The Mitford Scandal--A Mitford Murders Mystery Read online

  Somehow, above the chatter and the music, Louisa was sure she heard a creak from above, followed sharply by a cry. She was puzzled to see shadows moving across the glass. There was more than one and they were too big to be the house’s pet cats, surely. Were those people on the glass? It couldn’t be nearly strong enough to hold anyone. Louisa looked frantically about her, not knowing what she was hoping to see – something to catch them? Should she shout? But she didn’t want to cause a scene, it might be someone fixing something and it could be terribly embarrassing if—

  Without realising, Louisa had been moving as she was looking up, and she felt someone grip her arm. It was Mr Meyer, though of course he did not know her name. ‘Watch out,’ he said. He looked up, following her eyeline, and gave a gasp. ‘What’s up there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, her pulse racing.

  Before either of them could warn the others there was a crash, then a fast-moving, horrible sound as shards scattered everywhere, hands flew to faces and men threw their arms around the bare shoulders of the women, before the most sickening and terrible sound of all – a body hitting the floor.

  There lay a young maid, absolutely dead.

  Up above them another girl clung to the chandelier, blood pouring down her china-white face, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her mouth a silent black hole.

  CHAPTER TWO

  For a second, every person in the hall stood still, petrified by the sight of the inert maid lying in the broken glass, her body twisted like a vine, blood pouring out from beneath her skull. As if in jest, the music and the chatter continued loudly next door; then, as the guests close by the maid stirred to action, the noise lowered until it completely stopped. In the echoing silence, several people ran to the body, covering it with a coat and shouting for someone to call an ambulance, someone get upstairs, someone fetch the housekeeper, someone find Mr Guinness. Somehow, in all the commotion, further servants and guests ran up the stairs and the second maid was rescued; she had been wounded by the broken glass, and was clinging on to the chain, her fingers stiff with fright. Some women had burst into tears and were being comforted; one had been removed to another room in order to hide her hysterics. The hubbub from the ballroom started up again, louder than before, but the music remained quelled.

  Bryan Guinness, a narrow figure in white tie, with dark eyes set in a face that had a high forehead but otherwise perfectly proportioned features, had been the first in his family to react to the waves of alarm coming from the hall. He ran straight there, handed his drink to a friend, and knelt beside the body, seemingly not caring that the broken glass might shred his trousers and cut his knees. ‘What happened? What happened?’ he asked, staring at the white faces of the men and women around him.

  An older man gripped him firmly by the elbow and pulled him up. ‘Seems the young girls must have been trying to look at the party through the skylight, and fallen through.’

  ‘She’s dead?’

  The man nodded and Bryan grimaced. ‘Poor girl.’

  In the next few minutes, his parents rushed to the scene, leading Bryan away as quickly as they could, encouraging the rest to follow. Two footmen were recruited to shield the maid’s body from the party until the ambulance arrived – thankfully soon – to take her away, along with the second maid, who was shaking uncontrollably in spite of the enormous blanket that was wrapped around her. Lady Evelyn and Walter Guinness stood by the door to see out their guests as they left, apologising over and again for the shock and upset.

  * * *

  Guy Sullivan stood on the black and white marble floor of the hall of Grosvenor Place and marvelled at the coolness of the atmosphere. Outside, he had been sweating in his suit, though at least he was spared the indignity of the year-round wool uniform his colleagues suffered. Up above him, the skylight still showed the signs of its brutal smash the night before, with a chain hanging uselessly through it, the chandelier no longer attached to the end. Below, around him, it was as if nothing had happened, let alone a fatality. The place was gleaming with cleanliness, there were flowers everywhere and sunlight shone through the windows. While his superior, Detective Inspector Stiles, interviewed Mr Guinness, Guy had been taken on a tour of the servants’ quarters below stairs, on to the back stairs and up to the fourth-floor landing. A servant’s life was nothing so much as a continuous journey up and down steps, he thought. A close examination of the railing around the skylight had yielded nothing suspicious – it was as secure as a prison gate. Now, he was holding in his hand a list of the guests who had been there that night and his eye had just fallen on that of the Hons. Nancy and Diana Mitford of 26 Rutland Gate.

