Death at Blenheim Palace (9 page)

What did matter was that the Rosamund legends had evolved over the centuries into a fascinating, if contradictory, literary tradition. In ballad and story, Rosamund’s Bower became a palatial establishment of stone and timber, with 150 doors, surrounded by a maze “so cunningly contrived with turnings round about, that none but with a clue of thread could enter in or out.” Some of the tales suggested that the king constructed the labyrinth to barricade the beautiful young girl against his jealous queen and against other rivals—one of whom, Roger of Salisbury, was said to have fallen so desperately in love with Rosamund that he tried to carry her off. Others hinted that Rosamund herself would have been glad enough to escape from the king, but she was now his captive, trapped in their sinful liaison (symbolized by the legendary labyrinth, of course).

In the legend, Henry’s Herculean efforts to defend his mistress ultimately failed. Eleanor visited the palace at Woodstock. When Henry came to her one morning, she saw that his spur had snagged a golden thread. Following the thread through the maze, Eleanor discovered Rosamund. Shortly thereafter, Rosamund was found dead. She had been poisoned.

Had the aging, vengeful Eleanor murdered her beautiful young rival? Or had Rosamund been killed by a treacherous servant, or even by the desperate Roger of Salisbury? Or had she—stricken with shame, sick with scandal and disgrace, realizing that she was imprisoned for life—killed
herself
?

Beryl, of course, found these questions deliciously enthralling, for the legends offered a wealth of story material for their novel, some of it wonderfully lurid and exactly the sort of mystery she loved. Kate herself was always more circumspect and tried to keep within the bounds of the believable. If history said that Eleanor had been in Henry’s prison at the time of Rosamund’s death and hence could not possibly have killed her, that settled the matter.

But Beryl was bolder, and insisted on holding open all the possibilities as long as possible.
So what if the queen was shut up in jail?
she argued.
What makes you think she couldn’t have hired a killer to do the dirty deed for her?

To which Kate had no immediate answer. In such matters, Beryl was usually right, and Kate usually gave in. For now, at least, they would leave the questions open and see where the story took them.

By this time, Kate had arrived at the end of the bridge and was setting off along the narrow path that led down the hill to the left, in the direction of Rosamund’s Well. The grass was damp and slippery, and she had to scramble to keep her footing. But the soft gray light was exactly what she wanted, and when she reached the Well, she unfolded her stool, opened her sketchpad, and set to work.

The spring, she saw, issued out of an ancient, moss-covered stone wall and fell into a square pool, about twenty feet by twenty, set within a paved area. When an observer had described the site some two hundred years before, there had been three pools, and a seat built into the wall, as well as the ruins of an old building and much stone paving. Now, Kate and Beryl had to use their imaginations in order to see what might have been there in Rosamund’s time: a pleasant rustic bower, a paved courtyard, a pear orchard, a fragrant herb garden filled with birds and butterflies, and perhaps a series of bubbling waterfalls, where the waters of the spring danced down the rocky slope.

The mist swirled through the trees and over the lake, concealing Blenheim Palace on the opposite shore. Surrounded by the gray swirls, Kate could imagine herself carried back to Rosamund’s time, on a morning when two lovers stood in a pleasant garden beside a spring, absorbed in their passion and seeing nothing of the turmoil around them. For a moment, she was swept by Rosamund’s feelings—a tumble of delight, apprehension, and the reckless, headstrong abandonment that comes with passion. And Henry’s—his desire, his need, his concern for Rosamund’s well-being, his determination to keep what belonged to him. And Eleanor’s, as well. The older woman, losing her husband to a younger; the queen, in danger of losing her kingdom and her freedom; the jealous wife, filled with a hateful bitterness.

Beryl was right. All the elements were here, and more.

Compelling characters and a tantalizing setting, within a rich background of legend, tradition, and history. She had only to let her imagination go free, and she would be able to create a wonderfully powerful story, perhaps the best she had ever written.

But as Kate sat, lost in a misty vision of the past, her attention was caught by something very real and entirely unimaginary: a scrap of burnished gold silk snagged on a low holly bush in front of her. She leaned forward and picked it off, turning it over in her fingers. The silk was exactly the shade of the dress that Gladys Deacon had worn to dinner the night before.

For Kate, the sight of the scrap of silk evoked the scene at the dining table: Marlborough’s possessive hand on Gladys’s wrist, Gladys’s provocative smile, Lord Northcote’s angrily jealous glance, Consuelo’s sad mouth. And Gladys’s idea for a folly, “a sort of Gothic ruin,” she had said, “where people could go and pretend to be Rosamund and King Henry and fall madly in love.” And then another image flickered across the first, like a blurry double exposure, the ancient story of adulterous love, annihilating jealousies, and bitter rivalries, reenacted in the present. Gladys playing Rosamund, Marlborough as Henry, Consuelo as Eleanor, and Botsy Northcote as Roger of Salisbury.

And in her mind, she heard Beryl, speaking in an ominous whisper.
Something awful has happened, Kate. There’s been a tragedy here, a death. I know it. I can
feel
it!

Kate shivered, for a moment overwhelmed with apprehension. But Beryl was often overly dramatic, and as she considered the situation, she could see no reason to imagine any sort of tragedy. Apart from the exchange of gesture and glance at the dinner table, and that silly business about the folly, the previous evening had been rather ordinary.

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

 
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?”