Death at Blenheim Palace (19 page)

Inside the boat house, the air smelled of weeds and rotting wood, and the silvery light danced across the surface of the water. Off to the left, in the shadows, Kate saw a pile of fishing gear, a heap of netting, and some fishing poles. To her right, there was a stack of wooden crates and baskets. A dock extended some six or eight feet into the water in front of her. A green-painted rowboat was tied to the dock on one side, with a pair of oars in the bottom. A yellow-painted rowboat was tied on the other.

Kate hesitated for a moment, as her eyes became accustomed to the shadowy gloom and the dazzling reflections. Then she stepped forward onto the dock, to a point where she could see down into the rowboat.

Look!
Beryl exclaimed, with an excited nudge.
What’s that in the bottom of the boat? It looks like—

Kate got down on her knees, bent over the boat, and picked up a golden evening slipper, somewhat damp from lying in a puddle.

It is!
Beryl cried.
It’s Gladys’s shoe!

Kate straightened up, still on her knees. It was indeed Gladys’s shoe—at least, it was the same color as the dress she had worn the night before. So Gladys really
had
gone across the lake in the rowboat.

There was a moment’s silence.
But did she go by herself?
Beryl asked, in a significant tone.

Kate frowned. Then, with no hesitation at all, she gathered her skirts, clambered down into the rocking boat, and began a thorough search, from prow to stern. She had just picked up several bits of litter when a dark shape loomed over her and a rough male voice demanded, “Here, now, Miss! Wot d’ye think yer doin’?”

Kate’s head snapped up. The man was small and wizened, with a gray beard and a thick shock of gray hair, as shaggy as a terrier. He was dressed in worn corduroy trousers, a jacket made of sacking, a brown leather hat, and workmen’s leather boots.

“I . . . I was just looking for something,” Kate stammered, straightening hastily and thrusting her left hand into her pocket. The boat rocked wildly, and the man leaned over and grabbed her right arm.

“Hey, now, Miss!” he cried. “Steady! Watch wot yer doin’ there, or ye’ll find yerself in the water!”

Kate recovered her balance. “Thank you,” she said. Accepting his extended hand, she climbed out of the boat, adding, somewhat breathlessly, “What did you say your name was?”

“Di’n’t,” the old man growled. “Badger’s wot they call me.”

“Well, thank you, Badger,” Kate said briskly, dusting her hands. “Are you responsible for these boats?”

The man looked even fiercer. “ ’Deed I am,” he said. “I’m ’sponsible fer the fish’ry on this lake, and I minds the boats. These be
workin’
boats,” he added with a dark emphasis. “If ye’re wantin’ one o’ the Duke’s boats t’ go out for a row, ye need t’ go down the shore ’t the Duke’s boathouse.”

“I see,” Kate said. “So guests aren’t encouraged to take these boats?”

Badger pushed his hands into his pockets. “These be workin’ boats,” he growled again. “T’other boats’re better ’n’ cleaner. They’re fer the Duke’s guests. Wish they’d tell ’em that, up ’t the house,” he added in a disgruntled tone, “so people ’ud stop botherin’ me. Damn nuisance, is wot it is.”

“Bothering you?” Kate asked. “Have other guests inquired about these boats?”

Instead of answering, Badger squinted at her. “What’s that ye’ve got in yer hand?”

“Something I found in the boat,” Kate said, holding it up. “A woman’s slipper. It appears that one of the other guests, Miss Gladys Deacon, was in this rowboat last night, and may have gone across to Rosamund’s Well. Most likely, she was with someone—a man. Might you have seen them?”

A crafty look crossed Badger’s face, but it was gone as soon as it came. “Nobody but me uses these boats,” he said, in a gruff, ill-humored tone, evading Kate’s question. “Anyway, it’s dang’rous here. Rotten boards, deep water, nobody ’round to hear ye if ye call fer help.” He paused and added, ominously, “Nivver kin tell wot might happen in a place like this. Losin’ a shoe ’ud be a small thing, compared.”

Hearing the warning—or was it a threat?—in his tone, Kate nodded. “Thank you,” she said, thinking that Badger knew more than he was willing to tell her. It might be a good idea if Charles talked to the man. “And how do I reach the Duke’s boats?”

