Death at the Abbey (28 page)

Read Death at the Abbey Online

Authors: Christine Trent

BOOK: Death at the Abbey
13.12Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Annie MacPherson was a Scottish evangelical Christian who pioneered a new form of child migration in the late 1860s. MacPherson was appalled by the virtual slavery that children in the matchbox industry lived in, and resolved to do something about it. She bought a workshop and turned it into a “Home of Industry” where poor children could be fed and educated. Later, MacPherson decided that the real solution for these children was migration to a country of opportunity, so she started an emigration fund. Children were trained in London homes and then shipped to Canada, thus beginning an extensive campaign to find homes and careers for fourteen thousand of Britain's needy children.
As one might imagine, there was plenty of criticism for MacPherson's project. Not only were there rumors of ill treatment of the children by their new employers and of profiteering by those involved in the training and transport of children (although MacPherson herself was always held in the highest regard), but also it was held that grouping together “good” children from the workhouses with “street” children, who were mostly considered thieves, caused nothing but trouble.
Child emigration was suspended for economic reasons during the Great Depression of the 1930s, but not completely stopped until the 1970s. During a 1998 parliamentary inquiry in Britain, the full extent of the home children scheme was exposed. In 2010, Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an official apology for the resettlement program.
I have written before on workhouses in Victorian London. Orphanages were different but similarly bleak. They were intended specifically for foundling children, whereas workhouses contained adults, children, and sometimes entire families who did not want to be separated. However, orphanage children were frequently farmed out to mills and other workplaces during the day, embracing the workhouse idea that all residents must be productive. Both workhouses and orphanages could be dreary, forbidding institutions. Coram's Foundling Hospital was founded in 1741 and generally ceased operations in the 1950s, as British law trended toward more family-oriented solutions to the problem of orphans. Edmund Henderson, the commissioner of police, was indeed instrumental in starting the Metropolitan Police Orphanage, which opened in October 1870 and closed in 1937. By all accounts, it was a humanely run institution, and Henderson was known for his kindness and charity, as well as his foresight in developing Scotland Yard. Babbage's Home for Foundlings is my own invention.
You might think that I completely invented Colonel Mortimer's playful manner with his glass eyes. I actually took this idea from Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, husband of Princess Helena, one of Queen Victoria's daughters. The prince lost his left eye in December 1891 while on a holiday shooting party at Osborne. Friends later recalled that he kept a large collection of replacements, which he brought out to show—and shock—favored guests. He was particularly attached to a bloodshot version, which he wore when he felt poorly. Unfortunately, this event happened more than twenty years too late for me to actually write the prince into the story, so I attributed his antics to a fictional character.
You might also assume that tattoos are a twentieth-century affectation, particularly in the West, but that is not so. In 1862, the twenty-year-old Prince of Wales received his first tattoo while on a trip to Jerusalem, just a few months after the British nation had plunged into mourning for his father, Prince Albert. His tattoo of five crosses forming a Crusader's Jerusalem cross started a fad for tattoos among the aristocracy. Although tattooing was largely the practice of seamen, with most British ports having a tattoo artist in residence, there were certainly others who had designs inked into their skin. Many leading figures of society criticized the fashion, associating it with the rough life of sailors, port towns, and prostitutes, not the well-mannered life of the ordinary citizen.
Ravens have a special place in English history. Legend holds that the White Tower, the old keep within the Tower of London, will crumble and a great disaster befall England if the six resident ravens ever leave the fortress. It was Charles II, the legend continues, who first insisted on having ravens protect his kingdom, as England was so hard-fought and -won for him. It is a lovely story, but more than likely a Victorian-era invention. However, the requisite six ravens (plus a spare) are continuously kept on the grounds of the Tower of London today, and are accorded great respect, as evidenced by the special ravens' graveyard kept at the Tower. I thought it only appropriate that Violet Harper have an opportunity to work with one of these magnificent birds, even if she isn't quite happy with the honor.
S
ELECTED
B
IBLIOGRAPHY
Archard, Charles J.
The Portland Peerage Romance.
London: Greening & Co., Ltd., 1907.
 
Beeton, Isabella.
Beeton's Book of Household Management
(Facsimile Edition). London: Jonathan Cape Limited, 1968.
 
Bentley, Nicolas.
The Victorian Scene: 1837–1901
. London: George Weidenfield and Nicolson Limited, 1968.
 
