Death at the Abbey

by Christine Trent

  “Sir, can you hear me?” Violet said, her voice quavering as she knelt next to the coffin, still in complete disbelief that she was actually witnessing a body arising from a coffin.

  He recoiled from the sound of her voice. Harry, shaking his head in complete incredulity, reached in and lifted the man out effortlessly.

  “May I be of help?” came an awestruck voice from behind Violet. It was the man in the light coat. She now saw that he was in his forties, and had thick, curly muttonchop whiskers. He, too, must have realized what had happened, for his face was drained of all color. “I am Byron Ambrose. I’m a doctor with offices nearby. I witnessed the, er, disturbing thing that just happened and can hardly believe my eyes. I cannot comprehend how this gentleman could have possibly—” Like Harry, the physician looked incredulous. “If I might have a moment with him to—”

  “Misser ’Brose, havfindabang,” the man from the coffin repeated senselessly, still tottering and struggling to fully open his eyes.

  The physician peered into the man’s eyes and pulled open the man’s mouth without asking for permission. “Fascinating,” he muttered as he looked inside. “Sir, can you understand me?” he asked.

  “Yuh,” the man said dully, his eyes now darting about wildly. Violet couldn’t blame him. How must it feel to wake up in a dark coffin, with no room to move and with no understanding of why you were sequestered into such a tight space?

  She shook her head in bewilderment. It was absolutely inconceivable that a dead man could have risen from his coffin. Wasn’t it?

  The doctor was clearly as baffled as she was. “Sir, if you’ll come with me, I’d like to examine you.” He turned back to Violet. “I’ll help this man recuperate back at my office. His . . . recovery . . . is quite unusual, don’t you think? I’ll also help him back to his family.”

  At that moment, the stationmaster arrived to see what the commotion had been. After Violet explained what had happened, the doctor interjected, “I’ll help the poor man home, Uriah.”

  The stationmaster nodded. “That’s all right then, Mr. Ambrose.”

  As the physician offered a supportive arm to the seemingly reincarnated man and the two walked unsteadily away, Violet turned to the stationmaster, who didn’t seem particularly surprised by the supernatural event they had just witnessed. “I am Violet Harper, and this is my associate, Harry Blundell.”

  “Uriah Gedding, at your service, madam.” He politely touched the brim of his hat at her and shook Harry’s hand. He wore a dark blue uniform with red stripes up the sides of his trousers. His jacket, with brightly polished silver buttons running up both sides and a large red lapel, marked him as the important railway man he was.

  “Sir, I presume you have never seen such a—a—such an extraordinary occurrence at your station before,” Violet said.

  Gedding shrugged casually, although whether this was intended to convey that bodies sprang routinely from coffins at Brookwood or that he had no real answer for her, she couldn’t be sure.

  “May I ask you a few questions, Mr. Gedding?” she asked. Surely the stationmaster would have answers about what had happened.

  “Of course, madam.” Gedding led Violet and Harry into the one-story station, which was built around a square courtyard filled with pebbled pathways and flowering urns for viewing from anywhere inside.

  One side of the square contained the first-class reception room for mourners dropped off by the late-morning train, while the other side housed the ordinary reception room for second- and third-class mourners. Gedding took them through the ordinary room to the offices that lay along the back side of the station. She knew that beyond the offices lay lodgings for certain railroad staff, Gedding included.

  Gedding’s office was plain, with badly whitewashed walls covered with timetables, maps, and a single drawing obviously made by a child’s hand. There was an out-of-place floral tablecloth thrown over the table that served as his desk. A gift from his wife, no doubt.

  As Violet and Harry settled into seats across the distracting fabric’s profusion of roses, lilies, and hyacinths, Gedding offered them tea. Violet waved a dismissing hand and instead pressed directly to the point. “Mr. Gedding, have you ever experienced what we just saw, a man seemingly rising from the dead out of his coffin?”