Badger jerked his thumb. “That way. Take the path.”

Feeling Badger’s dark glance following her until she was out of sight, Kate did as she was bid, taking a path that meandered for fifty yards along the shore of the lake. The Duke’s boathouse, it turned out, was large and ornate, rather like a picnic pavilion. However, as Kate discovered, it was securely locked, which answered one question that had come to her mind: why Gladys—and her rowing partner, if she was not alone—had taken one of the working boats instead of the boats available for guests.

In the distance, Kate heard the resounding gong that signaled luncheon. She’d have to hurry, or she’d be late. But as she went up the hill toward the palace, she couldn’t resist taking her finds from her skirt pocket and looking at them again.

Gladys Deacon’s golden slipper, slightly damp.

A cigarette bearing the Marlborough crest, half-smoked, also damp and trodden upon, found in the bottom of the boat.

And what looked like a letter written in ink in an unskilled hand on a ragged piece of paper, crumpled and much blotted, found with the cigarette.

 
A touching little love note,
Beryl sniffed,
but I doubt it has anything to do with Gladys
.

Kate agreed. It had probably been written by one of the male servants to a female servant, and suggested that Badger’s rowboats were more commonly used than he liked to acknowledge. It might even have been one of the servants who arranged for the lock to be unfastened.

But the slipper certainly belonged to Gladys, and the cigarette, too, most likely, although Kate would have expected that if it were Gladys’s cigarette, it would have borne traces of her lip coloring. It did not. Kate wondered whether it was possible to take a fingerprint from a half-smoked cigarette, and handled it carefully. She was anxious to see Charles and give everything over to him, including Northcote’s letter.

And if Beryl was feeling smug about the course of their investigations this morning, who could blame her? They had, after all, answered their initial question. But the answer raised still other questions, and Kate frowned as she pondered them.

Gladys seemed to have gone across the lake in the rowboat. Did she go voluntarily, or against her will, as the shoe seemed to suggest? And who had rowed the boat back across the lake and returned it to the boat house? The passionate Northcote, who threatened to spirit Gladys away? The secretive Duke of Marlborough, whose taciturnity might conceal an even greater passion? Some as-yet-unidentified third man, perhaps a spurned lover? And where in the world could Gladys have gone, minus one shoe? Kate shivered, liking neither the questions nor the possible answers, all of which seemed to her to be ominous.

And as she went into the palace through a rear door, a line from one of Conan Doyle’s recent novels came into her mind. “We hold several threads in our hands,” Sherlock Holmes had said to Watson, “and the odds are that one or other of them guides us to the truth.”

She held several threads of a mystery in her hand, like the golden thread that had led Eleanor straight to the heart of Rosamund’s labyrinth.

But what exactly was the mystery?

And did
any
of the threads lead to the truth?

CHAPTER TWENTY

 
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 
 
 
Winston Churchill thought of himself as a man of some importance, and under other circumstances might have resisted the suggestion that he make inquiries at an hotel or a railway station, as if he were a policeman or a private inquiry agent.

However, he knew that it was of the utmost urgency that he and Charles discover Gladys’s whereabouts and get her safely back to Blenheim Palace. Since he refused to believe that Sunny might have had anything to do with her disappearance, that left only that blasted Northcote. Or some unknown person, of course—a possibility that, where Gladys was concerned, ought perhaps not be discounted. Miss Deacon had a great many suitors, both past and present, and one never knew how a disappointed fellow might take it into his head to behave.

But first there was that other business to attend to—Charles Sheridan’s scheme designed to obstruct a possible robbery attempt during Edward’s and Alexandra’s visit. It was very hard for him to imagine a ring of thieves daring to infiltrate Blenheim Palace and target its illustrious guests. But even Winston had to admit the awful possibility of such a thing, and he was all for any plan that would keep the family from the public humiliation of a jewel theft during a Royal weekend! And when it was all over and the danger had passed, he would be glad to receive the Duke’s gratitude for having rescued the Marlborough name from disgrace.

So, spurred by a sense of familial responsibility, Winston had located the butler and informed him that Lord Sheridan wanted to find a place for a worthy young man of his acquaintance and that he, Winston, had agreed to look into the possibility of obtaining a page’s position for the boy at Blenheim. Lord Sheridan hoped to send the young man along later in the afternoon, and both he and Winston would very much appreciate it if Stevens might accomodate him.

