Death at Blenheim Palace scs-11

by Robin Paige

  “A screwsman!” Bulls-eye said, genuinely surprised. “A female screwsman?” A screwsman was a specialist in locks and keys-screws-and had the ability to make the wax impressions from which duplicate keys could be created. It was a useful skill, and Bulls-eye knew that a female screwsman would be a valuable asset in a country-house game.

  “Yes, and a prime one at that,” Dawkins said smugly. “She can be depended upon to keep her trap shut and do what she’s told-and use her brain, too. She’ll see that we get the schedule of the weekend’s activities, the layout of the guest and family bedrooms, and the keys.”

  “The keys’ll make all the diff’rence,” Bulls-eye said thoughtfully, beginning to see the merit in the plan. And it wouldn’t hurt to keep Alfred in the dark as well. The boy was young and inexperienced, and Bulls-eye suspected that he’d lost his head over the girl. Once that kind of thing got started, it caused problems for everybody.

  “The keys’ll help,” Dawkins agreed. “But as I said, we’ll stick to the plan. There’ll be the usual commotion below-stairs when the guests arrive with all their servants and baggage. ’Specially the Royal Flapdoodles. They’ll have two dozen servants and a trainload of trunks, and nobody’ll know who’s who or what’s what. That’s when the rest of the crew’ll go in disguised as extra help. And when they come back out, they’ll be loaded with all the fine jewels those fine ladies have brought to show off to the King.”

  Bulls-eye nodded. The plan sounded good. It always sounded good, and it always worked. He had been temporarily rattled, that was all. The girl had rattled him, and he was rattled thinking about her. He pushed the thought away, comforting himself with the idea of a female screwsman, especially groomed by Mr. N himself for jobs in the best places.

  Dawkins smiled agreeably. “There, now, Bulls-eye. Feeling better?”

  “I b’lieve I am,” Bulls-eye said.

  “Well, good,” Dawkins said. His smile was gone. “Now, maybe we’d better talk about the other one. Alfred, is that his name?”

  Bulls-eye sighed, feeling rattled again. It was time for another mug of ale.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  An American heiress who married an English Duke was more likely to be a character in a tragedy, rather than a fairy tale.

  “You’re going to be put in a cage,” warns Ralph Touchett when Isabel Archer considers a European marriage in Henry James’s

  The Portrait of a Lady, a warning that came true for too many.

  For instance, Consuelo Vanderbilt Marlborough’s fabulous dowry came entirely under the control of her husband, and she had no funds of her own. But for Consuelo, even worse was her husband’s coldness toward her and the dismay she felt about Blenheim, the “monstrous house,” as she called it, which seemed to be her prison.

  “American Heiresses, English Duchesses” Susan Blake

  Kate had been only a little late for the luncheon, and as it turned out, there were just the two of them, Consuelo and herself. Charles had driven to Oxford, Winston had taken the pony cart to Woodstock, and the Duke had gone off with Mr. Meloy to have a look at a distant hay field. Botsy Northcote and Gladys Deacon were still absent.

  Kate was tempted to share the results of her morning investigations with Consuelo, but she reluctantly decided against it. For one thing, she thought perhaps she ought to keep what she had discovered private until she had a chance to discuss it with Charles. For another, she wasn’t entirely sure that Marlborough was clear of suspicion, and until that was so, she ought not to involve his wife in what she (or Beryl, rather) was coming to think of as an investigation. And of course there were the servants, hovering over the luncheon table, taking in their every word. Kate did not feel comfortable mentioning Gladys’s name or bringing up anything of a personal nature.

  After lunch, under the delicate shade of their lace parasols, Consuelo and Kate walked to the aviary, beyond the Italian Garden. There, hundreds of exotic birds collected from various parts of the British Empire, their bright feathers glowing like irridescent jewels, were confined within a two-story cage of wire netting. It stood adjacent to a heated building where the birds-most were from the tropics and would freeze in the Oxfordshire winters-spent the colder months. Today was very warm, however, and they were all in the outdoor cage.