  Gedding pondered the question only momentarily. “I can’t say that I have. I’m just glad there was no one else about for it except you two. Imagine a funeral party witnessing what happened. The Times would have flown reporters in on brooms for that news item, and the LNR would have been accused of intentionally shipping live bodies for profit or some such thing.” Gedding shuddered, presumably imagining reporters in warlock garb blocking out the sun as they swarmed into his station, laughing menacingly in low-pitched voices.

  As if on cue, a sleek tan cat, with chocolate-colored paws, ears, and face, appeared from nowhere and jumped gracefully onto the tablecloth with a plaintive meow. Gedding absentmindedly reached out a hand to pet the animal, which turned to face Violet and Harry. The cat sat down, lazily blinking its sea-green eyes at them.

  “Do you keep records about the bodies shipped on your trains?” Violet asked.

  “Records?” the stationmaster asked, his face reflecting the confusion in his voice. “What kind of records?”

  “The name of the deceased in each coffin, for one. Who the undertaker is, in which part of the cemetery the body will be buried, and so forth.”

  Gedding scooped up the cat and embraced it to his chest. The cat climbed up and draped itself like a fur stole casually thrown over the shoulder by a wealthy woman. All Violet now saw was a pair of dangling legs and a swishing tail, although the animal’s purr resembled an incoming train.

  “Mrs. Harper,” Gedding began, drawing himself up importantly in his chair. He put up an arm for the cat to prop its back legs on. “We are in the business of moving bodies, not doing an undertaker’s job. As you can imagine, anyone who can afford to pay to have a body shipped here is probably not going to abandon that body. We have never had an instance where a coffin went unclaimed.”

  “But surely you—”

  Gedding shifted the animal to his other shoulder, but the cat became irritated by the movement and leaped from its owner’s shoulder to the floor, disappearing out of the room in a feline huff. The stationmaster leaned forward and, with his elbows on the tablecloth, brought his hands together in a triangle. “Please understand. The LNR has not had a single complaint yet of a body being mishandled or disappearing. Families and undertakers hire us to put coffins on board, and they always—always—show up to collect them. It is vital that we maintain our sterling reputation, for we are not yet profitable, given our presently limited number of runs each day. Any bad publicity would . . .” Gedding spread out his hands expressively to indicate the disaster that would befall the company.

  “I don’t think the London Necropolis Railway can be held accountable for what happened,” Harry assured the stationmaster.

  Gedding immediately seized on this. “Yes, Mr. Blundell, you are absolutely correct. Besides, there has been no crime committed, has there? A man believed dead now lives. Mr. Ambrose is a respectable physician who will see to the man’s reunion with his loved ones. His family will rejoice, as will we. I consider the matter resolved, and so should you.”

  Violet and Harry left Gedding’s office. She knew the stationmaster was correct in his assessment, but it bothered her that not only had some undertaker somewhere been careless with a body, but that it was actually possible that those dratted safety coffins might work.

  The horse-drawn biers arrived, with the drivers offering apologies for their tardiness, having been delayed with coffins at the North station. With Mr. Harland now securely resting on the bier, Violet and Harry walked on either side of it to the Anglican chapel, a sweet and peaceful structure surrounded with columns. The driver and his assistant unloaded the coffin into the chapel, with a promise to return later for the ride to the grave.
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  Violet asked Harry to stay behind to compare final notes with the cemetery director, while she went to inspect the grave site. Ordinarily, she enjoyed such interactions and Harry, who was still young and lacking experience, preferred to take care of the manual aspects of funerals. Today, though, Violet wanted to enjoy the walk under the tree canopies and through the winding pathways on her own, to settle her mind over what had happened back at the station.

  The August day was warm but not uncomfortably so. The oak, hawthorn, and elm trees in the cemetery were mostly along the borders of the cemetery, working together in their varying heights to serve as sentinels over the graves, blocking views from outside the cemetery and providing mourners with a sense of peace and steadfastness. Thus far, only around five hundred acres had been excavated and put in order for graves, with only a fraction of those graves occupied. Beyond that, nearly fifteen hundred more acres awaited eventual preparation.

