The Burying Ground

by Janet Kellough

  “As far as I can tell he didn’t use St. Paul’s to hide his money,” Lavinia said. “He chose other places instead. Some of them are double burials, some of them aren’t. But every grave contains an emigrant, or an indigent, or a person with no family. They’re all people nobody cared about. There would be no one to complain if the body was disturbed later, you see. No one to raise an alarm or demand an investigation.”

  No one but Morgan Spicer, Luke thought.

  “He must have reasoned that he could retrieve his money over time, and that the disturbances would be attributed to vandals or resurrection men. He didn’t anticipate that he would ever need it all at once.” She handed him the book. “See what you can make of it.”

  Luke opened the book. There were only a few pages with writing on them, but a few pages were enough. He was astounded at the amounts listed. He had thought that each grave might contain a small bag of notes and coins — pounds and shillings — none of it amounting to more than a few hundred. The book detailed thousands and thousands in British pounds sterling and American dollars. He could decipher the initials Van Hansel used to denote some of the cemeteries — SJ was obviously St. James-the-Lesser; M was probably Methodist, although there was no indication of which particular Methodist cemetery was being referenced. And yes, there was SB — Strangers’ Burying Ground — but he realized that he could understand the code only because he already knew what some of the letters referred to. Otherwise they were meaningless. He could only guess at the other initials that had been inked in beside each entry. He pointed to one that had an E beside it.

  “Does this mean ‘Emigrant’?” he asked.

  “I think it must. And I think V is for vagrant. W is for whore.”

  “And M?”

  “Molly, I expect. I just tried to think of every variety of outcast I could and guessed it from there.”

  Luke winced a little at the term outcast, but he couldn’t fault her reasoning.

  “The trouble is,” she went on, “even if you know what the letters stand for, there’s no indication of where to go from there. The book tells me where and how many and how much, but it doesn’t tell me how to find the individual graves. There’s some other part of his code that isn’t in the book.”

  “And you thought that Perry could help you figure out where the mollies are?”

  She shrugged. “I thought there might be some clue in Wood’s Bush. Or he might hear something at one of the taverns he goes to. He’s been singularly unsuccessful.”

  Luke was a loss. “How do you think I can help you with this, if Perry can’t? I’m not nearly as connected in the city as he is. I’ve been here only a short time.”

  “You live in Yorkville. Manufacture some excuse to get a look at the records at the Burying Ground. See if there’s a clue there.”

  Luke already knew there wasn’t, or his father would surely have mentioned it. He stopped himself from blurting this out just in time. There was no point in giving his hand away.

  “And don’t wait too long,” Lavinia said. “Phillip will be back for the rest of his money sooner rather than later. This is my best chance, Luke. Otherwise Cherub and I will never get away. I need you to find a way to get to the money.”

  “I see,” he said. “And if I don’t, you’ll tell Dr. Christie all about me, is that it?”

  “Well, of course I will,” she said in a low voice. “And I’ll do worse besides. I’ll take Perry down with you.”

  Luke decided to start walking back to Yorkville, in spite of the fact that there was a fine mizzle in the air and that he had already been gone far too long. He needed the time to think through the bizarre conversation with Lavinia Van Hansel. His mind was in turmoil with the implications of what she had told him and what she had asked him to do. Her message was clear: figure it out, or both he and Perry would be dragged into the dirt. Maybe even end up in prison. So you are in love, Lavinia had sneered. Luke had thrown away any chance at that, but maybe he could at least manage to keep poor, feckless Perry from drowning in the mud.

  And what would Luke himself do if he failed to deliver? He didn’t know. But even more to the point, what would Hands do if he found out what his wife was up to? And that the Lewises were within such easy reach? Hands doesn’t like it when he’s crossed. He’d hunt me down to the ends of the earth. Lavinia was threatening exposure. She couldn’t know that for Luke the stakes were far higher than that.

