Stolen Remains

by Christine Trent

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Stephen said as he helped Violet out onto the pedestrian path and tied up the horses to a post.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve been summoned to a bridge painted green to match the leather seats in the Commons, when my father was in the House of Lords. You’d think they’d have had us come to Lambeth Bridge.” He pointed to a scarlet-painted bridge that crossed the Thames nearby, its span starting on the other side of the Parliament building. “The seats in the House of Lords are red leather. Perhaps they’re making a statement. Maybe the kidnapping is political in nature.”

  “Had your father done something controversial?”

  “No, but you know how these crazed labor rioters are. Maybe it looked like a way to bolster their cause.”

  Violet was doubtful. “It seems an odd thing to do.”

  “You can never tell with these vagrant types. Regardless, it will all be over soon.” He held up the coin-laden bag, secured with twine. “What do we do? Stay here on the one end? Walk to the center of the bridge?”

  “I recommend that we stay here. Whoever it is will come to you.”

  There was little foot traffic this early in the morning, but plenty of boats were out, made visible only by their glowing lanterns cutting through the fog. Despite the warmth of the morning, Violet felt a shiver creep up her spine. There was something not quite right with what was happening here. She looked straight down over the parapet. It felt as though she were floating, hovering over an abyss. She stepped back.

  She felt a sharp jab in her back. She turned, and a cloaked figure thrust an envelope in her hand before disappearing in the direction from which she and Stephen had come.

  “Wait! Who are you?” Violet called, running after him.

  “Violet, where are you off to?” Stephen caught up to her in just a few steps and took her by the elbow. “What are you doing?”

  She held up the envelope. “A man just shoved this into my hands.”

  “Who was it? Did you recognize him?”

  “No. It happened in just a second.”

  Stephen opened up the envelope and read from it. “ ‘Go to the center of the bridge. Look for a steam launch to pass under bearing a man standing at the prow with his fists crossed on his chest. Drop the money down to the boat. You will receive further instruction on where your father’s body is located.’ And so the ridiculous subterfuge continues. Why not just walk straight up to me for the ransom money? Alas no, the feeble-minded idiots have not finished leading us on their merry chase.”

  They walked to the center of the bridge. The sun was rising, but not enough to penetrate the mist. “How will we ever be able to see which is the right boat?” Violet said.

  “If they want their money, they will undoubtedly make themselves known.”

  Violet gripped the rail. The sooner this was finished, the sooner she could recover Lord Raybourn and hopefully leave London.

  A whistle blew from somewhere below, its sound mournful and despondent. Several lanterns began glowing from the same location, revealing a steam launch approaching the bridge. Yet another lantern was lit, and the form of a man standing at the prow became visible. His arms were crossed on his chest, his hands curled into fists. He did not look up.

  Violet turned to Stephen, who nodded wordlessly. He tossed the bag down, and Violet leaned over the rail, watching to ensure the money made it into the boat. It struck the deck with a jangling thud.

  Now what would happen? Violet and Stephen stayed at the bridge rail several more moments, unsure whether they were supposed to wait for another signal there, or return to Park Street for yet another message.

  The boat was almost completely under the bridge now. Violet stood on tiptoe and leaned over just a bit more, to be sure there was no other signal or sign being emitted from the steam launch. It was so difficult to see through the fog, despite the rising sun. Perhaps this was to be one of the days where the fog would stay—

  From nowhere, she felt strong hands shove her between the shoulders, rolling her over the rail. She flailed wildly, but managed to throw her right arm over the metal railing. Thoroughly unused to supporting her own entire weight against gravity, her damaged arm howled in resistance, the pain radiating up her arm and through her shoulder, threatening her tenuous grip on the rail. She dangled perilously over the Thames, and knew she wouldn’t survive a fall.

  She tried to scream, but had no strength for it.

  “My God, Violet!” came Stephen’s voice from above her. She felt his hands clamp around her arm and the nonsensical thought flashed through her mind that she would be mortified if Stephen could feel the ridges of her scars through her sleeve.

