The Mourning Bells

by Christine Trent

  She dipped all ten fingers into the small bowl of tea-infused water, sprinkled the tea from her fingers onto her scalp, then gently rubbed her scalp, going back and dipping her fingers in the tea repeatedly.

  That done, Violet picked up her boar’s-hair brush that had an ivory handle to match the comb, and used it in long, even strokes from her scalp to the ends of her hair. The sensation was even more relaxing than that of the comb and enabled Violet to think further on the matter that troubled her.

  Even if Sam was correct and there was nothing criminal to consider, would it really hurt to investigate a little further? But what should she do next? Whom should she visit? Or revisit?

  Undoubtedly, Mr. Crugg was at the top of Susanna’s list. But as Violet thought about it, she realized that he didn’t fit her opinion that whoever had mishandled the bodies had been incompetent. Crugg might be vile and resentful, but Violet had no reason to think he was unfit for his work.

  What about Mr. Upton, the octopus-like man who had so cleverly repulsed her questions about safety coffins and Brookwood? Perhaps another visit to him, with a box of Fry’s chocolate blocks, might elicit a few substantial answers.

  Furthermore, what about Mr. Vernon, who was disposing of paupers and other undesirables at various hospitals and medical universities? He claimed he performed his work legally—and he behaved forthrightly enough—but there were surely dozens of musty old books and magazine clippings in existence that would teach a man how to skirt the law. And a man working around the law was not an honest man. And a dishonest man was more likely to blunder and bungle his way through things.

  The hair should be brushed for at least twenty minutes in the morning, for ten minutes when it is dressed in the middle of the day, and for a like period at night, Mrs. Hale had asserted with authority.

  Violet soon realized, though, that this much brushing in one sitting was tiresome for the arms, especially for Violet, whose right arm had once been scalded and scarred in a train collision, and was easily fatigued. She put down the brush and made up her mind.

  Of her three suspects, Mr. Vernon was the most likely to have been responsible for the ineptitude she thought had been performed on those two men. When she had time tomorrow, she would pay him another visit.

  Violet’s hair did seem cleaner in the morning, although Sam didn’t seem to notice anything when he gave her his daily morning kiss on top of her head. Well, better that he didn’t observe anything at all, lest he notice that she had a few gray hairs popping up from some unknown, fertilized bed of them under her scalp. Violet was also glad that Sam hadn’t noticed the weight she’d gained since they’d returned to London, although perhaps he was being intentionally oblivious to it.

  Violet skipped breakfast to get down to the shop as soon as possible. There were suppliers to be paid, and she hoped to hand her envelopes to the postman on his first pass by the shop today, before she headed out to see Mr. Vernon. With that done, she went over the day’s tasks with Harry. There were no funerals scheduled, but Jonathan and Christopher Boyce would be dropping off coffins later in the day, and Harry planned to wait for them, freeing Violet to take as much time as she needed on her mission.

  As a precaution, she picked up the box of chocolates she thought Mr. Upton would have liked, thinking Mr. Vernon might, as well. With the chocolate-covered raspberry blocks under her arm, she made her way to Chelsea.

  Mr. Vernon blinked in confusion at her arrival, as though trying to place an unfamiliar face. Violet mentioned the London Necropolis Railway, and he said, “Of course, I remember you, Mrs. Harper,” but not before Violet noticed a moment of fear reflected in his eyes as he took the box from her and set it aside. Rather ungraciously, in her opinion.

  “Pardon my intrusion,” she said, trying to carefully formulate her next words. “I thought you might like to know that another man came to life at Brookwood yesterday.”

  “That is very interesting, indeed. Did you have an opportunity to speak to him?” The undertaker rubbed the hem of both sides of his vest between his thumbs and forefingers.

  “I did, in fact. He seemed quite perplexed as to why he was in a coffin.”

  “How terrible for the man.”

  Violet tried another approach.

  “Do you deny that you shipped a body to Brookwood yesterday?” She tried to sound imposing but didn’t think the words sounded particularly formidable in her own ear.

