And yet she had known, and kept the secret from him. For the first time, Alfred wondered about Kitty, and whether they could have Bulls-eye laughed again, bitingly. “Stupid dolly-mop. Thought she was goin’ t’ get ’er a great pot o’ money, di’n’t she?” He pushed Alfred forward. “Now, get to ’t. Sooner it’s done, the better fer both of us.”
Holding the knife, Alfred knelt beside Ned, whose terrified eyes flashed at him. He raised his hand as if to strike, then lowered it.
“I… can’t,” he said brokenly. “Ned, I never meant to. I just had to hear him say he’d killed her, that’s all.”
“That’s all, is it?” Bulls-eye grabbed a handful of Alfred’s hair and yanked his head back, pressing the knife blade into his throat. “Kill ’im,” he rasped. “Er ye’re a dead man.”
“Drop that knife, Bulls-eye!” the voice boomed out of the darkness. “Or you’re the dead man.”
Bulls-eye’s head jerked up, but the knife remained poised to slash at Alfred’s throat. “ ’Oo’s that?” he cried. “ ’Oo’s out there?”
“Drop that knife!” came the repeated command.
“The hell I will,” cried Bulls-eye defiantly, pulling Alfred’s head back farther, pressing the knife harder against his throat. “I’ll kill both o’ ’em. I’ll-”
The night was shattered by a sharp report, and Bulls-eye pitched heavily backward in a spray of blood.
“Got ’im!” crowed Mr. Churchill exultantly, bounding out of the blackness.
“You weren’t suppose to kill him,” Lord Sheridan said severely.
“Did I?” Mr. Churchill said, in an innocent tone. “Let’s see.”
With trembling hands, Alfred cut Ned’s bonds. “I wouldn’t have done it, Ned,” he whispered penitently. “I was playing along, to get him to confess to killing Kitty. I knew that Lord Sheridan and Mr. Churchill were out there in the dark somewhere. They had to hear him say he was the one that did it.”
To tell the honest-to-God truth, of course, Alfred hadn’t known for certain that the two men were out there in the dark. He hoped they were, because that’s what they’d said, but he hadn’t been sure he could trust them.
Ned sat up and pulled the gag out of his mouth. He had to take several gasping breaths before he could say, “I believe you, Alfred. You played it all perfectly.” He grinned. “You had me quaking, I’ll tell you.” Up on his feet and rubbing at his wrists, he asked, “Is he dead?”
Mr. Churchill was bending over Bulls-eye’s sprawled form. “Very nearly, I’m afraid,” he said. “My aim must’ve been off. It’s a little hard to get a clear shot when you can hardly make out the gun-sight in the dark.”
Beside him, Lord Sheridan knelt down, lifted up the dying man, and spoke in an urgent tone. “Just one question, Bulls-eye. What about Gladys Deacon? Is she one of yours?”
Bulls-eyes eyelids fluttered. “Deacon?” he muttered thickly. “Deacon?” He managed a crooked grin.
“Wudn’t ye like t’ know,” he said, and died.
Robin Paige
Death at Blenheim Palace
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Friday, 17 July
And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable… Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs.
“And that’s where we are at this point, at least as far as I know.”
With those words, Kate finished her long tale-a convoluted chronicle of criminal schemes and espionage that even Beryl Bardwell would envy-and leaned back in the chair beside the fireplace in the Duchess’s luxurious private sitting room.
Consuelo had sat unmoving during the whole of Kate’s story. Now, she pushed up the sleeves of her blue silk morning dress and poured each of them a second cup of tea. “So our housemaid’s body has been found, and the man who killed her is dead,” she repeated incredulously. “You said that Winston actually shot him?”
“I’m afraid so,” Kate said ruefully. “It wasn’t meant to happen that way, Charles said, but Winston misjudged, or so he said. The two of them are going to Woodstock to see the constable and the coroner and explain the whole story, from beginning to end. Given the circumstances, they thought it best not to ask the Duke to accompany them. They are counting on Scotland Yard to support their claim that this is part of a larger investigation which should not be pursued locally, thereby forestalling an investigation and curtailing the inquest.”
“They’re right, I’m sure,” Consuelo said, adding sugar to her tea and stirring it. “I hope-oh, I hope-that it can be kept out of the newspapers, since it’s such a frightful embarrassment. People are likely to think that Blenheim’s staff is disorganized and security terribly lax.” She sighed heavily. “As I suppose it is. I try very hard, but the servants take advantage, and there seems to be very little I can do to stop it. Or to keep them here, either. Bess left this morning, Mrs. Raleigh said.” She sipped her tea and added, in a worried tone, “Marlborough has been informed about the shooting, I suppose.”
“I believe so. Charles said he was going to tell him at breakfast, so I assume it’s been done.”
Charles had returned to their bedroom at a very late hour last night, or more accurately, very early this morning. He’d been tired and cross, and more than a little angry at Winston, who (it seemed) had blundered badly by killing the man-Bulls-eye, his name was. Hoping to take him alive so they could pry information out of him about the gang of thieves, Charles had intended that Winston’s gun be used only to capture and control Bulls-eye. But now he was dead, and Kitty was dead, poor thing, and all they had to go on, Charles said, was the blurred photograph he had found in Kitty’s trunk, with Jermyn Street written on the back. And when he and Winston had gone to apprehend Bess, they found that she had packed a bag and fled, although it wasn’t clear how she had known that the conspiracy had been found out. So even though they seemed to have checked the plan to stage a robbery at Blenheim Palace while the Royals were visiting, the theft ring itself-and its criminal ringleaders-remained untouched.
Consuelo sighed again, even more heavily. “I don’t suppose it will ease Marlborough’s mind much. Oh, he’ll be glad to know that the man who killed that poor girl has been taken care of, and he’ll be grateful that Charles and Winston have ensured a safe visit for the King and Queen.”
Kate raised her eyebrows. Charles hadn’t been quite so confident about the Royal visit. The fact that Bulls- eye had been killed did not guarantee, he had told her, that the theft would be called off. She said nothing, however, not wanting to trouble the Duchess about something she could do nothing about.
“But none of this answers the question that weighs most on Marlborough’s mind,” Consuelo continued sadly.
“I suppose you’re thinking of Gladys?” Kate said warily. She had not told Consuelo that Miss Deacon’s visit to Welbeck Abbey at the time of the theft there had made her a suspect, or that Charles viewed Bulls-eye’s final words as a refusal to exonerate her from suspicion. Again, she had not wanted to trouble the Duchess, when there seemed to be no ready solution to the mystery of Gladys’s inexplicable disappearance.
“Yes, of Gladys,” Consuelo said, putting down her cup with a weary air. “Marlborough is terribly in love with her, you know. Irretrievably so, I’m afraid. It’s wrecked our marriage beyond all hope of repair. If it were possible, I would gladly seek a divorce, but since it isn’t, separation seems the only answer, although I suppose I shall have to wait until the boys have been sent to school.”
“It’s probably for the best,” Kate said regretfully. The marriage-based not on love or even a friendly affection, but on simple greed-had been so obviously a mistake from the very beginning. To find any happiness in herself, to discover her real strengths and powers, Consuelo would have to abandon it and begin a life of her own. “I believe,” she added, “that you will find it in yourself to be glad, when you have moved past the most painful parts and can see a brighter future.”
