, to see which clothes needed laundering or ironing. It was important that she keep herself busy. But just as she had stepped out, she felt someone close behind her and heard a cough. It was the man who had been on reception the night before. ‘I was very sorry to hear about your friend,’ he said.
Louisa was about to say that Clara hadn’t been her friend and then realized that would be splitting hairs needlessly. She had been concerned for her, hadn’t she? In those last hours, Louisa was as close as any friend could be, and certainly as wretched at her death. No one else had thought to ask Louisa how she was, having woken to find the body, and the kindness of this stranger’s remark almost brought her to tears.
‘There is a small concern … ’ He looked around him but no one else was there, other than the usual traffic of a large hotel. ‘I sent one of the maids up to your room with the tea and she is terribly afraid that she may be blamed for something.’
‘Oh no, she mustn’t worry,’ said Louisa, rushing to assuage the poor girl’s fear. ‘She couldn’t possibly have, you see it was—’ She stopped. No one would want the hotel to know that one of the guests had died in a drug-related incident. ‘It was something she had been suffering from for some time. Please let the maid know.’
He shrugged. ‘I will try. These things, they happen in hotels all the time but they frighten the new girls. I hope she does not disappear!’ He didn’t seem quite as sympathetic as he had done at first. ‘Goodbye.’ He gave a small bow. ‘Enjoy the rest of your stay.’
Up in Diana’s room, Louisa mechanically set about her tasks, but as soon as she had run out of things to do, she realized she was completely worn out – from both the lack of sleep the night before and the terrible tension before the tragedy itself had struck. She wanted nothing more than to lie down in a darkened room but Clara’s body had not yet been moved. It didn’t seem to have occurred to anybody to find Louisa another room to sleep in. In the end, she decided to take a small risk by sitting on a low but comfortable chair in Diana’s dressing room and closing her eyes for a few minutes or until her mistress returned.
But sleep would not come. Her mind raced around, seeing only the sallow face of Clara the day before and her death mask in the early hours of the morning. She wondered if any of her family had been told yet, she remembered how fun and pretty she had been when Louisa had first known her, and she thought about Clara calling out for someone
and wondered who that person was. Could it have been Shaun? Nancy had mentioned Kate’s comment that Clara was a ‘husband-stealer’. The name had sounded more like Rose. The same name as that maid Guy had been looking for, though that could only be a coincidence. The young American had been so dreadfully unhappy in all sorts of ways, she now realized. It was the notion that Clara had died from not having opium which didn’t sit right with her. Louisa didn’t know very much about drugs but, from anything she had read in the papers, people died of something they had taken rather than not taken, didn’t they? What’s more, why was Kate so eager to shut down a second autopsy?
It was at that thought Louisa opened her eyes and sat bolt upright. Nancy and Kate had gone to see Clara last night, hadn’t they? And they had been left alone with her. What if Nancy had left Kate alone with Clara for a few minutes? Kate could have asked Nancy to fetch her something, or Nancy might simply have gone to the bathroom. That would have been time enough for Kate to slip something in Clara’s mouth. In her state, she wouldn’t have noticed, and even if she had, she’d have had no strength to protest. Any cry she made could have been easily brushed off as just one of another of her agonised noises. She had to find out what Kate knew, and if she had been alone with Clara.
A further thought shook her. If Kate was capable of slipping something to Clara, might she not have done the same to her husband? She knew he was allergic to sesame: it wouldn’t have been hard to put some in his food, would it?
As bone-tired as she had been a moment ago, there was a surge of energy running through her now. She could not wait and ran down the stairs back to the drawing room. It had been an hour since she had left but nobody appeared to have changed position, although the drinks had been refreshed. She hovered at the door, wondering whether to make herself known, when Luke happened to look up and caught her eye. He tugged at Nancy and the two of them came over.
‘Louisa,’ said Luke, ‘you must be feeling ghastly. What a horrible shock you had this morning.’
