The Mitford Murders Page 7

  Twice a day Nanny insisted on a brisk walk around the garden, which all of the children complained about at various times, except for Pamela. Even when the weather was awful, Pamela was happy to be outside and always enjoyed her daily ride. She was strictly forbidden from riding her elder sister’s beloved mare, Rachel, on whom Nancy went hunting, much to Nanny’s terror. When not riding, Nancy could always be found in the library, head deep in a book.

  That first day, after her interview with Nancy, Louisa found Nanny in the linen cupboard. Although referred to as a cupboard, it was really a room, with a small high window that was always tightly shut, and wooden slatted shelves from floor to ceiling. She had stepped in to be hit by a fug of warm, damp air, a sharp contrast to the nursery floor where Lady Redesdale had decreed all windows were to be kept open at least six inches the year round.

  ‘Oh, there you are! I wanted to show you in here,’ said Nanny. ‘It’s far too hot for me, I can’t bear it, makes me feel faint. I’d like you to be in charge of the linen. All our sheets and towels are here, as well as the girls’ petticoats and vests …’ Nanny went on to explain how the linen needed to be rotated to avoid any one sheet or towel wearing out. ‘There are no napkins,’ she continued. ‘Lady Redesdale thought the cost of laundering them was too expensive when they lived in London and everything had to be sent out. The habit seems to have stuck.’ She gave a faint disapproving look. ‘You’ll need to do mending, too, but you can manage that, can’t you?’

  Louisa nodded. If she could, she would move in a wooden chair on which to sit as she darned, and breathe in the smell of the soapflakes to feel a little closer to home, though she had no desire to leave. Here, she felt safe. In this house she was cocooned from the harsh truth of what she could only think of as her real life in London. Nobody could get her here.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘Richly yet quietly dressed in a morning suit of grey tweed, a natty pearl tiepin stuck airily into his chocolate tie, the man presented a prepossessing exterior …’

  ‘No decent man would wear a pearl tiepin! And what is a chocolate tie? What utter rot,’ Lord Redesdale called out across the library as he rose from his armchair.

  The scene would have looked odd to anyone passing by as there was evidently nobody else in the room. But under a table, hidden from view by a starched white tablecloth, were huddled the five Mitford girls and their new nursery maid. Nancy was reading aloud to her adoring audience from the latest edition of The Boiler. She had whispered to Louisa earlier that morning that the stories in it by W. R. Grue were, in fact, written by her. Grue’s speciality was tales of horror – ‘All the better to frighten them with,’ Nancy had sniggered.

  Her father, perhaps, was not so appreciative a listener, but Louisa had come to learn in just a few days that Lord Redesdale’s bark was invariably worse than his bite.

  Nancy stuck out a bright pink tongue, safe in the knowledge that he wouldn’t see her misdemeanour.

  ‘And don’t let me catch you pulling a face at me. Sewers, the lot of you.’ Lord Redesdale chuckled and walked out of the room.

  It was nearly lunchtime and Louisa thought she probably should get everyone up to the nursery but Nancy was almost at the end of her story. She had come down with the girls to keep an eye on them and allow Nanny to put her feet up.

  The first days at Asthall Manor hadn’t been easy; Louisa felt out of place in such a big house and was shy of the children, especially when they were all banded together. Yet under the table, hidden from view, she felt like one of them as they listened to Nancy reading in her best dramatic voice.

  Now and then, after a particularly scary bit, Diana would let out a quick shriek, but she otherwise looked as if she was quite happy to be frightened. Her face already contained brush strokes of the beauty that would surely later dazzle anyone she met. Pamela – ‘The soppiest of us all,’ Nancy said – seemed always to hold her breath, waiting for the next cruel tease, which her older sister was only too quick to provide. Nancy had told Louisa that her three happiest years had been those when she was alone as the child of the house, until Pamela had arrived and spoiled it all, never to be forgiven.

  The sisters were getting fidgety, their stomachs beginning to growl with hunger. Unity had already complained of pins and needles. Decca was pulling on Louisa’s buttons. Nancy waved the torch she had stolen from her father’s coat pocket.

