Stolen Remains (3 page)

Windsor Castle

1869

Q
ueen Victoria sat and stared over the balding head of her latest prime minister, William Gladstone, wondering when the parade of parliamentary leaders through the government would cease. What had it been? Ten prime ministers during her thirty-two-year reign? And now Gladstone, her eleventh, had taken office last December.

Quite insufferable, he was. Seemed unable to tame or even trim what coarse hair remained on the sides of his head and over his elephantine ears. Breathed fire most of the time, going on and on about his various plans, most of them centered on pacifying Ireland. It almost made her wish for the days of Lord Palmerston’s appalling and immoral leadership. Really, the elderly Palmerston’s dalliances—with much younger, married women—had been the height of tastelessness and nearly drove Victoria to apoplexy. Yet, that seemed preferable to Gladstone’s rants.

Things were so much simpler when dearest Albert was still alive. He would have deftly handled undesirable men like Gladstone. Albert also knew how to groom himself. How unfair it was of the Lord to take her Albert away and leave Victoria to fend for herself.

Gladstone’s pacing and droning about this scheme and that proposal reminded her of a swarm of angry bees. Ah, how Albert had loved his beehives, proudly showing them off to her and instructing the beekeepers to ensure the honey gathered was always served at the breakfast table.

She really should check on the state of those beehives. She mustn’t let the outdoors staff think they could forget about them. Whatever was important to darling Albert was still important to everyone in the kingdom.

“Ma’am?”

The droning had stopped, and now Gladstone was looking at her, expecting some sort of answer.

“Yes, I’m sure whatever you think is best is—”

A footman, flushed and breathless, entered without knocking. “Yes, what is it?” Victoria said. Even servants were behaving in the most boorish manner these days.

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but the commissioner of police is here from London. Major Cowell spoke with him, then said I was to bring this note to you straightaway.”

If the master of the household had met with the commissioner, something must be very wrong indeed. She hoped a member of the staff wasn’t involved in anything too scandalous. Weren’t Bertie’s peccadilloes enough for one monarch to bear?

She cast aside thoughts of her amorous, wayward son and her bellicose prime minister to open the sealed envelope the footman handed to her on a silver plate engraved with her
VR
monogram. The note was signed by Lieutenant Colonel Edmund Henderson, who had been commissioner of police for just a couple of months, even less time than Gladstone had been prime minister.

So much change all of the time. No one understood how difficult it all was.

Victoria scanned the letter rapidly once, then again more slowly to be sure she had correctly absorbed its contents.

This was impossible. Utterly preposterous.

She realized that Mr. Gladstone was looking at her expectantly. He needed to know this as well, didn’t he? She dreaded his response, but what was a queen’s lot in life but to endure?

“It would appear that Lord Raybourn is dead.”

“What? Dead, you say? It cannot be! When? Where?” Beads of sweat accumulated on Gladstone’s considerably wrinkled forehead.

This was a delicate, political nightmare for them both, but Victoria refused to perspire so heavily and obviously over it.

“As near as the commissioner can tell, it happened yesterday late at Lord Raybourn’s Mayfair townhome. The coroner believes he committed suicide, but Henderson has his best men interviewing the family quietly to be sure there was no foul play.”

“Good man.” Gladstone pulled a stained, crumpled handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. Victoria swallowed her disgust.

“Yes, we are grateful for his discretion. The question is what we are to do about it.”

Gladstone offered several ideas, one more outlandish than the next. Have the viscount’s body whisked to Windsor, indeed! Imagine the public’s response to
that
.

“We must not panic, sir. We must think.” Victoria once again resumed her stare past the prime minister’s moist, messy pate.

Was it possible to keep this news out of the papers? Of course not.
The Times
was probably running an extra edition at this very moment. How could she and Gladstone learn more without raising too much curiosity on the part of the public as to why she had a personal interest in this?

What would Albert do in this situation?

He would involve someone who wouldn’t arouse anyone else’s curiosity.

Victoria tapped Henderson’s note in her hand. Who would that be? Someone who would do the queen’s bidding without being too . . . inquisitive.

Gladstone once again interrupted the blissful peace of her own mind. “Your Majesty, if I may, I believe our first concern is to prevent the family from burying the body.”

