Guy walked fast to Joe’s and as he pushed open the door, a uniform was on his way out. In spite of his lowly rank, he was older than Guy, with jowls and eyes the colour of shrapnel. ‘PC Marshall?’ asked Guy.
‘Who’s asking?’
‘DS Sullivan, Knightsbridge. Might we have a little chat?’
‘You’ll have to walk with me, I’m on duty.’
‘Lead the way,’ said Guy, with an insouciance he didn’t feel. For all his pleasure in apprehending criminals, Guy was not a man who enjoyed confrontation.
They walked along the narrow pavement, jostling against each other and having to separate crocodile fashion as others pushed past, people hurrying to work or appointments. By the time Guy was able to speak properly, his breath was short, undermining what he had hoped would be his gravitas as the senior policeman.
‘I understand you arrested a Mr Luke Meyer recently.’
PC Marshall didn’t break his stride. ‘Yes. What of it?’
Whatever had happened, this was a man on the back foot. Guy knew he had to tread carefully. He couldn’t incriminate himself by interfering in criminal justice before he had forced PC Marshall to retreat.
‘He’s a personal friend of Mr Bryan Guinness.’
‘Thinks that puts him above the law, does he?’
‘No,’ said Guy. ‘But it does buy him a good lawyer.’
‘Best of luck to him, then.’ Not once had PC Marshall looked at Guy but kept his eyes straight ahead.
‘Mr Meyer has given a second statement of the events that night, to us at CID.’
There was a momentary break in his rhythm then.
‘Right. And this concerns me because?’
‘PC Marshall. I suggest you think carefully before you repeat that question. I think you know what Mr Meyer will have said. Now, we can take this to court and have it all heard there, or you can realize that you made an error in your arrest, and have the charges dropped immediately.’
PC Marshall still didn’t look at Guy but he stopped walking. ‘You and I know this is how policing works. All I’m doing is upholding the law.’ He pushed his face closer to Guy’s. ‘Are you doing the same, DS Sullivan?’
Guy didn’t flinch. ‘Magistrates don’t see it quite like that. I don’t think you want to be another Reginald Handford, do you?’
PC Marshall sneered. ‘I can see it’s my word against his and you’ve decided to believe the rich man. Money always talks, doesn’t it?’
‘What’s more, PC Marshall, I’ll be keeping an eye on your arrest record. I’d stick to the petty thieves if I was you.’
PC Marshall made no reply to this but walked away and disappeared around the corner.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
In April, the Guinnesses moved out of 10 Buckingham Street to 96 Cheyne Walk. Diana made this house her own, painting over the old walls and panelling in white, and washing rooms in pale blues, pinks and golds. It was ineffably pretty, particularly with the first-floor drawing room that overlooked the River Thames; but instead of enjoying this suffusion of light and water, Louisa was beginning to feel oppressed by the secret life that her mistress was now leading. This was due, in part, Louisa knew, to the fact that she was hiding her own affairs of the heart. However much she condemned Diana’s treatment of Bryan, Louisa understood – to a degree – the compulsion she felt.
Louisa had met Mosley only briefly and watched him at a distance once or twice, waiting discreetly for Diana as she talked to him after they had bumped into each other somewhere. Rarely, of course, had the encounter not been orchestrated in advance. The new house in Cheyne Walk also happened to be quite close to the headquarters of Mosley’s New Party’s Youth Movement in the King’s Road, where he organised fencing and gymnastics for the young members. Though the New Party had been dissolved, the Youth Movement remained, and Diana always referred to him as ‘the Leader’. It wasn’t hard for Diana to find a reason to go shopping nearby and for Mosley to appear in the street, apparently by accident. More than once, Louisa had been compelled by her mistress to admire his fitness and the strength of his figure; he was fourteen years older than Diana and yet her husband’s youthfulness never favourably compared.
