The Mitford Scandal--A Mitford Murders Mystery Read online

  The eldest of the six sisters looked the same as ever: not tall but slim, in an elegant pale pink dress with a duster coat a slightly darker shade over the top, both of which fell to just below her knees; her eyebrows were long and thin, and her large eyes still had the smallest droop at the edges, with a glint that kept them from looking soft. But it was Diana who took Louisa by surprise, able to observe her more closely now than she had at the dance. Her chin was round and her jaw almost square, yet this made her look strong – like a Viking – rather than thickset. The effect was show-stopping, Louisa supposed, because of her fashionably short bob, barely reaching past her earlobes. Her features were ideally proportioned and symmetrical, with ice-blue eyes and blonde hair adding to the general impression that she might be leaning out on the prow of a ship. There was a stillness to her, in spite of her lively movements. If Nancy was the ripples in a millpond, Diana was the smooth pebble that had been thrown into the water.

  ‘Lou-Lou!’ Nancy called out as they walked towards her, the sunshine blinding them slightly. ‘Darling, are we late?’

  By twenty-five minutes.

  Louisa shook her head. ‘Nothing to worry about. It’s lovely to see you both. Miss Diana, you look—’

  ‘Don’t say “so grown up”,’ grimaced Diana. ‘All I’ve had for weeks is people comparing my height to a grasshopper’s knees.’

  ‘All right then, I won’t. But it’s lovely to see you.’

  ‘You too,’ said Diana. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? Now you’re no longer our maid, it’s almost as if you’re one of us.’

  Louisa didn’t know how to respond to this but fortunately, Nancy, rather more sensitive, diverted the conversation. ‘Let’s walk down to South Ken,’ she said. ‘There’s a sweet little café there and we can have a cup of tea. I’m terribly afraid to say that we haven’t been up for all that long.’

  ‘Dancing,’ said Diana, her face alight with the pleasure of her memories. ‘Until the small hours. Muv was quite exhausted when we got home.’

  ‘Oh, she loves it,’ said Nancy. ‘It’s not as if she has to do it. Now I’m practically an old maid of twenty-four I’m quite senior enough to be your chaperone.’

  ‘I’m not sure she’s convinced that you would stick to me in the way that she does.’

  Louisa enjoyed hearing them volley their lines like a game of tennis. Nancy was always the sharper wit but Diana had learned how to whet the blade. They had turned to begin walking down Exhibition Road when they heard a ‘Hi!’ call out. A young man was leaning out of the back of a black Bentley which had pulled up alongside the bus stop.

  ‘It’s Bryan Guinness,’ said Nancy. ‘I’d better say hello.’

  ‘I think it’s me he wants to see,’ said Diana, a little pink colouring her cheeks, and she marched off at a faster pace, reaching the car ahead of her older sister, who, Louisa could see, was doing her best not to look put out. Diana leaned in at the car window and talked to him only briefly before he – or rather, his driver – drove off.

  ‘Well, I say,’ said Nancy as Diana returned to them. ‘He didn’t say hello. You know it was me who invited him down to Swinbrook last year? You were still a child, not even at that party.’

  Diana shrugged but she looked pleased. ‘He asked me if I was going to Westminster’s dance on Monday.’ This rang a bell for Louisa, she would have to look at her diary but she thought it may have been somewhere the agency was sending her to work that night.

  ‘Are you?’ Nancy was imperious.

  ‘I am now.’

  * * *

  Cars sped down Exhibition Road, tooting their horns in greeting or impatience at the pedestrians. The noise and the heat momentarily made Louisa feel tired but she was buoyed by the company of Nancy and Diana. She knew she was not as handsome as either of them, and her clothes were cheaper, but she was confident they were happy to see her too. ‘Who is this man then?’ she enquired, in a way that she knew would have been a cheek if she’d been still in the Redesdale employ but not today.

  ‘Bryan Guinness,’ said Nancy. ‘Rich and good-looking but worse than that, he’s terribly nice. One of the few proper chaps about.’

  ‘He’s only one of many,’ said Diana with a smile that showed her white teeth. ‘They’ve been dropping like flies.’

  Louisa, temporarily back in nursery-maid mode, decided it was best not to encourage this line of talk. ‘Is he something to do with the Guinnesses that had the dreadful accident at the party last month? Where the maids fell through a skylight?’ She knew she was being disingenuous but she didn’t want them to know she had been working there in the kitchens. Even so, it had been a distressing night: she felt the need to talk about it with others who had been there. Only they weren’t so willing.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nancy blithely, ‘it truly was ghastly. We were there, although neither of us saw it happen and we were all hurried out very quickly.’

