Death at Blenheim Palace

CHAPTER FIVE

Consuelo Vanderbilt Marlborough was awakened by the echoing sound of the dressing gong. Feeling drained and dispirited in spite of her afternoon nap, she swung her feet off the high bed and wrapped her arms around herself. It might be summer out-of-doors, she thought bleakly, but the sunshine had little chance of warming this wretched mausoleum of a house. Blenheim was supposed to be centrally heated-a convenience purchased, together with electric lighting and repairs to the palace’s lead roofs, with the eleventh duchess’s dowry-but the rooms were always cold.

“Would Your Grace prefer the blue or the lilac?” Rosalie asked, holding up two gauzy tea gowns. Her maid, who was stern and reproachful, had been selected by her mother-in-law, Lady Blandford. Consuelo couldn’t shake the uncomfortable thought that Rosalie might be more loyal to the Duke’s mother, or to the Duke, than to herself-that she might even be a spy.

“Your Grace?” Rosalie repeated severely. “The blue or the lilac?”

“I’ll have neither.” Consuelo shivered. “I should like something warm.” She glanced up. At the foot of her bed, on the opposite wall, there was a marble mantlepiece that looked exactly like a tomb. On it, in large black letters, the seventh duke had carved three words: DUST, ASHES, NOTHING. She woke up to that desolate admonition every morning, went to sleep with it every night, and heard it echoing in her dreams. It seemed to represent her life.

Fifteen minutes later, Consuelo was dressed in a blue velvet gown with a high cream-colored valencian lace collar embroidered with cut crystal and silver beads, and was seated at her dressing table, fastening her diamond bracelet while Rosalie silently arranged her hair.

Without much enthusiasm, Consuelo studied her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror. She knew that she was said to be a beauty, although of course, the newspapers had to print things like that, since she was a Vanderbilt by birth and a Marlborough by marriage, and such women were always supposed to be beautiful, no matter what they really looked like. She was tall-at five-foot-nine, she overtopped her husband by a full three inches-and willowy, with an elegant posture, the result of having worn a steel brace as a girl. Her deep-set brown eyes and arched brows were her best features, as well as her graceful neck and flawless white shoulders. But her jaw was decidedly firm, her capable hands were the size of a working man’s, and her nose Oh, that ridiculous retrousse nose, with its silly tip-tilt, which entirely spoilt her face! Consuelo made a self-deprecating grimace as she thought how her mother had blamed her nose when the Duke seemed disinclined to have her, in spite of her tempting Vanderbilt dowry.

“It’s your nose, I’m sure of it,” Alva Vanderbilt had wailed, after three weeks of wondering whether the Duke-Sunny, as he was incongruously called-had decided not to propose after all. “He must be afraid that your children will inherit it.”

But Marlborough had either discounted the importance of Consuelo’s nose or weighed it against her father’s fortune, for after three long weeks of ducal shilly-shallying, he had at last proposed, to the great delight of Mrs. Vanderbilt, who immediately set out to create the grandest wedding that had ever been seen in North America.

The offer of the Duke’s hand had brought Consuelo no happiness, however, for she loved someone else-dear, sweet Winty Rutherfurd, who had begged her to throw over everything else and elope with him. She had tried to tell her mother that she could never love Marlborough, who had not even had the grace to pretend that he loved her, but it was of no use. Mrs. Vanderbilt was absolutely dead set on the marriage: “An English duke! My dear child, what a coup! You should be eternally grateful to me for arranging it.” Consuelo had finally bowed to the inevitable.

The extravagant wedding was followed by the obligatory Mediterranean honeymoon, and in the course of time, Consuelo had obligingly presented her husband with an heir and then a spare, neither of whom were disfigured by their mother’s nose. This attention to duty had pleased the Duke’s grandmother, the old Duchess, who on their first meeting had told her that it was her responsibility to have a son, “because it would be intolerable to have that little upstart Winston become Duke.”

At the thought of Winston, Consuelo smiled, for he had become one of her closest friends, perhaps because his brash-ness was very American (after all, his mother Jennie was an American) and very unlike the stuffy Marlboroughs and their stiff friends. She wished she could talk to him about her present troubles, but they involved the Duke and she always hated to put Winston in a corner when it came to the family. But perhaps Her thoughts were interrupted by a light tap on the door, which burst open before she had a chance to call out. A young woman danced into the room.

