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pulling into the carpark at Blenheim. I hurry around to the absolutely massive courtyard. I’m not sure how many soccer fields could fit in here…twenty, thirty? The size of Blenheim and its surroundings are staggering. At the ticket office, I show identification. They ring for a woman in a navy suit who introduces herself with the rather serious moniker of “The Director.”
    The Director undoes the hook on a section of velvet rope, allowing me into a back hallway. I can’t believe my luck as I follow her along an empty wing to a door that is marked, “Staff Only.” She swings open the door and we enter Blenheim’s dazzling main entryway which is packed with summer tourists.
    “First time to Blenheim?” the Director asks pleasantly.
    “No actually, I came here as a kid with my parents.”
    “Then you know the family, or what’s left of them, lives on the second floor.”
    I nod my head and the Director leads me around more velvet ropes to the grand staircase. Once we reach the second floor, she knocks on the first door on the left, and we enter a modern receiving room. Here, two impeccably dressed elderly ladies sit sipping tea.
    “Ah, this is your guest?” surmises a woman who is much older than Margie.
    “This is her,” replies Lady Margaret Jones, standing up to greet me.
    “You’re an angel of the road,” declares the older woman, while Margie directs me over to sit on a poof of golden damask. She takes a seat in a wingchair beside me, and motions to a small table.
    “Eat, eat,” Margie and the elderly woman invite pointing to a smorgasbord of food.
    “I’m not hungry,” I lie, but my stomach betrays me by grumbling loudly.
    “Oh, but of course, before we have tea, allow me to introduce the two of you. Ms. Trudy Rue, may I present her Grace, the Duchess of Marlborough.”
    The Duchess waves a hand and tells me to call her Violet.
    “Thank you both for inviting me to your lovely home.”
    “No, no,” replies Margie, shaking her head of silver curls, “Not my house. It belongs to my sister.” She points at Violet. “I live here at her largess. Despite my impressive name, I am almost penniless.”
    “Oh now Margie, you still have the Mi-6 pension.”
    What? An Mi-6 pension? I watch as Margie shoots Violet the evil eye. For a moment neither of them speak, while I stuff my face full of tea cakes --I’m so hungry.
    Clearly not intimidated by Margie, Violet straightens out the string of pearls she wears around her neck and questions, “What? Why do you care who knows? You left there over thirty years ago, and we’re still not allowed to talk about what you did for a living?”
    “Yes, I worked for the SIS, and that is all I’m going to say about it,” Margie answers, folding her hands in her lap.
    The next hour is a glorious one, spent talking to these two interesting woman, and eating everything in sight. Somehow the subject turns to my biography of the Prince.
    “He’s such a marvelous lad,” Violet sighs, “Since I have no family and am the last of my line,” --this part is declared in the dramatic tone of Henry VIII being presented with another disappointing daughter-- “and since this estate will be inherited by that wretched child, my niece, I recently presented Prince Alex with my greatest possession, a crown which was made for Victoria Regina herself.”
    I stop in the middle of my tiny egg-salad sandwich. “What?”
    “I gave the Prince, who is a distant relative of mine, one of my greatest treasures. I gave him a crown I inherited that once belonged to Queen Victoria. I thought it should return to his family and be given to whomever he marries. I felt very strongly that something so precious needed to return to the next in line for the throne,” she laughs. “You should have seen it, it was stunning.”
    I did see it, I want to tell her. I wore it on my head while I watched part of a cricket match with the Prince. So this is the woman the Prince visited that day before