“That’s fine, Benny. One more question: Do you remember an open coffin on the platform at the same time that the crying woman was here?”
Confusion reigned in the boy’s eyes. “There’s lots of coffins here each day, wot?”
“This was a very fine coffin, made of sycamore maple.”
Benny shrugged. “They all look the same ta me, m’um.”
“That’s all right then. You may go.” The boy clearly didn’t know anything. He scampered off, kissing the coin.
Violet had another idea. She glanced at the platform clock. It was fifteen minutes to the hour. She went inside the station and sought out the stationmaster, Uriah Gedding, in his office. This time, he was crouched over his cat with his back to Violet, cooing at the animal as it attacked a dish of unidentifiable, bloodied meat, gulping it down unchewed as if it were the head of a pride taking the first feed.
Violet shuddered. The animal brought back a terrifying memory of long ago, when she had been accidentally trapped in a lion enclosure at Regent’s Park zoo. She brushed away the thought. She wasn’t about to be cowed into a corner by a silly housecat.
“Mr. Gedding?” she said.
The stationmaster turned and, recognition dawning in his eyes, gave the cat a final pat—earning him a throaty growl as a reward—and rose to greet Violet. “Attending to another funeral today, Mrs. Harper? I presume you’ve encountered no more inconveniently living bodies?”
Violet was in no mood to be mocked. “I don’t have much time, sir. I was wondering if there are any coffins in the pauper waiting room?” Cellars beneath the station had been converted into reception rooms for coffins not immediately claimed, and were also periodically used for pauper funeral services prior to burial in the poor section of the cemetery.
“You’re welcome to check for yourself,” Gedding said, taking a burning oil lamp from a hook on the wall. He escorted her back to the platform and to a door at the rear of one side of the station. The wood door was painted a dismal, drab sepia, and did not suggest a kind welcome at all. Gedding handed her the lamp and unlocked the door.
Violet preceded Gedding down a brick staircase, which was damp and mossy, into the cellars. How did porters haul coffins down here without slipping and sending both themselves and their cargo crashing down to the bottom? Her heels sent tapping echoes into the basement area, and she realized that hers were the only heels she heard. She stopped and turned to say something to Gedding, but he was at the top of the stairs, shutting the door behind him with a firm thud, aided by the wind whipping around the building.
Oh. She had thought he was going to inspect the pauper rooms with her. Perhaps he needed to hand-feed his cat some cream.
Like in the upstairs reception rooms, there was no gas or electricity down here, but it stank of sweat and protracted grief. A dim ray of sunlight filtered in through a narrow window at one end of the cavernous space that was actually aboveground. Otherwise, the oil lamp she lifted was her only source of light.
A few scattered oak benches surrounded a minister’s lectern in the middle of the space. Filling the long wall behind the lectern were wood niches intended to temporarily store coffins. The cavities were all empty except for one used as lamp and oil storage.
She swung the light around the room again and this time saw that there was a coffin lying unceremoniously on the floor at one end of the room, opposite from the window. If she was not mistaken, the lid was askew. She took a deep breath and tap-tap-tapped her way over to it. She held the lamp over it.
The coffin was empty.
Why would there be an unoccupied coffin carelessly placed in the pauper waiting rooms? There had to have been an occupant at some point—vacant coffins weren’t placed on the LNR, or at least they wouldn’t be for any reason she could think of. She examined the coffin more closely. It was made of inexpensive white poplar and was definitely not constructed of the same quality as Roger’s. She scanned the box further and could find no maker’s mark. The interior had no mattress, just a thin muslin lining unevenly nailed in along the sides. It was an altogether stark resting place, but probably more than a poor family could afford.
Violet concluded that this had been a rental coffin, and after the shrouded body had been committed to the ground, the hearse driver had dumped it here to await its next trip to London to pick up another occupant. She heartily disapproved of such careless work, but then, she wasn’t in charge of the LNR, nor of Brookwood Cemetery.