  ‘Will you just listen?’ she instructed, then continued in a low, slow voice: ‘Suddenly his appearance of noble languor vanished and he sat upright, fork in hand with all the air of one who sees his end approaching. A foreign-looking individual of unprepossessing countenance and claw-like hands drew near—’

  ‘That’s quite enough of that, Miss Nancy!’ The tablecloth was lifted to reveal the highly polished black-laced boots and woollen stockings of Nanny Blor. ‘Come out, all of you, and get yourselves upstairs. I want scrubbed hands and faces for luncheon, and if I find a single dirty fingernail I’ll tell Mrs Scobie no pudding for any of you.’

  Louisa crawled out first and started apologising to Nanny, who motioned her to be quiet with a flap of her hands. ‘Don’t you be the one to say sorry. Miss Nancy knows it’s her that needs to say it. You go and fetch our tray from Mrs Stobie.’

  Louisa nodded and gratefully ran off to the kitchens, with a lurching feeling that she had had a near miss. The week’s notice was not yet up and she needed to keep this job. There had been no word from Stephen and she was beginning to breathe out at last, allowing herself to believe that he was not able to find her.

  Behind her, the children scrambled out in reverse order of age: Decca, on her wobbly, fat legs, holding on to Unity, then Diana, followed by a pink-faced Pamela and, finally, reluctantly, and with a show of making it look as if she meant to be coming out now anyway, Nancy.

  Once she was up in the nursery with a chafing dish of roast lamb and potatoes, Louisa began to put out the plates for her and Nanny; they would eat alone together. As there were no guests that day, the children were having luncheon with their parents. Louisa rolled the peculiar word around her head. Before coming to the Mitfords, she had only ever had dinner in the middle of the day. The Mitfords had dinner in the evening. There seemed to be a never-ending list of words and ways of doing things that were different to the way she’d always done it at home.

  Louisa heard the quick footsteps of the girls coming up the stairs, just as she noticed that Ada had thoughtfully put the Daily News on the tray. Yesterday’s, of course, passed along up to the nursery after Lady Redesdale and then Mrs Windsor had finished with it.

  ‘Get their hands washed, Louisa,’ said Nanny, walking across to inspect the plates. ‘Hmm. No bread today. How are we supposed to mop up the juices? Does Mrs Stobie expect us to eat gravy with a spoon?’

  In a chain that linked pudgy fists and small, dry hands, Louisa pulled along the three smallest girls to the bathroom. Nanny went to the bedroom to find the Mason Pearson hairbrush; both Pamela and Unity’s thick tresses were slipping out of the silk ribbons they’d been tied in that morning.

  Nancy went to the sideboard and picked up the newspaper, turning to the announcements page. When Louisa came back into the room, she started reading out loud: ‘The engagement is announced between Rupert, son of Lord and Lady Pawsey of Shimpling Park, Suffolk, and Lucy, daughter of Mr Anthony O’Malley and the late Mrs O’Malley of North Kensington, London. Oh dear,’ she giggled, ‘that must have put the cat amongst the pigeons at Shimpling.’

  ‘Do you know them?’ asked Louisa.

  ‘No,’ said Nancy, ‘but you can see that’s a mismatch. I don’t expect Miss Lucy O’Malley met her beloved Rupert while she was being presented at court.’

  ‘While she was what?’

  ‘Presented at court,’ said Nancy. ‘You know, when the debs are presented to the King. Mind you, it hasn’t happened for a few years because of the war – this summer will be the first in ages. I wish it was my summer!’

  ‘Wh
en will you do it, then?’ asked Louisa.

  ‘When I’m eighteen. Ages.’ She turned back to the paper, and Louisa fussed around the girls, straightening out their dresses and smoothing down their hair. Nancy looked up again. ‘You know, Muv says we might all go to London this year, after the baby is born. Perhaps Farve will let me go to a dance. I am sixteen and I think if I put my hair up I could look much older.’

  Nanny heard this last bit as she came back with the hairbrush. ‘His Lordship will think no such thing,’ she said firmly and pulled Pamela over to her, undoing the pale pink ribbon that pulled her hair back.

