Stolen Remains (14 page)

“Eh? Yes, yes, quite right, Your Majesty. What is it, Mrs. Harper?”

Violet explained that Mrs. Peet had been found hanging in the kitchen, and that she didn’t believe the housekeeper had done it to herself, any more than Lord Raybourn had. Another strange look passed between Victoria and Gladstone.

“What was the family’s reaction to the housekeeper’s death?” Gladstone asked.

“They are shocked, of course. Mrs. Peet was a distant, impoverished relative who had been running the household for many years. I also think it possible that she was having an affair with Lord Raybourn.”

The queen put a hand to her chest. “Are you quite certain? That would have been scandalous on Lord Raybourn’s part.”

“I’m not entirely sure, of course, but I do believe it to be true.”

“What has happened to our kingdom? We expect our trusted men to be beyond reproach. At least Lord Raybourn was widowed, but carrying on with his servant is so unseemly.”

Violet doubted the queen was surrounded by many men who were beyond reproach.

“Yes, Your Majesty. If I may inquire, is there any impediment to proceeding with Mrs. Peet’s funeral?”

“I shouldn’t think so. What did the detectives say?”

“They believe her death to be a suicide, a response to her utter devastation over her employer’s death. If you have no reason for Mrs. Peet to remain aboveground, I’d like to bury her, if it pleases Your Majesty. I’ve not embalmed her, so it is imperative that she be buried quickly.”

“Yes, by all means, see the woman to her rest. Of course, she is a suicide, so she can’t be buried in sacred ground. Were you planning to put her in a pauper’s section somewhere?”

“The family has agreed to inter her in their churchyard in Sussex.”

Victoria shook her head. “We do not think it wise to allow the family members out of London for a funeral.”

Violet blinked.
How am I supposed to explain this to the family?

“But, Your Majesty . . .”

“Surely it is not that important that a housekeeper be buried on the family estate, is it? Tell them our gratitude in doing this small thing will be deep and unending.”

“And what of Lord Raybourn . . . ?”

The queen shook her head again. “We are not yet satisfied with his situation. He is sufficiently preserved, is he not?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Mr. Gladstone, perhaps it might be prudent for you to pay your respects to the family.”

“I am yours to command, Your Majesty, but might it not be better to wait and see what our other sources have to say on the matter?”

“Perhaps you’re right.” The queen sighed. “It is so hard to know the right course sometimes. When our dear prince was with us, he always knew what to do. He would have been bold and confident in this situation, I am sure. Why must we go on alone? It is so unfair. We are singularly blessed, though, that everyone surrounding us continues in expressing their admiration and grief for the prince consort.”

Gladstone shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Yes, we all dwell on the prince’s many remarkable qualities on a daily basis. Sometimes I am so overcome as to not realize that my valet hasn’t remembered my armband.”

“Perhaps you need a new valet. Our staff knows to lay out clothes for our dear Albert each day as though he had never gone. It is their homage to his memory. Mr. Gladstone, please leave us for a few moments. We wish to speak with Mrs. Harper alone.”

Violet made a mental note to never enter the queen’s presence again without wearing some piece of mourning wear, and prepared to be berated over it. What actually happened was even worse.

“We have arranged for you to visit our son at Marlborough House, Mrs. Harper. He is in receipt of a private message from us, indicating that you will be arriving this afternoon to question his activities while in Egypt.”

“What activities, madam?”

“We wish to know what sort of devious involvements he may have had. How close to Lord Raybourn was he? Did Bertie share any secrets with Lord Raybourn or vice versa? Our son knew that Lord Raybourn was there at my behest, so it is possible that something untoward happened between them.”

“Your Majesty, surely you aren’t suggesting that the prince is responsible for—”

“No, no.” The queen sighed again heavily. “Yet we are sure he was up to his typical failings. We need to be sure those failings didn’t impact Lord Raybourn in any way.”

With the undertaker gone, Victoria rang a bell to have Gladstone brought back to her presence.

“As I was saying before the undertaker’s arrival, Your Majesty, it would appear that we have some blackmail on our hands.”

“What? Did you say ‘blackmail’? Who could possibly have reason to blackmail the Crown?”

