Violet went straight to Uriah Gedding’s office, where she found the man at his desk without his cat draped on him or demanding his attention. He looked up and said, “Ah, Mrs. Harper, how is the funeral business for you today?”
“Well, as I trust it is with you. Mr. Gedding, can you tell me where the Blount family crypt is?”
“Blount?” he asked. “I can’t possibly know personally where every corpse is buried in such a vast cemetery—”
“I understand that,” Violet said impatiently. “But you undoubtedly maintain records of when families purchase burial tracts. Can you please look in those records and let me know where the family plot of ground is? I’m sure such a family would have a fairly large area set aside.”
Gedding rose and went to a file cabinet, but before opening a drawer, he turned back to Violet. “Is there a problem regarding the family? Something that I can assist with?”
“No, I simply wish to visit Roger Blount’s grave. He is—was—second son to the Earl of Etchingham.”
He still didn’t open the file drawer. “As you know, Mrs. Harper, we are very sensitive to anything that might cause the public’s apprehension over burial here, so if there is some sort of trouble, I really must know about it.”
Would the man never pull on the oak handle and look for the information? Violet felt a faint pounding in her temples again. “Mr. Gedding, I have a funeral to conduct in the next few hours, and I simply wish to pay my respects to the young man, whom I remember seeing here at the station two weeks ago.”
“That’s all?” Gedding finally opened the drawer. “I’m sure I have the information somewhere here. Let me see . . .” He leafed through several papers in the middle of the drawer and pulled out the one he wanted. “Here we are. Section four, east of the double willow. Do you know where that is?”
Violet looked skyward. Had she really been that close? She left Gedding’s office and returned to the same location in the cemetery, this time moving to the right of the willow until she found the Blount family tomb. A full piece of Mrs. Wren’s dessert was in order after all of this activity.
The tomb was, unsurprisingly, an imposing Gothic masterpiece of sandstone and granite, resembling a mini-cathedral with its pointed arches and turrets, set in an elevated position in the cemetery. Violet wondered if the rise was natural or if the family had paid to have wagonloads of dirt brought in. She walked completely around the tomb, which was set on a large plot of pristinely maintained grass enclosed by a three-foot wall, like a green moat protecting the family members ensconced inside. It didn’t look as though it had been opened recently. She stepped out of the confines of the tomb and walked around the exterior of the wall, stopping periodically to gaze up at the magnificence that the Blount fortune had purchased.
At the rear of the exterior wall, Violet halted in her tracks, disbelieving what she saw. It was a grave with a newly installed headstone, inscribed:
ROGER BURTON BLOUNT
JUNE 4, 1844–AUGUST 16, 1869
“FOR WE MUST ALL APPEAR BEFORE THE
JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST;
THAT EVERY ONE MAY RECEIVE THE THINGS DONE
IN HIS BODY, ACCORDING TO THAT HE HATH
DONE, WHETHER IT BE GOOD OR BAD.”
—THE BOOK OF II CORINTHIANS, CHP 5, VERSE 10
Violet was dumbfounded. Not only was Blount buried all the way out here, instead of in the family tomb, but the wording on his headstone was puzzling. Did it suggest that Blount had done good deeds in his life . . . or bad? Most families selected comfort verses from the Psalms to adorn monuments for posterity. This one was enigmatic and highly unusual for a prominent family like the Blounts, who would want everything associated with them to appear respectable and proper.
Burying a family member outside the tomb and inscribing his stone so strangely was anything but respectable and proper. Lord Blount would have had to have committed the most heinous of crimes for the family to justify exiling his body, and there was no evidence that he had done anything other than drop dead after dinner one evening.
Was this why Miss Latham’s family hadn’t buried her next to him? Because he wasn’t actually in the tomb, or at least on the grounds of it? Had they decided that Miss Latham was better off in their own enclosure than relegated to an ignominious location next to Blount?
Violet was also puzzled that the heirs to an earldom would choose to purchase a plot at Brookwood at all instead of having their burials in a churchyard near their country estate. Unless they viewed Brookwood as fashionable. Maybe their estate was nearby in Surrey.
Violet leaned up against the Blount tomb’s outer wall, thinking through everything. She couldn’t come up with a single reason why Roger Blount should be buried this way. But she did know who would have the answer.
Perhaps it was time to pay a bereavement call on the Blount family.
Violet received her standard greeting from the Etchingham House butler after she twisted the front bell of the stately home whose windows were swathed in black crape: first, a critical glance at her working-class clothing, followed by a frown of disapproval that she was arriving at the front door and not the servants’ entrance, both concluded with a disdainful “Yes?”
Violet had experienced this so many times that she no longer took offense. She was also not cowed into entering by the basement servants’ door. It was her opinion that undertakers became part of a family for a short time and therefore deserved the privilege of entering by the front door.
Not that she was this family’s undertaker, but she wasn’t about to change her policy today.
To further put her in her place, the butler held Violet’s calling card like it was the tail of a dead mouse and told her to wait in the entrance hall without inviting her to be seated anywhere. She didn’t mind. With what she had to discuss, she might find herself quickly escorted out the door, anyway.
