Death at Blenheim Palace scs-11

by Robin Paige

  As an afterthought, he opened a compartment in the side of his motorcar and took out his camera bag and a small wooden box-a field collection kit he used when he was pursuing his natural history researches. It contained small glass vials, muslin bags, and celluloid envelopes, all for collecting specimens, as well as a hand lens, tweezers, needles, and a penknife. Carrying his gear, he walked down the slanting hill and along the lake shore, following the narrow footpath to the well.

  As he walked, he was thinking of Gladys Deacon and the telltale scrap of gold silk Kate had found that morning, snagged on a bush. While Miss Deacon had last been seen in the Blenheim garden with Botsy Northcote, the torn piece of silk seemed to suggest that she had also been here, on the far side of the lake.

  But when? After her conversation in the garden with Northcote? With Northcote or with someone else?

  And how had she got here? On foot-which seemed to Charles unlikely, given the young lady’s dinner costume-or by boat? He glanced over his shoulder at the yellow rowboat, disappearing under the arches of the bridge. There must be several such boats on the lake. He should have to have a look in the boathouse.

  Charles had no difficulty finding Rosamund’s Well, which bubbled out of a stone wall and into a shallow pool constructed of square-cut stones and surrounded by a flagstone pavement. The spring had in medieval times been called Everswell, in recognition of the fact that it had not stopped flowing through all the centuries of recorded history, not even in the worst of droughts. No wonder, he thought, that it had become the source of so many powerful legends-the stories about Fair Rosamund and Henry and Eleanor, for example.

  He glanced up the hill above the spring, wondering where Rosamund’s Bower might have stood, some six hundred years ago. On the brow of the hill, overlooking the River Glyme? Was that where Henry II had built the legendary labyrinth to protect his mistress? But the labyrinth had not kept Rosamund safe, if that’s what it was designed to do, for if legend could be believed, she had been murdered.

  But that was in the distant past, and Charles’s errand had a much more immediate urgency. He had no difficulty finding the bush on which Kate had discovered the scrap early that morning, for several gold threads still clung to it. Upon close examination, however, he agreed with Kate: The little bush was not stout enough to have snagged and torn the heavy silk. So how had the scrap come to be there?

  Not finding an immediate answer, Charles put down his camera and prowled around the pool, moving slowly, eyes on the ground, looking for anything out of the ordinary. It didn’t take long to find it, on the front side of the pool, the side nearest the lake. A brownish, pinkish stain that looked very much like blood, on the flagstone pavement beside the pool.

  Charles took his hand lens out of his pocket and knelt down, studying the stain intently. Overall, it was ten inches or so in diameter and surrounded by a number of spatters, as if the blood had forcibly sprayed from an open wound. All of it had dried, either by the action of the air or by soaking into the porous stone, or both.

  He had no way of judging, of course, how fresh the blood was; it might have been there for some hours or some days. And there was no way of deciding, short of an analytical test, whether the blood was human or animal. The test, which distinguished among the proteins of different blood residues, had been only recently developed by Paul Uhlenhuth, a German professor. It could be used on any bloodstain, regardless of the size of the stain, its age, or the material on which it was deposited. Charles had none of Professor Uhlenhuth’s serum, of course, but it could be obtained, and with that in mind, he took a penknife out of his kit, scraped a sample of dried blood into a glass vial, and corked it tightly. For the present, he would proceed on the assumption that it was human blood-an assumption which threw, he thought glumly, a new and disturbing light on the question of Miss Deacon’s disappearance.

  Having found the blood, he broadened his search, and almost immediately discovered a bloody heel print, remarkably clear and well-defined, on a nearby flagstone. He studied it for a moment, then set up his camera and made several photographs of it, and of the blood spatters. At the edge of the paving, he noticed the track of disturbed dirt and leaves left by something heavy, dragged in the direction of the lake. He photographed what he could see, then followed the track until it ended at the edge of the lake. There were several deep V-shaped indentations along the shore which might have been made by beached boats, and a welter of indistinguishable footprints in the soft earth, but nothing else.