She put the lantern on the ground and stood back to think, tapping a forefinger against her lips. Who was this Roger fellow? By the looks of his final home and his fiancée’s clothing, he had obviously been wealthy. Why was his fiancée waiting for him at the train station instead of accompanying the entire mourning party later? Violet wished she could have been present when they all arrived so she could have inquired as to what undertaker they’d used. Instead, she was as—
Bang! Something crashed into the narrow window edging the ceiling, nearly sending Violet jumping into the empty coffin on her own.
With her heart fluttering, she turned to the window. She could see nothing this far away, except a shadow of something blocking the window’s light. What was it? The thought crept into her mind that someone was trying to frighten her, but who? That thought was replaced by the fear that the object was a human body.
Violet grabbed the oil lamp from the ground and hurried back up the steps to the door. She turned the brass knob, but it spun uselessly in her hand. She rapped on the wood and shouted, “Hello? Hello?” but her voice only echoed behind her downstairs among empty benches and coffin niches.
Had she been intentionally locked into the dank cellar?
She turned the handle once more with the same fruitless result. Then she decided to put more effort into it. With the lamp in her right hand and the knob in her left, she concentrated all of her weight into her left shoulder and threw herself against the door. It gave way immediately and she stumbled back out to the exterior of the building.
How odd. She shut the door and tried to open it again. The knob still didn’t work and her tugs were ineffective. She abandoned the door to go around to the back of the building and inspect the window. Violet laughed in relief and exhaled her fright at what she saw there. A limb had blown off a large beech tree behind the building, whose base was so intertwined with overlapping trunks that it looked like tangled locks of hair. It was no wonder one had snapped off and been carried forward against the window.
How silly Violet now felt, realizing she had been fearful of floating debris and a door that had been stuck shut by the wind. Honestly, Violet Harper, soon you’ll be jumping at shadows, she thought. For a moment there, she’d thought she’d have to include Uriah Gedding in her list of dubious characters.
Ignoring her hat’s tails as they fluttered in the wind like demented birds, she returned to the station platform. The clock showed that it was ten minutes past two. The train would be here shortly. Where was Mr. Crugg? She looked inside both reception rooms but saw no trace of him.
Perhaps she should pay Mr. Gedding another visit. He was still in his office, signing some papers, when Violet entered. The cat was curled up on one corner of the desk, apparently so satisfied and sleepy from its earlier meal that it barely lifted its head to acknowledge her presence.
“Did you find what you wanted, Mrs. Harper?” Mr. Gedding asked, cordially laying down his pen to give her his attention.
“Not exactly. Do you know Julian Crugg, another undertaker who frequents the LNR?”
Gedding spread his hands over the documents. “There are many undertakers who pass through here on a daily basis, Mrs. Harper. I cannot be expected to know each by name.”
“He is tall, a bit older than me, and is frequently very . . . agitated.”
“Does he have a shop in Mayfair?” Gedding reached over and absentmindedly scratched the cat on the head. The animal raised its head and presented its neck for further attention, and Gedding complied.
“Yes.”
“Certainly I know who he is. He was here this morning, comforting a woman in the first-class reception room.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“Yes, madam, he returned on the early-afternoon train that went back for mourners.”
Had Crugg forgotten about her in all of the commotion with the fiancée? What of his own funerals? How had he handled them if he’d returned home so soon? Violet shook her head. It was difficult not to be skeptical of everyone around her when everyone behaved so suspiciously.
Samuel Harper was not pleased with what he was hearing. He and Cyril Hayes, who worked for London East Bank, were strolling among the graves inside the churchyard of St. Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, just outside the wall of London. Hayes had insisted on this meeting place, for utmost privacy over what he had to say.
“There is a recently passed law that could spell doom for the banking industry,” Hayes had said, raking through his beard with his fingers. The banker had been the most open and welcoming of all of Sam’s contacts, not that it had thus far resulted in a loan.