A wave of misery flooded over her when she heard these sympathetic words, as if they had opened the dam. She couldn’t do more than nod in agreement.
Nancy moved the three of them to the side of the doorway, so that they couldn’t be observed by anyone in the drawing room.
‘What is it, Louisa?’
‘Has the doctor has signed off Miss Fischer’s death as natural causes?’ Louisa asked, aware that she had no concrete reason to contradict this finding yet needing to know the answer.
‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘I believe he’s said it was a heart attack. Apart from anything else, it means her body can be flown back to America quickly. Nancy telephoned the mother and she’s understandably anxious to have her daughter back as soon as possible. Jewish, you see.’
Louisa looked at Nancy. ‘You had to telephone … ?’
Nancy nodded. ‘It was awful.’
‘The thing is,’ said Louisa. ‘I wonder if it was natural causes.’
‘Not this again,’ said Nancy.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Luke, his ears practically flapping.
‘I just don’t see how she could have died that quickly from opium withdrawal. People do recover from addiction. She had been very sick, it’s true, but not enough to cause death.’
‘But what else could it have been?’ Luke had the bone, Nancy looked angry.
‘I don’t know exactly but someone could have slipped her something, poison or another type of drug.’
Luke was about to respond to this but Nancy flew at Louisa. ‘Must it always be murder with you? You and I have had this conversation already and I tell you, it’s not that. It was horrible, it was sad, it was bad luck.’
‘But what about Clara calling out—?’
Before Louisa could say a name, Nancy had held out her hands, palms out, as if shielding herself from hearing any more. ‘I am not going to have this thrown in. The whole thing has been distressing enough. Just stop it, Louisa. Perhaps you should give up being a lady’s maid and become a policewoman. That’s the proper place for this sort of nonsense.’
She turned on her heels and stalked back into the room. Luke looked at Louisa. ‘What name did Clara call out?’
‘I can’t tell you, if Miss Nancy doesn’t want it said.’
‘I think I know,’ said Luke. He glanced over his shoulder. ‘I’d better go back in there.’
Two mornings later, the English newspapers were delivered. In all of them was the news of ‘the hopeful starlet Clara Fischer’s sudden death in Venice, while on holiday with high-society luminaries’. No connection was made between the presence of Mrs Shaun Mulloney and the fact that her husband had died equally suddenly, almost exactly a year before, in Paris. But in the Daily Sketch, there was a gossip item about ‘wagging tongues in the group suggesting that the flapper Miss Fischer had been, shall we say, swimming in the Irish seas with a husband that was not hers’.
Everybody read it. Everybody knew that Luke wrote for the Daily Sketch. It wasn’t entirely wrong but it broke the code of discretion.
Louisa was summoned to Diana’s room not long after the papers had been sent up and was told that Mrs Mulloney had decided that she would be leaving that day. ‘So are we, too. It’s not as if any of us can have any fun after all that business with Clara. You’d better get started on the packing, Lou-Lou. We’re going home.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Louisa’s mind on the journey back to London from Venice was full of murderous thoughts. Whether it was the detective novels she had been reading, the thwarting of her police career, Nancy’s off-handed remark about her giving up being a lady’s maid, or genuine suspicion, she would not allow herself to fully determine. But she could not shake the feeling that there was a connection between Shaun’s death in Paris and Clara’s in Venice. On the face of it, they were both unfortunate but natural: Shaun’s an allergic reaction to sesame, most probably in something he ate at the restaurant; Clara’s opium withdrawal.
Yet there was a possible connection and, if right, it was a simple one: Clara and Shaun had been having an affair. That would both mean the search for a motive did not have to go far and would immediately unlock the possible murderer: Kate Mulloney.