Louisa and Guy, meanwhile, were doing their own sneaking out to meet. She wasn’t quite ready yet to admit the idea of marriage and was grateful that Guy hadn’t brought it up. She thought he might have been sensitive to Sinéad receiving any news of an engagement less than two months after he had broken with her. At least, she hoped it was no more than that. Louisa knew now that she was in love with Guy and she knew, too, that it was different to whatever it was that Diana had with Mosley. Where Louisa felt comforted by the idea of Guy and revelled in the safety and strength he could provide, Diana seemed to be distracted by a kind of madness, thinking of little else other than where Mosley was and how she could meet him. She was increasingly careless of discovery by Bryan, though Louisa was confident that Diana had not discussed her burgeoning feelings with either Nancy or Pamela. Nor did she think Diana and Mosley had become lovers. Diana was a prize, publicly on view and constantly watched by admirers and the press. It was dangerous for her to do anything that broke the code of what was expected of her, and she was still devoted to her boys. All the same, there was no doubt that it was a merely a question of when, not if, they would cross that line.
*
However, there were advantages for Louisa, with more time spent in London at the new house, particularly as Diana chose to leave the boys with Nanny Higgs at Biddesden and was losing hours to her ‘distraction’, whether on the telephone trying to find out which social engagement both she and the Leader were invited to or actually at the events themselves. This meant Louisa had fewer demands on her day and was able to do things for herself in a way that had never been possible before. There were lunches with Guy, in themselves an indulgence, even if they were mostly little more than egg sandwiches on a park bench. They talked freely, of their past, of the books they were reading (Louisa was more of a reader than Guy but he had started to take up some of her suggestions), there was a trip to the cinema to see A Farewell to Arms, and walks around Hyde Park, admiring the blossom. There was also talk of murder.
Guy had pursued the police in France for details of their investigation into the death of Shaun Mulloney, but when they came finally through, they were brief. The chef at the restaurant where the Guinnesses and their friends had eaten that fateful night had been questioned and he had been adamant that there was no sesame in anything that Mr Mulloney had ordered. But he had conceded that as there was sesame in other dishes made in the kitchens, there was the possibility of cross-contamination. The waiter who had taken the order said that no one had mentioned the danger of sesame to any of the diners. Given the symptoms of Mr Mulloney’s death – vomiting, stomach pains and cardiac arrest – the doctor stood by his decision to rule the death as accidental and caused by an allergy. All in all, there wasn’t much to go on.
Except for the chocolates.
Guy and Louisa were strolling through the park on a bright and breezy day, when spring was definitely near if not yet quite arrived, taking advantage of a long-ish lunch hour, in itself a novelty for them both. ‘Have you spoken to Luke recently?’ Guy asked.
‘No, he’s been lying low since the arrest. I know he went back to his aunt’s, safe in the knowledge that she hadn’t discovered anything about it and the charges have been dropped. But I get the impression it rather knocked him off his perch. Diana hasn’t mentioned him lately but then, she doesn’t mention much except the Leader.’
Guy raised an eyebrow at this. She loved him for his feelings on the subject: it was not so much that he was moral, though he was, as that he disliked unkindness. And Diana’s treatment of her husband, as she pursued another man, was unkind.
‘I think you should drop in on him,’ said Guy. ‘I can’t. It would be too official.’
‘All I got was a defensive reaction last time.’
‘Per
haps you should be more direct. Ask him where those chocolates came from, where he bought them. Even if he realizes that you suspect him, I think it’s a risk worth taking.’
‘Fine,’ said Louisa. ‘For you, I’ll do it.’
‘You don’t know how glad that makes me feel,’ said Guy.
‘So show me.’ And he did.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Louisa telephoned Luke the very next day, arranging for them to meet. They met at his suggestion in Lyons’ Corner House on the Strand, and when she walked in he was already sitting at a table for two at the furthest end from the entrance.
Under the electric lights of the café, Louisa was shocked by Luke’s appearance. He was gaunt, with hollows in his cheekbones and his eyes slightly bulging out of their sockets. His skin was grey and even his hair looked thinner.
‘What’s happened to you?’ she said as she pulled her chair out.
‘Hello and how lovely to see you too.’
‘I’m sorry but you look awful.’
Luke grimaced. ‘Is it really that bad? I was wondering why no one had asked me over to the Lily Pond.’
‘The what?’
