by Robin Paige
After dinner, they had adjourned to the Saloon. No one seemed to feel much like conversation, so Kate, Charles, Northcote, and Winston had played a hand of bridge. Pleading weariness and a return of her headache, Consuelo excused herself and went to bed. When she was gone, as if by a secret signal, Gladys and the Duke announced that they were going for a walk. A few moments later, Northcote flung down his cards, rose, and went to the window, where he stood for a while with his back to the room, smoking a cigarette and looking out at the moonlit garden. Then he, too, pled weariness and went off to bed.
“I’m not much for three-handed bridge,” Winston had said. “Charles, perhaps you and I could enjoy a cigar while you tell me what you think of those chapters I sent you.” So Charles and Winston had gone to the smoking room, and Kate had gone upstairs to her book. As evenings went, this one had been on the quiet side.
But what about Gladys and the Duke? Likely, Kate thought now, turning the golden scrap in her fingers, she had persuaded him to take her to the Well, after all. They could have rowed across the lake in one of the skiffs that were kept in the boathouse, then walked up to the spring, and Gladys had torn her dress on the bush. Kate’s mouth tightened. The silk scrap might not be the golden thread that Eleanor had followed to Rosamund, but there was a connection here, and it made Kate uncomfortable.
She opened her pencil case and put the scrap inside. Gladys would want to have it, so that the dress could be repaired. But she would approach her privately, Kate decided. The girl would certainly not want anyone to know where the scrap had been found, for fear of raising embarrassing questions.
Or would she? Gladys Deacon had struck Kate as the sort of young woman who preferred to be the center of everyone’s attention, to be at the eye of every storm-and if there was no storm, she was perfectly capable of creating one. She probably wouldn’t mind at all if she were publically confronted with the evidence of a moonlight tryst with the Duke, Rosamund to his Henry. She might even feel triumphant at the sadness in Consuelo’s eyes and the scarcely concealed jealous rage on Northcote’s face.
And with that in mind, Kate decided very firmly that Gladys Deacon should not have the opportunity to feel any sort of satisfaction. She would return the silk scrap privately, along with the suggestion that it was dangerous to play with people’s hearts. Gladys would laugh and pay no attention, but Kate would at least have made the effort.
CHAPTER TEN
No American heiress knew how to run the enormous household her English husband expected her to manage-with no preparation or training or even assistance. She knew nothing of how the food was purchased and meals made to appear on the table, how the clean linen was accomplished, the dust done away with, the tradesmen paid. Her ignorance often led to serious problems with the servants, for they recognized her inexperience and exploited it to their best advantage.
Dollar Duchesses, Susan Blake
Consuelo was in the habit of rising at seven, breakfasting in her apartment, and then spending several hours at the desk in the morning room where she conducted her household duties: meeting daily with the butler, the housekeeper, and the cook; going over their household accounts; checking inventories and seeing that the tradesmen were paid; and dealing with staff problems. When there were guests, she had the extra work of seeing to their comfort, planning elaborate meals, arranging entertainment.
Of course, the four guests staying with them this week posed no problem at all, compared to the thirty-King Edward and Queen Alexandra, together with an assortment of dukes and duchesses-who had been invited to Blenheim for a gala weekend at the beginning of August. This wasn’t the first time the Royal couple had been guests of the Marlboroughs, and Consuelo knew what a daunting responsibility it was to feed and amuse not only Their Royal Majesties and the other luminaries, but to accomodate the various entourages of valets, maids, footmen, and grooms. Altogether, a hundred people would be sleeping in the house, and there would be a fine hubbub and hullabaloo below-stairs.
For Consuelo, visitors usually brought a welcome respite from the long, dispiriting days when she and Sunny were alone with nothing to say to one another, with nothing to share, certainly not love and scarcely even friendship. She would especially enjoy playing hostess to Edward and Alexandra, would enjoy dressing up and wearing her jewels, usually kept in the London bank-the nineteen-row pearl dog collar her husband had bought for her, the long rope of perfect pearls that had once belonged to Catherine the Great, as well as her diamond tiara. She hoped she would feel better by that time, not as tired and low-spirited as she was now. She had even left her guests early the night before, angry at her husband and irritated with Gladys, who was behaving like a spoiled child.