How would she have done it? Knowing of her husband’s sesame allergy, the first task would have been a simple one – and given that they were alone in an apartment in Paris, it would have been easy for her to claim that she had been too drunk to notice what had happened to him. Clara’s was more complicated, but perhaps it was simply that she saw the opportunity and took it. When Clara was taken suddenly so ill, all Kate had to do was make sure that she was left alone with her long enough to slip her something that would cause her death.
That left two questions. Did Kate definitely know that Clara was having an affair with Shaun? And if so, why would Kate have waited a year between the two murders? The answer must be that a distance of several months would seem less suspicious. She may also have been biding her time, waiting for the moment when she could do it easily. Nevertheless, it seemed very cold-hearted, which did not fit with Kate’s easy humour and largesse, both of which indicated a woman of real feeling; and her grief after Shaun’s death had seemed genuine, if a touch too contained.
Perhaps Nancy was right. Louisa was intent on creating drama where there was none. She might be better off confronting the fact that she was bored, and that she should not be settling for this life of servitude, however much she enjoyed some aspects of it.
By the time Louisa had arrived at 10 Buckingham Street, she had determined that she must find another course of action for herself. In spite of having finished her schooling at the age of fourteen – her mother had needed her to assist her in her laundry work and to bring in extra wages to the household – she felt that she did have a brain. Under Lady Redesdale’s kind instruction, she had been guided to various history books in the Mitford library that had been used to tutor the girls. Art books, too, had offered her windows into the souls of
painters and sculptors; something she still felt to be a privilege, as no one before had ever suggested that Louisa might know of them, let alone understand their works. Nancy, who had been a wide and enthusiastic reader from a young age, recommended to her novels of worlds past and foreign, teaching her of Victorian slums, Indian maharajahs and African deserts. Besides all that, Louisa had been disciplined in reading the newspaper daily and catching as much as she could on the radio. For her work with Diana, she had made studies of Vogue and Harper’s magazines when Diana had finished with them, making sure she was up-to-date on the latest fashions and styles, so that she could be a proper advisor as lady’s maid. (Though, truthfully, she found the insistence on ‘must-have’ hats of a certain shape or the distinctions between two apparently identical beaded dresses rather silly.) All in all, she had a mind of her own. Why did she not use it to greater satisfaction?
But Louisa’s initial impulse to look for other work was quickly submerged in the sombre atmosphere that greeted them in London. Diana’s generally sunny outlook as she awaited the birth of her first child in the spring was overshadowed by the grim conversations everywhere – between Bryan and his friends, in the newspapers and on the radio – about what ‘Black Thursday’ in America’s Wall Street would mean for Britain. There was talk of economic collapse, rising unemployment and social unrest spreading across the Atlantic to Europe. Not, Louisa noted, that it yet affected the evenings of the feted Mr and Mrs Guinness. The near-constant weekly cycle of theatre, concerts, dinners and dances remained as predictable as a commuter train timetable.
It wasn’t long before Kate Mulloney was one of the many to arrive at the house for a dinner party. Friends of Nancy’s or Bryan’s had only to telephone for Diana to ask them over. Louisa could see she was eager to cultivate the friendships for herself, and was always careful to be especially pretty and charming as a hostess. She certainly knew what not to do, thanks to her father’s infamous outbursts at Asthall Manor; one guest had been sent packing from a weekend for leaving her handkerchief on a hedge. Being young and fashionable, the hosting was little effort for Diana – although Louisa thought that, when set alongside Nancy, it was clear that she lacked her sister’s sharp wit, even if she was quick to laugh at another’s jokes. Her quiet confidence, too, could have grown into something rather steely and unforgiving had she not been softened by the warmth and generosity of Bryan, who was never less than kind or concerned about any other person in trouble. That did not mean there was complete harmony in the matrimonial state. The most common argument Louisa would overhear took place as Diana readied herself for an evening out. Bryan would come into the bedroom, see Louisa fetching a long dress or Diana putting her diamond earrings on and say: ‘Darling, we’re not going out tonight, are we?’
[Mitford Murders 03] - The Mitford Scandal Page 14