  Nancy gave a pout and closed the paper, reading the headlines on the front page. ‘Here’s a rather grim story,’ she said.

  ‘What’s the Beastly Scale?’ asked Pamela, turning her head and causing Nanny to pull her ponytail more firmly. ‘Ow!’

  ‘I’d say about ten,’ said Nancy. ‘Maximum Beastly. A nurse was brutally assaulted on the Brighton line last Monday, somewhere between London and Lewes—’

  ‘The Brighton line? But we’ve been on that train. Nanny! Listen to this.’ Pamela’s eyes were wide.

  Pleased to have an audience, Nancy continued: ‘She was discovered unconscious by three railway workers on Monday and died last night. The police are looking for a man in a brown suit.’

  ‘Stop that, Miss Nancy,’ said Nanny. ‘It’s not right for small ears. They’ve had quite enough to put up with this morning already.’

  But Pamela had picked up the trail of the story like a hound. ‘Nanny, that’s the train we’ve been on to see your sister. We only went there last summer! Does it say which compartment it happened in? I wonder if it’s the same one we were in?’

  Louisa caught Nancy’s eye and an understanding passed between them, but still Nancy pressed on – the thrill of the tease was too great to let go.

  ‘Closer investigation showed that she had received a severe injury to the left side of her head … there was a ghastly wound in the head, and blood on her clothing—’

  ‘Miss Nancy Mitford! You’re not too old to be put across my knee and spanked with a hairbrush if you don’t stop this minute,’ threatened Nanny, going red with the effort of her crossness.

  ‘But Nanny, it’s so sad,’ said Nancy, trying to put on a tone of great concern and woe. ‘She was a nurse – Miss Florence Nightingale Shore. Do you think she could have been related to the famous one? Oh yes, it says here, her father was a cousin. She’d only just got back from five years’ war service in France with the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Nursing Reserve—’

  ‘Did you say Florence Shore?’ asked Nanny quietly.

  ‘Yes, Nightingale Shore. Why?’

  ‘She was a friend of Rosa’s. Oh dear.’ Nanny put a hand out to steady herself and Louisa rushed to her, walking her to the armchair.

  ‘Who is Rosa?’ asked Louisa.

  ‘She’s Nanny’s twin sister,’ said Pamela. ‘She and her husband have a teashop at St Leonards-on-Sea and we’ve been down there to stay with her. It’s complete heaven. She sells these cakes with custard in the middle and if you don’t bite carefully, it all comes oozing out and runs down your chin—’

  ‘Yes, yes, dear,’ said Nanny, shushing her. ‘Oh, poor Rosa. Supposing Florence was on her way to see her? You know, Florence was a nurse at Ypres, when His Lordship was out there, and it was her letters to Rosa that let us know he was safe and well. She knew, you see, that I worked for his family. It was a great comfort to Her Ladyship at the time. And now she’s been murdered! Oh, it’s too awful. She was a good woman. All those soldiers she nursed … What an end. I don’t know what the world is coming to, I really don’t.’ Nanny Blor sank back into her armchair and started fishing for a handkerchief.

  Louisa, who hadn’t been listening closely at first, gave a start. ‘What station did you say she was discovered at?’

  Nancy gave her a quizzical look but went back to the paper. ‘It says that men raised the alarm at Bexhill and she was taken off the train at Hastings, but they think the attack must have happened somewhere between London and Lewes. Why?’

  ‘Oh, no reason,’ said Louisa. ‘I just wondered.’ But a thousand thoughts flashed through her mind. She had got off at Lewes. And then Guy Sullivan had suddenly been called to trouble at a station – had that been Hastings? She couldn’t exactly remember but she thought it probably was.

  Nancy folded the paper and put it back down on the side. ‘I think if we do go to London this summer I might ask Muv for a new dress. If I do go to a dance, I need to make the right impression,’ she said, but nobody responded. Nanny was staring into the fireplace and Louisa was brushing Diana’s hair.

  ‘I said, I might ask for a new dress. Perhaps I could even get something that could be used for my season? I won’t grow all that much between now and when I’m eighteen, will I?’ Nancy continued, in a voice slightly louder than before. Still, there was no response.