  He was nearly at the city limits when one particular of her conversation struck him. At no point had she mentioned Thaddeus. This thought was enough to make him halt suddenly, with the result that a young woman carrying a basket of vegetables nearly fell in an attempt to avoid the suddenly stationary object in her path. He apologized profusely, but she only glared at him and went on.

  He began walking again, slowly. Was it possible that Lavinia didn’t know about Thaddeus? He supposed it was. Thaddeus was off on his circuit most of the time. He usually stayed at Christie’s for only a day or two until he set off again. Even if Cherub had been sent to spy on Luke, her timing would have to be precise for her to realize that there was an extra occupant in the Christie house. And if Lavinia didn’t know, Hands couldn’t find out.

  He felt a little better with this realization. At least he could be fairly certain that his father was in no danger, but how strange it was that Morgan Spicer’s puzzle had led them straight into the very situation that Luke and Thaddeus wanted so badly to avoid. Luke was sure that solving the mystery at the Burying Ground was nothing more than an intellectual exercise for Thaddeus, a way to use his powers of observation and deductive reasoning as an antidote to the frustrating task of ministering to an unrewarding circuit. As a result Luke had not paid much attention to his efforts. In fact, he’d barely spoken to his father about it. The little he did know had come from casual mealtime conversations. Now he wondered if his father had uncovered anything that would prove useful to Lavinia. He needed to talk to Thaddeus.

  Feeling easier in his mind now that he had determined a course of action, Luke boarded an omnibus that took him the rest of the way to Yorkville. Just as he disembarked at the main intersection the skies opened and the rain began to fall heavily. He ran for the nearby Keeper’s Lodge, hoping he could wait out the downpour there.

  “Oh, your father’s in the kitchen,” Sally said when she answered his knock. “Come in out of the rain. Please, come back to the kitchen and have a seat.” She shooed a twin off one of the stools that had been pulled up to the table.

  “Oh good,” Thaddeus said, when he saw who it was. “We need to talk to you.”

  “And I to you.” Luke’s eyes slid over to Morgan, who was looking even more unkempt and weedy than ever. Of course, Thaddeus said he had been staying up at night keeping a watch over the cemetery. “I’m not sure where to start.”

  “First things first,” Sally said. “Would you care for a cup of tea?”

  “That would be grand, thanks, Mrs. Spicer. I hope my father hasn’t drunk up all your supply.”

  “He’s paid for it with his good company,” she returned.

  And then, while he idly watched Sally refill the kettle at the kitchen pump, he found himself asking, “Where do you get your water, by the way?”

  She looked puzzled. “A carter fills up the cistern every month or so. It comes with the house.”

  “Forgive my curiosity. I’m just trying to figure out what caused all the sickness we’ve had.” The mind is an astounding thing, he thought. In spite of everything else he had to think about, it was still grappling with the question of what caused the typhoid outbreak in Yorkville.

  “Our water must be fine,” Sally said. “None of us fell ill.”

  Luke tucked this piece of information away to puzzle over later and returned to marshalling his thoughts into something coherent to say to his father.

  Thaddeus jumped in before he could get the first word out. “I need to talk to you about Christie. I think he may have something to do with the g
raves being opened.”

  Sally frowned at him, indicating the children with a nod of her head.

  “Matthew, Mark, Ruth, Rebecca, I think you should go play in the parlour now,” Morgan said.

  One of the girls removed her thumb from her mouth. “But we want to play with Mr. Lewis,” she said.

  “Go on now,” Sally said. “Do what your father says. You can look at the big Bible with the pictures in it if you like.”

  The twins crowded down the hall. Looking at a picture book was evidently a great treat.

  “Remind me to bring some books down from Christie’s for them,” Thaddeus said to Luke. “He’s got more than he knows what to do with. I’m sure he won’t mind if I borrow a few.”

  “I’m sure it would be fine,” Luke said. He was grateful for the interruption in the conversation. He’d forgotten that he, too, had briefly, if not seriously, wondered if Christie was involved. But he wasn’t sure how to respond to his father’s statement.

