CHAPTER ONE
The note from Nancy Mitford was delivered by a young boy in short trousers, which made Louisa laugh. Anyone would think it was Dickensian London, but this was 1937 and there were telephones and telegrams. Nancy had always been curiously old-fashioned, for all her love of cocktails and Chanel; Louisa rather loved her for it. The envelope was thick white paper and in the top left-hand corner was By Hand in black ink, underlined. The card inside had ‘Mrs Peter Rodd’ and Nancy’s Maida Vale address embossed on it, but the first thing Louisa noticed was that the note had been scrawled – in haste, perhaps. Nancy’s handwriting was usually easy to read, but not here. Louisa squinted and held the card a little closer.
Decca missing. M&F frantic. Police hopeless. Please come to Rutland Gate. Urgently. Nx
A summons from Nancy was not an altogether unusual thing, but the last time it had happened Louisa had ended up on a liner in the Mediterranean with Lady Redesdale, Nancy’s mother, and Nancy’s sisters, Diana and Unity, and they had become embroiled in a murder and the murkier side of British government. Admittedly, it hadn’t all been Nancy’s fault. Louisa looked down at the floor, where her baby girl, Maisie, almost a year old, was lying on the rag rug, happily gurgling at the woollen rabbit she held. Today was Louisa’s final day at home before she joined her husband, Guy Sullivan, at work. From tomorrow, Maisie was going to be looked after by her grandmother, Guy’s ma, who only lived around the corner. Old Mrs Sullivan had muttered her misgivings but Louisa and Guy had stood firm, and when she understood that it was either her or someone else looking after her granddaughter, she had agreed to do it. Now it looked as if Louisa was going to have to ask her mother-in-law to start a day early.
Louisa knew that Nancy was aware of Cannon & Sullivan, the private detective agency she and Guy had established six months previously. They rented a minuscule office space above a betting shop in Hammersmith, with two desks, a filing cabinet and a telephone. In fact, a few months before, when Nancy had sweetly said she’d like to meet Maisie, Louisa suggested they have tea in the office, knowing it would tickle her old friend. They had known each other almost twenty years now, meeting when Louisa had gone to work in the nursery of the Mitford household. In 1919, Louisa had been a bedraggled, frightened young girl escaping London, and Nancy had only just emerged from the schoolroom herself. In many ways, in spite of their differences, they had embarked on early adulthood almost side by side. Their relationship had its complications, but now – married and a mother – Louisa felt she had at last thrown off the shackles of servitude the Mitfords used to invoke in her. Which was why she questioned her hasty response to Nancy’s request. Did she want to go, or did she have to go? Rutland Gate meant Lord and Lady Redesdale, her former employers – and not people given to thinking of former servants as anything but.
And yet.
Decca, the sisters’ nickname for Jessica, the second to last youngest of the seven siblings, was nineteen years old, and Louisa had a hunch that the situation had to be more serious than her spending one night too many with a friend.
Not to mention that this could be Louisa’s first official piece of work for Cannon & Sullivan.
Louisa picked her daughter up from the floor, held her warm, dumpling body close and kissed her smudge of a nose. ‘Let’s go and see Granny, shall we? Your mother has got to go to work.’
CHAPTER TWO
With Maisie safely and happily ensconced in her grandmother’s arms, Louisa took the two buses necessary to get from Hammersmith to Rutland Gate. She considered telephoning ahead but, if circumstances truly were as Nancy described in her note, then she was bound to be with her parents at their London residence. Nor would any of them leave the house so long as news might reach them there. Louisa picked up a newspaper to read on the bus but, as she flicked through, she could see no headlines about Decca; either she hadn’t been missing very long or they had managed to keep it quiet.
When Louisa first worked for the Mitfords, they had been living in a very pretty house in Oxfordshire, Asthall Manor, which had since been sold, much to everyone’s regret. Lord Redesdale built a new house, Swinbrook, which Nancy insisted on calling Swine Brook; it was generally agreed to be too cold and too severe, and the family had sold it a few months before, stranding them, so Nancy claimed, in London. Even Nanny Blor, who’d looked after them all since Nancy was six, had moved to Rutland Gate. The thought of Blor made Louisa smile – she’d have liked her for her own Maisie. Not that she could entertain that idea for a second. It had been hard enough persuading Mrs Sullivan that she, Louisa, was going to work with Guy, let alone that she might employ someone to live in the house and look after Maisie while she did so.