Consuelo had been barely nineteen when she came to Blenheim-much too young and inexperienced, she knew now, to have taken on the monstrous burden of administering such a huge enterprise. When she might have been enjoying the pleasures of a glamorous, carefree youth, the Duke had made it clear that her chief duty (next to producing a male heir, of course) was to manage the enormous house and its complex and often inharmonious staff. The situation was made even more uncomfortable because Marlborough’s aunt, Lady Sarah Churchill, had acted as his hostess and chatelaine during his bachelorhood. The butler and housekeeper had been loyal to her, resisting Consuelo’s efforts to undertake her new responsibilities and make necessary changes.
Even now, with six years of experience behind her, Consuelo felt that she didn’t do a very good job. Marlborough felt so, too, and frequently took her to task for not paying the proper attention or for being too soft in her dealings with the staff. He told her she should try to be more like Lady Sarah, who was extraordinarily well organized and had a great firmness with everyone, especially those who were slow in executing her orders.
Looking over the accounts on her desk, Consuelo had to admit that they were rather in a muddle. The trouble was that she had to rely for everything upon Mrs. Raleigh, the housekeeper, and Stevens, the butler, who had both been in service at Blenheim for several decades. She was confident that she could trust them, although they were both getting on in years, Mrs. Raleigh especially, and she often found herself wishing that they would keep a tighter rein below-stairs, where some of the servants seemed unacceptably lax.
Of course, Consuelo thought with a sigh, it was becoming harder and harder to find good household help. Many young men had gone off to the Boer War, many young women were taking factory jobs in the cities, and service was not the attractive alternative to agricultural labor that it had once been. Stevens had just stepped in to ask permission to hire a new page to replace Richard, who had been promoted to third footman because the third footman had gone to America. And here was Mrs. Raleigh, wanting to hire yet another housemaid, a replacement for one who had apparently left without permission-more surprisingly, without asking for a character or for the pay that was due her.
Consuelo frowned. Page boys and housemaids and scullery maids came and went, but it was rather strange for one to just up sticks and leave. And now was a difficult time to hire a new maid. “This will be the second new housemaid in a fortnight,” she said disapprovingly, “and with Royalty coming in less than three weeks. There will scarcely be time to train her.”
“The new maid, Bess, has recommended a woman with whom she was in service at Wilson House, in London,” Mrs. Raleigh said. “If she is as good as Bess, she will be a treasure.”
“Bess is good,” Consuelo agreed, “experienced and quite responsible.” Bess had been with them for only a few weeks, but she had already proved her worth by volunteering to look after Gladys Deacon, whose own maid had been requisitioned by Gladys’s mother. Gladys (who was hard to please) had spoken favorably of the woman. Consuelo frowned, going back to the previous subject. “The housemaid who has left, Mrs. Raleigh. When was she last seen?”
“I believe it was Friday night at bedtime, Your Grace,” Mrs. Raleigh replied thinly. “Ruth, who slept with her, missed her in the morning whe
n she woke up.”
Friday night, and today was Thursday. “A search was made, I suppose,” Consuelo said, thinking uneasily of the gardener who had drowned himself in the lake in a fit of despair the winter before.
“Oh, yes, Your Grace,” Mrs. Raleigh replied quickly. “There wasn’t a sign of her anywhere. She had been here just since May, so I supposed she got homesick and left. Nothing is missing,” she added, pursing her narrow lips. “I made a careful check of all the rooms she worked in, just to be sure.”
Consuelo felt a sudden impatience with the woman, although she understood Mrs. Raleigh’s concern. Not long ago, a valuable china box had disappeared from a table in the Green Drawing Room. Marlborough had discovered it missing, and a housemaid was accused. After everyone was thoroughly upset, he had told Consuelo that he himself had taken the box to see if its absence would be noticed. Since then, Mrs. Raleigh had supervised the housemaids more closely, although her supervision did not appear to extend to the nighttime hours, or to the locking of doors. Presumably, the missing maid had got out through an unlocked door.
