The Mitford Scandal by Jessica Fellowes

Author:Jessica Fellowes [Fellowes, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780751573947
Amazon: 0751573949
Goodreads: 42958879
Publisher: Sphere
Published: 2019-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

A week later, Louisa had put Diana’s breakfast tray down with the morning post and was running her bath when she heard her mistress call out for her. She quickly turned the taps off – she’d once left it too long and it had flooded the floor, causing a dreadful row – and went to see what it was. Diana was waving a letter around. ‘It’s from Naunce, apparently Clara’s family did have an autopsy after all and now they say it was an opium overdose. So much for claiming they wanted a quick burial.’ Louisa didn’t know how to react to this.

‘Idiot girl. I’m sorry, Louisa, but she fooled you. She hadn’t had it stolen at all. Her kind are sly, you know.’

The ugliness of this remark took Louisa aback for a moment. Besides, she knew different. She’d been with Clara, she’d seen her distress. There was absolutely no possibility that she had opium hidden on her, and Louisa certainly didn’t have any in her bedroom, where Clara had spent her final hours. She wondered what to do with these suspicious – at this stage, they could be no more than that – and decided that she had to say something. She was due to leave London for a few days to stay with her mother and aunt in Suffolk. Before she left, she sent a note to Guy at the station, saying nothing save the detail of the autopsy result and her own knowledge of that evening, together with the conclusion she had drawn. If there was anything to take further, then he could deal with it.

While Louisa was away, Bryan and Diana had planned to drive out to the country to look for a house. Most weekends they borrowed a Guinness place in Sussex but now it was deemed necessary for them to have one of their own. Louisa reserved judgement on this but she could see that, with her baby due in a few weeks, Diana was at last embracing Bryan’s notion of happy families in the wilds of the English countryside she had once been so desperate to escape.

Louisa’s time in Suffolk, in the pretty village of Hadleigh, with her mother and aunt fussing over her and cooking her favourite dishes, helped her find perspective again. She knew she was obscurely influenced in London by the people she worked for, and the people they spent time with, not to mention her friendship with Luke, which was both enjoyable and unsettling. Without a close friend or Guy to confide in, she found it harder to hold on to those parts of her she knew to be true. Though she had grown up in London and would always love the solace of the crowded pavements and familiar bus routes, she found a peace in the country walks and the beauty of winter there, which had bewitched her since her first morning with the Mitfords. Her mother was also happy to remind Louisa of her good fortune with her work: ‘I had backbreaking, thankless years as a washerwoman.

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