  Charles turned and looked in the direction of Rosamund’s Well, some thirty feet away. Reasoning backward from the evidence, it looked to him as if someone had been standing beside Rosamund’s Well when he, or she, was attacked. The assailant had left the print of a shoe, and the dead or unconscious victim-Miss Deacon? — had been dragged to the lake, perhaps to a waiting boat.

  And then what?

  Was the victim alive or dead?

  If dead, had the corpse been taken to a less-frequented area and buried? Or weighted with stones and dropped into the deepest part of the lake?

  In spite of the warmth of the afternoon, Charles shivered.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  There is a thread here which we have not yet grasped and which might lead us through the tangle.

  The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  When Kate went back to the house after her conversation with Consuelo at the aviary, she remembered that she had intended to talk to Bess, the housemaid who was looking after Miss Deacon. Kate found her tidying the housemaids’ closet on the second floor, which was stocked with cleaning supplies, brooms and brushes, fresh linens, and everything necessary to make up the bedrooms.

  “Pardon me, Bess,” she said, “may I trouble you for a moment?”

  Startled, Bess turned from her work. She was a woman in her late twenties with dark hair tucked up beneath her white cap, a firm mouth, and quick, intelligent eyes under thick, strong brows. She was wearing a neat black afternoon dress and a ruffled apron.

  “Of course, m’lady,” she said. She closed the closet door. “How may I help you?”

  It was a pleasant response, Kate thought, different from the careless replies of most of the servants. “I wonder,” she said, “if you would accompany me to Miss Deacon’s room for just a moment. I shan’t keep you long.”

  “Yes, m’lady.” As they walked down the hall, Bess’s face grew troubled. “Miss Deacon seems not to have returned to her room last night,” she said in a low voice.

  “So I understand,” Kate said. “You were the maid who reported her absence to Mrs. Raleigh?” They had reached Gladys’s bedroom door. Kate took the key out of her pocket and unlocked it.

  “That’s right, m’lady,” Bess said, following her inside. She gestured. “I turned down her bed last night, and laid out her nightgown, same as I always do. You see? It’s just the way I left it. Hasn’t been touched.”

  “Yes, I see,” Kate said. She went to the wardrobe door and opened it. “I would appreciate it if you would look through Miss Deacon’s clothing and tell me whether anything is missing.”

  “Missing, m’lady?” Bess asked. She cocked her head, her eyes bright with curiosity.

  “Yes,” Kate said. She knew the maid wanted to know why she was making the inquiry, but she had no intention of telling her. “Either here in the wardrobe or in her chest of drawers. And please have a look at her footwear, as well.”

  If Bess thought this an unusual request, she didn’t say so. Without a word, she began to look through the clothing, while Kate went to the dressing table and, in a desultory way, glanced through the perfumes and cosmetic items.

  Parisian Pleasures, Beryl remarked in a snide tone, as Kate picked up a scent bottle. Sounds like something Gladys would enjoy, doesn’t it?

  Kate put down the scent bottle and took up a ceramic dish with a gilded picture of a country house surmounted by the arms of the Duke of Portland. Gladys had used it as an ashtray. �
��Welbeck Abbey,” she mused.

  Welbeck Abbey, Beryl said. The scene of Gladys’s crime.

  “The scene of the crime? At Welbeck?” Kate reflected aloud, setting the dish down. She hardly thought that pinching an ashtray amounted to a crime. But that wasn’t what Beryl had in mind.

  Not the ashtray, silly. Welbeck is where she accepted Northcote’s hand and Northcote’s diamonds, remember? Beryl chuckled maliciously. If that’s not a crime. I don’t know what is.

  Bess finished with the wardrobe and went to the chest, where she was now pulling out the third drawer. She stopped, cocked her head, and turned.

  “A crime at Welbeck?” A breath later, as an afterthought, she added, “M’lady.”

  Kate laughed a little. “A jewel theft, of sorts.”

  That’s exactly what it was. Beryl replied flatly. Gladys accepted those diamonds under false pretenses. As good as thieving, in my book.

  “A jewel theft?” A sudden, wary look crossed Bess’s face.

  Kate was about to correct herself and say that she was only playing with words, but something stopped her. Instead she said, “Have you been to Welbeck, Bess?”