“That doesn’t sound very good for either you or me,” Sam said, hoping Hayes would get to the point quickly. He didn’t enjoy treading over the graves of people who had been buried three centuries ago.
“It isn’t. Parliament has passed something so heinous that I cannot imagine what they were thinking. The Debtors Act consolidates all of the country’s bankruptcy laws. In doing so, they have not only abolished debtors’ prisons; it makes dodging a debt a mere misdemeanor.”
“No debtors’ prison at all?” Sam asked.
“Only in the cases where money is owed to the Crown, or the debtor actually has the money but refuses to pay the debt.”
Sam didn’t understand. “That has at least some benefit, doesn’t it?”
“Not in the way they did it. They have also decided to eliminate the arrest on mesne process.”
Sam had been a lawyer back in the United States and understood this well. “So you have lost your ability to have a man put in custody prior to a judge’s order, thus running the risk that he will flee altogether.”
“Precisely. We have little recourse against those who would dodge their debts.”
“But won’t it make banks more cautious in giving out cred—Ah.” Now Sam fully comprehended why he wasn’t getting a loan. He was an incidental victim of debt dodgers ruining the credit industry.
He would need at least two dishes of ice cream tonight to fully sort this out in his mind and decide what to do next.
That evening, Violet and Sam sat inside his favorite ice cream shop, located just outside Regent’s Park. It was run by Carlo Gatti, a Swiss émigré, who, according to rumor, had initially started out with a stall outside Charing Cross station, but his popularity grew, and he soon contracted with the Regent’s Canal Company to keep a brick icehouse in the canal and now imported his ice from Norway.
Samuel Harper was probably responsible for half of Gatti’s business, and it would be a wonder if Norway didn’t completely run out of ice. Violet shook her head with a smile as she watched her husband devour ice cream molded into the shape of a rooster, replete with rose petals added to represent the bird’s comb. She gently set aside her own half-eaten ice cream, which was wrapped inside an almond wafer.
Susanna and Benjamin had gone shopping earlier in the day, and their note said they wouldn’t return until after the dinner hour, so Violet had dismissed Mrs. Wren’s services for the evening, and she and Sam had indulged themselves by substituting supper with ice cream. Violet enjoyed the cold treat, but not nearly so much as Sam did.
While he ate, she told him of what had happened at Brookwood that day, from her nearly harmonious trip with Julian Crugg, to the discovery of the unknown Roger, and ending with her misadventure in the train station’s cellar.
Sam licked the last drops from his spoon, set it carefully in his empty dish, and directed his full attention on her. “Before, you were encountering living bodies in coffins and were suspicious of them. Now you say you’ve discovered a dead body in a coffin, and this, too, is suspicious? Sweetheart, aren’t bodies in coffins supposed to be dead? That was what made you so upset about the live ones.”
Violet shook her head in frustration at the seeming contradiction of her speculation. “I know. It’s just the condition in which I found this Roger fellow, whoever he may be. He was so . . . fresh. It was very peculiar.”
“I still don’t see that you have anything to take to Inspector Hurst.” Sam flagged down the shop’s hostess.
Violet sighed. “No, I suppose I don’t.”
The hostess approached. “Yes, sir, can I get you something?”
“I would like to try another, this time something with pistachio ice cream.”
As the hostess went off to fulfill Sam’s order, Violet looked at him in disbelief. “Another one? Aren’t you full?”
“I hate to think there could be untasted flavors going to waste while we sit here.”
The hostess returned shortly with Sam’s second dish. This time his ice cream had been molded into the shape of a cup of chocolate. Brown-tinted sugar crystals decorated the top to enhance the effect.
Violet smiled indulgently at her husband. “I’ll have to ask Mary to let out your trousers soon with all of these sweets you’re eating.” A ridiculous notion, of course, since Sam hadn’t added an ounce of weight anywhere since the day she met him. Violet was the one who needed alterations.
“That reminds me,” Sam said. He pulled a small book from his jacket, flipped through it until he reached the page he wanted, then slid it across the table to Violet.