  “I went through to the kitchen, to get something to eat,” Thaddeus went on as soon as he was sure the children were out of earshot. “There was a skinned marten carcass on the table. Mrs. Dunphy came in while I was there, but she didn’t seem to think there was anything out of the ordinary about it. She told me he boils things down, for the bones.”

  “Well, that would explain the fumes that stink up the house sometimes,” Luke said. “But I can’t imagine that he would go so far as to exhume bodies just to get bones.”

  “But what about the skeleton in the consulting room? Where did that come from?”

  “He’s had it for years. He got it in Edinburgh.”

  “Are skeletons things that are easy to come by there?” Morgan asked.

  “Well, no,” Luke replied. “He did boil it down himself, but he told me that he took it from the medical school. It had already been well-dissected and they were done with it.”

  “Well, there you go,” Thaddeus said. “He obviously has no qualms about working with old bodies.”

  “But if he boils down old bodies, what’s he doing with the bones?” Morgan asked.

  “Maybe he wires them together like the one in the office and sells them,” Thaddeus said. “He can’t be the only doctor who wants a skeleton. And he’s always complaining about money.”

  Luke hadn’t expected to defend Christie. The old doctor’s activities might be very strange in nature, but they had nothing to do with what was happening at the Strangers’ Burying Ground. But Luke could think of no way of convincing Thaddeus of Christie’s innocence without disclosing his source. Finally he said, “I really don’t think it was Christie. How would he have managed it? And he hates leaving the house.”

  “We’re working on a theory that Mrs. Dunphy is involved,” Morgan said.

  “She is rather a large woman,” Thaddeus pointed out. “She could easily be mistaken for a man, especially if she dressed as one. It wouldn’t be the first time we know of that someone has masqueraded as the opposite gender.”

  “But …” Luke said. He was desperate to turn this conversation away from the preposterous notion of Christie as grave robber and toward any other clues that Thaddeus had uncovered, but Spicer and his father had seized on their explanation with far too much enthusiasm to let it go easily. “I’m sure it’s not Christie,” Luke said again. “Have you found any other avenues to explore? You were off to see the coffin at St. James-the-Lesser, if I remember correctly.”

  “Ah yes, the double burial,” Thaddeus said. “Well, we know who’s responsible for that, don’t we? We went over to the cemetery at St. Paul’s as well, but we found nothing that would tie the gentleman in question to the disturbances that took place here.”

  Luke’s eyes widened at the casual, albeit anonymous mention of Hands in front of Spicer. Thaddeus noticed his look.

  “Oh, it’s all right. I filled Morgan in on the general thrust of the story. And as it turns out, there’s little evidence that the man is involved anyway.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Luke said. “I don’t understand who else could be bothered to dig up the double graves.”

  “But that doesn’t explain what’s been happening here,” Morgan said. “My bodies were buried by the county and there’s only one in each grave. Unless …” he stopped for a moment to think and then he said, “unless the coffins came from the same place and that’s the connection.”

  “Who has the contract to supply coffins to York County?”

  “Several of the cabinetmakers. It depends on where the bodies are coming from. Sometimes it’s Williams, sometimes it’s Striker and Plews. Other times it’s Fraser and Hess.”

  “We followed the wagon to a cabinetmaker’s that night,” Luke said to Thaddeus. “Wasn’t the name on the gate Fraser and Hess?”

  “It was somebody and somebody,” Thaddeus said, his eyes narrowing as he tried to recall the sign.

  “So if all of the coffins in question were supplied by Fraser and Hess, wouldn’t that point to …”

  “Our nefarious friend,” Thaddeus said quickly. Luke understood that he had protected the Spicers by not supplying the identities that went with the story, but he was getting dizzy from trying to express his thoughts without using names or giving anything away. He hoped that his question about coffin supply would result in another look at the cemetery ledger. Armed with the knowledge of who was responsible, he might find some clue as to which graves had been targeted.

