Death at Blenheim Palace by Robin Paige Page A

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