Stolen Remains Page 5

  Hurst shook his head and muttered unintelligibly under his breath. “Beg your pardon, madam, but you are a strange one, indeed. Very well, let’s fix Lord Raybourn up all dainty and proper. Maybe we’ll all take tea with him in His Lordship’s study. Mr. Pratt!” he shouted up the stairs.

  Violet heard the sound of multiple pairs of feet moving around. To her surprise, three more people appeared at the landing and came down. One was another man dressed similarly to Mr. Hurst except younger, wearing a black jacket and looking more rumpled, in addition to a man and woman around Violet’s own age.

  The woman was tall, blond, regal, and elegantly dressed enough to tell Violet that she was a family member. The man next to her was . . . Stephen Fairmont. Was this poised, self-assured gentleman the same boy she had once chased in and around the stables at Willow Tree House?

  He looked at her quizzically. “Hello, don’t I know you?”

  Violet proffered a hand in greeting. “You do, indeed. I’m Violet Sinclair, now Violet Harper.”

  Recognition dawned in his eyes. “Of course. So it is you the queen has sent to care for Father? I’d never have imagined you as an undertaker, of all things. I more imagined you’d have ended up helping your father run an estate somewhere. I remember all of the endless questions you used to ask of the gardener, the beekeeper, the footmen. As though you were trying on each of their positions and deciding which one you’d take. How did you end up an undertaker?”

  “I came by it through my deceased husband, and together we enjoyed some success. The queen was pleased enough by my work on Prince Albert’s funeral, which I believe is why she summoned me to help you.”

  “So you are a widow?”

  “Not anymore. I married an American by the name of Samuel Harper. We’ll be returning to the Colorado Territory soon. We just happened to be visiting in England when the queen asked me to do this service for you.”

  “You married an American, you say? Another surprise from my childhood comrade-in-arms. Sweetheart, Violet Sinclair’s father was once my father’s estate manager.” He looked down at the prone body and swallowed. “Violet, this is my wife, Katherine. We had just arrived from Sussex when all of this bedlam occurred. She’s held up well under the shock.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, I’m sure.” Katherine shook Violet’s hand, studiously looking toward the drawing room, away from both Violet and her father-in-law’s covered body. Her tone indicated that shaking hands with an undertaker was far from pleasurable.

  There were now two grieving family members, two detectives, an undertaker, and a dead body in the Raybourn entry hall. This was ludicrous. Violet opened her mouth to suggest that Stephen and Katherine might be more comfortable waiting elsewhere while she attended to her duties, when Mrs. Peet reappeared from the dining room carrying a wood tray.

  “I found a navy linen, Mrs. Harper. Mr. and Mrs. Fairmont, would you also like some tea? I’ll fetch the silver tray and be right back up.”

  Katherine lifted her chin. “I believe it is now Lord and Lady Raybourn, Mrs. Peet. Yes, we’ll have tea upstairs in our room.”

  Mrs. Peet set her mouth in a grim line and scowled as she placed Violet’s tray in the drawing room and returned silently to the servants’ staircase to retrieve a more elegant tea service for the Fairmonts. Katherine visibly shrank, her apparent experiment with boldness quite over. “Mrs. Harper, I hope you’ll forgive me, but I don’t think I can remain here a moment longer.”

  Violet sympathized with the new Lady Raybourn. She herself had once had a housekeeper named Mrs. Scrope, who was extraordinarily competent yet thoroughly intimidated Violet.

  Stephen kissed his wife’s hand. “I’ll join you momentarily,” he said before Katherine floated back up the stairs in a rustle of velvet-embellished satin.

  “My sisters, Dorothy and Eleanor, will be coming up from Sussex. Do you remember them? They were older than we were, and far too sophisticated to be bothered with their youngest brother, far less the estate manager’s daughter.”

  “Vaguely, but I look forward to making their acquaintances again.”

  Stephen glanced up the stairs. “I must join Katherine. She’s in a very agitated state. We both are, I suppose. Please send Mrs. Peet up if you need anything.”