  “They’re beautiful,” Kate said, watching a parrot with gleaming yellow and red and blue wings dashing itself against the wire netting. “But sad, don’t you think? They don’t belong in England, somehow-like the leopards and camels and lion that King Henry kept here, when Blenheim was a Royal park.”

  “I’m sure,” Consuelo said gravely, “that they would much rather be back in their own native jungles. But now that they’re here, they must be confined. If they were released, you know, they’d be dead by the first frost.” Her laugh was poignant. “There’s a parallel here, I suppose. A moral to the story.”

  “I’m not quite sure that I know what you mean,” Kate said quietly.

  “I think you do,” Consuelo said, as they strolled down the gravel path. “In some ways, we are alike, you and I. Both of us are American women, married to British peers-birds of a feather, one might say. In other ways, though, we are very different. You seem to have made a happy marriage, and I envy you for that. But you must know, Kate, that I have not.”

  Perhaps it was the stress of the events of the last day or so, or perhaps the Duchess had begun to feel that Kate was not only a fellow American but a compassionate and reliable confidant. Whatever the reason, she linked her arm in Kate’s and spilled the story of her life.

  It was, Kate thought later, one of the saddest tales she had ever heard. At a time when most women had to depend upon men because they had no money of their own and no means of earning enough to support themselves, Consuelo Vanderbilt had been a woman of independent fortune, who (most would assume) could have done whatever in the world she chose to do. But she was very young when her marital destiny was planned and executed, and of a pliant and yielding nature. It was that which had made her a victim-first of her mother, who had insisted upon her marriage to Marlborough even though Consuelo loved another man; and then of Marlborough, who having successfully married her fortune, paid no attention whatever to her.

  They reached a bench in the shade of a large copper beech and sat down. “I’m grateful for the children,” Consuelo said pensively. “They give purpose to my life.” She had, Kate knew, two boys, Bert and Tigsy. “But between the governess, the head nurse, and the groom with whom they ride their ponies,” she added, “there is little time left for mother.” Her voice was forlorn. “And soon they will be off to school, and I shall lose them altogether, forever. Then what shall I do?”

  Kate listened sympathetically. She herself had no children, having suffered a miscarriage several years before. For a time, she had been distraught, but she had lately been more reconciled to the situation, realizing that her inability to have children gave her a greater freedom. And she was sure that she would not have been able to tolerate the English system of childrearing, where the parents lived their own separate lives while their children were cared for by others. Patrick, the young boy she and Charles had taken into their home and their hearts, was now seventeen and she was happy to see him embarked upon his own path. But if she had borne him, she would not have been content to put him in the nursery and see him only when he was clean and combed and on his best behavior.

  “Having the children go off is not the end of the world,” Kate said at last. “You did relief work during the war, and enjoyed it. Once the boys are gone, you can do more of that.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Consuelo brightened. “When Sunny was in South Africa with Lord Roberts, I was able to go to London to work with Jennie and the others to raise money for the hospital ship.” She paused. “Well, you know, Kate. You were involved, too.”

  “That was a wonderful project,” Kate said reminiscently. The Times had called them the American Amazons-more than a dozen energetic American women led
by Winston’s mother, Jennie, with the goal of raising two hundred thousand dollars to outfit the Maine. And they had done it, too.

  Consuelo nodded. “That’s where my interests lie, you know-in social work and philanthropy. But Marlborough allows me to pursue neither, except in the most desultory way.” She made a face. “Taking beef tea and jellies to the villagers, for instance, and blankets, and hats and gloves to the children. That’s all the Marlborough women have ever done, apparently, and all I am meant to do.”

  “But it’s something,” Kate said. “It’s important.” And it was, she knew, as much as other women in Consuelo’s position did.