Louisa jumped off the bus outside the Albert Hall and walked the last stretch fast. It was bitterly cold, with a wind that snapped at her ankles like a terrier. The house, with its stacked seven storeys, fronted out onto a small cul-de-sac, close to the wide green spaces of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. Louisa walked up the steps and knocked firmly. She was not arriving as a servant today.
It was a maid who opened the door, however. A young girl in a blue-and-white toile de Jouy dress with plain linen apron, the uniform that Lady Redesdale favoured for her staff. Louisa walked into the hall, relieved to feel its warmth, and took off her hat, fluffing her hair a little. ‘Would you tell Mrs Rodd that Mrs Sullivan is here?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ The maid ducked out of view for a minute or two before she came back. ‘I’m to take you through, ma’am. Follow me, please.’
Louisa had never worked in this house. Even when she had stayed there the night before her wedding to Guy, it had been in the former coach house attached at the back. But she had visited Nancy and her mother there a few times before so was reasonably familiar with it. She expected to be taken into the library but was instead led up to the first floor where the drawing room was situated, a rather larger room. Louisa soon realised why the meeting was taking place there: it seemed that almost the entire family was present. Nancy ran up to Louisa and kissed her on both cheeks with even more effusiveness than usual.
‘Oh, darling, I’m so pleased to see you. As you can see, we’re all in bits.’
Louisa looked around to see the evidence of this. Lady Redesdale perched on a narrow armchair by the fire, dressed in a plain skirt and twinset in navy, her face drawn and pale; she did not stand but acknowledged Louisa with a nod. Lord Redesdale was leaning on the mantelpiece, one hand in his pocket, looking rather older than Louisa remembered. His long, lean figure was dressed as elegantly as always, but his face was gaunt and his hair now the steel grey of a pan scrubber. He gave a grunt that could be loosely interpreted as a greeting. Louisa did not blame either of them for their abruptness: they were not people given to changing their view of the world, and former servants becoming equals in their drawing room was a bridge too far. Tom Mitford, their only son in a family of six daughters, was smoking a cigarette in a chair by the window. He turned and gave Louisa a ‘Hi’, his hand in the air, before he resumed his position, gazing listlessly at the street.
Debo came up too, just behind Nancy. The youngest of them all, she was in that sweet phase between being a girl and a woman, a touch plump and uncertain. She gave Louisa a kiss and grabbed one of her hands for a squeeze before dropping it quickly. ‘It’s so lovely to see you. I just wish…’ Debo trailed off miserably and went to sit back down.
‘I’m sorry to turn up unannounced, as it were,’ said Louisa, ‘but I got your note this morning, and it said it was urgent—’
‘You sent her a note?’ Lord Redesdale looked accusingly at his eldest daughter.
‘Yes, I had to. We’re at our wits’ end, aren’t we?’ Nancy gestured to Louisa to sit down, so she pulled out a small wooden chair that had been hidden against the wall. Lord Redesdale flinched as the former nursery maid took a seat. Lady Redesdale barely acknowledged the action in the room; the cup of tea she held on her lap was half-drunk and grey. Nancy sat down on the sofa beside Debo.
‘As you can see, most of the family has gathered here. Pam’s in France with Derek in newlywed bliss, Unity is in Munich, although on her way back. And Diana is—’ She hesitated and glanced at her parents before stage-whispering, ‘Well, she’s with the Ogre. We won’t say any more about that.’
Louisa knew from Nancy that Diana, now divorced from Bryan Guinness, was living in sin with Sir Oswald Mosley. Which was presumably why her name was verboten.
‘You said that Miss Jessica is missing.’
‘Yes, she—’ Nancy broke off. ‘You’re writing this down?’
Copyright © 2021 by Jessica Fellowes