  His hopes were dashed when Morgan said, “There’s no mention in the records of where the bodies came from, much less the coffins. I’m sure there’s a record of contracts, but that’s the sort of thing that’s handled by the Board of Trustees.”

  “Is there any way you could ask them?”

  “I’m not sure it would help us much,” Thaddeus said. “Even if we tie the bodies here to the double burial at James-the-Lesser, there’s still nothing to tell us why they’re now being dug up.”

  “Didn’t the man at the African church — Mr. Finch — say that Isaiah Marshall was a carpenter?” Morgan said. “I wonder if he worked for Fraser and Hess.”

  “Yes, he did say that. He also said that Marshall kept to himself. And there was something else about him that Finch didn’t want to tell us.”

  “Maybe … our friend … was hiding something besides bodies. And maybe Marshall helped him hide it,” Luke said. “And whatever it was, the gentleman in question needs to get it back.”

  Thaddeus thought about this for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I don’t see it. The beauty of putting extra bodies in the coffins is that no one would ever be likely to unearth them. He’d never be found out.”

  “But that would be true for anything else he wanted to hide, wouldn’t it?” Morgan said. “And it would explain why he had no interest in the bodies themselves.”

  “But not why he suddenly decided to open all these graves. Even if there was something else hidden in the coffins, something that he now wants to retrieve, it would be incredibly foolish to dig so many up over such a short period of time. One grave now and then is easily attributable to resurrectionists. Three graves in a handful of weeks is bound to attract someone’s attention.”

  “But only yours and mine,” Morgan pointed out. “And yours only because I told you about it. The constable I spoke to wasn’t concerned at all. And I wrote a letter to the Board of Trustees, but I haven’t heard a thing from any of them. It hasn’t attracted much attention at all.”

  “That’s true,” Thaddeus admitted. “You may have something there. So where does that leave us?”

  “It’s either a criminal conspiracy, or Dr. Christie has lost his mind,” Morgan said.

  “I still think Christie makes the most sense. It’s the simplest explanation. And after all, he offered to write to his colleague at the hospital, but we haven’t heard a word. I’m wondering now if he even sent the letter.”

  It was time to put paid to the Christie theory, Luke decided. That was the only way he would ever b
e able to get his father to focus on Hands.

  “I don’t agree with you,” Luke said. “I don’t think it’s Christie at all. And I’ll prove it.”

  Thaddeus looked at him with surprise. “How will you do that?”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  Chapter 19

  There was no point in taking anything but a direct approach. Luke knew that it would be impossible for him to get into the back of the house undetected. Now that his presence was no longer required to see to patients, Christie again spent most of his day either in the dining room or somewhere in the kitchen regions. There was also Mrs. Dunphy to dodge. Other than the times she dumped plates of food on the table, Luke seldom saw her, and he assumed that she spent the bulk of her time in the kitchen — this was confirmed on several occasions when he heard her voice in admonishment to something Christie had shouted at her. Only occasionally would he run across her in another part of the house, duster or broom in hand. There was little likelihood of there being a time when Christie was absent while Mrs. Dunphy was cleaning.

  But armed with the knowledge that, whatever Christie was doing, it had nothing to do with the events at the Burying Ground, Luke saw no reason why he shouldn’t just walk into the kitchen and see for himself. All he needed was an excuse to seek Christie out. Thaddeus wanted books for the Spicer twins. Luke would make an appropriate selection or two from Christie’s shelves and ask to borrow them.

  The next morning he dawdled at his breakfast and then made an excuse to go back upstairs where he waited until he heard Christie and Thaddeus get up from the table. Coming back downstairs again he passed Mrs. Dunphy, who had her broom and duster in hand. Just as well to have her out of the way, Luke thought, although his father said that she seemed unconcerned about his discovery of the marten on the kitchen table.