  He hadn’t seen either of them for over two years, when he had been at their parents’ house in Oxfordshire, investigating a murder. That is, he hadn’t been there officially, but he had discovered the culprit and the successful result had ensured his quick referral to the CID. Diana had been a young girl of fifteen then but Nancy he’d known a little better, from earlier still, when she was a debutante, emerging from the nursery but chaperoned by her former nursery maid, Louisa Cannon.

  Louisa. The thought of her had never lost the power to stop Guy in his tracks, even though she had disappeared from view. He couldn’t understand it: they’d been friends for so long, even if he’d always hoped it would turn to more. They had met in inauspicious circumstances, when Louisa had jumped from a moving train, escaping her uncle, Stephen. She’d been in distress but in spite of her scuffed clothes and wrecked hat, the first thing Guy had noticed was how pretty she was; then he’d admired her fighting spirit. After that, they had become close, as circumstances conspired to bring them together again. Still, though she could be exasperating, never quite seeming to make up her mind what she thought about him, they had never lost touch altogether – until recently.

  So far as Guy knew, Louisa had planned to leave her job with the Mitford girls’ parents, Lord and Lady Redesdale, in order to return to London and find work; she had been ambitious to be more than a servant. Not knowing where she’d gone, he’d written to her at Asthall Manor, hoping that if Louisa was no longer there that his letters would be forwarded. But he’d never heard back and could only assume that she’d requested his letters not be passed to her. Or simply not replied. She’d probably met someone and got married and not wanted to tell him. He could understand that; he’d made his feelings about her clear, even when he was unsure that she felt the same.

  A thump on his shoulder shook Guy from his reminiscences. ‘Righto, back to the station. Better write this up, get it all ready for the inquest. Gather it’s happening in the next couple of days or so.’

  DI Stiles was, in spite of his heavy hand, tall and lean, always dressed in a pale grey suit with a pastel-coloured tie. Standing together, the contrast between him and Guy couldn’t have been sharper. They shared the same height and narrow frame, but the similarities ended there, at Guy’s thick, round glasses and amiable smile. Stiles’s silver hair was slicked back till it shone and his moustache could have been painted on. It was rumoured that the man he lived with was not his brother. Guy liked him chiefly because he wasn’t snooty, even if he looked it. In fact, Stiles was distinctly unimpressed by anything he deemed snobbish and had taken a shine to Guy. In the last few months they had formed what amounted to an unofficial partnership, though Guy couldn’t entirely rule out the idea that this was largely down to the fact that he was more willing than Stiles to complete the necessary legwork of a case, particularly when Stiles had a drink on offer.

  True to form, the next thing Stiles said was: ‘Don’t mind if I hand over my notes to you, do you, old boy? I’ve got a longstanding at the Dog and Duck in about half an hour.’

  ‘No problem, sir,’ said Guy, knowing this was his cue to leave Grosvenor Place and return to the station alone.

  * * *

  Next morning at Pavilion Road, the Knightsbridge station to which Guy had been attached when promoted to detective sergeant, he dutifully
typed up the notes made by him and Stiles. It looked to be a straightforward, if tragic, case. Earlier, Guy had interviewed Elizabeth, the maid who had survived the accident. Though still visibly distressed, no blame could be laid at her feet. She had described how she and Dot had wanted to look at the women’s fine dresses and had crept out on to the skylight, to peer through the gap in the glass. But for a slip of the fingers, they might have had their moment of fun and that would have been the end of it. Instead, it had led to death. A brief conversation with the third maid, Nora, had confirmed her statement. There was only one thing she had said that niggled at Guy: she had seen a fourth maid come up on the landing, someone she hadn’t recognized. ‘She wasn’t one of the live-ins,’ Nora had said, ‘probably one of the maids borrowed for the party. But I don’t know what she was doing up there. I didn’t see her after the girls fell.’ Whoever this maid was, she could be an important witness. He would have to check against the names of all the staff on the list that the housekeeper had given him, and that would take time: there had been over sixty people working there that night, the vast majority of them drafted in only for that party. Then again, given that the inquest was likely to conclude an accidental death with no suspicious circumstances, he thought it unlikely he’d be given permission to do this.