After a fifteen-minute wait—undoubtedly more of the butler’s doing—he returned and escorted her upstairs into a tiny study filled with collections. The walls were so full of deer heads she could barely see the blue wallpaper beneath. Tables groaned under the weight of glass-covered display cases full of stuffed grouse, pheasants, and ducks. A pair of shotguns hung above the door. The shelves of a wide bookcase contained not a single book but were instead crammed with pocket watches under domes on one shelf and silver spoons on another. A cluster of clocks occupied two entire shelves, all of them ticking, ringing, and bonging furiously, the cacophony not even remotely absorbed by the thick, somberly patterned carpet on the floor.
It even smelled like a museum in here, musty and pretentious. Violet didn’t consider herself to be claustrophobic, but this room made her long for the seaside air of Brighton, where her parents lived.
After several more minutes of waiting under the gaze of probably every avian species in existence, the door opened and a regal woman in mourning entered the room. Violet had expected to be seen by the earl or one of his sons, given the room she was seated in, but perhaps her placement was merely meant to make her uncomfortable.
“I am Lady Etchingham. I understand you are here about my son.” The woman was pale and tired-looking, but was not, in Violet’s estimation, grieving the way a mother suddenly losing a child should. She did not sit down, her silent signal that Violet’s visit was to be a short one.
“Yes, my lady. I am Violet Harper, an undertaker in Paddington.”
“So Chapman told me. I find it displeasing that you have entered my home, seeking trade when all of London knows our son was buried two weeks ago.” The countess crossed her arms across her black crape bodice and scowled. “Please state your business.”
Standing like that in the middle of the bird-choked room, the woman looked like a mongoose protecting her young from a snake.
“I was at Brookwood station when your son’s body arrived there, madam, and I wished to talk to you about it.”
Lady Etchingham pursed her lips, as if still considering whether Viole
t was there to steal from her or not. Finally, she relented, even if her invitation was ungracious. “Won’t you sit down?”
Violet found a spot on a leather chair that sat so high her feet did not touch the ground, even though she perched herself at the edge of the cushion.
“Forgive my intrusion, Lady Etchingham, but I have recently accompanied several bodies on the London Necropolis Railway down to Brookwood, and have noticed some oddities at the station on three separate occasions, the oddest being when your son arrived.”
Lady Etchingham sat straight in her chair, every bit the proud and stately countess. “What was so strange about my son?”
“He was met at the station by Miss Latham, did you know that?”
The countess’s lips were now a thin, nearly invisible line in her ashen face. “Miss Latham was his fiancée,” she said.
“So I read in the papers. Wasn’t she supposed to be buried next to your son? I was at Brookwood yesterday and noticed his unusual placement outside the family mausoleum. Would you be willing to tell me why he is located outside the walled area surrounding the tomb?”
Once again, Lady Etchingham did not directly answer Violet. “Why were you poking around the cemetery?”
Violet replied as vaguely as the countess had. “I am an undertaker. Burial places interest me.”
Lady Etchingham’s look was frosty. “And somehow your obsession with graves means I must answer ridiculous questions? This household has hardly entered its first period of mourning, and we are not taking visitors. I made an exception for you, Mrs. Harper, as I thought that as a funeral woman you might have been coming in some sort of comfort capacity. If you’re actually here under some pretense in order to secure gossip about my son, I’ll have you run out of London.”
That was certainly an interesting reaction. “My lady, I trade in funerals, not slander. Actually, I was wondering who the family undertaker is who prepared your son.”
“Of what importance is it? How could it possibly interest you?”
Violet chose her next words carefully. “When Miss Latham met your son’s body at the station, she seemed . . . distressed over his condition. I, too, was a bit shocked.”
“What do you mean?”
“In my estimation, he was not properly prepared.”
Lady Etchingham huffed. “As though the opinion of some stranger is of importance to us. It is obvious to me that you are seeking information so you can tattle to the newspapers some sort of salacious detail about my son’s death.”
“Why would you think I wish to tattle to others about Lord Blount?”
“Doesn’t everyone want to gossip about their betters? Especially when they find out—”
“Mother, are you in here?” came a deep male voice from outside the door. “I hear an undertaker came to see—Oh, pardon me for intruding.” A man of about thirty years of age entered, obviously Roger Blount’s older brother. He was stunningly handsome, with auburn hair in a longer, curling fashion that she’d never seen before on a man and sea-green eyes that invited a woman in for an unchaperoned swim. For a moment, Violet wondered why Margery Latham would have chosen Roger instead of this brother.
His lopsided grin suggested that he was well aware of the effect he had on women, and Violet immediately realized why Miss Latham might have shied away from him.
“Won’t you introduce us, Mother?” he asked as both women rose.
“Son, may I present to you Violet Harper? She is a London undertaker—”
“Ah, and here I thought she was some neighbor coming to pay respects.” He winked at her. Violet felt a flicker of revulsion. This was no way for a sibling to behave when his brother was not yet relegated to the realm of fond memories. This man seemed no more saddened than his mother.
“—who has some questions about Roger. Mrs. Harper, this is my son and the heir to the earldom, Jeffrey Blount, the Viscount Audley.”
