Stolen Remains Page 17

  It was from a Mrs. Young, requesting that Violet meet her the following morning in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, by Sir Christopher Wren’s tomb.

  . . . for privacy, of course. I am well acquainted with the viscount’s family, having been a close family friend for many years. I know that you are more than just an undertaker to them, and since they are refusing society visits, I thought I might share some vital knowledge about Lord Raybourn that you could take back to the family. I cannot speak to the police, as this information would prove embarrassing to me if made public.

  Was this a prank, or was it possible that this woman had valuable information about Lord Raybourn’s murder? Violet supposed the crypt at St. Paul’s was safe enough, given the number of tourists that would surely be there. It was unlikely that this woman truly knew anything. She was probably just a curiosity seeker who had figured out a unique way to ferret out gossip about the family.

  Violet chose to leave early the next day for St. Paul’s, to spend time in quiet contemplation among its various chapels. She eschewed her normal undertaker’s garb, instead choosing a burgundy-and-black outfit, appropriately somber yet not mourning.

  At the appointed time, Violet took the staircase down into the crypt. Originally off-limits to visitors except for those attending interments, the crypt had been open to tourists since Lord Nelson’s body had been buried down there in a fantastic black tomb more than fifty years ago. The cathedral’s crypt was a rabbit’s warren of hallways with tiny chapels jutting off them. The air had the peculiar stillness common to underground burial chambers. It was familiar and oddly comforting for Violet, and she supposed she was the only person down here actually breathing deeply to capture the atmosphere in her nostrils.

  She went in exploration of Wren’s tomb, her heels clacking against the stone floor and the noise reverberating off the stone walls and ceiling. The floors were punctuated by flat grave markers, giving the observer details about the birth and death dates of whoever was located beneath the metal slab. After some searching, she found it in an alcove with a barrel ceiling above it. A spiked gate created a private enclosure for Wren’s tomb. No one was inside. Violet stepped through the opening at one end of the fencing to wait.

  She examined Wren’s tomb. Upon it was inscribed, LECTOR, SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS, CIRCUMSPICE. Reader, if you seek his monument, look about you.

  Violet smiled. Wren certainly deserved his reputation as a master architect for his designs of St. Paul’s, parts of Hampton Court, the Royal Observatory, and countless other buildings he created after the Great Fire of 1666.

  After studying the inscription, she turned to examining the tomb itself, wondering what funerary practices were used upon the great man. Was he embalmed? How long did he lie in state before burial? What was his coffin inside the tomb made from?

  Violet eventually grew bored of the mental exercise. Where was Mrs. Young? A couple carrying a guidebook approached the tomb. Violet looked at them hopefully, but they quickly moved on.

  Had the woman decided not to come at the last moment?

  Violet glanced at the watch pinned to her bodice. It was half an hour past the appointed time. She waited another half hour, then gave up and returned to her lodgings.

  Yet another envelope waited for her under the door when she returned. It was an incoherent ramble from Stephen, demanding to know what she’d done with his father’s body and when did she plan to inform the family of it?

  Now thoroughly confused by the morning’s events, Violet quickly changed into her undertaking attire and hired a cab to take her straight to Park Street.

  “Has something happened?” she asked, removing her hat and gloves and handing them to Louisa.

  “They’s in the drawing room, madam,” was all the maid said, making Violet even more unsettled.

  As usual, the Fairmont family was in an uproar, except today the fury was reserved for Violet. She felt as though she’d been placed against a wall, and five members of a firing squad were aiming weapons at her heart. At least Toby wasn’t there.

  “I see you received my note,” Stephen said as she entered the drawing room. “Pray tell, what made you decide to abscond with the coffin?” He waved a hand toward the empty bier. One of the lily pots was knocked over; there was a dark stain on the carpet from spilled water.

  Violet hardly knew what to say. “Your father is gone?”

  “Obviously,” Dorothy said. “Your men said you instructed them to take the coffin.”