  “I have you,” he said. “Give me your other arm.”

  With great effort, she lifted her other arm up to him. He began pulling, and when he had enough leverage, put an arm around her waist as he brought her slowly back over the railing. Violet stood, but just barely, so badly were her legs shaking.

  “What happened? How did you stumble over the rail?”

  “I didn’t. Someone pushed me.”

  “Pushed you? I didn’t see anyone. Of course, it’s still so damnably thick out here. Are you all right? Even in this baffling vapor you look as a pale as a corpse. Oh, sorry.”

  Violet gave him a weak smile. “I’m fine, just a little weak-kneed. I don’t understand why someone would have pushed me. It’s quite beyond a schoolboy prank. I might have died.”

  “If whoever it was had been a few moments sooner, you’d have ended up in the boat.”

  An interesting point.

  “Can you walk now?” he asked. “We may as well return to the carriage, since it doesn’t look as though there will be any further notes delivered.”

  “But . . . shouldn’t we look for whoever did this? He might still be nearby.”

  “Will you recognize his hands when you see him? Do you think he will greet us, tip his hat to you?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Come.” He held out an arm. “Let’s go back to Raybourn House to wait.”

  Violet took his arm, but was unsettled. Stephen seemed unconcerned that she’d just been attacked. In fact, someone had attempted to murder her. Why? Was it one of Lord Raybourn’s kidnappers? But why would they want to kill his undertaker? Or was this connected again to Lord Raybourn’s murder? If so, how?

  A dreadful thought rose in the back of her mind. If Stephen was unconcerned about the attack, was it because he was responsible? Had he himself pushed her? She tamped the thought down. It was too ludicrous to consider. After all, they had been childhood friends, and now she was helping him find his father’s body.

  No, it was a foolish notion and without foundation. Besides, he’d had plenty of other opportunities to hurt her if he were so motivated.

  The sun was finally piercing through the fog as Stephen once again handed Violet up onto the driver’s seat. An envelope lay there. Violet held it up for Stephen as he joined her on the seat.

  “From our friend, presumably,” he said, taking it. “Perhaps he pushed you so we wouldn’t notice him at the carriage.”

  The carriage had been entirely too far away from the center of the bridge for them to see him in the murky fog. Violet made no comment.

  “It says we will find the coffin in the cold store building at the Smithfield meat market.”

  “At Smithfield! How did they manage to move a coffin in broad daylight all the way from Mayfair to Smithfield?” Violet said.

  “You’re the undertaker. How would you do it?”

  Violet thought. “St. Bart’s Hospital is near there. I suppose I would pretend I was headed there.”

  “A good assessment, I should think. I recommend we take Victoria Embankment.”

  This road had recently opened, and was intended to provide congestion relief in the Strand and on Fleet Street. It commenced at the base of the bridge across from Parliament. “I agree.”

  Violet guided the carriage
out into traffic. Soon they were racing along the Embankment—to the extent traffic would allow—which ran parallel to the Thames. At Farringdon Street she turned north toward the meat market, passing within a couple of blocks of St. Bart’s. St. Paul’s dome was visible to the east, towering over everything as it had done for two centuries.

  They came nearly to a halt as they approached the market, as the road became clogged with men driving cattle into the central entrance. The stench was overpowering, as cow dung competed with the droppings of the passenger-carrying horse carriages. The cattlemen were shouting unintelligibly at their herds and cracking whips over their heads. They had clearly already been at this for hours, long before the average Londoner arose.

  “Smart of them to keep this downwind on the east side of London. And imagine what this looked like before they built a railway tunnel beneath it for primary animal transport,” Stephen said.

  Violet looked at him in surprise. How unusual for an idle aristocrat to have a working knowledge of something as pedestrian as a meat market.