  Again on cue, Mrs. Peet appeared with another tea service, this time on a heavily ornamented silver tray. Stephen went upstairs with the morose Mrs. Peet a few steps behind him.

  Violet was now alone with the officers. “Now if you will quickly assist me before Mrs. Peet returns, I’d like to move Lord Raybourn into the dining room.”

  She knelt and rolled down the blanket covering the body, maintaining her composure despite what lay before her. Poor Lord Raybourn. All that remained recognizable on the man’s face was his cleft chin, a trait shared by Stephen. The rest of his face was bloodied and mangled. She looked at Hurst, certain her question was obvious in her eyes.

  “Multiple shot wounds from a duck’s foot volley gun we found next to his body. We’ve recovered three of the bullets.”

  “What is a duck’s foot volley gun?”

  Hurst reached inside his jacket and retrieved a vicious-looking weapon. “A duck’s foot volley gun is a pistol with four forty-five-caliber barrels arranged in a splayed pattern and resembling a duck’s webbed foot, as you can see here. It sprays a sizable area with a single shot. They’re typically used by prison wardens and sea captains for defense in confrontations against a group. It’s overkill for a suicide, if you’ll pardon my pun.”

  Violet nodded. “What about the fourth bullet?”

  “Pratt dug around a little for it, but couldn’t find it, nor could the coroner.”

  More indignity for Lord Raybourn.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Langley Pratt at your service, Mrs. Harper.” Pratt was far younger than Hurst and carried himself uncertainly, as if unsure whether to salute Violet, shake her hand, or bow.

  “Thank you, Mr. Pratt. The service you and Mr. Hurst can provide me is to carry His Lordship to the dining room. Wait just a moment.” Violet gently rolled the blanket back farther. Lord Raybourn wore an olive-green smoking jacket, so fashionable these days. She cupped his arm with one hand and applied light pressure, then did the same to his thigh and calf. Violet took the man’s hand and slowly moved his fingers. They were pliable and his limbs weren’t stiff, so rigor mortis had passed.

  She removed the blanket and spread it out next to his body. “Lift him onto the blanket—gently, sir, he’s a human being!”

  Violet brought his arms to a crossed position on his chest and held them. “He’s ready,” she said.

  She caught Hurst’s head shaking as he went to Lord Raybourn’s feet and Pratt picked up the blanket behind the man’s head. The officers lifted the body and moved it to the dining room, with Hurst leading the way backward as Violet continued to hold Lord Raybourn’s arms together.

  “Slowly, Mr. Hurst. Do not jostle him any more than has already been done.”

  He grunted in exasperation but did as Violet requested. Lord Raybourn ended up on the linen-covered table with more of a thud than she would have liked, but at least he was no longer splayed out on the floor. She directed the men to gently ease the viscount from the blanket onto the cloth-covered table.

  “Tell me, what does the coroner say about Lord Raybourn’s death?” Violet asked.

  “The coroner says His Lordship pulled the trigger on his own pistol yesterday afternoon. It was at close range and there are no signs of a struggle. I agree with him, as I also do not see signs of a struggle, nor can I find evidence that any acquaintances had a quarrel with him.”

  Violet nodded. But why would someone of Lord Raybourn’s stature, wealth, and royal esteem do something as undistinguished as shooting himself? It made no sense.

  Hurst continued. “I’ve confirmed with the family that His Lordship regularly kept loaded pistols stored about the house.”

  Which meant that the whereabouts o
f the pistols might be known to many people. “I see. Does this mean that your investigations here are concluded?”

  “For the moment. We will return to interview the family members when they arrive in London. Although I believe his death to be self-inflicted, we must cover every possibility, and quickly. I want to finish with this, as we have another case to tend to.”

  “I’m sure your interviews will prove quite illuminating, Mr. Hurst.”

  “Yes, well, I should say so.” Hurst was momentarily nonplussed. He and Pratt bowed to Violet and left, returning a few moments later.

  “One more thing, Mrs. Harper. Please do not put any bunting on the windows or do any exterior decorating that will make it obvious that someone here has died.”

  “Why not?”

  “The press. They will swarm around and cause me no end of irritation. I prefer to keep this quiet.”