Consuelo tried to conceal her impatience. “What was the girl’s name? Who on the staff knew her best?”
“Her name was Kitty, Your Grace.” Mrs. Raleigh watched uneasily as Consuelo wrote it down. “I suppose Ruth would have known her best.”
“Then I should like to speak to Ruth,” Consuelo said, feeling that somebody ought to make an effort to get to the bottom of this, and if Mrs. Raleigh wouldn’t do it, she would have to. What’s more, she was curious. It wasn’t like housemaids to disappear without their wages. “Now, if you please,” she added firmly.
Ruth was summoned from her duties and stood nervously before her, a sturdy young girl, pleasant-faced, her thick brown hair bound up under her cap. She could scarcely be sixteen.
Consuelo softened her tone. “Tell me, Ruth, what you think might have become of-” She looked down at her notes. “Of Kitty.”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Your Grace,” Ruth said, biting her lip. “She went to bed same as me, but when morning come, that would be Saturday morning, she was gone. Sneaked right out, she did. Quietlike, or I would’ve heard her. I told Mrs. Raleigh straightaway,” she added, as though she were afraid she might be accused of concealment.
“Did she go off with someone, do you think?” Consuelo asked. “Did she have a young man?”
The girl frowned. “A… young man? I don’t think so, Your Grace. She never said.”
Consuelo tried another tack. “Well, then, where was she in service before she came here?”
“Welbeck Abbey, Your Grace,” Mrs. Raleigh put in officiously. “She had a fine character from the Duchess of Portland’s housekeeper. And before that, at Carleton House, in Manchester.”
A fine character. Consuelo knew what that meant. It wouldn’t surprise her if half the characters the new hires presented were forged, and although the housekeeper and butler were supposed to check, they didn’t always. But perhaps Ruth knew where the girl came from.
“Where was her home, Ruth?” she asked in a gentle voice. “Where are her people?”
Ruth shook her head, and then, as if she felt she should explain, added, “Us maids don’t talk much about ourselves, Your Grace. There’s not hardly time in the day, what with the work and that, and at meals there’s always somebody listenin’.” Her voice became self-pitying. “And at night we’re wore out. We’re asleep soon’s our heads hit the pillow.”
Consuelo suspected that there was plenty of time during the day for the maids to share personal secrets and household gossip, but she could not deny that by bedtime, they would be exhausted. A servant’s life was not an easy one. She would have done more to make it easier, if she could-would at least have heated the tower rooms where the girls slept, and laid on running water. But Marlborough disapproved of innovations in the house. Her Vanderbilt dowry was meant to restore Blenheim to its earlier glory, not to make it more habitable.
There was a little silence, and then Ruth added, almost as an afterthought, “But we did talk once, now that I think on’t. We walked to the village together on our last half-day off. Kitty wanted to see Fair Rosamund’s Well, and it was only a little out of the way, so we stopped for a look. She said she was meeting someone at the Black Prince, in Manor Road.”
“Meeting someone?” Mrs. Raleigh stared at the maid disapprovingly, over the tops of her glasses. “A young man?”
Ruth shook her head. “Oh, no, not a young man. He was waiting in front of the Prince for her, and I’d say he’s as old as my father. He had a red beard. She-”
“Well, then,” Mrs. Raleigh interrupted, obviously relieved. “I expect he was a relation.”
Consuelo wasn’t so sure of that, but there was no use in speculating. “Very well, Ruth,” she said. “Can you think of anything else?”
The girl glanced hesitantly at Mrs. Raleigh, then at Consuelo, then seemed to pluck up her courage. She licked her lips. “Well, yes, I can, Your Grace. You see, I’ve been wondering…” Her voice trailed off.
“Yes?” With an inner sigh, Consuelo looked down at the seemingly endless list of chores in front of her. The weekend menu was next, a task she always dreaded, for the French chef was inclined to be a prima donna. Whenever he wanted to show his displeasure with her, he would serve ortolans-rare songbirds, considered a gourmet delight-to her guests for breakfast, because he knew that she considered these mortifyingly nouveau riche. One never knew what might set the man off. He hadn’t been at all pleased, for instance, when she’d sent word that they wanted a picnic lunch today.