‘It’s the name the waitresses have in here for that area in the corner.’ Louisa looked and noticed that there were only men sitting across from each other at the tables where Luke had indicated. Some of them wore rather less than conventional clothing and she was fairly sure one of them had pressed powder on his skin.
‘Oh,’ said Louisa, wondering how she hadn’t noticed before. She needed to get to the point. ‘Wasn’t it sad about poor Dora Carrington?’
‘Yes, that was wretched, wasn’t it? I suppose it wasn’t really surprising though, everyone expected it of her after Lytton died.’
‘You spoke to her, didn’t you? Down at Biddesden.’
Luke was startled by this. ‘A little, yes.’
‘You told her you shot a badger, to put it out of its misery.’
‘What of it?’
‘That’s quite a dangerous suggestion to someone like Miss Carrington, isn’t it? Knowing how unhappy she was at the time, after Mr Strachey died.’
‘Are you suggesting she shot herself because of something I said to her?’
Louisa glanced away. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, you should know,’ said Luke. ‘That’s a pretty awful thing to say to me.’ He started coughing and it led to a minor fit. Louisa waited it out.
He sighed then and was about to speak when a waitress came up and asked for their order. Luke ordered Earl Grey tea with no milk, only a slice of lemon and nothing to eat. Louisa asked for tea too, and a scone. ‘I can’t eat,’ said Luke. ‘Everything makes my stomach turn. The police wrote to say they were dropping all the charges but I suppose I’m still feeling the after-effects of that ghastly time.’
The waitress had returned to set their tea things down but mercifully left swiftly. Luke was pouting, either because he was cross or for the benefit of the Lily Pond, or both.
Louisa thought she had better pull back for now. She still wanted to know how he had obtained Kate Mulloney’s diary, in which she had spelled out her anger against Clara and Shaun, but decided that would be better left for another day.
‘Could you pour my tea? Thank you. Now, tell me what’s happening with Mrs Guinness and the Leader.’ He had moved smoothly on.
Louisa interrupted the flow of milk. ‘Is this for your newspaper?’
‘No, darling. I can hardly lift a pen these days, let alone clack on the typewriter.’
She looked up at him, as if she could check how truthful he was being. ‘There’s nothing to report. What have you heard?’
‘What haven’t I heard, more like. London is awash with filthy rumours. There’s always plenty to say about him as it is. I don’t think anyone has ever mentioned Mosley’s wife without the adjective “long-suffering”.’ The breathless gossip put a little colour back into his cheeks.
‘I don’t think they’re lovers, if that’s what you’re asking. But I do think she’s enamoured. She believes he’s a brilliant political mind.’
‘Hmm. Rumour also has it that his New Party dissolved because some of his co-founders think he has fascist ambitions to be an autocratic ruler. He went on a trip to visit Mussolini earlier this year. That tells you something.’
‘I didn’t know,’ said Louisa, genuinely surprised. Beyond the brief articles the Italian correspondent wrote in The Times about Mussolini she was quite ignorant about him but she had read about the fears that surrounded his ideas. Fascism built roads, seemed to be the nub of it, but anyone who disagreed with his ideology was disappeared from public life, either literally or figuratively. It didn’t seem to be the freedom everyone had fought for in the war.
Luke took another sip of his tea then but it prompted another coughing fit, at the end of which he looked quite green.
‘Do you think Diana knows about his ambitions?’
‘I hardly think she couldn’t. Pillow talk, dear. The trouble is, girls like Diana were brought up to fall in love and get married. They don’t understand the dangerous power of sexual attraction and get carried away when it hits. I spend my life repressing sex. She needs a lesson from me.’ He allowed his eyes to fall briefly on a good-looking waiter as he walked past.