 
I
NTERNET
R
EFERENCE
 
 
Victorian Web:
A deep compendium of quotes and facts from the Victorian age.
Turn the page for a special excerpt of Christine Trent's
T
HE
M
OURNING
B
ELLS
One of Victorian London's most respected undertakers, Violet Harper has the duty of accompanying coffins on the London Necropolis Railway for respectful funerals and burials in Surrey. But on one fateful trip, the mournful silence of the train is shattered by the shrill ringing of a coffin bell—a device that prevents a person from being buried alive.
Inside the noisome coffin Violet finds a man panicked and wide-eyed with fear chattering incoherently. When a second coffin bell is rung on another trip Violet grows suspicious. She voices her qualms to Inspector Hurst of Scotland Yard, only to receive a puzzling reply that, after all, it is not a crime to rise from the dead.
But Violet's instincts are whispering that all is not well on the London Necropolis Railway's tracks. Is this all merely the result of clumsy undertaking, or is there something more sinister afoot? Determined to get to the heart of the matter, Violet uncovers a treacherous plot and villains who will stop at nothing to keep a lid on her search for the truth . . .
 
A Kensington trade paperback on sale now!
1
August 2, 1869
 
U
ntil today, undertaker Violet Harper would have sworn that it was impossible for corpses to rise out of their coffins.
Now, she wasn't so sure.
The sun was just breaking over the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral when Violet entered Waterloo station to stand on a dedicated funeral train platform with her undertaking partner, Harry Blundell. They were both watching as six coffins, including one under their own care, were loaded into the long compartments on the railroad hearse van, which contained twelve total slots. Each compartment in the van had a door in the side of it, past which a coffin was pushed so that it lay perpendicular to the train's length. The coffins, stacked in individual compartments, were three high and four wide in the wood carriage. These special carriages were made especially for the London Necropolis Railway and painted chocolate brown, edged in an orange-red vermilion, to match the carriages of the London and South Western Railway, upon whose tracks the LNR ran.
Coffins were placed on large biers with hand cranks by the coffin porters, who wore simple dark-blue uniforms and matching hats with large brims and flat crowns. With one man on the ground cranking the bier up, the second coffin porter rode on the bier and pushed the coffin into its compartment, and was then cranked to the ground for the next coffin.
As the last coffin was pushed into its compartment on the ground level—a little too carelessly, in Violet's opinion—she noticed that it bore a maker's plate from Boyce and Sons Cabinetmakers. It reminded her that she wanted to set up dealings with Putnam Boyce again, now that she was permanently back in her London undertaking business.
But the coffin was hung up on something, and as one of the coffin porters pulled it back out to reposition it, she noticed something disturbing. She held up a hand to stop them.
“What's the matter, Mrs. Harper?” Harry asked in irritation. Harry's wife was expecting, and although she wasn't due for at least a month, he was always impatient to return to the immediate area surrounding their shop.
She waved him off as she moved closer to inspect the coffin. It was one of those confounded “safety” coffins, intended to give loved ones comfort with the idea that if the deceased were not truly dead, he could send an alarm aboveground and be rescued even after burial.
Violet heartily despised these so-called safety contraptions, which took the form of bells, trumpets, and even ladders in vertical coffins, by which someone who awoke to find himself mistakenly buried could literally climb up a ladder and out of his grave.
No matter how often Violet railed against these foolish mechanisms, firmly telling people that only the return of the Lord Christ would cause people to waken in their graves, people still wanted them as a measure of comfort. And as always, unscrupulous undertakers were happy to sell them.
This one had a bell apparatus, with a bell attached to a string following along a folding brass pole that would be unfolded after the coffin went into the ground so that the bell sat above the freshly shoveled dirt.
Violet's insides churned. If she opened the coffin, she would undoubtedly find a string tied to the deceased's fingers and toes, so that with the merest of tugs, he could set the bell jangling.
More frustrating was that this coffin had been made by Putnam Boyce, a respected cabinetmaker whom Violet had used in the past. Most cabinetmakers made coffins during their slow times, for there was always demand for them in a mortal population. Mr. Boyce's coffins were well crafted, with tightly fitted lids and smooth surfaces. Why, then, was he peddling safety coffins?
Perhaps she would have to rethink her plan to purchase coffins from him.
“Thank you,” she said simply to the two coffin porters, who were still looking at her in bewilderment as to why she was halting their work. They pushed the coffin off the bier and into the compartment. With the last coffin now placed inside the hearse van, the train was ready for its journey from Waterloo station to Brookwood station in Woking, Surrey.
Violet climbed into the passenger carriage with Harry. They would accompany Mr. Harland's body to the cemetery, making final arrangements at the chapel until his family arrived later in the day for the funeral.