She looked up to find the girl still standing there. “What were you wondering, Ruth?”
The girl ducked her head. “Whether I could have Kitty’s best dress. It would exactly fit my sister. She’s-”
“Kitty’s dress?” Consuelo asked, startled. “You mean, she went away and left her clothing behind, as well as her earnings?” She turned to Mrs. Raleigh. “Is this true?”
“I don’t know, Your Grace,” Mrs. Raleigh replied, flustered. “I didn’t think to ask-”
“So her things are still in the tower?” Consuelo asked the maid.
“Yes, Your Grace,” Ruth said, “in a trunk.” She went on eagerly, “There’s a skirt and blouse and winter cloak, if they’re wanted for the other maids. But this dress is made of blue wool, you see, with blue and black braid, and my sister is getting married and-”
“I think we might wait a while before we give away Kitty’s clothing,” Consuelo said quietly. “Thank you, Ruth. That will be all.”
After the girl had left the room, Consuelo sat for a moment, thinking. If the housemaid had left her clothing behind, especially her best dress, she had not gone off with some young man. But where could she be?
To Mrs. Raleigh, she said, “I think you should ask the other servants what they know about this missing girl. Since she has left both clothes and money, it is not unreasonable to think that she might have met with an accident.”
Mrs. Raleigh looked uncomfortable. “Yes, Your Grace. I’ll have it looked into right away. And about the clothing, I must say that I-”
“Thank you,” Consuelo said firmly. “I also think that inquiries should be made at the Black Prince. The person Ruth mentioned, the man with the red beard, may still be there. Perhaps he can offer some clue as to Kitty’s whereabouts. And if he is indeed a relative, he will need to know that she is gone.”
Mrs. Raleigh stiffened. Even though she may have felt in the wrong about the girl, it was clear that she would go only so far to make amends. “If you will pardon me, Your Grace, inquiries at a village pub are the sort of thing the footmen should be asked to carry out. Shall I ring?”
Consuelo frowned. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to send one of the footmen on this errand, for they would only gossip about it in the servants’ hall. It might be better if she asked the butler, who could perhaps manage it himself, without causing a commotion or creating gossip among the serv
ants.
“I’ll speak to Mr. Stevens about it.” She glanced at the ormolu clock on the desk, stifling a sigh. It was nearly nine-thirty. “It’s time to get on with our work. Please tell Monsieur Carnot that I am ready to discuss the menus with him. And don’t forget that lunch is to be a picnic. Be sure that it is sent over to the Well so it’s waiting when we arrive. There’s to be champagne, of course, so don’t forget to arrange for the ice.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Mrs. Raleigh said. She went to the door, then hesitated indecisively.
Consuelo looked up. “Was there something else?”
“Yes, Your Grace, I’m afraid there is. I don’t like to mention it, but…”
“But what, Mrs. Raleigh?” Consuelo felt impatient. There was so much to do, and never enough time. “Please, we don’t have all morning.”
Mrs. Raleigh’s lips thinned. “It’s Miss Deacon, Your Grace.”
Consuelo frowned. “What about Miss Deacon?” The week before, Mrs. Raleigh had reported that Gladys had accused one of the housemaids of having taken a silver comb. The comb had subsequently been found under the bed, but the hard feelings had lingered. She hoped this wasn’t another report of the same sort.
The housekeeper spoke with obvious reluctance. “The maid went in to take her tea and open the drapes, and she-Well, she wasn’t there.”
Consuelo felt a chill of unease. “Well, then, she’s gone out, I expect,” she said. “Perhaps she’s walking with Lady Sheridan, who loves early-morning tramps.”
“Walking?” Mrs. Raleigh’s tone was colored with a delicate disapproval. “Pardon, but I shouldn’t think so, Your Grace. Bess says her bed hasn’t been slept in. I realize that Miss Deacon has her own way of doing things. But if she intended to go off last night, she might at least have let someone know.”