  “My men?”

  “Yes. Said they were from your shop and you were having him buried today. I didn’t know what to think, but since you’re the undertaker . . .”

  “But I no longer have a shop in London.”

  “Leave it to Dorothy to foul up a perfectly simple situation,” Nelly said. “Perhaps the word ‘no’ was in order, dear sister.”

  Dorothy pointed a finger at Violet. “She’s the one who is the queen’s favorite and therefore dictates our own lives.”

  Gordon joined the fray. “I say, if the queen was ready for the old man to be buried, wouldn’t it be right to have a chat with us first?”

  “Please.” Violet held up a hand. “Can someone tell me what happened here? I did not have Lord Raybourn taken away.”

  Stephen looked at her incredulously. “You mean to say that another undertaker got confused and picked up our family member by mistake?”

  “I’m saying no such thing. I’m merely saying that something quite unprecedented has occurred and I’m trying to make sense of it. Please, Miss Fairmont, when did this happen?”

  “This morning. Just a few hours ago. Louisa admitted two men in matching wool frock coats. I thought they were a bit seedy-looking, but they said they were here at your behest, and that you wanted Father’s body taken back to Sussex for burial.”

  “It wasn’t Will and Harry? The ones who have been with me before.”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t question their legitimacy, then?”

  “And why should I do that, Mrs. Harper? We all know that you are at the queen’s command and therefore we are at your mercy. I assumed the queen finally decided it was time to end Father’s long repose in the dining room.”

  “I’m at a loss.”

  “Violet, are you telling us that you had nothing to do with his removal?” Stephen asked.

  “I’m sorry to say it, but I believe Lord Raybourn has been stolen.”

  The room was silent, except for a single gasp from Katherine. Violet didn’t know what to do next although she now understood Mrs. Young’s purposes.

  “I think you need to know what happened to me this morning. I received a note from a Mrs. Young, requesting that I meet her at St. Paul’s Cathedral, at Mr. Wren’s tomb, because she had information for me regarding your father’s death. I can see now that she—or whoever it was—was merely trying to ensure I wouldn’t be attending to the coffin so it could be more easily spirited away.”

  Dorothy shook her head in frustration. “The papers mock us, our neighbors loathe us, and now complete strangers are persecuting us. When will this end?”

  Violet sympathized with the woman’s feelings. “Unfortunately, sometimes bad things happen to dead bodies. Would you like me to report this to Inspectors Hurst and Pratt?”

  “I suppose it is the only thing we can do. Not that they have provided a moment’s help to our state of affairs, have they? And the press will go simply wild with this, won’t they? Thanks to Nelly, they’re already slavering over the situation. Imagine tomorrow’s headlines.”

  “Stephen, I’ve already told you I didn’t—”

  “Yes, Nelly, you’ve told us over and over.” Stephen closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he looked directly at Violet. “The police are as bad a lot as the journalists. They take notes and nothing productive comes of it. They are worse than useless. But you can move about inconspicuously with your undertaker’s bag. After all, it is only natural for an undertaker
to make inquiries about a dead body. For the sake of my father’s honor, will you find him for us before he is desecrated? Help us get our father buried properly?”

  Five pairs of eyes were upon her again, but were no longer brimming with loathing. Katherine and Nelly were nodding. Dorothy’s face was still sour, but no longer accusing.

  What choice did she have? If the queen discovered that Lord Raybourn was missing, Violet’s reputation with Victoria would be destroyed. Without a body, there could never be a burial, and without a burial, Violet would never make it home to America.

  Yet, the family was asking her to work behind the backs of Inspectors Hurst and Pratt. What sort of trouble might she be purchasing for herself? If only Sam were here to advise her.

  Of course, if she simply discovered where Lord Raybourn had been taken and immediately reported it to Scotland Yard, there could be no harm done, right? It wasn’t as though she had to personally confront a criminal or haul Lord Raybourn’s body back to the premises. All she had to do was find him.