“Oh, Connie, vous voila!” she cried, with a toss of her beautiful head. “I have been searching all over for you! I have something exciting to tell you!”

“Thank you, Rosalie,” Consuelo said, dismissing her maid. She turned from the mirror, smiling fondly. “Gladys, my dear. How pretty you look.”

No matter how angry she might be at Marlborough for the reckless way he was behaving with the girl, Consuelo found it hard to be angry at Gladys herself, who was as innocent as a child in such matters. Innocent and free, Consuelo thought with a sudden pang of envy-free to be lively and winsome and pursue her dreams as willfully as she pleased, privileges that she herself had never enjoyed.

Gladys threw herself on the bed with a theatrical flutter of white chiffon. “Oh, I am too, too weary, dear Connie, simply trop fatigued. The Duke insisted that we tramp around and around the garden, pausing to sit only a little.” She raised her arms above her head, showing off delicate white hands like little birds. “Did you know, ma cherie, that Marlborough has commissioned a Venus fountain? And it is to be in my likeness! Isn’t that a deliciously enchanting idea? Oh, that wonderful Duke of yours-he does all in his power to entertain!”

Consuelo’s lips tightened. She thought of the silent Sunny-what an irony there was in that family nickname! — who, when they had no guests, ate his dinner with neither a word nor a glance, let alone any thought of entertainment. But her husband’s churlishness toward her was scarcely Gladys’s fault, any more than it was Gladys’s fault that Marlborough was so obviously smitten-although Consuelo could wish that her young American friend might use just a little more discretion. Twenty-two was a bit old to play at being a flirtatious young girl, and Gladys’s giddiness might get her into trouble-as it very nearly had when the Crown Prince of Germany had fallen in love with her the year before, and insisted on exchanging his mother’s communion ring for Glady’s bracelet. The ring, of course, had been returned at the Kaiser’s command, but the indiscreet flirtation had nearly created an ugly international incident.

Consuelo glanced up to see her young friend watching her in the mirror, her luminous, wide-apart eyes the color of sapphires, a sphinxlike look on that beautiful face with its lovely straight, fine nose that Consuelo, despite her best intentions, could only envy. She had overheard a pair of housemaids whispering that the girl had persuaded a doctor at the Institut de Beaute to inject paraffin wax into the bridge of her nose, to form a classical line from forehead to tip. It was likely true, Consuelo thought, having herself noticed something of a difference in Glady’s profile, as well as a slight puffiness between the eyes. But it had been a ridiculous and dangerous thing to do-and quite unnecessary, for Gladys had been perfect just as she was.

To be fair, Consuelo could understand why her husband was infatuated with the girl, whose slender, boyish figure and enchantingly mercurial temperament gave her the air of a provocative young god. She herself had loved Gladys from the moment they met, although not, she supposed with her usual caustically self-deprecating humor, in quite the same way as did Marlborough.

Or Lord Northcote, for that matter-Botsy, everyone called him, who had turned up at Blenheim the previous week, in pursuit of Gladys. Botsy was simply mad for the girl, and had even told Consuelo that they were engaged. At first, Consuelo had welcomed the news with relief, thinking that Gladys’s marriage would put Marlborough off the chase. But when she had asked Gladys about it, the girl had only smiled her lovely, mysterious smile and refused to say whether it was true. Unfortunately, Botsy only seemed to add to the general tension, and Consuelo found herself wishing that the fellow-he was really rather silly, she thought, and not much of a match for Gladys-would go away again.

Consuelo picked up her engraved silver mirror, turned to inspect the arrangement of her hair at the back of her neck, and smiled at the girl. “I’m glad the Duke has amused you, my dear.” The gong sounded again, signalling teatime, echoing like a hollow, damning voice through the empty corridors of the immense house. She put down the mirror with a sigh. “Shall we go down to tea?”

As if they had any choice, she thought with dull resignation, following Gladys out of the room. For when the Blenheim gong sounded, everyone obeyed, like it or not.