  “Welbeck?” A short, hard laugh. “Oh, no, m’lady. Not me. I just wondered what you was saying, that’s all.” She pushed in the drawer, folded her arms, and went on, in a matter-of-fact tone, “It appears that a pair of trousers and jacket are missing, m’lady. Brown, they were. Dark brown flannel. It was… well, it was rather like a man’s lounge suit. I believe there was a tie, as well.”

  “Trousers!” Kate couldn’t help exclaiming.

  Trousers! Beryl echoed, intrigued. Kate herself owned several pairs of corduroy trousers, which she found useful for outdoor work at Bishop’s Keep and for tramping across the fields and woods. And she knew that American women were wearing trousers for bicycling. But it was a little more difficult to picture Gladys Deacon in trousers.

  Unless, Beryl whispered excitedly, she wanted to disguise herself.

  A disguise! Kate thought. Of course. They were all imagining that Gladys had gone off, or been spirited off, in the dress she had worn the night before. But what if she had “I think a white shirtwaist is gone, too,” Bess was saying, “although I can’t be sure. And a pair of brown suede walking boots.” She cleared her throat. “I noticed the trousers particularly,” she added in an apologetic tone. “Quite… well, quite manly looking, if your ladyship wouldn’t mind my saying so.”

  Of course she would notice them, Beryl remarked slyly. I’ll wager nothing gets past this ’un. Look at those eyes. Bess is a sly puss, if you ask me.

  Kate agreed. Nothing escaped the attention of a good maid, particularly something as extraordinary as a man’s brown flannel lounge suit in a woman’s wardrobe. And Bess struck her as a remarkably discerning person, the kind of housemaid who would be promoted to housekeeper, if she stayed in service. That made her question about the jewel theft that much more puzzling. A good servant would have allowed such idle words to pass unremarked.

  Aloud, Kate said, “What about Miss Deacon’s luggage, Bess? Do you remember seeing a small bag?”

  “P’rhaps,” Bess said thoughtfully, “when I did the unpacking. But the luggage has all gone downstairs, m’lady, where it’s seen to by the odd man.” She tilted her head, frowning slightly. “If your ladyship will forgive me asking, are you thinking that Miss Deacon might have.. well, gone off?”

  “I’m not at all sure,” Kate replied. “Do you have an opinion?”

  “No, m’lady.”

  No, m’lady, Beryl mimicked. But if she did have an opinion, she wouldn’t venture it, especially to you, Kate.

  Again, Kate agreed. An experienced maid kept her own counsel, although she might have a confidante among the other servants. She led the way to the door and closed and locked it behind them. “If you think of anything else, Bess, please come and tell me. And thank you for your help. I shan’t keep you any longer.”

  Bess dropped a quick curtsey. “Yes, m’lady,” she said, and went off, keys jingling, in the direction of the maids’ closet. At the corner of the corridor, she turned and cast an appraising glance over her shoulder.

  I wonder, Beryl said thoughtfully, about those keys.

  But Kate didn’t have time to think about that just now. She turned and went in the other direction, toward the service stairs. Below-stairs was normally out-of-bounds to guests, but Kate managed her own servants at Bishop’s Keep and knew her way around their work area very well. She did not hesitate to open the green baize door and go down the stairs.

  Once below-stairs in the maze of the servants’ area, it took her a little while to locate the odd man, who was cleaning wax drippings from brass candle holders in the lamp-and-candle room. Back in America, such a person would have been called an odd-job man, but the words “odd man” seemed to fit this fellow rather well. He was a very small man, one shoulder higher than the other, with wire spectacles and only a fringe of gray hair around his bald head. He seemed a little surprised to see Kate, perhaps because ladies usually sent their maids to fetch their luggage. But upon her inquiry, he led her to the luggage room, where the empty trunks and valises belonging to the family and their guests were kept.

  “Yer ladyship is wantin’ her trunk, I s’pose,” he said, scratching his head. “Let’s see, now. B’lieve it’s this’n.” He pointed to Kate’s leather trunk, with Charles’s smaller trunk perched on top. “Or did ye want me t’ fetch both yers and his lordship’s?”