Louisa understood something of what he was saying but she also felt terribly sad, if not for Diana then for Bryan and their two boys. If only she could rush back to the house and scoop the boys up, protecting them from the heartbreak that was coming their way as certainly as a wave crashing on the rocks. Of course, she could not.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
For the next three days, Louisa was at Biddesden, accompanying Diana as she returned to see her boys and Bryan. It was a quiet time, with Diana spending all her waking hours with Bryan, going for long walks along the river and reading their books together in the evening. When Louisa brought Diana her tray in the mornings, she was more muted than she had been in London, less full of lively chatter and gossip and plans for her day. She was always delighted to receive letters from her sisters, childish and enthusiastic missives from Decca and Debo. ‘Decca’s Running Away fund is building up nicely, she says,’ Diana reported on the second morning as Louisa tidied up the bedside table. ‘And Debo says eight new chicks have hatched and she’s in a fury because Muv won’t let her keep them in the Hons Cupboard.’ Diana snickered. ‘No, I’m sure she won’t.’
‘What’s the Hons Cupboard?’
‘It’s that little room on the top floor where the linen is kept. The girls have taken to spending hours in there because it’s so filthy cold in the rest of the house. Not like lovely Asthall.’
Diana opened another letter. ‘Lady Evelyn,’ she muttered, scanning the pages. ‘Oh, she says they’re thinking of selling Grosvenor Place.’ She put the letter down and stared into the distance. ‘Probably because of that awful evening. You know, when the maids …’
Louisa nodded. She remembered. She had been working in the kitchens that night.
‘That was just before Bryan proposed. He said that dreadful accident made him realize how short and precious life is.’ She looked at Louisa then, her eyes as blue as the Antarctic Ocean. ‘It is short, one mustn’t waste a second, must one? One should live life to the absolute fullest, not doing anything dreary but surrounding oneself with love and beauty.’
Louisa, folding items in Diana’s underclothes drawer as this was said, could not help but smile, though she thought the statement did not bode well for Bryan somehow.
In any case, it was something else Diana said that set that dog off again, jumping up in Louisa’s mind, refusing to be ignored.
On the third day, Diana wanted to return to London. Louisa was packing her mistress’s case as she and Bryan argued over her returning alone.
‘You would be bored stiff,’ Diana pleaded. ‘It’s wall-to-wall cocktail parties and luncheons with Nancy and Tom. He’s over from Berlin only for a short time and we will be d
oing all that family rot. I think Nanny Blor might even be bringing down the little ones to see them.’
‘I like seeing your family,’ said Bryan. ‘You know Tom and I get on well.’
‘Yes, but darling, don’t be difficult. You’ll have a much nicer time here getting on with your writing. And it’s so much better for the boys if you’re here.’
As she always did, Diana got her way.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
As promised, on their return to London, Diana was out almost constantly. Louisa was required to be there for the mornings when her mistress woke, and the late afternoons when she rested before preparing for the evening’s rounds. But she was told she did not need to wait up for when Diana returned at the end of the night. Louisa knew this was because Diana always hoped to ‘bump into’ the Leader and did not want to run the risk of leaving a party too early.
Of course, this suited Louisa perfectly. Guy had received a telephone call from Rose Morgan wanting to meet him. He had let her know that Ronan was safely locked up in prison and she had decided it was safe now to see Muriel Delaney, the little girl she had felt guilty about leaving behind. Guy had suggested to Louisa that she come with him to meet Rose, to which she readily agreed. Partly because she was curious and partly because they were spending every free moment they had together.
She was waiting for them in a tea room in Knightsbridge, not far from Guy’s police station. As soon as they walked in, Louisa wondered how she could have forgotten her before, though it was clear her years in Paris had given her a style that wouldn’t have been there when she was working as a maid. Rose greeted them with a nervous smile and they sat down opposite her at the small table. ‘This is Louisa Cannon,’ said Guy but Rose stopped him.
‘Yes, I remember. That is, I don’t think I knew your name but I saw you twice, didn’t I?’
Louisa agreed and shook her hand. ‘It’s funny how it all comes back, isn’t it?’ They ordered tea and Rose began to talk, everything tumbling out in a rush in her Yorkshire accent, unchanged by her years abroad. Louisa had the feeling that Rose hadn’t been able to talk about any of what had happened to her family and that she and Guy were providing her with the shoulders she needed. First of all she checked that Ronan had definitely gone to prison, which Guy was able to confirm. ‘It’ll be some months before he’s out.’
[Mitford Murders 03] - The Mitford Scandal Page 25