He glanced up the hill above the spring, wondering where Rosamund’s Bower might have stood, some six hundred years ago. On the brow of the hill, overlooking the River Glyme? Was that where Henry II had built the legendary labyrinth to protect his mistress? But the labyrinth had not kept Rosamund safe, if that’s what it was designed to do, for if legend could be believed, she had been murdered.
But that was in the distant past, and Charles’s errand had a much more immediate urgency. He had no difficulty finding the bush on which Kate had discovered the scrap early that morning, for several gold threads still clung to it. Upon close examination, however, he agreed with Kate: The little bush was not stout enough to have snagged and torn the heavy silk. So how had the scrap come to be there?
Not finding an immediate answer, Charles put down his camera and prowled around the pool, moving slowly, eyes on the ground, looking for anything out of the ordinary. It didn’t take long to find it, on the front side of the pool, the side nearest the lake. A brownish, pinkish stain that looked very much like blood, on the flagstone pavement beside the pool.
Charles took his hand lens out of his pocket and knelt down, studying the stain intently. Overall, it was ten inches or so in diameter and surrounded by a number of spatters, as if the blood had forcibly sprayed from an open wound. All of it had dried, either by the action of the air or by soaking into the porous stone, or both.
He had no way of judging, of course, how fresh the blood was; it might have been there for some hours or some days. And there was no way of deciding, short of an analytical test, whether the blood was human or animal. The test, which distinguished among the proteins of different blood residues, had been only recently developed by Paul Uhlenhuth, a German professor. It could be used on any bloodstain, regardless of the size of the stain, its age, or the material on which it was deposited. Charles had none of Professor Uhlenhuth’s serum, of course, but it could be obtained, and with that in mind, he took a penknife out of his kit, scraped a sample of dried blood into a glass vial, and corked it tightly. For the present, he would proceed on the assumption that it was human blood-an assumption which threw, he thought glumly, a new and disturbing light on the question of Miss Deacon’s disappearance.
Having found the blood, he broadened his search, and almost immediately discovered a bloody heel print, remarkably clear and well-defined, on a nearby flagstone. He studied it for a moment, then set up his camera and made several photographs of it, and of the blood spatters. At the edge of the paving, he noticed the track of disturbed dirt and leaves left by something heavy, dragged in the direction of the lake. He photographed what he could see, then followed the track until it ended at the edge of the lake. There were several deep V-shaped indentations along the shore which might have been made by beached boats, and a welter of indistinguishable footprints in the soft earth, but nothing else.
Charles turned and looked in the direction of Rosamund’s Well, some thirty feet away. Reasoning backward from the evidence, it looked to him as if someone had been standing beside Rosamund’s Well when he, or she, was attacked. The assailant had left the print of a shoe, and the dead or unconscious victim-Miss Deacon? — had been dragged to the lake, perhaps to a waiting boat.
And then what?
Was the victim alive or dead?
If dead, had the corpse been taken to a less-frequented area and buried? Or weighted with stones and dropped into the deepest part of the lake?
In spite of the warmth of the afternoon, Charles shivered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
There is a thread here which we have not yet grasped and which might lead us through the tangle.
When Kate went back to the house after her conversation with Consuelo at the aviary, she remembered that she had intended to talk to Bess, the housemaid who was looking after Miss Deacon. Kate found her tidying the housemaids’ closet on the second floor, which was stocked with cleaning supplies, brooms and brushes, fresh linens, and everything necessary to make up the bedrooms.
“Pardon me, Bess,” she said, “may I trouble you for a moment?”
Startled, Bess turned from her work. She was a woman in her late twenties with dark hair tucked up beneath her white cap, a firm mouth, and quick, intelligent eyes under thick, strong brows. She was wearing a neat black afternoon dress and a ruffled apron.
“Of course, m’lady,” she said. She closed the closet door. “How may I help you?”
It was a pleasant response, Kate thought, different from the careless replies of most of the servants. “I wonder,” she said, “if you would accompany me to Miss Deacon’s room for just a moment. I shan’t keep you long.”
“Yes, m’lady.” As they walked down the hall, Bess’s face grew troubled. “Miss Deacon seems not to have returned to her room last night,” she said in a low voice.
“So I understand,” Kate said. “You were the maid who reported her absence to Mrs. Raleigh?” They had reached Gladys’s bedroom door. Kate took the key out of her pocket and unlocked it.
“That’s right, m’lady,” Bess said, following her inside. She gestured. “I turned down her bed last night, and laid out her nightgown, same as I always do. You see? It’s just the way I left it. Hasn’t been touched.”
“Yes, I see,” Kate said. She went to the wardrobe door and opened it. “I would appreciate it if you would look through Miss Deacon’s clothing and tell me whether anything is missing.”
“Missing, m’lady?” Bess asked. She cocked her head, her eyes bright with curiosity.
“Yes,” Kate said. She knew the maid wanted to know why she was making the inquiry, but she had no intention of telling her. “Either here in the wardrobe or in her chest of drawers. And please have a look at her footwear, as well.”
If Bess thought this an unusual request, she didn’t say so. Without a word, she began to look through the clothing, while Kate went to the dressing table and, in a desultory way, glanced through the perfumes and cosmetic items.
Parisian Pleasures, Beryl remarked in a snide tone, as Kate picked up a scent bottle. Sounds like something Gladys would enjoy, doesn’t it?
Kate put down the scent bottle and took up a ceramic dish with a gilded picture of a country house surmounted by the arms of the Duke of Portland. Gladys had used it as an ashtray. “Welbeck Abbey,” she mused.
Welbeck Abbey, Beryl said. The scene of Gladys’s crime.
“The scene of the crime? At Welbeck?” Kate reflected aloud, setting the dish down. She hardly thought that pinching an ashtray amounted to a crime. But that wasn’t what Beryl had in mind.
Not the ashtray, silly. Welbeck is where she accepted Northcote’s hand and Northcote’s diamonds, remember? Beryl chuckled maliciously. If that’s not a crime. I don’t know what is.
Bess finished with the wardrobe and went to the chest, where she was now pulling out the third drawer. She stopped, cocked her head, and turned.
“A crime at Welbeck?” A breath later, as an afterthought, she added, “M’lady.”
Kate laughed a little. “A jewel theft, of sorts.”
That’s exactly what it was. Beryl replied flatly. Gladys accepted those diamonds under false pretenses. As good as thieving, in my book.
“A jewel theft?” A sudden, wary look crossed Bess’s face.
Kate was about to correct herself and say that she was only playing with words, but something stopped her. Instead she said, “Have you been to Welbeck, Bess?”
“Welbeck?” A short, hard laugh. “Oh, no, m’lady. Not me. I just wondered what you was saying, that’s all.” She pushed in the drawer, folded her arms, and went on, in a matter-of-fact tone, “It appears that a pair of trousers and jacket are missing, m’lady. Brown, they were. Dark brown flannel. It was… well, it was rather like a man’s lounge suit. I believe there was a tie, as well.”