  Remembering her father’s great affection for his one-time employer, and sympathizing with this family’s plight, Violet took a deep breath.

  “Yes, I will help you.”

  14

  Violet’s first stop was Morgan Undertaking, just to be sure that Will and Harry hadn’t been involved in Lord Raybourn’s removal. As she suspected, they were flummoxed at the suggestion.

  “You gave us no such guidance, Mrs. Harper. Why would we do this? I don’t even know where the family churchyard is,” Will said.

  “I didn’t think you would. I just thought it best to make sure someone hadn’t led you to believe they were acting on my behalf, or I hadn’t somehow led you astray in the viscount’s funeral plans.”

  The other undertaker rubbed his chin. “What plans?”

  Indeed.

  Violet asked him for a current edition of Funeral Service Journal. With the publication in hand, she returned to St. James’s Palace to pore through it, tossing aside the gloves, corset, and other personal items that had managed to wander onto her chair and desk.

  There were more than two dozen undertakers in London. How was she to decide which ones to visit?

  More important, what question should she ask? “Did you steal the body of a peer this morning from Mayfair?” didn’t seem appropriate. Undertakers were a secretive and sensitive lot, both by the nature of their work and because the public frequently held them in such low regard. Any question Violet could possibly ask would be construed as an attack on the profession.

  She herself would feel the same way if presented with questions that had even the slightest hint of impugning her good name.

  In the end, she decided she would work in as narrow a radius as possible around Park Street, visiting those undertakers and asking if they knew anything. If she didn’t learn anything, she would expand the bands of her search.

  Violet realized that an undertaker not on her list was the one whom she’d encountered when she first arrived at Raybourn House. Of course, how could she have been so blind as to have overlooked him? Mr. Crugg, who had accused her of spiriting the Fairmont work away from him. He was as angry as if someone who had dropped an urn on his foot.

  But to steal a body for spite seemed more senseless than what the lowliest undertaker would do, didn’t it?

  She went there first.

  The man’s shop was filled with many of the overwrought tricks and devices that Violet loathed. Prominent in the center of the display area was a sample safety coffin, fitted with bells that a prematurely buried occupant could ring to alert the outside world that he was not actually dead.

  Mr. Crugg also offered Franz Vester’s recently invented burial case, another absurd item permitting a person buried alive to climb out of his upright coffin and go up a ladder through a wide tube to the ground’s surface.

  Edgar Allan Poe’s works had done much to stir the public anxiety for such things, and Mr. Crugg was profiting from it. Unfortunately, these fears were distributed across the classes, and unscrupulous undertakers tried to convince everyone from the poorest chimney sweep to the richest member of the House of Lords to buy any number of ridiculous contraptions.

  Her rival undertaker’s displeasure at seeing her upon arriving was palpable. “Have you come to pilfer more customers?”

  “I am not in the habit of pilfering customers, Mr. Crugg. However, I have come to investigate a theft, that of Lord Raybourn’s body.”

  Was it a theft? Or was it more aptly termed a kidnapping? She wasn’t sure what you would call the taking of a dead body. A corpse snatching?

  Mr. Crugg’s expression was at first puzzled, then a great smile settled upon his face, eventually resulting in laughter, most inappropriate in a place that served the grieving.

  “Oh, that is perfect irony. The woman who stole a body from me now finds that same body stolen from her. I would happily reward whoever did that. Complimentary funerals for him and his entire family. Richly deserved.” Mr. Crugg’s laughter rolled into a coughing fit.

  Violet remained still as the man recovered himself from his own wit. “I am certain you find this amusing, but assuredly the family does not. In fact, there is some question as to whether you might have been offended enough by your removal from Lord Raybourn’s funeral that you devised his kidnapping yourself.”

  Mr. Crugg’s amusement quickly ceased. “What? That’s preposterous.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course it is. I may have been put out by being ousted by not only a chit of a woman but by someone who has never buried a single member of the Fairmont family, but that doesn’t mean I am so unethical as to steal a body!”