“What is this?” she asked.
“I found it at Hatchards. It’s a reprint of Mrs. Mary Eales’s recipes. Look at that one.” He tapped the left page. “I thought maybe you could try your hand at it.”
The recipe was titled “To Make Ice Cream” and contained instructions such as breaking ice up into various-sized pieces, layering salt and ice over cream, and covering everything up with straw to freeze together before adding in fruits for flavoring.
Violet looked up at her husband in disbelief. They’d been married four years and he still didn’t realize that her skills as a chatelaine were substandard at best? That although she could easily whip up an embalming fluid brew that would preserve a body into the next century, the simplest pot of coffee was likely to be bitter and half burnt?
“Samuel Harper, you think I would be competent at making this? Besides, there is only a small storage cellar underneath the shop. I’m not sure it’s a good place to keep ice.”
Sam sighed and held up his hands in defeat. “It was worth a try.”
Suddenly Violet felt ashamed of herself. “I’ll give it to Mrs. Wren. I’m sure she’ll make a treat to rival Mr. Gatti’s concoctions.”
“I keep forgetting that my wife can only concentrate on burying bodies, not ice. At least you haven’t gotten into any trouble with your living bodies that are supposed to be dead. Or is that your dead bodies that are supposed to be alive? I confess I’m getting confused.”
Violet bit her lip. She should tell Sam about James Vernon and his erratic behavior that had resulted in her being trapped in a coffin. But if she did that, Sam’s protective nature would burst forth like a badger fighting off a pack of dogs.
No, ultimately no harm had been done. It was best to keep it to herself. Mr. Vernon likely needed the confinement of an asylum, not a prison. Which reminded Violet of Mr. Ambrose, the doctor she’d met when the first body had risen from its coffin. Was it fortuitous—or extremely convenient—that he had been on hand that day? Or was Violet now viewing everyone within ten miles of Brookwood as a suspect?
Nevertheless, it might be of interest to interview the doctor to see what he had to say.
Violet felt even guiltier about concealing information from Sam when arranging to have coffee with her friend Mary Cooke with the express intent of telling her e
verything, including how she ended up briefly trapped in a coffin.
The two met at an elegant coffeehouse in Mayfair, across from Hyde Park, where the two friends had once discovered a dead body together while boating in the park’s Serpentine lake. They made no mention of that shocking day, instead musing on Violet’s present situation.
Mary was older than Violet by twenty years. Despite the fact that Mary was old enough to be Violet’s mother, the two shared a love of funereal things, Mary with her mourning dressmaking and Violet with her undertaking. They had also both been married twice. Mary had lost her beloved first husband, Matthew Overfelt, to a malignant brain growth. She’d made an unfortunate second marriage with George Cooke, a ne’er-do-well who eventually ran off to Switzerland and became entangled with another woman there, who unceremoniously coshed him in the head when she discovered that he had a wife back in London.
Mary had been in mourning now for a couple of months. The dark circles were gone from under her eyes, but she looked as fragile as a china cup, ready to crack at the slightest pressure. She wore a gown of the deepest ebony silk bombazine, accompanied by the requisite jet necklace, earrings, and bracelet. Her gray hair, normally worn in an impossibly large cloud on her head, was completely concealed under a bonnet trimmed in more black silk. Mary had sewn her own mourning wear, which Violet had no doubt was a difficult thing to do. It was one thing to assist and console the grieving; it was a different thing entirely to be the one in mourning.
They sat at a table next to the window. On the other side of the glass, hardy souls braved the traffic noise and manure smells while Violet and Mary made themselves comfortable inside.
Violet described the events of the past two weeks, with two bodies arising from coffins and a third wept over hysterically by a fiancée, in addition to her visits with other undertakers.
“Do you know who all of the people in the coffins were?” Mary asked.
“Not a single one of them. I only know that the dead man’s name was Roger.”
The Mourning Bells Page 9