  Violet managed to find a place to park the carriage, then she and Stephen went in search of the cold store. Stephen tossed an extra coin to the boy who offered to watch the equipage, and who pointed out the cold store entrance, which led to an underground network of lockers for storing carcasses. They went from locker to locker, hunting through the slabs of beef and pork, not sure whether they were looking for a coffin, or perhaps just Lord Raybourn’s embalmed body.

  Hours later, fatigued and perspiring despite the chilled lockers, they admitted defeat. There was no body or coffin anywhere inside the cold store. They returned to the carriage, dejected.

  “I don’t understand,” Stephen said, running a hand through his hair as Violet took the reins. “They took the money and kept the body. Isn’t there some sort of kidnappers’ code that prevents that?”

  Now that sounded more like an aristocrat’s view of humanity, imagining a world that wouldn’t dare betray him.

  “There is no honor among thieves,” Violet quoted.

  “A pestilent lot of mongrel dogs, aren’t they? You don’t suppose they were down inside the cold store, watching us on our futile pursuit, do you?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t a single idea as to what is in their minds.”

  Watching Stephen’s profile, though, she had that dreadful, queasy feeling again. Impossible, she told herself. Men like Stephen Fairmont did not kill their fathers, nor did they kidnap their fathers’ bodies for no reason.

  Did they?

  Violet sat in her attic room at Raybourn House, a large book in her lap propped up as a table as she wrote a letter to her parents, telling them of her exploits thus far, but omitting any mention of her near fall from Westminster Bridge.

  As she blotted the letter dry, she heard the loud ringing of the doorbell in the hallway outside her door. What a cursed life a servant led in a rich household, having all manner of summons—front doorbells, servants’ entrance bells, ladies’ handbells—all going off riotously day and night both in the basement and the servants’ quarters. At least she’d learned not to jump each time one of them sounded.

  Violet folded her letter and slid it into the envelope, then took it downstairs to add to the mail tray.

  A man sat in the drawing room, so tall and cadaverously thin that his knees jutted up and out from the chair in an awkward way. Louisa intercepted Violet as she dropped the letter, along with a penny for the post, into the tray.

  “Mrs. Harper,” she said, her voice low and her eyes cast down. “This ’ere’s Mr. Godfrey, a friend of Mr. Fairmont. The late Mr. Fairmont. The dead one.”

  “You mean the viscount?”

  “No, ma’am, the elder brother, that one what perished in the war. There’s no one else home right now, so I thought you might speak wi’ him?”

  “Of course, if I can help.”

  “Mr. Godfrey?” Violet said, extending a hand as she entered the drawing room. He rose, and proved himself to be even taller and thinner than Violet suspected. He looked as if he might be on war rations, and his nose cut out sharply from his bony face like a short bayonet. He looked familiar. “I’m Violet Harper, a friend of the family, staying here temporarily. Everyone else is out. May I help you?”

  He took her hand and eyed her clothing. “I see you, too, are in mourning for the late Lord Raybourn?”

  “Actually, I’m the . . . yes, I’m in mourning with the family.”

  He released her hand. “I was hoping I might speak to Lord Raybourn’s son. Stephen, I believe his name is? Do you know when he’ll return?”

  “I don’t. Again, might I assist you?”

  They sat down. He rested spidery hands on his jutting knees. In that moment, she realized how she knew him.

  “You’re that man,” she blurted out.

  “That man?”

  “You accosted me outside of this home not long ago. You reeked of spirits and demanded that I tell Lord Raybourn you were waiting for him at your hotel.”

  A light of recognition dawned in his eyes and he was immediately apologetic. “Ah, that. I’m greatly sorry. I’m afraid I was in my cups at the time. Mrs. Bagwell at the temperance society always tells me I’ll come to no good end that way. I suppose I’m too used to free living. When my notes were sent away unanswered, well, I took matters into my hands.”

  Violet nodded her forgiveness. She was already mentally widening her circle of suspects who might have attempted to push her over Westminster Bridge, although she couldn’t imagine why he had a motive to do so.