  Consuelo sighed. “Yes, of course. Every little bit eases the burden of poverty. But it’s not enough, not nearly enough. I am capable of doing more, if only he would let me. Sometimes I feel so.. so hopeless.” She glanced up at the aviary, where a pair of elegant white-crested cockatoos sat on a branch, and tears filled her eyes. “Like those birds, Kate. Fed and cared for, pampered, even-no danger of going without food or water, no danger of predators, or any sort of threat. But they’ll live their entire lives cooped up in that cage. They’ll never know the joy of flying free, of flying as high as they like, or as far.”

  Kate could not answer. There was no reason for Marlborough to change, and nothing in Consuelo’s situation that suggested any alteration. She could think of nothing, short of separation or divorce, that would free Consuelo from her prison. So she could only press the Duchess’s hand and murmur a few consoling words, consoling, but meaningless.

  Consuelo’s face darkened and she turned her head away. “And now, of course, there is Gladys,” she said, with even greater melancholy, “and Marlborough making a fool of himself over her. I think I could bear the coldness, and even the rebukes. It is much harder to bear the thought of his… unfaithfulness.”

  Kate released her hand. For a moment, they sat in silence, Kate thinking of what she had found at Rosamund’s Well, and in Gladys’s bedroom, and in the rowboat. But the more she thought, the more muddled things seemed to become. “Do you think,” she asked at last, “that something… serious may have happened to Gladys?”

  “I hope not,” Consuelo said. There was another silence. Then she added, almost reluctantly, “The girl has many moods and fancies, Kate. She’s a strange, whimsical creature, and sometimes quite… unpredictable.” She gave a little shrug. “Perhaps that’s why I have enjoyed her so much. She’s playful, she’s enchanting, like a child, like one of those birds. She raises my spirits. She brightens Blenheim’s gloom.”

  She obviously raises the Duke’s spirits, too, Kate thought wryly. Aloud, she repeated Consuelo’s phrases. “Strange and whimsical. Like a child.”

  “Yes, very like a child,” Consuelo said reflectively. “I’ve sometimes thought that Gladys lacks any sense of consequences, and that’s why she takes the risks she does. Like that horrible business with her nose, for instance. That paraffin injection.” She shuddered. “It might do very well for now, but I hate to think what will happen in another few years.”

  No sense of consequences. “Is it possible, do you think,” Kate asked slowly, “that she might be… well, playing some sort of game with us?”

  “A game?” Consuelo frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate confessed. “I’m just thinking out loud, I suppose. I was wondering whether Gladys might take pleasure in something… well, something childish, like hide-and-seek, perhaps.”

  Consuelo stared at her incredulously. “But why would she do such a thing, Kate? She surely knows that we would be frantic.”

  Kate said nothing. She could imagine any one of a half-dozen reasons, although she doubted that any of them would occur to Consuelo, who struck her as inexperienced and rather naive. Gladys might do it to make the Duke realize how much he loved her, or to teach him some sort of lesson. Or to make Northcote even more insanely jealous. Or even to mock her friend Consuelo.

  The silence stretched out, filled with the raucous sounds of birds, an occasional sweet melody rising plaintively above the tuneless racket. At last Consuelo said, in a doubtful tone, “I suppose it’s possible, Kate. Once, when she and I were visiting Versailles together, she went off to Paris with her sister, without telling me.”

  “I’m sure you must have been wild with worry,” Kate said.

  “Oh, yes, of course.” Consuelo frowned. “But that was… well, it was a lark, in a way, and I’m sure her sister egged her on. They seized the opportunity of a moment. She couldn’t have done that here, of course. Where would she go? And how? It was night when she disappeared, and she was wearing evening dress. I just don’t see-”

  “I’m probably wrong,” Kate said, not wanting to trouble Consuelo further. “Let’s not talk any more about it.”

  But that did not mean that Kate and Beryl would not think about it. Or that Consuelo would not think about it, either.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result.

  This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backward, or analytically.