  “I had no corpse scheduled yesterday on the LNR,” Vernon replied.

  No, of course not. “Perhaps you forgot that—”

  The shop’s bells rang as a customer entered. The customer was an older man, bleary-eyed and grizzled. Completely ignoring Violet’s presence, he launched into a diatribe against Vernon. “Where have you been? You were supposed to arrive two hours ago. How long are we supposed to wait for you? Have you no decency?”

  Violet stepped away, over to where the undertaker’s few sample coffins lay propped open, to give Vernon a bit of privacy to deal with the man. She understood what it was to have irrational customers. The grieving tended to be void of manners and politeness in the aftermath of a death, especially in the face of an unexpected one.

  As the customer continued to rail against Vernon, who tried his best to placate the man, Violet wondered if the man had lost a wife, a parent, a child, or someone else. She then realized that although the customer was berating Vernon for dereliction of duty, he had not yet said anything about his loved one. That was curious. Typically, the grieving spoke of nothing else.

  Vernon finally managed to calm the man down enough to get him out of the shop, with a promise to see him within the hour. “Don’t be late this time,” the man growled as the door’s bells jangled behind him.

  The undertaker came to where Violet now stood among the coffins. He was pale and perspiring, and she noticed his right hand trembling. Had the customer so unnerved him that he was near to breaking down? An experienced undertaker became used to torrential outbursts, threats of violence, and any manner of unusual behavior. What had just happened with his customer wasn’t completely abnormal.

  “Mr. Vernon, are you quite all right?” Violet asked.

  “Yes, yes, of course.” He removed a handkerchief from a pocket and mopped his chubby face. “Sometimes clients are very demanding. Well, as you can see, I have my duties to attend to, if you will excuse me.”

  Vernon was clearly relieved at the thought of getting rid of her.

  “Pardon me, sir, was your customer unhappy with his service? Perhaps there is a way I can help you?”

  “Ah, no. You know how it is. Sometimes people expect too much of an undertaker. Think it is our job to make them appear lifelike.”

  Violet frowned. “But that is our job.”

  “Of course, but when we get overwhelmed with too many bodies, certain . . . embellishments . . . have to be put aside to ensure we have everything ready for a backlog of funerals. Some customers are more, ahem, fussy than others and demand perfection.”

  Violet did not like what she was hearing at all. Vernon was essentially admitting that he was deceptive, if not outright fraudulent, in his work. Undoubtedly he charged the same no matter what he did.

  Violet was overcome by a thought and blurted it out without stopping to consider the repercussions of voicing it aloud. “I have a suspicion, Mr. Vernon. I suggest that you are, at a minimum, very lazy in your undertaking practices. You receive bodies and, with little inspection or preparation, toss them into coffins to be delivered to cemeteries, hospitals, or medical schools.”

  Vernon blanched as his eyes blinked as rapidly as a hummingbird’s wings. “I object to your accusation, Mrs. Harper, which you are in no position to make. I am—”

  “Sometimes you get confused and aren’t sure which body goes where. I also think that in your haste and confusion, you are accepting merely unconscious people and sending them off to their destinations, where they awake in total terror. It has happened twice in my own presence, and who kno
ws how many other times.”

  Vernon glanced around nervously, as though worried that someone else might enter the shop. He dropped his voice. “Mrs. Harper, I understand you are upset about mysterious doings at Brookwood.”

  Violet knew that voice; she’d used it many times herself to soothe irate relatives. Did he think she wouldn’t know it when she heard it?

  “I am by no means upset, Mr. Vernon. I am curious. I am perplexed. And at this moment, I am very suspicious.”

  Vernon dropped his voice even lower, and this time in a matter of seconds it went from soothing to menacing, a thoroughly incongruent sound from the mousy man. “You are testing me, Mrs. Harper, for no good reason. May I suggest that it would be wise for you to take your leave now?”