The LNR had been in operation since 1854, but Violet had only recently become involved with it. Although she had sold Morgan Undertaking to Harry Blundell and his partner, Will Swift, four years ago, Will had recently asked her to buy him back out so that he could join his wife's floral business. During his time with Morgan Undertaking, though, Will had built up a considerable business with wealthy patrons who wanted to start family crypts far outside the stench and overcrowding of London.
Not content with some of London's garden cemeteries, such as Highgate and Kensal Green, they were flocking to Brookwood, which its owners bragged had enough spaces that London need never build another cemetery again. Clearly the gentlemen had no experience with what happened in a cholera or typhoid outbreak, where deaths in the thousands could occur in the space of a few weeks.
However, coffins at the 2,200-acre Brookwood didn't have to be buried in the crowded manner that they did at these other cemeteries, and certainly didn't need to be stacked up to six high as they did inside the ancient and overflowing church graveyards. The owners' idea of creating a cemetery that could accommodate millions of bodies when fully developed—thus alleviating the need to ever build another London cemetery again—was commendable.
The funeral train pulled out of Waterloo with a steamy snort and a jarring lurch as Violet settled into her third-class compartment with Harry. This special train was only comprised of an engine, the hearse vans, and six passenger carriages. The passenger carriages were divided into two sections, conformist and nonconformist, with first-, second-, and third-class carriages within each religious section.
Conformist carriages were for those passengers who belonged to the Church of England, also called the Anglican church. The nonconformist carriages typically conveyed Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Unitarians, and Quakers, but might be those of other sects, as well. Special care was taken to ensure that people from different social backgrounds and religious leanings didn't have to be distressed by having to mix with others of a different class.
The train ran a single, hour-long route from Waterloo to Woking, southwest of London, so it certainly had no beds or Pullman dining carriages, but it did have comfortable enough seats for the hour's ride, even in third class. The first-class seats included plush cushions, chandeliers, filigreed ornamentation, glass windows instead of bare openings, and doting attendants, but such fripperies were never Violet's concern when there were bodies to be looked after.
The only real inconvenience was having to travel at dawn with the bodies and wait at the cemetery for the train to return to London to pick up mourners at the more civilized hour of eleven thirty in the morning. If the number of mourners for the day justified it, later trains followed.
There were always details to attend to at Brookwood, but it was still earlier in the morning than Violet cared to rise.
The train conductor stepped into their carriage, nodded at Violet, Harry, and the other two undertakers in the car, and passed on through to the next carriage via the open platform between them. The undertakers were always recognized by their severe black dress and tall hats with black crape wrapped around the base of the crown and trailing down their backs. However, the conductor had to dutifully check for any stowaways who might attempt to board the train for a free ride.
Now that they were in relative privacy, seated across from each other, Harry asked, “Do you feel well, Mrs. Harper?”
Violet had had violent experiences with trains in the past, having been involved in a wreck and also having witnessed a train hitting a murderer who had fallen from a platform. She had largely overcome her resulting fear of the hulking, steam-breathing beasts, but always felt an unwelcome twinge as the whistle shrilly blew and the engine started its laborious forward motion.
“Yes, I'm fine,” she assured him, even as she swallowed the unpleasant taste in her mouth.
Harry nodded knowingly and then proceeded to change the subject. “What did you notice on the platform?”
“A bit of false hope by loved ones preyed upon by an unscrupulous undertaker. A bell safety coffin.”
“Really? How fascinating. I was reading in the latest issue of
Funeral Service Journal
that an American named Vester has developed a new safety coffin that adds a tube connected to a viewing glass inside the coffin.” He seemed eager to share both his knowledge and the evidence of his willingness to research the latest in undertaking. “That way, the face of the corpse can be viewed from above. An interesting solution to the inadvertent bell-ringing problem.”
Harry referred to the fact that the swelling or position shifting that naturally occurred when the body began to decay would frequently cause the body to ring the bell and send people into a frenzy of grave digging. A viewing tube would enable a mourner or cemetery worker to look down and determine whether the coffin's occupant was still alive.
Not that it mattered, for coffins held very little air, perhaps two hours' worth at most, and so unearthing a coffin in time to rescue someone buried alive was nearly impossible.
Violet was displeased with her own grumpiness but unable to condone even a discussion of the infernal contraptions. She turned dismissively to the window to avoid any further discussion of safety coffins and the deceptive reassurance they gave grieving families. Instead, she contemplated the packed and soot-covered hovels of south London. That dreary cityscape soon opened up to impressive country estates, the rich red-brown coats of Sussex cattle, and the spires of crumbling country churches.
 