  ‘That poor woman,’ muttered Nanny. ‘She deserved much better than that. I must write to Rosa. Louisa, dear, could you find me some writing paper?’

  ‘Yes, Nanny,’ said Louisa, wondering if she could bear to read the article when the children had gone. She wasn’t sure what this all meant but she felt certain it meant something. ‘Miss Nancy, could you take the girls downstairs, please?’

  Nancy looked sulky but she held out her hand for Decca, who wobbled over to clasp it, and slowly the two of them led the rest down the stairs to join the grown-ups for roast lamb.

  3 May 1917

  Ypres

  My dearest love,

  Forgive me for not writing these last two weeks but I have had not a single moment to myself – not one, at least, where I am able to do something other than eat or sleep when relieved from work. Not long after my last letter to you, we were told we would be moving to Ypres, where I am now. It’s a few hours north of the Somme, yet in many ways it is, for me and my nurses, as if we have not moved at all. We are confined to our work in the Casualty Hospital for almost all our waking hours. In the short distance outside between the canvas canopy of the hospital and that of our dormitory, a few yards away, there is little to see that we haven’t seen before.

  The earth is beaten down by the tramping of the army boots, no flowers can emerge and all we know of the sunshine is that it makes our hospitals hot and uncomfortable for us and the men. Of course, the sound of gunfire is constant and the shells explode with a ferocity that never fails to make one jump. There’s a thunder that rumbles around one’s head and never rolls out. It is so unlike our experience in the Boer War that I feel ashamed when the younger nurses come to me expecting words of reassurance or an explanation as to how it will all turn out – I feel as naive as they do.

  Somehow, of all the war so far, Ypres has been especially unnerving. I arrived here with eight experienced nurses from our encampment, as part of a drive to pull in as many capable hands as possible. The nine of us are working in a hospital with seven hundred beds. Every day we send men out, patched up as best we can, but we receive a constant intake of wounded men, and we must make do with finding them places to lie on the floor when the beds run out, as they always do.

  For once we are not having to deal quite so much with the harrowing tragedies of limb amputation, which the newer recruits always find particularly distressing. These still go on, of course, but most of our wounded are from a sudden and appalling use of poison gas against our men. They tell us it floats across the trenches as a foul yellow cloud and before they know it, it has burned their skin and they have breathed it into their lungs.

  These poor men! Our hearts break for them, if we have but a moment to sit and think about it. It is just as well, then, that we do not. We must be in our hospital all through the days and nights, which bring no distinction when it comes to duty, appetite or routine. One snatches sleep where one can, but fitfully.

  The doctors have worked some minor miracles this war but they are almost inert with frustration in the face of
this vile gas. There is nothing they can do. They can barely even relieve the pain and we must watch the men die slowly, each breath a razor slice inside their chest. Most terrible of all, somehow, has been the discovery that far from every case is fatal, but you can never tell which way it’s going to go. Even the apparently worst afflicted may make a recovery. But for what? To be sent back to the front line? It is hardly what any of us could wish for.

  Stories are our sustenance in these straitened times, whether it’s the men telling us of their lives back home or extraordinary tales of courage that somehow emerge from this terrible war. So you may imagine that I was particularly thrilled to hear one of someone whom I do not exactly know but do have a link with: Mr David Mitford. I’m sure you will remember that Rosa’s twin sister, Laura, is nanny to his children.

  All his family must be in a state of anxiety since DM’s older brother was killed at Loos very recently, leaving behind a pregnant wife. If she has a boy, then he, the baby, will be the heir to the family title, but if she has a girl then it will fall to DM (who will become Lord Redesdale). Meanwhile, DM has insisted on returning to war despite having only one lung – he’s been invalided once already – and, my dearest, you can only imagine how I felt on realising he has been stationed here at Ypres!

  That’s not the half of it. He arrived in April, shortly before the battle broke out, and was given what was probably supposed to be a straightforward commission as transport officer, keeping the battalion supplied with ammunition. But this battle has been like no other, the demand for the ammunition has been exceptionally high and the danger has been great. Someone in his battalion told one of the men in the hospital about his courage and the story has been whispered between us for days.