  Violet tripped over a tree root but caught herself by grabbing on to the edge of a crypt, this one in the unusual Gothic-inspired shape of a large bed frame. At the head of the “bed” were pointed arches topped with crosses and gargoyles. It was a fantastical crypt, unlike any of the usual oblong boxes with weeping angels resting atop them, or the tall obelisks and crosses marking the occupants beneath them.

  She continued along the path to the section containing Mr. Harland’s grave site, with only chirping birds for company as she paused to examine the names and dates on some of the graves. Nothing was more than fifteen years old, except for a few ancient graves that had been transferred out of London to alleviate the overcrowding of churchyards there. Most of the sites also lacked the soot and lichen stains that plagued older cemeteries. It was almost as if this cemetery breathed life, not death. For now, anyway.

  Violet found Mr. Harland’s site, which had been freshly dug. His family already had a crypt, built to resemble a Greek temple, a common style for those who had the money to spend on it. Mr. Harland’s grave was dug between two of the columns. She pulled out her measuring tape from her reticule and unrolled it down into the grave. It stopped at the twelve-foot mark. Very good. This was a fresh dig in the Harland family site, so Mr. Harland would rest at the bottom, leaving room for two more family members to be buried on top of him in the future.

  She rolled up the tape, satisfied. Several urns of lilies surrounded the temple, and a few chairs were positioned around the grave for the widow and elderly family members, as she had requested. Violet was pleased with Brookwood’s efficiency. No wonder Will had started engaging in funerals with them, despite the trip involved.

  She strode quickly back to the chapel. She was happy enough with how things were turning out for this funeral, and was ready to forget about the unfortunate, yet fortunate, man who had staggered out of his coffin. Harry was waiting for her outside, and he, too, indicated satisfaction with the proceedings.

  They walked back to the station to wait for the family. The reception room was not furnished with gas, but instead relied upon oil lamps for light and a cavernous fireplace on one wall for heat in the winter. Here they would wait another two hours for the mourners to arrive, then accompany them back to the chapel.

  Violet paced restlessly inside the reception room, discussing the various details of the funeral with Harry. It wasn’t long, though, before their conversation turned back to what had happened on the station platform.

  “What do you think?” Harry asked, animated and no longer irritated with his temporary exile from London as he leaned casually against the fireplace mantel and watched her pace. “That seems proof that safety coffins do have some merit. I look forward to posting a newspaper advertisement about it.” He became invigorated by his own words. “Imagine the favorable publicity the undertaking profession will receive once people realize that someone has been rescued by a safety coffin. Why, it could erase a hundred years of notoriety. We should order a great sampling of these coffins before the other under—”

  “No,” Violet interrupted, her voice firm. “Absolutely not.” She stopped pacing and whirled on him. “Whatever happened back there was . . . was . . . incomprehensible. Harry, we both know it’s not possible for a dead body to come back to life, except for the Resurrection.”

  Harry straightened to his full height. “Ordinarily I would say yes, you’re right. But we saw it occur with our very own eyes. You cannot deny that the man arose, quite terrified and babbling, but also quite alive.”

  Violet frowned. Yes, it had occurred just as Harry described. But even if—if!—the man had not been truly dead and was saved by a bell coffin, it was a rare circumstance. So despite the excitement it would generate among mourners who imagined they could hold out hope that their loved one might come out of the grave a week or two after death, it would ultimately prove to be a leaden disappointment to all of them. And eventually it would bring shame to the undertaking profession, which was already tarnished by the few charlatans who practiced it.

  She softened her tone. “Harry, we must think this through. Whatever medical condition that man experienced was not typical. We have both seen enough bodies in our lives to know when they are dead. The ashy skin, the vacant eyes, the odors. Don’t you think it more likely that the undertaker who put him in a coffin was incompetent?”

  Harry considered this. “Yes, perhaps, but—”

  “If we want to maintain our reputation, we have a responsibility to keep quiet about this until we know for sure who put that man in a coffin before he was ready.”