  Then something happened that Guy couldn’t have called a stroke of luck exactly – that would have presumed a happy turn of events. DI Stiles came over and handed him a telephone number, for a pub in Yorkshire, the Queen Victoria. Guy was to call the number and leave a message for a Mr Albert Morgan with a time that Mr Morgan could call him back. ‘It was given to me because I’m leading the inquiry into the maid’s death but I’ve got to go out,’ said Stiles with a wink. ‘Do it for me, would you?’

  Guy was intrigued: he did as he was asked and at noon they spoke. Mr Morgan had a distinctive accent, and he sounded distressed. He started talking about how he was a simple farmer and had no understanding of London folk until Guy had to press him to tell him what the phone call was about.

  ‘It’s my daughter, Rose. She’s gone missing. Her mam and me, we’ve not heard from her and she’s not shown up at work. Someone from the big house she works fer called us and asked us if she’d come home, but she in’t here.’

  Guy took down some details: Rose worked as a maid for a Lady Delaney at 11 Wilton Crescent, she’d been there a year. But she’d gone to work at a big party a few nights ago. ‘The housekeeper told us there was a terrible accident at the party, a maid died. It weren’t Rose, I know that, but she’s not been seen since.’ The father’s voice threatened to crack but he recovered his stoic tone fast. ‘It’s not like her not to let us know where she is. She knows we worry about her being in the city. We just want to tell her she can come home, we won’t be angry. She’s only seventeen, not much more than a lass.’

  Guy reassured him he’d do everything he could to find her. ‘I’m sure she’s safe and well, Mr Morgan, and I’ll keep in touch. Can I call this number when I need to talk to you?’

  ‘Aye, someone here will tek a message to me or the missus and one of us will call you back. We’ve no telephone at the farm. I don’t hold with them usually but I’m glad for it now.’

  Guy thanked him and repeated his assurances. Privately he wondered if he could be so sure that the young Rose was safe and well somewhere. He shook his head sadly as he put the phone down; his work as a policeman had taught him that life could be brutish and short. In spite of his grand age – nearing thirty – Guy was not yet married and still lived in the house in which he’d been born. It was hard to leave when he worried about how his mother was coping. His father was alive but losing his mind, and she spent her days worrying about him, unable to leave him for more than a minute for fear he’d let himself out of the front door and walk into the road, never to find his way home again. Guy, the last at home out of the four brothers, was the only one to give her some respite, allowing her a breather to get to the shops or pop out to see one of the neighbours.

  Even so, his mother loved him and wanted the best for her son. Perhaps it was time he did something about the lack he felt in his life and moved towards the place he really wanted to be. It was time, he decided, to get married. And he knew exactly the woman to ask.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A week or so after the Guinness party, Louisa Cannon was standing on the pavement outside the Albert Hall, wishing she had worn a lighter coat. She’d have liked to cross the road, kick her shoes and stockings off, and walk on the grass. It had been a wet June but when July arrived, the heat had come with it. On the other hand, she was looking forward to seeing Nancy and Diana. She looked at her watch and smiled. Ten minutes late already.

  Louisa had been their nursery maid for more than five years but had left over two years ago at the start of 1926 to pursue a career in London, a city that had changed in those years since the war, offering new and better jobs for her kind than had ever existed for her mother’s generation. Louisa had moved into a room in Chelsea, close by where she had grown up, though Mrs Cannon had long left to live with Louisa’s aunt in Suffolk. Her father had died years ago. There was hardly anybody from her old life around any more, only her friend Jennie, but they met rarely. Even less since Jennie had married and had a baby.