  ‘The poor girls,’ said Louisa, ‘they were only eighteen.’

  Nancy and Diana acknowledged this with a nod and a murmur but she could see that they had put the incident behind them already. ‘What other news, then?’ she said brightly, looping her arm around Diana’s. ‘Tell me everything. How is the new house? How is Nanny Blor? Is she still reading her terrible murder mysteries?’

  Diana laughed, and off they strode, as if they none of them had a care in the world and only bright futures to look forward to. The young don’t look for the clouds over the horizon.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  At nine o’clock the following Monday night, Louisa was back at another grand house in a maid’s uniform. The kitchen was stiflingly hot and she had volunteered to take out one of the full rubbish bins, just to catch her breath. She stood on the pavement, drinking in the warm air, as various young men and women in their evening dress and feathered boas tripped up the stone steps of the Duke of Westminster’s town house.

  Louisa knew the Season was coming to an end and wondered if for all these young people there was the promise of a finale, when the couples that had been dancing around – and with – each other for weeks would decide if they were going to continue their Charleston into the sunset or not. Just then, she saw two figures coming out. A man and a woman. Bryan Guinness and Diana Mitford no less. This could be interesting. Louisa bent down to tie her bootlaces, as if she were not deliberately concealing even from herself that she wished to eavesdrop. The night was not completely dark; the clear blue skies of the day were still as cloudless now, with stars pushing through the navy streaks. The doorway of the house was lit well enough to be a stage, and Diana’s pale shoulders glowed, her face hidden as she bowed her neck. Louisa sensed the nerves in Bryan as he took her by the hand and led her along the pavement, into the shadows. He was a smidgen shorter than her, which gave him no advantage, made worse by the beseeching looks he was throwing at his fair maiden. They hadn’t walked far when Bryan pulled Diana around, his hands on her arms, and brought her closer. Louisa, watching their silhouettes as she remained crouched beside a tree on the other side of the street, saw their heads come together, long enough for a kiss. Then the profiles parted. There were urgent whispers, which grew louder.

  ‘Can’t you tell how mad I am about you?’ Louisa heard. ‘You’re all I want, day after night, night before day.’

  ‘Do you always talk in iambic pentameters?’ teased Diana.

  ‘Darling, I’m serious. Do you think you could marry me? Do you love me enough?’

  Their figures stood apart now. The white bricks of the house showed between them.

  ‘I’m very fond of you,’ said Diana.

  ‘But do you love me?’ persisted Bryan. There was a pause and when no answer came forth, he said: ‘You kissed me.’

  ‘A kiss means nothing.’ At this, Louisa’s own heart sank for the wooer. ‘I do it without thinking as I’m used to kissing my family.’ Diana’s tone was light, perhaps deliberately so.

  ‘I’m not your brother,’ said Bryan, admirably keeping any
hurt out of his voice. He took Diana’s hand. ‘We’ll go back in. But promise me you’ll think about it?’

  Diana nodded. ‘Yes, I will. Promise. Now please let’s go back in. Cecil’s promised me a Black Bottom dance.’ And the two of them ran back through the stage lights, their moment in the wings over.

  1929

  CHAPTER FIVE

  For what had been frequently referred to in the newspapers as ‘the society wedding of the year’, despite it being still only January, the excitement amongst the waiting crowds that lined the way to St Margaret’s, Westminster, was palpable. A union between an heir to a fortune and a great beauty was enough to feed the diary columns and over-the-fence gossip for months. Sashaying down the path to the church door were the young men and women, as well as the elderly statesmen and dowagers of the country’s aristocratic families, dressed in their very best silks, furs and diamonds.

  Amongst them, in a rather less expensive outfit but feeling relief that the anticipatory nerves appeared to be over, was Louisa Cannon. She had found the build-up to the event quite terrifying, partly because the wedding marked a significant change in her life too. But for the moment, she was content to find a place beside the comforting presence of Nanny Blor, in one of the furthest rows at the back. It wasn’t long before Louisa was commiserating with her at the absence of the bridesmaids Decca and Debo (the family names for Jessica and Deborah), Diana’s two youngest sisters of twelve and nine years old, who had developed scarlet fever seemingly overnight. ‘Least, that’s what the doctor said,’ sniffed Nanny Blor, ‘but he’s not our usual one, of course, being in London. I think it’s whooping cough myself.’

