Robin Paige: Death at Blenheim Palace

Buttersworth fluttered a hand. “Oh, no. At least, not here at the museum, I’m glad to say. It’s only that-” He broke off, obviously troubled. “But perhaps I shouldn’t mention it. It is only speculation, after all. My suspicions, if that’s what they are, are probably quite unfounded.”

Charles waited, feeling that there was more here than the man wanted to say-more, perhaps, than he wanted to hear.

“On the other hand,” Buttersworth went on after a moment, “since you are staying with the Marlboroughs, perhaps I ought to-” He looked in both directions up and down the hall, then lowered his voice. “I was visited by a rather remarkable woman on Friday, you see.” He paused.

“Remarkable in what way?” Charles asked.

“Well, her appearance, for one thing. Her nose, quite classical, exactly like that of Sappho, whose bust we have in our collection.” Buttersworth seemed to reflect on this phenomenon for a moment.

“And this remarkable woman-” Charles prompted.

Buttersworth started. “Ah, yes. Well, she claimed to represent her employer. Wanted my opinion on several antique pieces.”

Charles smiled. “I shouldn’t think such a request would be all that unusual, in your line of work.”

“It was not the request, it was the items themselves. One was a rather ordinary scarab seal-people are always fetching those things home from holiday in Egypt. But she also had a Minoan prism seal and three very fine Greek seal stones, and she suggested that there were more.”

Charles tipped his head to one side, remembering Dreighson’s story-when the truth had finally been forced out of the man-of being visited by a woman who had sold him an earring. “I see,” he said. “I suppose you thought of the Dreighson affair.”

“I did,” Buttersworth said ruefully. “But I was also reminded of the Marlborough collection. The Marlborough Gemstones.” He paused. “I suppose you know of them.”

“Ah, yes,” Charles said reflectively. “A large assemblage of very fine gemstones-more than seven hundred, as I recall-gathered at enormous expense by the fourth duke. And sold by the seventh duke, who needed the money to keep the palace going.” He smiled crookedly. “Alas, they went for just thirty-five thousand guineas, although they were said to have been worth twice that.”

Buttersworth cleared his throat. “But there’s something else, you see,” he said, distinctly uneasy. “The woman who brought the stones-she let it slip that she had been sent by the Duchess.”

“The Duchess?” Charles repeated with a chuckle. “Come now, Buttersworth. You can’t be serious.”

“I know,” Buttersworth said gloomily. “Well, of course it could only be the Duchess of Marlborough. And I wondered, you see… Of course, it was just a thought, but I couldn’t help asking myself whether some of the gemstones might have escaped the auction block, after all, and were now being offered for sale, clandestinely. Although I must say,” he added quickly, “that it does seem rather strange. The Duchess was Consuelo Vanderbilt before she married the Duke, as you know. The Marlboroughs’ pockets are said to be empty, but I doubt that a Vanderbilt would need money. Or, if she did, that she would stoop to sell the Duke’s family jewels.”

Buttersworth’s story, Charles thought, was highly unsettling, and not because the Duchess would be involved in anything underhanded. “There may be a scheme afoot that doesn’t involve the Marlboroughs,” he said, thinking of the Dreighson affair. “A plot of which the Duke and Duchess know nothing.”

“It’s possible,” Buttersworth agreed. He gave Charles an anxious look. “You’ll keep it in mind while you’re there?”

“I shall,” Charles said. “I shall indeed.”

Robin Paige

Death at Blenheim Palace

Kate Sheridan, carrying a string bag containing her purchases, walked past Woodstock’s town hall, past The Bear, past St. Mary Magdalene’s church, and along a row of rose-covered Georgian houses and pretty shops. At the last shop, she turned left, crossed a grassy quadrangle, stepped through an imposing stone arch, and paused to admire the sweeping view that lay before her-the finest in all England, it was widely reckoned.

Before her lay a quiet lake girdled with mature beech-woods and soft green meadows, its glittering surface reflecting the shadows of moving clouds and the darker, heavier shadow of a massive stone-arch bridge. To the left of the lake rose the walls and towers of Blenheim, and Kate thought with a shiver that, even softened by distance, it seemed cold and fierce and forbidding, more like a prison than a palace. To the right, through the trees, she could see the tall stone Column of Victory, monument to John Churchill’s decisive defeat of the French at the Austrian village of Blenheim two hundred years before. A grateful Queen Anne had awarded the nation’s hero a dukedom and crowned the honor with the grant of the eighteen hundred-acre royal manor of Woodstock, promising to build on it, at government expense, “the Castle of Blenheim.”

Never mind that the park and woodland, the site of Henry I’s famous hunting lodge and Henry II’s royal palace, had fallen into a sad decline, seldom used, derelict and neglected. And never mind that certain cynics in the court hinted that the Queen had merely taken the opportunity to off-load a surplus royal estate that had become a royal embarrassment. Most agreed that it was a magnificent gift, worthy of a victorious general and a munificent queen.

But things hadn’t sorted out as the triumphant Churchill, now known as the Duke of Marlborough, might have wished. Having paid out nearly a quarter of a million pounds for Blenheim’s construction, the Queen repented of her promise, snapped shut the royal purse, and died, leaving to Marlborough and his heirs the pain of finishing the palace out of their personal pockets, which, unfortunately, were not very deep.

The task had been difficult and prolonged, but eventually the grand house had been completed, and eight succeeding dukes had carved out the landscape that now held Kate’s admiring gaze. The famous landscape architect, Capability Brown, had dammed the River Glyme to create the lake and artfully planted beeches and oaks around it, creating the illusion of the long-vanished medieval forest that had once surrounded the King’s favorite hunting lodge. And on the lake’s far shore, beyond the bridge, a clump of trees marked the oldest, most historic, and most romantic site of all: Fair Rosamund’s Well, that mysterious spring about which Kate had heard so many stories. In fact, Rosamund’s Well was the reason she had come to Blenheim, to see for herself the setting of one of the most tantalizing romances in English history.

By this time, Kate had reached the elm-lined avenue that led from Hensington Road to the East Gate of the palace. She had just turned onto the lane when, behind her, she heard the chugging of a motor and the peremptory tootle of an airhorn, and turned to see her husband Charles piloting their Panhard along the graveled road. He slowed the motorcar to a stop, pushed his goggles up on his forehead, and leaned over to open the door with a smile.

“Climb in, Kate.”

“Happily,” Kate said, gathering her skirts and stepping up into the motorcar. She leaned over and kissed her husband on the cheek, not caring that his brown beard and moustache were gray and gritty with road dust. “I’m glad to see you, dear. Did you motor straight down from London?”