Death at Blenheim Palace Read Online Free

moon, all the way across the lake to the grassy slope beneath Rosamund’s Well, a magical spring that had flowed unceasingly for centuries. The spring’s waters, Ruth had told her, had wonderfully transforming powers. If you dipped your hand into them and wished, your wish was bound to come true, no matter how wild and silly it was. That was what had happened to Fair Rosamund centuries and centuries ago, Ruth said. Rosamund was just a plain, ordinary girl—a scullery maid in a Woodstock house, people said—until she dipped her hand in the spring and wished to be loved by a king. Not long after, her wish came true. King Henry fell passionately in love with her and would have married her, if he hadn’t happened to have a queen already, who was as jealous and mean as anything. But he built her a beautiful house on the hill above the spring, and himself a splendid palace not far away, and whenever he could get away from the queen, he’d come and make love to Rosamund.
    Well, Kitty thought, when she finished transacting her business tonight, she’d dip her hand in that spring, too, and wish that some handsome man with lots of money and power, a duke or a prince or somebody like that, would fall in love with her and get down on his knees and beg her to marry him. But she wouldn’t have to depend on magic to have money in her pocket, or wait for some fairy godmother to wave a wand and free her from service. She was about to make that happen herself!
    As Kitty beached the boat and went toward the spring, she thought with an almost giddy delight that it would not be long before her dreams came true. After tonight, she would have the means to leave the drudgery and hard work behind, to buy jewelry and pretty clothes and hire a ladies’ maid who would fix her hair. And she would live in London in a fine house and go to the theater whenever she felt like it. After tonight, nothing would be the same, ever again. Tonight was the end of her old life and the beginning of something brand new and different.
    Kitty thought she saw a glimmer of light among the shadowy trees above the well, where Rosamund’s house had once stood. He was there waiting for her, she thought with an in-drawn breath, and she stepped forward eagerly. And then, just as she reached the spring, there was a shadow behind her, and the soft sound of a footfall. Surprised, she turned, and saw the glint of something shining in the moonlight.
    Kitty was half-right. Tonight, her old life would end, but the future she had imagined would not come to pass.

CHAPTER THREE
    Wednesday, 13 May The Ashmolean Museum
     
 
There was a brisk traffic in stolen antiquities around the turn of the century, as a number of wealthy industrialists attempted to use the patina of antique treasures to burnish their newly acquired wealth and bolster their sense of belonging to the aristocracy.
     
The Social Transformation of England: 1837-1914
Albert Williams
     
 
 
Lord Charles Sheridan stood at the door of the Ashmolean’s Knossos exhibit, just off the main gallery, and looked around the room, shaking his head in disbelief. It was overwhelming, this immense collection of pottery, stone, and metal artifacts, all of it dug up on the island of Crete, where Arthur Evans, the Ashmolean’s chief curator, had recently uncovered a remarkable Minoan palace. It looked as if, Charles thought, the entire contents of the palace were being crated up and transported, bit by bit, to England.
    Charles admired Evans’s archaeological work and hoped that the new site would open the way toward a better understanding of a hitherto unknown civilization, whose princes had once thought themselves the lords of the earth. But this wholesale exportation of artifacts—Well, some critics argued that it was little more than thievery, just another example of the British Empire’s habit of pilfering the priceless treasures of other cultures, and on the whole, Charles had to agree with them. If the precious