Stolen Remains (5 page)

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 of 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
.

W
ith 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, and 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?”

Violet sat in an armchair with an elaborate floral covering next to a marble-topped pedestal table. “Thank you, but no. Lord Raybourn has been moved into the dining room and made more comfortable. I recommend that he remain there until such time as the funeral takes place.”

“That should just be a day or two. The family has its own mausoleum at St. Margaret’s churchyard in West Hoathly. Can you arrange to have him transported there?”

“Yes. Well. Ah, I have to tell you that Lord Raybourn cannot be buried just yet.”

“Whatever are you talking about? Why not? Are things . . . worse with him than we thought?”

“No, it’s simply that . . . that . . . while the queen cannot honor him with a state funeral, she would like him to have as decent a lying-in as possible. She may even send a member of the royal family to pay respects.”

Violet waited for a lightning bolt to strike her. When it didn’t come, she felt emboldened in her falsehood.

“Lord Raybourn must therefore be preserved as long as possible, so that dignitaries can have time to visit.”

Stephen frowned. “It seems unusual for the queen to be so involved in the death of one of her lords.”

“You must understand, though, that the queen has become much more attuned to death since the loss of her dearly beloved Albert. The loss of a peer means so much to her now.” At least that statement was mostly true.

Stephen’s expression was conflicted. Katherine’s face was blank, although her hand shook as she picked up her teacup again and brought it to her lips. Stephen glanced sympathetically at his wife before speaking again.

“Violet, you must understand how horrific this has been for us. Father dying so unexpectedly and so brutally, then the detectives just leaving him here like that. Now the queen—while flattering us immensely—has sent away the family undertaker and is asking us to postpone the funeral. It’s a bit overwhelming. I suppose it is a grace that Mr. Crugg was replaced by someone else we know.”

“I know this is very hard on you both, and I—”

“Not just on us. Dorothy and Nelly aren’t here yet. They will be devastated.”

“When will they arrive?”

“Dorothy will be on the six-thirty train to London Bridge tomorrow. Nelly is in London for the Season, and is meeting Dorothy at the train station.”

No staff to meet the Fairmont sisters at the train station? Curious. “Is Mrs. Peet the only servant here?”

“Yes, Father only brought her, his valet Larkin, and Madame Brusse, Willow Tree House’s cook, with him to London prior to heading off to Egypt. He’d planned to spend the rest of the Season in parliamentary session.”

“Where are the valet and cook now?”

“We have no idea.”

The valet and cook were gone? “Do Detectives Hurst and Pratt know this?”

“Yes, they’ve questioned us extensively, which is why my poor wife is nearly exhausted. Father took Larkin and Madame Brusse with him on his journey, leaving Mrs. Peet to manage the empty house.”

“And so your father came home early for some reason, but without his two servants.”

“It seems so. Do you think Larkin and Madame Brusse know something? Could they have had something to do with this? Inspector Hurst had no opinion, but I thought maybe . . .” Stephen’s voice trailed off on a sob. He cleared his throat and continued. “Do you know, I do believe he suspects me of killing Father.”

“You? For what reason?” Didn’t the inspector think it was a suicide?

“The inheritance, of course. Do you remember my elder brother, Cedric? He went off to the Crimea in fifty-four after a rather, er, disastrous marriage, and we never heard from him again. He was declared dead in 1861 and I was made the heir. So I suppose I stand the most to gain in my father’s death.”

Violet shook her head. “But surely Inspector Hurst sees that is ridiculous. Not only did you love your father, I’m sure, but why would you do this all of a sudden now?”

“Especially given that he may have been dying anyway.”

“Stephen!” Katherine said. “Should you speak of such things to the undertaker?”

“Of what topic other than death
should
I speak with the undertaker?”

Katherine blushed.

“It’s quite all right, Lady Raybourn,” Violet said. “Most people don’t know what to make of the undertaker. We’re used to being partly detested, partly feared, and only occasionally admired. So have no fear that you can either offend or distress me.” She smiled encouragingly at Katherine. The grief-stricken frequently argued and lashed out at one another, hardly remembering later what they’d said. No need for this husband and wife to have a petty quarrel over her.

“What do you mean that your father may have been dying?”

“It’s as I told the detective. Some months ago, I went to Willow Tree to visit Father, and caught him taking some pills he’d gotten from the chemist. He said he had a stomach ailment, but that I shouldn’t worry, as he planned to stop for a cure somewhere along the way on his Egyptian tour. I knew he was scheduled to return yesterday, so Katherine and I took the train up from Sussex to surprise him. We arrived here to find only Mrs. Peet in residence. She was . . . was . . . standing over my father’s body. I—we—were devastated. Still are.”

“So if your father had taken a cure and it worked, he should have been feeling healthy, and if his illness had been exacerbated by his time in Egypt and he was possibly ill to the point of dying, what purpose would there be in killing him, as he would soon pass on himself?”

“Exactly what I told the detective. It didn’t seem as though he believed me, although he said that he and that other fellow—Prigg? Plum?”

“Mr. Pratt.”

“Right, that he and Mr. Pratt had other investigations to set upon, and that he wasn’t sure when he’d be back.”

Could Lord Raybourn have killed himself because of his illness? Did it worsen while in Egypt, making him realize he might die a painful, lingering death if he didn’t put a quick end to it all?

Perhaps, but the notion didn’t sit well with Violet.

There was nothing to do but plow on. “I’m so sorry, Stephen. I’m sure Inspector Hurst will soon clear your name and discover what really happened. Meanwhile, I need to ask you for permission to do something.”

“Anything, just ask.”

“In order to ensure I can obey the queen’s request, I need to inject—I mean, I need to fill, no . . . what I’m asking you is whether you would permit me to embalm your father in order to preserve him as long as possible. I have an excellent formulation that will prevent—”

Katherine’s cup clattered down into its saucer. “Heavens, no! You—the queen—can’t mean to do such a thing. Stephen, really, hasn’t your father been through enough?”