  “My name is James Godfrey. I’m a friend of Cedric Fairmont, Lord Raybourn’s eldest son. We served together in the Crimean War.” Godfrey paused, as though considering whether to continue.

  Violet encouraged him. “It must have been terrible what you endured against the Russians, and you, too, have experienced a loss in your friend. I know the family was also most grieved by his death on the Crimean Peninsula.”

  He clasped his hands together on his knees. It looked as though a giant arachnid had curled up and died in his lap. “That’s just it, though. Cedric isn’t dead.”

  18

  Violet sat stunned, but was saved from struggling to make a coherent response by the return of the Fairmont siblings and their spouses. Stephen, Katherine, Dorothy, Nelly, and Gordon arrived in reasonably high spirits, having just gone for a drive through Regent’s Park. It was a highly improper activity for a family in recent mourning, but most family deaths didn’t encompass quite so much tragedy. It was good to see them all smiling.

  Violet introduced James Godfrey to them, and he repeated his statement about Cedric being alive. Their rare jubilance was terminated in a mere moment. The stream of Fairmont revelations seemed to never cease.

  “Pardon me, did you just say my brother is still alive?” Dorothy asked. “That can’t be. He’s been dead for at least thirteen years. We never heard from him again after he left for the Crimea. He was formally declared dead by the courts seven years later. He’s dead.” She said it with emphasis, as if repeating it would make it so.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but that isn’t so.”

  “Speak up, then, man. What are you talking about?” Stephen said. “What do you mean he’s still alive?”

  “I first met Cedric on a ship bound for Sevastopol on the Black Sea. We ended up serving together in the disastrous Battle of Balaclava in October of fifty-four. During those dark hours, he told me of his family and his time at Willow Tree House.”

  Showing little respect or pity for his past service and suffering, Nelly, in a sharp mood now, couldn’t control her tongue. “What else did he tell you?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Hmmph,” Nelly said, arms crossed.

  “Cedric was promoted to lieutenant, and managed to secure me as his batman. He nearly died when we made the charge on the Russians. I was one of the lucky ones, coming out unscathed. He took a terrible wound to
the thigh, though. They wanted to take his leg, but I wouldn’t let them. Spent weeks tending to him on the floor in what they called a hospital. Blood and excrement everywhere, despite the wood shavings thrown down to absorb it all. Rats as big as small dogs coming by on occasion to inspect Cedric’s leg, to test whether he was weak enough to be gnawed on as a snack.

  “Cedric was an officer, so he was upgraded to a bed as soon as one was available. He might have gotten well sooner, but then cholera ran through the camp. I risked infection to make sure he was well. Cedric told me later that he was forever indebted to me for my loyalty and friendship.”

  Godfrey pulled a cigarette from inside his jacket. “Do you mind?” he asked as he lit it. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and blew a great plume of smoke toward the ceiling. He was quiet several moments, as if gathering his thoughts as to what had happened next.

  “Even after he recovered, Cedric was never quite the same, here.” Godfrey touched his temple with the cigarette between his fingers. “Got in a few scrapes he shouldn’t have, and I always talked him out of doing anything too foolish before he got into trouble with his own superiors. When the war was over, he decided he didn’t want to go home, but instead wanted to start his life anew. As I said, he wasn’t quite . . . right.

  “I accompanied him to France, where we joined the haut bohème. Cedric’s aristocratic status enabled us to live a more privileged lifestyle, although we certainly embraced the unconventional, vagabond lifestyle after being so long confined to the rules and discipline of the army. Even more, we embraced the, er, generous nature of the women we met there.”

  Godfrey flicked ash into the crystal ashtray.

  “Alas, our money eventually ran out, even though we adopted the poverty of the regular bohemians. Cedric tried his hand at painting and selling his oils in the streets, while I attempted—quite unsuccessfully—to publish a memoir of the war. In due course, we decided we hated poverty more than we loved the kindhearted and affectionate women, so we traveled a bit more, sampled what else the world had to offer, and returned to England.”