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.
Dearest Kitty,
I need to talk to you, soon as ever posibel. You know I luv you dearest and long too hold you close.
Yours ’til death
Alfred
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
Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.
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.