“It isn’t blackmail of the Crown itself, but of the Crown’s interest. In order to meet the completion deadline later this year, corvée labor was quietly reinstituted last year. They were to do hand digging alongside all of the dredging equipment, in case any of the machinery broke. The project cannot withstand even a single day of idleness.

“Commissioner Henderson says that Monsieur de Lesseps has received several letters intimating that some person unknown will notify all of the British presses of the corvée labor being used, unless he is paid quite a substantial sum.”

“Why don’t they arrest the man?”

“He is keeping himself quite hidden. They believe he has genuine, firsthand knowledge of the corvée trade. See here.”

Victoria took the message Gladstone held out to her. “Hmm, yes, we see. How very troublesome.”

“Monsieur de Lesseps didn’t want to bother Your Majesty with it directly, in case it could be handled discreetly without disturbing you.”

“Yet here we are with the matter in our lap.”

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.

“The question is whether we should be personally involved or not.”

“Begging Your Majesty’s pardon, I have already requested that Scotland Yard contend with it. You can let the commissioner know that it is of utmost concern to you that the blackmailer be caught, but that you will let justice work on its own timetable. I will add a message to confirm that Parliament, too, will leave the work of finding this cretin to Scotland Yard.”

“Pray it is soon. If word gets out that Britain is condoning the use of slaves when we just abolished the practice not forty years ago, well . . .” Victoria shuddered. “Maybe Monsieur de Lesseps and Isma’il Pasha have some sense about them and are providing the workers due compensation. We must not give more benefit to an anonymous blackmailer than to de Lesseps and the Egyptian viceroy without more facts.”

“We could weather the storm, Your Majesty, but I agree—the sooner this is resolved without public knowledge, the better.”

Victoria dismissed her prime minister and sat alone in the silence with her own thoughts. Was it a mere coincidence that her son was in Egypt just as this blackmailing scheme started? What might it have to do with Lord Raybourn’s death?

What could she have Mrs. Harper discover, without the undertaker realizing she was doing it?

V
iolet returned to St. James’s Palace, where she had a letter from her father awaiting her, which she read while sitting down to veal collops, boiled tomatoes, and spinach dressed with cream. What joy it was to have food simply appear like this. The letter expressed shock at learning from Sam that Lord Raybourn had been killed, and shared gossipy tidbits about the Fairmonts.

Violet smiled as she folded the letter. How she would miss her parents when she returned to Colorado, although it would be good to get back to Susanna. To think that a bedraggled little orphan she’d found sleeping in a coffin eight years ago had become her apprentice, daughter, friend, and was now on the verge of transforming into a married woman.

Which reminded Violet that a critical question Sam should ask Benjamin Tompkins was whether he would object to Susanna continuing to work with Violet in her undertaking shop once they were wed. Violet could never agree to losing Susanna from the shop, unless Susanna actually wanted to leave.

A servant scratched at her door and entered at Violet’s beckoning. As an experienced and dutiful palace worker, the man tried to keep his face bland as he notified Violet that the prince would now see her, but as she followed his gaze around the room, she realized why he seemed to be hiding a look of dyspepsia.

Violet’s housekeeping skills were already on full display. Clothing lay scattered about as though intended for the dustbin, and her personal papers, books, and newspapers covered every available surface.

Perhaps he would think better of Violet if he knew that at least her cavernous undertaking bag, sitting proudly near her bed, was thoroughly organized. Every embalming fluid bottle, tinted skin cream jar, syringe, and cutting tool was ensconced where it belonged.

Or perhaps he wouldn’t think better of her.

At least the poor fellow was unaware of the bottles of drained blood tucked deep inside the armoire. He might faint dead away.

“I am ready to escort you when you are ready, Mrs. Harper,” he said stoically, before stepping outside to wait.

Violet had no idea what to wear to visit the Prince of Wales, who was a reputed connoisseur of feminine beauty and aesthetics. Perhaps she would command more respect if she wore her customary undertaker’s garb. Yet, to do so might be offensive to the high-spirited prince.

In the end, she chose a dusky blue skirt and jacket edged in pearl gray. She hoped it conveyed confidence, and not the utter terror she felt.

Marlborough House, the Prince of Wales’s residence in London, was directly across from St. James’s Palace, but it may as well have been ten miles away, as long as the walk seemed to Violet.