  “Actually, it’s Miss Deacon’s luggage I’m asking about,” Kate said, adding, “She said I might borrow one of her small bags for a day or two.”

  “That’s the lot there,” the odd man said, nodding to a towering stack of trunks that completely filled one corner of the room. “All but the small valise. She come and got that ’un day ’fore yestiddy.”

  “She did?” Kate asked, trying to keep the excitement from her voice.

  “Yessum, her very own self,” the odd man said, adding, with a private grin, “Give me a shillin’, too.” He looked around the room. “If yer ladyship is wantin’ a valise, ye might take that carpet bag. B’lieve it b’longed to the Duchess of Manchester, and was left behind when she was last here.” He rubbed his hands together with a hopeful look. “I’d be glad to bring it up to yer room, if ye like.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said, wishing that she had brought a shilling to give him. “Now that I know it’s here, I’ll send for it when I’m ready.”

  Trousers, a jacket, walking boots, and a bag, Beryl said as Kate went along the back passage the way she had come, past the lamp-and-candle room and the large panel of electric bells that were connected to the upstairs bedrooms. Sounds to me as if our Gladys was preparing to go off somewhere, dressed as a man.

  Beryl’s idea might seem far-fetched, but Kate had to acknowledge that it was a possibility. However, Gladys had an abundance of long, red-gold hair. If she planned to masquerade as a man, she’d need to pin it up on top of her head and conceal it under a hat or a cap.

  A cap? Beryl asked with a knowing grin. Like one of those, d’you mean?

  Kate stopped. On her left was the service stairs. On her right was a door that led up a short flight of concrete steps to the outside. And next to the door was a row of wooden pegs on the wall, from which hung a motley assemblage of mackintoshes, umbrellas, and several sorts of headgear-tweed caps, leather caps, a felt beret, several straw hats, and even a battered yachting cap. If Gladys Deacon had wanted something under which to hide her long hair, all she had to do was help herself.

  While Kate and Beryl were chatting with the housemaid and the odd man, Consuelo had gone to her room to read. Books had always been her consolation, her escape from her dictatorial mother and now her escape from the prison of her marriage. As a girl, she had loved fairy tales, imagining herself as the enchanted princess set free by the prince’s kiss, then sentimental fiction-the sort of thing that fed romantic dreams, dreams of being loved, desired, and care
d for.

  But Consuelo had also been a bright, quick student, and by the age of eight, she could speak and write fluently in French and German, as well as English. Her favorite governess, Miss Harper, had encouraged her in a secret ambition: to attend Oxford University and take the modern languages Tripos. But the opportunity for formal education had been denied to her: girls of her class were not educated, for education was thought to make them unfit for marriage. But that didn’t mean that she couldn’t educate herself, and she continued to read as widely as she could. She loved poetry, and this afternoon, she sat with Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound on her lap.

  The volume remained unopened, however, for Consuelo’s attention was elsewhere. She was looking out the window, beyond the Italian Garden toward the aviary where she and Kate Sheridan had gone for a talk that afternoon. She was thinking about Gladys Deacon.

  Where was Gladys? What could have happened to her? Had she eloped with Northcote? Had she gone off with someone else? Or had she simply run away, as she had when she left Versailles and went off to Paris with her sister? Consuelo hadn’t wanted to tell Kate the whole story behind that dreadful escapade, but it had been more than a childish prank, much more. The two of them had had a terrible row, for she had felt responsible for Gladys and refused to allow her to spend an evening with a German military cadet who was infatuated with her. That night Gladys had disappeared and was gone for four days. Four whole days, while Consuelo fretted and worried and finally alerted the police, only to have Gladys reappear, as blithe and carefree and unapologetic as if she had been gone only a few hours.

  Consuelo sat back in her chair and closed her eyes, thinking over the events of the last fortnight: She and Gladys had taken the pony cart to Woodstock, had been driven to Oxford in the phaeton, and had taken several drives over the estate and the Blenheim farms in the electric car. In all that time, had Gladys said or done anything that gave a clue as to where she might go, or what she might do, if she suddenly vanished?