  “How would we do that? We have no authority, and no undertaker is under obligation to talk to us.”

  Violet had encountered more difficult situations than this before, and even uncovered killers in the process. This was no murder, just a simple case of bad undertaking. How challenging could it possibly be to ferret out the inept funeral man in their midst?

  “I’ll take care of it, Harry. Meanwhile, we have a funeral to perform, to make sure Mr. Harland is sent off well. We must stop such talk, at least until we know for certain what happened.”

  Harry shrugged. “As you say, Mrs. Harper. I’ll keep quiet. But after what we just witnessed, I have to say I’m convinced.”

  Mr. Harland’s funeral went off well enough except for a problem with a relative who availed himself of a little too much gin inside the reception room and almost stumbled into the grave before Mr. Harland himself was laid in it.

  It was with tired relief that Violet and Harry made the hour-long train ride back to London in silence. Violet’s peaceful walk through Brookwood was now but a distant memory as she was consumed with the bell coffin experience.

  The stationmaster had stated that no crime had been committed. Perhaps in the eyes of the law, no. But in Violet’s mind, a careless undertaker had perpetrated an inexcusable act on an innocent person.

  Whatever undertaker had put that man in his coffin no more deserved to wear his hat and tails than a Newgate Prison inmate did.

  © Jax Photography

  CHRISTINE TRENT lives in the Mid-Atlantic region with her husband, Jon, and five cats: Caesar, Claudia, Livia, Marcus, and Octavian. When she isn’t writing, you can usually find her scrapbooking, planning a trip to England, or haunting bookstores. Lady of Ashes, the first mystery in the Lady of Ashes series, was a finalist for the 2014 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in the Historical Romantic Mystery/Suspense category. Please visit her at www.ChristineTrent.com.

  LADY OF ASHES

  Only a woman with an iron backbone could succeed as an undertaker in Victorian London, but Violet Morgan takes great pride in her trade. While her husband, Graham, is preoccupied with elevating their station in society, Violet is cultivating a sterling reputation for Morgan Undertaking. She is empathetic, well versed in funeral fashions, and comfortable with death’s role in life—until its chilling rattle comes knocking on her own front door.

  Violet’s peculiar but happy life soon begins to unravel as Graham becomes obsessed with his own demons and
all but abandons her as he plans a vengeful scheme. And the solace she’s always found in her work evaporates like a departing soul when she suspects that some of the deceased she’s dressed have been murdered. When Graham’s plotting leads to his disappearance, Violet takes full control of the business and is commissioned for an undertaking of royal proportions. But she’s certain there’s a killer lurking in the London fog, and the next funeral may be her own.

  With equal parts courage, compassion, and intrigue, Christine Trent tells an unrestrained tale of love and loss in the rigidly decorous world of Victorian society.

  STOLEN REMAINS

  After establishing her reputation as one of London’s most highly regarded undertakers, Violet Harper decided to take her practice to the wilds of the American West. But when her mother falls ill, Violet and her husband, Samuel, are summoned back to England, where her skills are as sought-after as ever. She’s honored to undertake the funeral of Anthony Fairmont, the Viscount Raybourn, a close friend of Queen Victoria’s who died in suspicious circumstances—but it’s difficult to perform her services when his body disappears....

  As the viscount’s undertaker, all eyes are on Violet as the Fair-monts and Scotland Yard begin the search for his earthly remains. Forced to exhume her latent talents as a sleuth to preserve her good name, Violet’s own investigation takes her from servants’ quarters, to the halls of Windsor Castle, to the tombs of ancient Egypt—and the Fairmont family’s secrets quickly begin to unravel like a mummy’s wrappings. But the closer Violet gets to the truth, the closer she gets to becoming the next missing body . . .

  Wrought with both heartfelt bravery and breathtaking suspense, Stolen Remains is a captivating tale of death and deception set against the indelible backdrop of Victorian London.

  A VIRTUOUS DEATH