  A Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Mr. Lawrence had been surprised by Charles’s request to borrow his son Ned for a fortnight or so. But having heard Ned’s urgent plea and Charles’s promise to keep an eye on the boy, he rather thought, on the whole, that the proposal presented no difficulty.

  From Mr. Lawrence’s dithery response, Charles got the idea that the man himself was too good-natured to refuse any reasonable appeal, but that it was just as well that Ned’s mother was absent, for she would have been likely to have raised a strenuous objection which both Ned and his father would have had no choice but to honor. Charles surmised that, in the Lawrence household, the mother firmly ruled the roost, a fact which the father did not contest but the son deeply resented.

  On the way back to Blenheim in the motorcar, Charles explained in some detail what was wanted of Ned and who among the servants the boy should observe most closely-Alfred, especially, the footman who had been at Welbeck around the time of the robbery there. He also mentioned Kitty, whose disappearance might or might not have some relevance, and gave Ned instructions for communicating with himself, or at a pinch, with Winston or Kate.

  “I shall probably ask to see you this evening,” he said. “If questions are asked, you might say that I am an acquaintance of your father.” He smiled at the boy, who was trying, without success, to look confident and self-assured. “Lady Sheridan, Churchill, and I-all three of us will be looking out for you. You shan’t have any problems.”

  Privately, Charles was not quite so confident. There were several potential problems, especially since the stakes were so high and the people with whom they were dealing were experienced and unprincipled. But of course, he reminded himself, all this business about a ring of thieves operating in Blenheim lay entirely in the realm of theoretical speculation. Sometimes, when one was reasoning backward (as Conan Doyle had put it in one of his Sherlock Holmes stories), one saw illicit activities where there were none, or invented criminal conspiracies where none existed-especially when one was beginning with a conjectured result. Charles had to admit that this might be one of those times, and that the whole thing was a fabrication of his too-vivid imagination, the sort of fantasy that Kate and Beryl Bardwell loved to create. Ned might search and search and come up empty-handed, simply because there was nothing to find.

  “Whatever happens, I’m not afraid,” Ned said staunchly. He pushed the blond hair out of his eyes. “I only want to do a good job, that’s all. If there’s something secret going on below-stairs, I’ll ferret it out.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Charles said appr
ovingly. In many ways, Ned reminded him of Patrick, the boy whom he and Kate had taken to live with them. Like Ned, Patrick had many gifts, chief among which was his talent for working with horses. He was now riding as a jockey at George Lambton’s stables at Newmarket. ^3 Ned was more of an intellectual than Patrick, Charles thought, but the two boys had the same energetic spirit, the same eager willingness to please.

  They had come to the Hensington Gate, where the lane to Blenheim intersected the Oxford-Woodstock Road. Charles pulled onto the grassy verge and stopped.

  “I’ll leave you here,” he said. “Walk down the lane, and when you come to the East Gate, tell the porter that Mr. Stevens is expecting you. When you’re taken to Stevens, tell him that you are the young man recommended by Mr. Churchill. He will put you to work straightaway.”

  “I will, sir,” Ned said, jumping out. “And don’t worry about me,” he added with a brash grin. “Compared to prying brasses off church walls, this should be easy.”

  That brought a smile to Charles’s lips, and he was still smiling as he put the Panhard in gear and drove off down the lane, leaving Ned to come along behind him. But the smile had faded by the time he drove across the Grand Bridge toward the Column of Victory, parked the motor car, and stood, surveying the scene.

  It was getting on to five in the afternoon, and threatening clouds were piling up in the western sky. There was no breeze, and the lake was quiet, its placid surface disturbed only by several flocks of ducks and geese, a half-dozen elegant white swans, and an old man in a yellow boat, rowing in the direction of the Fishery Cottage at the north end of the lake. Charles knew he was going to be late to tea, but it could not be helped, for he could not put off having a look at Rosamund’s Well any longer.