  Violet frowned. “First of all, Inspector, you are saying this in front of Lord Raybourn. It is horribly rude.”

  Hurst’s eyes bulged. “Mrs. Harper, are you even aware that this man is dead? Deceased? Gone to the after—”

  “Furthermore, sir, my responsibility is to undertake for Lord Raybourn and his family. That includes not only preparing this gentleman’s body, but performing services that will comfort the family. Bunting on the windows lets the world know the family is grieving, and I intend to have it installed as quickly as possible.”

  “Surely a small delay won’t bring disaster upon the family.”

  Violet crossed her arms, her own irritation rising. “Nevertheless, I’ll not shirk my duties to save you a small bit of inconvenience.”

  “Small? The press are parasites. They cause endless damage to our investigations, with their prying questions and slanderous articles posing as journalism.”

  “Perhaps we can agree, Inspector, that the Raybourn patriarch’s gruesome death by a multibarreled pistol is a bit more inconvenient than the scribbling of a newspaper reporter. Therefore, it is the family’s needs I will respect. I cannot bury Lord Raybourn yet, but there is much else I can do to serve the Fairmonts. The windows will be covered as soon as possible.”

  Hurst opened his mouth twice to say something, then turned on his heel once again, with Pratt right behind him. Violet heard him muttering complaints about the “Bedlamite ghoul” the queen had foisted on him.

  She’d heard worse.

  Finally alone, she could get now to work in making Lord Raybourn appear to be serenely at rest, which would bring great comfort to the family. As for her other duty to the queen, looking for “anything unusual,” well, she was far less serene and comfortable about her ability to accomplish that.

  8

  With the heavy curtains between the dining room and the drawing room, plus those between the dining room and the hallway, pulled closed, Violet only vaguely heard Mrs. Peet come back down the stairs and pass by on her way to the kitchen, breaking out in muffled tears anew, what with Lord Raybourn’s covered body having taken one step closer to interment.

  Violet focused her attention on the task at hand—her craft, her livelihood. Whenever she did this, the entire world receded.

  She started by removing the chairs that surrounded the oblong table, except for one that she left nearby. She retrieved her bag and set it on the chair, opening the top as wide as possible. She always began by speaking to the dead person, as it not only soothed her personally, but it enabled her to deal as respectfully as possible with the deceased.

  “Lord Raybourn, I am so sorry for this terrible thing that happened to you. Who did this? Chief Inspector Hurst says you probably committed suicide, but is that really true?”

  Violet folded the bloodstained blanket and placed it on the floor. Mrs. Peet would have to decide whether to wash it or burn it. Sometimes families kept gruesome mementos.

  Where to begin? Violet had cared for many off-putting corpses, from poisoning victims to those ravaged by disease and accidents to those hobbled by old age. Never, though, had she been asked to prepare someone whose face was so horribly disfigured. She bent over the body and sniffed it at various points.

  Lord Raybourn was already decomposing, but it wasn’t intolerable yet. The queen had instructed her to delay the funeral. The only way she could possibly do that would be to embalm his body.

  But many families took offense to such an idea. Although it had become common practice in the United States since the Civil War, it was still frowned upon in England as an unnatural and un-Christian practice.

  Why, most people argued, would you fill a person full of chemicals and then commit the body to the ground where those toxic ingredients could leach into the earth?

  It wasn’t an illogical premise, especially given the concoctions some undertakers had developed—creosote, arsenic, and turpentine being just some of the foundation chemicals used in proprietary formulations. Each undertaker had his own special formula, and they were closely held secrets, Violet’s method included.

  She’d settled years ago on a combination of chloride of zinc, alcohol, and water. She reached into her bag and pulled out the ingredients to make a fresh batch.

  The only problem was, she always asked permission from the family to embalm. But it was likely that Stephen would refuse, and then what? She didn’t dare go against a family’s desires, especially not one she’d known from childhood. Yet, how else could she delay the funeral? Putting the body over a cooling chest wouldn’t keep him fresh for long.