  ‘Whatever it is, they must have been so sorry not to be here,’ whispered Louisa. ‘I know Miss Diana was very unhappy not to have them with her.’ She and Nanny Blor had arrived a good hour early ahead of the ceremony and happily discussed each of the Mitford children and the goings-on of Swinbrook village.

  ‘Inconsolable, the poor loves,’ nodded Nanny Blor. (Her real name was Laura Dicks but she had been ‘Nanny Blor’ since Nancy had christened her as such almost fifteen years before, and nobody in the family could think of her as someone who had a life outside the Mitfords, let alone another name.) There were three men in morning suits shuffling by the door and coughing. Louisa thought she’d got a second look from one of them, and touched her new hat when he did so. It had cost her almost half of last week’s wages but she’d needed the pep it gave her. Besides, after today she had no more rent to pay, nor even meagre meals to buy.

  As they had talked, the church filled up with the clotted cream of England’s society, ready to witness Diana as she was walked down the aisle by her father, Lord Redesdale. They were followed by eleven bridesmaids, including Nancy. Louisa spotted Unity, the next sister along at four years younger than Diana, if her complete opposite in looks, with straight, straw-like hair that stuck out awkwardly. She was tugging at her dress and throwing black looks at anyone she thought might be staring at her. Pamela, the sister who was between Nancy and Diana, was not one of the eleven in gold-tissue dresses; instead, she sat beside their brother Tom and their mother Lady Redesdale, in the front pew. Louisa hadn’t been at all sure that she, herself, should be at the service but Nancy and Diana had kindly insisted, and then there had been the question of her new appointment.

  Two weeks before Christmas, Louisa had received a note from Diana, asking her to come around to the house at Rutland Gate the following day for tea. It hadn’t been easy to get let out of work at the shop early – she’d told a small fib about a sore tooth – but Louisa had the sense that the summons wasn’t just for amusement. And there was the fact that in spite of having quit her job with the Mitfords a few years before, she could never quite resist a request from them of any sort.

  ‘Darling Lou-Lou,’ Diana had begun, once she had poured out the tea, surprising Louisa with her mature manner and use of Nancy’s own nickname for her. ‘Everyone has at last agreed that Bryan and I can marry, so we’re going to do it as soon as possible and afterwards we’re going to set up in a little house, a sort of dolls’ house really, in Buckingham Street. We’ve agreed that we want to do things the way we like to, and so rather than start with awful new servants that we don’t know at all, we’re bringing our favourites.’

  Louisa had listened to this with a very full cup of tea balancing on her knees, and she had had to force herself to concentrate on what Diana was saying, rather than on the light blue rug that she was threatening to ruin.

  ‘Bryan, that is, Mr Guinness, is bringing a parlourmaid from his parents’ house, and Farve has agreed I can have Turner, from Swinbrook.’

  ‘Turner?’

  ‘Oh, he must have started after you left. He’s a dear thing. The chauffeur. But the point is, Louisa, I’d like you to come, too.’

  ‘Me?’ Must she be reduced to one-word questions? She felt quite stupid.

  ‘Yes. As a sort of lady’s maid. That is to say, I don’t really need a lady’s maid, the idea of one is, I agree with you, quite absurd.’ Louisa hadn’t said anything or even changed her face so far as she was aware – did she agree? Diana chattered on. ‘Nonetheless, everyone is insisting I will need someone to help me because they all think I’m still a child. To pack my clothes, for one thing, because Bryan wants to go abroad rather a lot. So do I, of course. Then there are endless parties – Bryan has so many divine friends – and we go to the theatre every night. There never seems to be quite enough time to make sure the things I want have been ironed let alone mended…’

  She trailed off, smiling benignly, yet with her blue eyes firmly trained on her former nursery maid. Louisa still didn’t know how to respond. She wasn’t yet sure how she felt about this offer.

  ‘The point is’ – the voice was firmer now – ‘you’d be a friendly face in the house for me, and everyone is probably right. I’ve never run a house before and though it doesn’t seem terribly complicated to me, there are things it would be useful to have some assistance with. We’d pay you generously. Bry— Mr Guinness is very good in that way. What do you say, Louisa?’

  Louisa, unable to think straight and bewitched by the silvery beauty of this young woman, found herself accepting – almost – on the spot. ‘What about Lady Redesdale? She may not approve. I was not exactly asked to leave her employ but…’

  Diana’s face changed slightly. ‘Lady Redesdale is no longer at liberty to tell me what to do. I shall be a married woman soon, with my own house. If I decide I want to employ you then that’s my lookout.’ There was a trace of a child’s petulance, but she was, after all, only eighteen.

  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.