Bowing, Stevens had conceded that it would indeed be possible to find a place for Lord Sheridan’s young acquaintance, since he had only that morning obtained Her Grace’s permission to hire a new page. Winston assured Stevens that he and Lord Sheridan could vouch for the young man’s suitability, and suggested that Alfred be assigned to supervise the boy.

“Alfred, sir?” Stevens asked with a frown. “But he has not been here long himself and—”

“Yes, Alfred,” Winston said peremptorily. He did not intend to explain. “As well, I should like you to allow the young man some latitude in the execution of his duties, in case either Lord Sheridan or I have special tasks for him.”

Stevens’s audible sigh was resigned. He was obviously accustomed to dealing with peremptory persons. “Certainly, sir,” he said.

“Very good, Stevens,” Winston said. “I regret that both Lord Sheridan and I shall have to miss luncheon. Would you convey our apologies to the Duchess, please?” Then he went out to the stables, where he got a cart and pony and drove off to Woodstock with the intention of seeing if he could discover any bit of information relating to Northcote and Gladys Deacon.

His first stop was The Bear, an old coaching inn that boasted of serving Woodstock since the thirteenth century. It was located on Park Street, a short distance beyond the Triumphal Arch and across from the Woodstock Town Hall. Winston had stayed at The Bear on occasion, when he had arrived too late to be let into the palace, where the gates were usually locked by midnight. He knew of his own experience that the pub would still have been open when Northcote arrived, and that the man who presided over the bar was also available to provide latecomers with a key and a reasonably clean bed.

“Lord Northcote?” the hotelier asked, with pretended doubtfulness. He scratched a scabby ear with a pencil and said again, even more doubtfully, “Northcote, was that wot ye said?”

“A friend of mine,” said Winston, and pushed a half-crown across the desk. “He would have procured a room quite late—or rather, quite early this morning, sometime after twelve-thirty.”

“Ah, well, a friend,” said the hotelier heartily, pocketing the half-crown. “Well, that do make all the difference, do’ant it, sir?” He ran a grubby finger down the hotel register, paused, and asked, “Henry Northcote?”

“That’s him,” Winston said excitedly. “So he was here?”

“Here, sir, and gone,” the hotelier said with a cheerful grin. “Checked out, the gentl’man did, quite early. Five-thirty in the mornin’, it was. B’lieve he was off t’ the early train.” He chuckled under his breath. “Ill-tempered fellow, if ye’ll fergive me fer sayin’ so.”

“Ah, well, there it is, then,” Winston said. “I’ve missed him.” He made as if to leave, then turned back. “Oh, I nearly forgot,” he said. “Would you happen to have registered a lady, late last evening or early this morning? A Miss Gladys Deacon?”

The hotelier’s eyebrows rose significantly. “Another friend, sir?”

Winston sighed and produced a second half-crown.

The hotelier made a great show of studying the register. “No Miss Deacon, I’m sorry t’ say, sir,” he reported in a regretful tone.

“No single ladies at all?” pressed Winston, thinking that Gladys might well have used another name.

“No single ladies,” the hotelier confirmed. He gave Winston a knowing look. “And in case ye’re wonderin’, sir, Lord Northcote was all alone. Both when he registered and when he left. Weren’t no lady with him, is wot I mean t’ say. O’course,” he added, with the air of a man who wants to consider every possibility, “he might’ve met ’er on the way to the station. Can’t be sure ’bout that, ye unnerstand.”

“Yes,” Winston said. “I understand.” If Gladys had gone voluntarily with Northcote, she might well have chosen to stay at a different hostelry. But there wasn’t time to check them all. He would get on to the railway depot.

The station was a red brick building next to the tracks that stopped at the north edge of town. Woodstock was located on the branch line that joined Great Western Railway’s main line at Kidlington. In a bit of local whimsey, the locomotive that served Woodstock had been named “Fair Rosamund” when it was put into service in 1890. And just now, Fair Rosamund, trailed by three attached carriages, was waiting at the station, steam hissing from its boilers and smoke pouring from its smokestack. A trio of schoolboys stood nearby, hands in their pockets, watching—truant from the nearby National School, Winston guessed.