  “Tell me, Lord Raybourn, what am I to do? Would you mind terribly if I went ahead and embalmed you and begged Stephen’s forgiveness?”

  Violet shook her head. This just wasn’t how she practiced her craft. She remembered Sam’s tale of two undertakers during the Civil War, Hutton and Williams, who’d gone and scoured battlefields, picking up the dead and embalming them, then writing to the families and refusing to release them unless the families paid an outrageous price for the embalming service they hadn’t requested. The two men had been arrested and charged but later released, their reputations in tatters.

  Violet had no desire to follow in their footsteps in any manner.

  “I would normally embalm you and then work on you cosmetically, but perhaps we can do this a bit in reverse while I ponder what to do. What do you say?” She returned the embalming fluid to her bag.

  “Dear Lord Raybourn, your poor face. What shall I do? I suppose I must first make you clean. Such a shameful job the coroner and officers did on you.”

  She sought out Mrs. Peet down in the kitchen, requesting that she bring up a tub of water and several clean cloths, and leave them outside the dining room. “Please, Mrs. Peet, for your own sake, do not enter where I am working.”

  A tear rolled down the housekeeper’s face. “No, Mrs. Harper, I won’t. I couldn’t bear it.”

  Violet saw the pain in Mrs. Peet’s eyes. “I know you won’t. There is something else you can do to help Lord Raybourn.”

  “Yes, madam, however I can be of assistance.”

  “After you bring the water and cloths, could you see to the clocks in the house? They haven’t been stopped. I will take care of the one in the dining room.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Harper, where is my head? I forgot in all of the . . . difficulties.”

  The clock hands needed to be stopped once someone in a household died. The custom demonstrated that for the deceased time stood still, and he could start his new, eternal period of existence in which time did not exist. To permit time to continue unhampered was to invite the deceased’s spirit to linger endlessly.

  Violet opened the glass face to the dining room’s mantel clock and adjusted the hands to twelve o’clock. She then turned the clock around and reached inside its works to stop the pendulum bob. Now time was frozen until someone came in and intentionally restarted it.

  With the supplies delivered and Mrs. Peet otherwise occupied, Violet dragged them into the dining room and set to work cleaning up Lord Raybourn’s head. It was awful work, a
nd it quickly became clear that not only would she be unable to successfully clean his face and hair, she wouldn’t be able to repair him enough so that visiting mourners could see him.

  She threw the cloth into the now-murky water basin. “Perhaps one way I can serve you is to retrieve whatever is lodged in your face. It’s unconscionable that you were probed and mauled without anyone even removing it.”

  Violet drew a box from her bag. She unsnapped the latch and reviewed the set of Sheffield-made metal scalpels, nozzles, scissors, and other instruments. She selected a thin tool that resembled a crochet hook.

  “Please be patient with me. I promise not to take too long.” Violet gently inserted the instrument into where she thought the bullet might have entered. After a few moments she realized she would have to probe deeper.

  “Just a little bit more, sir. Ah, I believe I’ve found it.” Violet drew the bullet out past the sinewy shreds of muscle and fragments of bone. She held it up triumphantly in her stained hand. “Here it is, my lord. You can rest easier now.”

  With that done and her hands rinsed, Violet still had her embalming dilemma. She clasped Lord Raybourn’s cold, limp hand in her own as she contemplated what to do. Without even the tick-tick-tick of the mantel clock, all was as silent as a tomb.

  She squeezed the man’s hand and released it. “Lord Raybourn, there is nothing I can do other than ask for the family’s permission and hope that they agree. I expect the queen will be furious with me if they don’t, but I’ll face that when it happens. I’ll be back shortly.”

  With dread her only companion, she climbed the stairs and knocked on a closed door through which she heard murmuring voices. “Lord Raybourn? Lady Raybourn?”

  Stephen’s voice bade her enter. The couple was sitting at a small, round tea table, with half-finished cups before them. Katherine Fairmont still looked wan and distressed.

  “Pardon me for interrupting, but I need to discuss something with you.”

  “Of course, please sit down, and given that I have seen you covered in grass stains with scraped knees, you must call me by my Christian name,” Stephen said. “Tea?”