Brookwood station's main platform was deserted except for a few LNR workers, as to be expected so early on this August morning. There were two separate substations serving the cemetery: The North station was located in the center of the nonconformist section, whereas the South station was situated on the east edge of the Anglican cemetery.
The train chugged gently past the main platform and on to the North station, where Violet and Harry remained seated as the nonconformist coffins were unloaded from their hearse van. They then continued on to the South station, where Mr. Harland and the other remaining bodies were unloaded.
Undertakers sometimes neglected to accompany bodies to Brookwood, a failure Violet found shameful and a dereliction of their moral duties. The deceased certainly deserved the respect of an attendant, but many undertakers did not want to rise before the cock's crow to take a third-class ride an hour outside of London.
The nonconformist third-class carriage always carried whatever undertakers were accompanying the train to Surrey so that they were immediately on hand for the coffin unloading. Also, since they rode for free, the LNR wasn't about to provide them with luxury accommodation.
Violet suppressed a yawn. Perhaps the lazy undertakers did have a point about these arduous trips.
Soon, she and Harry stood on the South station platform amid a scattering of coffins, waiting for the LNR's horse-drawn biers to arrive from the company's stables. It was unusual for these conveyances to not be at the ready.
Harry looked particularly irritated. Violet touched his arm to comfort him. “All will be well, you'll see. We cannot return until after the funeral anyway, remember?”
He dropped his scowl. “You're right, Mrs. Harper. I'm just anxious over what the next month will bring. . . .”
“I understand.” Violet moved to sit on a backless bench, and Harry followed. The coffin porters were just cranking down the last box from the third level of the hearse van.
Violet watched their work in fascination, almost missing a man in a tall beaver-skin hat poking about one of the coffins as if looking for something. Violet would have thought he was another undertaker except he hadn't been on the train, and his jacket was a light camel color. Perhaps he was a local fellow.
She paid him no more mind, for her attentions were diverted by a distinct sound that at first she unconsciously attributed to a servant's bell. As it penetrated further into her senses, though, the hair stood up on the back of her neck.
Ting. Ting. Ting-a-ling.
Impossible!
Wide-eyed and with only a horrified glance at Harry, who looked as dumbstruck as she was, Violet jumped up from the bench and rushed to the sound.
It was coming from Mr. Boyce's coffin. The bell, dangling down from the tip of the folded brass tubing, danced insistently now. Dropping her reticule to the ground, she knelt down and tugged ineffectively on the coffin lid. It was nailed down in several spots.
Harry was now at her side, and with the burly strength that enabled the man to single-handedly lift empty coffins and move them with effortless ease about the shop, he ripped the lid off as though he were merely opening a tin of biscuits. The two undertakers gasped in unison at the sight of the body inside. Instead of a lifeless corpse there was a man of about thirty years in a rumpled but high-quality frock coat. His coppery beard, mustache, and hair were flecked with early gray and closely cropped, but his bloodshot, pale-blue eyes were wild with panic as he struggled to sit up.
“Havfindabang,” the man slurred, weaving where he sat as he squinted in what was now bright morning light, like a mole popping out from its burrow.
Violet stared at him, speechless. She had been undertaking for more than fifteen years and had never, ever come across a body resurrecting itself. Dead bodies sometimes moved on their own, or made noises through the expulsion of gases, but this—this—was inconceivable. This was actually a body sitting up after having been dead for presumably at least a day. She shivered involuntarily, overcome by the implication of what it meant. Surely it was not possible that she herself had ever buried someone who was not truly, irrevocably dead....

Other books

Adrienne deWolfe by Texas Lover
Las palabras y las cosas by Michel Foucault
The Lake House by Kate Morton
The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie
The Hollow City by Dan Wells
Brave Enemies by Robert Morgan
Wise Children by Angela Carter
For Richer, for Richest by Gina Robinson
The Testament by Elie Wiesel