Audley nodded at Violet. “I would be most pleased to entertain these questions you have, Mrs. Harper.”
Mother and son exchanged an unfathomable look; then Lady Etchingham swept out of the room without a backward glance at Violet.
He sat down casually, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing them at the ankle. Sam sometimes sat the same way, but on Audley the posture was somehow more arrogant—almost insolent—in its air of superiority.
With an elbow on the chair’s arm, displaying his black mourning band encircling a well-formed biceps, he rubbed his chin. “Please, Mrs. Harper, do sit down, and tell me what it is you need. I crave your pardon if Mother was rude to you at all; it’s just that she’s just lost a son, you understand.”
“As you have lost a brother,” Violet replied as she avoided the leather monstrosity and sat in a smaller armchair across from Audley. How did so much furniture fit in this room?
“Yes, yes, of course. The family is most devastated, but there are other matters that require attention, and so one must forge ahead, yes?”
“Other matters? Such as the death of your brother’s fiancée?”
At that, Audley turned serious. “What of Margery?”
He referred to her by first name, not entirely inappropriate, depending upon how close she was to the family already.
“I was just telling your mother that I was present for Lord Blount’s arrival at Brookwood, and was just as surprised by his condition as Miss Latham was. I’m sure you know she was there to meet his coffin.”
“What? Oh, of course. Yes, right. What surprised you?”
“That he didn’t seem well prepared by your undertaker. I was just asking Lady Etchingham who your family undertaker is.”
Audley shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t keep track of such things. An undertaker is not a man you summon that often, or at least you hope you don’t.”
Violet blinked. “You seriously don’t know who the family undertaker is?”
“It’s hardly in my sphere of concern. Mother knows, I’m sure.” Except Audley didn’t seem inclined to ring a bell and have a servant go after her. “Please, dear lady, surely you have other, more interesting questions? How about a glass of sherry?”
“No, thank you, I—”
For this, though, the viscount rose and pulled a knotted rope on the wall, resulting in a servant appearing almost instantly. “A bottle of sherry and two glasses, and be quick about it.”
While they waited, Violet continued to press him. “Were you fond of your brother?”
“As much as two brothers can be, when one is set to inherit a title and the other is not.”
Audley must have inherited the ability to sidestep questions from his mother.
“You knew his fiancée well?” she asked.
His eyes took on a distant cast, as if he were an old man reverting to the past. “Ah, Margery, a woman like no other. She would throw a barb of quick wit at you, but her blue eyes—deep like virgin pools of water—and her upturned mouth always softened the blow, so you never took offense. Instead, you couldn’t help but share her joy. Roger didn’t deserve her.” He spoke like a sentimental poet.
“Did your brother know you were in love with his fiancée?” Violet asked softly.
Audley shook off his reverie. “What? I wasn’t in love with Margery. I am a married man who—”
The servant reappeared with a tray. The viscount poured himself a generous glass and swallowed it in one gulp before offering the bottle to Violet, who shook her head.
“Suit yourself,” he said, pouring again and this time settling back in his chair with the full glass.
“As I was saying, I am a married man. Certainly I found Margery an attractive girl. What man with a beating pulse wouldn’t? Why would you ask such a thing? Wait, let me guess. You are a self-anointed detective and believe my brother was murdered, despite the fact that he dropped dead of a seizure, and you’d like to blame me for it.” His lips curved into a mocking smile.
“What makes you think anyone would consider your brother to h
ave been murdered?” Violet countered. Was Audley voicing the question she hadn’t dared ask herself?
“For what other reason would you be here, with your ridiculous questions about the family undertaker and how Roger and I got along. Besides”—he took a long pull from his drink—“you’re groping about in a dark room. Roger was—how shall I say it?—an insignificant member of the family. A black sheep, I believe is the euphemism.”
Violet disliked the man’s disrespectful tone toward his dead brother. “So you hated your brother?”
“Hated? No, you mistake me. I didn’t think enough of Roger for it to rise to the level of hatred. My parents, though . . .” He shrugged in a manner that suggested he was eager for Violet to ask him more. She indulged him.
“Your parents, then, were bitter toward Lord Blount for some reason?”
“Yes. You can imagine that a second son with no responsibilities tends to wander into feckless and sometimes harebrained activities. Gambling, married women, that sort of thing. Some even wade into politics, just to take whatever position their parents abhor. Roger was no different.”
“He made political waves?”
“No, he was harebrained. He fancied himself a scientist and began performing experiments that started with rocks and plants and eventually extended to animals. When he killed Mother’s favorite springer spaniel in his ill-considered attempt to determine whether dogs have souls—and how the hell would he have been able to know that by anesthetizing and cutting the poor beast open?—I thought she would go completely mad.
“Then Father’s valet, Digby, nearly died when Roger cajoled the man into an experiment to see if a man could build up tolerance to lily of the valley, which Mother grows in our gardens back in Surrey, if it was crushed up and steeped in tea. When Digby finally recovered and confessed what had happened, I thought Father would murder Roger himself. My brother nearly became a pariah in the family, only mending his name a little when he announced his intentions with Margery.”
The Mourning Bells Page 15