  Violet wasn’t quite sure about that.

  “Where were you this morning, Mr. Crugg?”

  His eyes narrowed. “A detective inspector, are you? I’ve no responsibility for answering your question, but if you must know, I was burying Mr. Thomas Little, headmaster of a boys’ school, who died after a tumble down the stairs into the school basement when he went after some cricket equipment. As dark as a crypt down there, and a fine mess he was for me, too.”

  He noticed her skeptical look.

  “I can give you Mrs. Little’s address for verification,” he said, going to a desk and scrawling on a piece of paper. “But assuredly, I was too busy to worry about Lord Raybourn’s body. Besides, what on earth would I do with it? Go to the trouble of having a burial at my own expense? What would be my gain?”

  “The satisfaction of ruining my own good name, to start. A lesson to families about not daring to allow your dismissal, perhaps? An exercise in flouting the queen’s authority?”

  Mr. Crugg sputtered. “What you say is slanderous. I don’t care if you are a woman, I’ll haul you into court, Mrs. Harper. I’ll not have my honor impugned.”

  Violet swept her arm to indicate the various coffin samples in the room. “You impugn your own honor with your crude and seedy artifices for taking advantage of people in mourning. Good day to you, sir.”

  Violet didn’t stop until she was a block away from the shop, then leaned against a lamppost, worn out from the interaction. Mr. Crugg was contemptible, but did that make him a body thief? She looked at the address he’d given her. It was in Holborn. She’d visit Mrs. Little in the course of visiting other funeral people.

  Violet spent two more days on interviews. As she expected, she was met with frowns, scowls, and the occasional, “How dare you?” Not even her own status as an undertaker made the path smooth for her.

  A visit with Mrs. Little, a short woman with a strange bald spot on one side, confirmed Mr. Crugg’s claim that he was conducting the headmaster’s funeral at the time Lord Raybourn’s body was taken.

  Not that it prevented him from hiring someone else to do it for him, which he must have done, since Dorothy didn’t recognize either of the men who showed up to take Lord Raybourn. Yet for all of Mr. Crugg’s bluster and irritating manner, she had to admit she wasn’t certa
in that the reasons she’d presented to him for wanting to steal Lord Raybourn were really valid.

  Violet stopped at Twining’s tea shop along the Strand, located near the last of her undertaker visits. While sipping a cup of black tea and nibbling at a watercress sandwich, she spread her papers on the table in front of her, hoping she might discern something of value from her sparse notes.

  There was nothing.

  She asked herself obvious questions, hoping to divine an answer. Why would someone steal an embalmed body? Was Lord Raybourn stolen by the same person who had murdered him? If not, did the thief know the murderer? How was it that two different crimes had been perpetrated on poor Lord Raybourn?

  Moreover, what of Mrs. Peet? Her death was most certainly not a suicide, although now that she was buried and gone, no one would give her a second thought. What of that neighbor’s maid? Rebecca, wasn’t it? A nervous little thing, but she’d implied that there was an immoral undercurrent in the house. What was it? Perhaps she should talk to the girl again.

  The Fairmont family was a puzzle in and of itself. The sisters harbored great resentment for their father, Gordon was a milksop who had few interests outside of pleasing his wife, Toby was an enigma, and Katherine was a skittish colt. Stephen was the only placid, composed one currently residing at Raybourn House.

  The queen and Gladstone sat across from each other over Victoria’s favorite desk, a mass of papers between them. Victoria frowned at what she was reading.

  “You obtained these from Scotland Yard?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. They are reproductions of the blackmail letters de Lesseps received. Commissioner Henderson thought we’d be interested in seeing them ourselves.”

  Victoria continued reading, amazed at the blackmailer’s audacity.

  I know everything about your scheme to finish the canal with slave labor. I will sail to England with one of these workers and tour with him to show the British people your callous disdain for human life in your quest to join the two seas.