  At first, Louisa had taken any odd job she could, not wanting to commit to any live-in servant work in the hopes of something more interesting coming her way. At the start, she had applied for training as a policewoman but had been turned down, peremptorily and quickly. There had been one or two minor charges of theft when she was younger and under the influence of her uncle Stephen, but Louisa had crossed her fingers, hoping either that they hadn’t kept a record or that they would overlook them – considering the assistance she had given the police since then – but it seemed neither was the case. She had thought about arguing that it ‘takes one to know one’ when it comes to catching criminals but suspected that this wouldn’t help. Ashamed, she had hidden herself even further from those she knew and finally found herself a job as a seamstress for a dress shop in Mayfair, working out of the back with two others, running up the alterations for customers. It wasn’t bad work. She had her freedom, no longer having to ask permission from Nanny Blor or Lady Redesdale to leave the house. And London was exciting after those years in the Cotswold countryside. There were nightclubs, restaurants, galleries and museums, not to mention theatres and picture houses.

  But she rarely went to any of them. They all cost money and, even if she had enough to spare, it would have been unseemly, if not downright lonely, to go by herself. She couldn’t eat alone in a restaurant, she couldn’t go to a nightclub without a pal. The less she saw of anyone, the worse it got. At twenty-six years old, Louisa felt she’d missed the best of what life had to offer.

  When she went to see her mother, who was quite old now – she’d had Louisa long after she’d expected to have the luck of bearing a child of her own – she was bombarded with questions about when she would marry. ‘I don’t know, Ma,’ Louisa would say, trying to keep her exasperation in check. ‘I haven’t met anyone I like.’

  ‘What about that policeman you used to mention?’

  Guy Sullivan. He was a good man, and Louisa had liked him very much. But she had been so mortified when she had been turned down for police training – she had planned to surprise him by knocking on his door, wearing the uniform – that she had fallen out of touch with him. He’d written to her a few times but she had never replied and presumably he’d given up on her now. Even if he tried again, he wouldn’t know the Mitfords had moved from Asthall Manor to Swinbrook House. She missed him.

  Louisa would try another tack. ‘Besides, if I got married then I couldn’t work.’

  ‘You could work,’ Ma would huff in reply. ‘I worked all my life.’

  To this, Louisa couldn’t explain that she wanted more than a job, she wanted a career, something that took her beyond her station, whatever that was. Her mother had worked long ye
ars as a laundress, her father as a chimney sweep – Mr Black and Mrs White she and Jennie called them – and Louisa was proud of them. But she wanted better than that for herself; work had made her parents tired and resentful. What she had seen when she had been working for Lord and Lady Redesdale had shown her that life was full of so many other possibilities. And the years after the war had promised change for the likes of her: a break with the past; a chance to do things differently. And lots of things were different – she couldn’t deny that. The streets were practically choked with traffic so’s one couldn’t help but worry for the policemen with their long, white sleeves directing four ways of cars, buses and vans. There was a telephone in every house and in red boxes on just about every street corner: you could talk to almost anyone, anywhere, even America. Plenty of women went out to work, too, not just as cleaners and shop girls. There were secretaries and telephonists working in big offices, there amongst lots of other women and men, too. Some women did even more amazing things. Just a few weeks ago, Amelia Earhart had been a passenger in a plane that had flown across the Atlantic. Louisa had seen the newsreel that had shown Miss Earhart waving off, looking thrillingly glamorous in her pilot’s outfit with hat and goggles, and those funny trousers that seemed to have wings of their own. Apparently, she hadn’t actually flown the plane but she’d been there, sitting behind the pilot, and she probably would be the pilot next time. How Louisa had longed to fly right through that cinema screen and join Miss Earhart on the Fokker F.VII. As it was, the furthest she had been was Dieppe in France, by ferry, and that had been with the Mitford girls.

  All this meant that when Louisa had received a message from Nancy to say that Diana was doing the Season in London, and would she like to meet them while they were in town, Louisa decided that she had to say yes. Naturally, they were behind the clock. Their father, Lord Redesdale, was a stickler for punctuality – he would even time the vicar’s sermon, signalling if he ran a second over ten minutes – so it was a form of rebellion that his daughters would ignore the time whenever he wasn’t around. Just as Louisa was thinking this, a number nine bus drew up at the stop, and amongst the people disembarking she spotted Nancy.