True. Their family undertaker could not be permitted to—

A thousand memories of Albert’s funeral flashed through her mind, not all of them entirely unpleasant. Of particular note was the undertaker’s assistant, who had been so helpful, and so very distressed at the loss of Britain’s cherished prince. Dear Mrs. Morgan.

Except that it was Mrs. Harper now, wasn’t it? She’d married some American man and moved off to the U.S. wilderness after their civil war ended, hadn’t she? Had she gone away permanently or just to visit? Victoria would assign someone to find out.

“Mr. Gladstone, we believe we have an idea. There is an undertaker with whom we are well acquainted. She took care of the prince consort. Very reliable, very discreet.”

“You are proposing that an undertaker investigate this situation?”

“Yes, she has pleased us in the past, and operates with utmost discretion.”

Gladstone rubbed his forefinger across the skin beneath his nostrils, as though he’d inhaled a disagreeable odor and was trying to surreptitiously rub it away. It was his telltale sign that he disagreed with her, but was buying time while thinking up a reasonable objection.

“Ma’am, the woman is not only a mere undertaker but, well, a
woman
. I know how you feel about women performing trades. Why do you endorse this one?”

Victoria leaned back in her chair and fixed Gladstone with a steely gaze, the one she usually reserved for her children when they displeased her by, say, forgetting their father’s birthday. Or, in Bertie’s case, by merely entering a room smoking.

For all of his jittery, sweaty behavior, though, Gladstone was not cowed. In fact, he smiled as though he’d just remembered a secret.

“You’re right, of course, Your Majesty. In fact, may I leave it all in your capable hands? Obviously, I shall muck it up if it’s left to me. You will be much better at guiding the undertaker’s movements properly to ensure she gets to the bottom of things.”

That was much more respectful. “Yes, we will deal with the undertaker directly, Mr. Gladstone. I’m sure she will uncover what happened with Lord Raybourn straightaway, and you’ll see my idea proved to be the best one.”

An idea that must surely work, else some of the queen’s best-laid plans would burst into flame before disintegrating into swirling, throat-choking ashes.

She could only pray Bertie was not somehow involved.

After he escaped the queen’s presence, Gladstone motioned to a servant. “I need to send a message to Scotland Yard,” he said.

The servant nodded and went to fetch writing materials.

Let Her Majesty dillydally about with her undertaker here in London. It would keep her occupied while he worked with Henderson to discover what had really happened. If he solved it, perhaps then the queen might admire him more.

Why was Lord Raybourn dead? Why had he returned early from Egypt, against very specific orders?

What real mischief was being conducted in the Suez?

Preston Village, outside Brighton, Sussex

“H
ow was it, Mother?” Violet asked, taking away the bowl of warm broth.

“Very good, dear. I feel much more settled today.” Mrs. Sinclair arranged her coverlet for the tenth time and retied the bow on her nightgown once again. “If only I didn’t have to lie here, rotting like a bag of potatoes before they are thrown to the pigs.”

Violet laughed. “Now I know you are well on the way to good health if you are making jokes again.”

“But I’m not joking. I’m not sure how much longer I can endure this inactivity. What I wouldn’t give for a stroll on the pier.”

“The doctor says it won’t be much longer. He just wants to make sure you’re strong enough for walks on Brighton Pier.”

Eliza pointed to the open window, where a breeze gently sailed in, causing the curtains to flutter in welcome. “It is a perfectly lovely day outside and the smart set have gone to London for the Season, leaving the pier alone and just aching for me to visit.”

“Yes, Mother, the pier is in visible pain without you to tread its boards.”

Eliza crossed her arms. “You’re mocking me.”

Violet sighed. The dead were so much easier to manage than the living. “I suppose I am. My apologies. How about if I promise to fetch Dr. Humphries tomorrow and together we’ll try to convince him that you’re well enough to be up and about. If he agrees, we’ll go for a walk on the pier in the afternoon.”

“I suppose that would be fine. Not that Dr. Humphries knows anything. I think he enjoys keeping me trapped here like an animal.”

“You mean like a bag of rotting potatoes.”

“That, too.”

Violet carried the empty soup bowl back to her parents’ small kitchen. She and her husband, Samuel, had been staying here for a couple of months during her mother’s convalescence. When they’d first received word in America that Eliza was gravely ill, Violet had left her undertaking business in the hands of her daughter, Susanna, while Sam turned over his law practice to his assistant, and the two of them had skittered from Colorado to the coast via stagecoach and train, then across the Atlantic in a steamer ship. Their travel had been dangerous and exhausting, but they’d reached Eliza’s bedside at the very moment it seemed her mother would not make it another day.