  What chord had Violet struck so precisely? Was she completely in tune in her assumption of his shoddy practices, or was she missing notes? Or was there something else making Vernon nervous? She couldn’t leave yet, not when she might be close to an answer.

  With a fluid movement, he took an ominous step closer. She stood her ground, even though she had an overwhelming urge to turn and flee. “Do not attempt to intimidate me, sir. I am merely seeking answers, and if you are a fraud—”

  “You dare accuse me?” His voice seemed to throb with suppressed rage as he enunciated his next words slowly. “You stupid, witless woman, you have no idea what you’re doing.” The hand that was trembling was now clenching and reclenching in a fist, the movement only slightly less rapid as his eyes were spasmodically blinking.

  Violet wondered if she’d pushed him too far. It was too late to recant what she’d said, although she stole a glance toward the shop’s door. She would have to dodge a couple of coffins to reach it, but she could do so, provided her skirts didn’t get caught or tangled up against anything. The shop was fairly sparse, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.

  She took a breath, exhaled, and dove recklessly back in. “As I said, sir, I am merely an undertaker seeking answers about some bodies that were found—”

  To Violet’s burgeoning horror, Vernon’s right hand snaked out like a striking viper and grabbed her by the throat. She clawed desperately at his hands, scrabbling to remove them, but he was surprisingly more powerful than he looked. His fingers dug in, pressing in to cut off her windpipe. Within seconds, he had lifted her off the ground and her booted feet were reaching uselessly for the ground. She couldn’t breathe, the excruciating pain arresting her flailing movements. His grasp was so tight that she was helpless to even utter a noise of protest.

  Vernon put his face close to hers, his once pale and timid face suffused with malevolent rage. She could see an unearthly brightness in his eyes as he stared intently at her as if in fascination over her suffering.

  “You want to discuss corpses? What if we discuss yours?” he growled menacingly. The sound of his voice was starting to fade, as if it came from the far end of a long tunnel.

  Just as everything in the room slowly closed into a pinpoint of the pale-gray color of three-day-old dead skin, Violet felt herself lifted even higher. Then she was flying backward, completely weightless until she found herself on her back staring up at the ceiling. She had the completely irrelevant thought that there were rust stains on the ceiling, most likely from rainspouts leaking into the building. The thought evaporated as she began coughing frantically, drawing in great, wheezing breaths now that air was finally rushing into her windpipe.

  Where was she?

  She gasped several times and was only vaguely aware of her limbs being jostled and thrown together. Vernon’s face loomed over hers, and he said quietly, “You must learn manners, Mrs. Harper.” A large shadow appeared between Vernon and Violet.

  “No!” she cried out weakly as she realized what Vernon was doing, but in a moment the world was black and in the darkness she knew that her nose was mere inches from the underside of the coffin lid. In fact, she could smell the sickeningly pungent traces of varnish that had probably been applied a couple of weeks ago to this sample coffin.

  Taking uncontrollably shallow breaths, her first instinct was to scream, as a crest of pure terror washed over her. Don’t panic, she thought. Don’t do anything that will take air out of the coffin too quickly. She knew she had less than two hours of air inside the box. What was she to do? If she begged for mercy and Vernon refused to listen, or had even left the shop, she would use up much of her air. But if she did nothing, she would surely die.

  All of a sudden, Violet very much wished she were in a bell coffin.

  Wait a minute. Might she be? She clung to that small and improbable hope as she felt around for a cord or metal loop. Nothing. Of course, she was packed in so tightly that it was difficult to do more than stretch her arms just slightly at her sides. No wonder the string had to be attached to the finger before burial. Finding herself needing the very device she despised, Violet was overcome with the strange desire to laugh hysterically.

  She took one more deep breath. The air was already getting stale inside the coffin. Don’t panic, she reminded herself. Then she realized that she hadn’t heard the sound of Vernon securing the lid to the coffin. Nor could she hear him moving about outside the coffin. Maybe he was gone, and all she had to do was push the lid off.

  Except she couldn’t. In the cramped space, it was as if her arms were pinned down to her sides, and she couldn’t maneuver them up enough to get leverage under the lid.

  That brief flickering of hope was extinguished like a candle stub. She really was going to die inside a coffin in an undertaker’s shop. Visions of Susanna giggling over silly things and the way Sam’s eyes lit up when Violet entered a room swam in her head. It just wasn’t possible that she wouldn’t see them again.

  But how would anyone find her here? Vernon would just ship her off to Brookwood to be handed over to the Royal Surrey County Hospital.

  A bubble of wild laughter erupted from her at the thought, a sign that she had surely lost her sanity during these past few minutes. Or had it been an hour?

  Suddenly there was light, nearly overwhelming her in its glorious brightness. Was she dead? Was this the entry to heaven?

  It couldn’t be because James Vernon loomed over her again, and it had to be impossible that he would be in residence there. “Mrs. Harper?” he asked solicitously. Concern and worry etched his face.

  Violet realized that she wasn’t dead, yet she was still lying in a coffin. Now that she was accustomed to the light, she breathed in deeply and gratefully, welcoming the fresh air that filled her lungs.

  Vernon was his previous meek self again. “My goodness, Mrs. Harper, what are you doing in there?” He shook his head, mystification and disbelief in his eyes.

  “What do you mean?” Violet said in complete outrage as Vernon offered her an arm and helped her out of the coffin. She hated that she had to accept this odious man’s help from the coffin bed. “You pushed me in there, you, you—” Violet was speechless from her ordeal.

  He looked at her curiously. “My dear lady, it would be akin to murder to put a live body in a coffin. I would never do such a thing.”

  Violet blinked. Was Vernon a Bedlamite, or was she? Had she imagined the entire interlude? She put a hand to her neck, now tender to the touch. It affirmed for her that she wasn’t the daft one. “You choked me and threatened me just now.”

  “Mrs. Harper!” He gasped, a look of horror on his face. “You impugn my honor. I am a respectable undertaker, not a marauding villain. I think you may have damaged your senses when you locked yourself in that coffin.” His eyelids were in motion again.

  What was wrong with the man? One moment he was a wilted flower, the next he transformed into an enraged madman, then the next he was an innocent bystander. Violet wasn’t sure whether to shout at the man or cry in frustration. Deciding neither was helpful, she realized the smartest thing to do was to leave the shop before Vernon decided to do something worse, like stuff her in an urn or tie her up in a shroud and dispose of her off Westmins
ter Bridge.

  “Pardon me, I must have made a mistake.” She spoke through gritted teeth.

  He smiled expansively. “We all make mistakes at times, Mrs. Harper. Let not your heart be troubled.”

  Violet edged her way past the man and out of his shop. By the time she reached the cabstand at the top of the street, she was trembling in delayed reaction to Vernon’s abuse. Should she go to the police? Would they even believe her story that an undertaker had pushed a fellow undertaker into a coffin? Violet could almost imagine the ensuing laughter. No, she had had enough humiliation for one day.

  A half hour later, as she exited the cab at her own shop, though, her fear had transformed into fury over what had happened—or nearly happened—to her. She headed to the back room to perform some mindless tasks so she could spend time in thought, but Harry greeted her with “Good afternoon, Mrs. Harper. Would you care to take a look at how I’ve set up the Boyce and Sons coffins?”

  Violet stopped, but just for a moment. “Truthfully, Harry, the last thing in the world I wish to see right now is the inside of a coffin.”

  She left Harry scratching his head in puzzlement.

  Roger awoke slowly in the still darkness. He attempted to adjust his eyes to the blackness, but they refused to cooperate. Why couldn’t he see anything? He blinked several times. It didn’t help. He’d never been in such a black space before, but his mind was as foggy as St. Paul’s churchyard on a December morning. He remembered the events of the past few days through a glass darkly, as his grandfather used to say. Everything was just gray, opaque shapes and unintelligible voices.

  He rolled to one side. Or attempted to roll to one side. His left shoulder met with an immovable object. What in the name of . . . ?