The sight of her daughter must have revived her, for Eliza had been making progress ever since. Her undiagnosed intestinal ailment had left the woman weak and thin, but she was finally eating and drinking.

For the past week, she’d been grumpy at her situation, an attitude most unlike her mother’s usual state of contentment.

Violet washed the bowl and spoon and put them away in the dish cupboard, then looked around for what she might prepare for dinner, always her most challenging task of the day. An array of vegetables lay on the worktable. Perhaps she should cut them up and—and—do something with them.

The Sinclairs’ day help usually prepared a meal and left it on the table, but Maisie was away visiting family this week. Leaving the household management in Violet’s hands was tantamount to disaster. Although she knew exactly what to do with a body overcome by rigor mortis, a pork loin left her baffled.

In fact, anything having to do with domestic affairs she either handled badly or not at all. She remembered having gone through five maids in only two years when she’d lived in London, mostly due to her own incompetence at supervising them.

Fortunately, Sam wasn’t troubled by her lack of domestic expertise, and, in Colorado, she and Susanna had gotten by with periodic day help.

Broth. Perhaps she should use a portion of Mother’s leftover broth and stir some of the vegetables into it.

Violet took out a chopping knife and went to work attacking the onions, leeks, and parsnips, heaping them in a big pile in the center of the table.

“Viiiiolet,” came the plaintive cry from her mother’s bedroom. Perhaps if Violet ignored it, her mother might settle down to sleep. She resumed her chopping.

“Tea, dear, I need some tea. Extra sugar, if you please.”

Violet put down the knife. Tea was simpler than putting together a meal, anyway. She rose and lifted the kettle that rested on the cast-iron range’s burner. Still plenty of water in it. She lit the burner and assembled a tray with teapot, cup, saucer, spoon, sugar, and milk.

She wondered when Sam and her father would return. The two men had escaped early in the morning, ostensibly to visit the Grand Hotel along the waterfront in Brighton. They wanted to see the hotel’s vertical omnibus, a hydraulically powered lift. Could she will them to come home and take a turn at her mother’s bedside?

Not for the first time, she thought about her undertaking business back in the Colorado Territory. Susanna was competent, and more empathetic with the dead and grieving than anyone she’d ever known, but at twenty years old she was just so
young
. Violet had started in undertaking at the same age, but wasn’t running a shop by herself. How was the town taking to Susanna as the proprietress?

Sam had asked his assistant to keep an eye on Susanna. Perhaps he was helping her in the shop, too. Such a nice young man, and so clearly taken with Susanna. Maybe there was even a wedding in their future.

As well as Eliza was doing now, they should be able to go back to Colorado soon enough to determine if there were nuptials in the air.

The kettle was whistling. She poured steaming water into the teapot and carried the tray to her mother. Just as she set the tray down at the foot of the bed, she heard an insistent rapping at the front door.

“Just a moment, Mother.” She went to the front door to find an urchin in a telegraph office uniform outside, holding a piece of paper.

“A telegram for you, ma’am.”

Curious. The boy tipped his hat at Violet before departing.

She tore it open and read the message, transcribed from a ciphered code in a slanted handwriting by a telegraph operator.

Queen Victoria, Regina Imperatrix, wanted to see her. This afternoon? And another royal funeral? Whose could it be? Surely nothing had happened to the Prince of Wales? Violet had to give the queen credit for figuring out where she was. She hadn’t seen the queen in four years, since Violet had left England for the United States in 1865.

Prior to that, she had been summoned to the queen’s presence periodically after serving as the assistant undertaker for Prince Albert’s funeral. Victoria enjoyed reliving her husband’s funeral, even though, as monarch, she had not been permitted to attend the service. Instead, she’d called on Violet to provide all of the details over and over in excruciating detail.

Surely the queen hadn’t discovered Violet had returned to England, and wanted to discuss Albert’s funeral again?

Male laughter outside signaled that her own husband and her father had returned from their day of amusement. She didn’t look forward to telling Sam that their return to America would have to wait a while longer. She didn’t particularly mind, though, handing her mother back into her father’s care.