The St. James’s Palace servant handed her over to a Marlborough House servant, who took the letter of introduction the queen had written and escorted her inside.

Originally built for Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough, the residence had been renovated over the past decade to suit the entertaining style of the Prince of Wales and his wife, having gained another full story and reputedly a new range of rooms on the building’s north side.

The home wasn’t nearly as imposing as Windsor, yet Violet had never been more intimidated. She drew a deep breath for courage as she stood in the massive, gray-veined marble foyer, and she could smell the distant notes of sawn wood, glues, and the peculiar odor of freshly unrolled Turkish carpets.

One of those carpets lined a wide staircase of matching marble tile leading up five steps to some sort of gilded, over-tapestried salon beyond it.

Another liveried servant came to escort her through a series of tall paneled doors, finally arriving in a drawing room wallpapered, carpeted, and draperied in apple green. Seated on a cream-colored damask settee was Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales. For all of his reputation as a great lover of women, he was not particularly handsome, with the same protruding eyes he shared with his mother.

On a nearby chair covered with pale stripes sat a beautiful, reserved woman of maybe twenty-five years. This must be the Princess of Wales, Alexandra of Denmark. The princess smiled so warmly in greeting at seeing Violet that all of the undertaker’s butterflies fluttered away.

The prince, however, scowled as Violet rose from her curtsy. “My mother sent you?” he asked without preamble.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Were you responsible for this?” He removed a folded paper from underneath a lamp on the table next to him.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness, I don’t know what that is.”

His expression stated quite plainly that he didn’t believe her.

“This is my mother’s wish—excuse me, command—that I not only entertain you, but that I make haste to Raybourn House as quickly as possible to pay my respects over that wretched man’s death. Why would the queen berate me over someone so inconsequential?”

“He is a peer. . . .”

“Yes, yes, I realize that. But she doesn’t send me roving about to visit every deceased peer’s home as though I might bring them back to life.”

“Sir, I had nothing to do with Her Majesty’s desire for you to visit Raybourn House. I am merely here upon her wishes.”

“To interrogate me?”

“No, simply to ask you a few questions.” Good Lord, in her anxiety, Violet had forgotten to develop a list of questions. The butterflies angrily beat their way back into her stomach.

“Who are you, exactly, Mrs. Harper? Why does my mother regard you so highly that she sends you in to question me?”

Violet folded her hands in front of her, hoping it looked meek and submissive.

“I am an undertaker, Your Highness, and I—”

“An undertaker?” The prince nearly exploded out of his seat. As it was, his eyes were bulging even more than before. “The queen not only distrusts me so much that she has me secretly interrogated, but she also despises me enough that she sends in one of these black crows that pick corpses clean of money, valuables, and dignity?”

Princess Alexandra moved to the settee and placed a hand over her husband’s, speaking in a soothing voice. “Bertie, my love, please calm down before
you
need Mrs. Harper’s services. I don’t think she wishes you ill. She looks harmless enough, doesn’t she? In fact, she seems quite kind. Why don’t we see what she has to tell us?”

Albert grunted but relented. “I suppose you’re right, Alix. How much harm can a woman do? Go on, Mrs. Harper, tell me more about why my mother feels it necessary to persecute me.”

“Your Highness, I am merely an undertaker, but I was present for your esteemed father’s funeral. I believe the queen trusts me for discretion because of my work with the prince consort, and she merely seeks a quiet resolution to what may have happened to Lord Raybourn.”

The prince leaned forward, staring intently at Violet. The stale smell of tobacco floated forward with him.

“Wait, I do believe I remember you. You yelled at all of the mourners as we gathered up for the march down to Windsor Chapel.” He sat back again, a smile flitting across his face. “You grabbed my walking stick and pounded it on the floor for attention.”

Violet reddened. “I can be bold where propriety and the outcome of a funeral are concerned, sir.”

“A dark day my father’s funeral was. Nothing has been the same since. Mother has practically abdicated the throne, except for special little projects that interest her. She blames me for his death still, you know. Says he would never have been sick and died if he hadn’t visited me at Cambridge in the rain a few weeks before he died. Doctors say it’s rubbish; my father was ill long before that. But Mother insists it was his rush to see me and chastise me for what she called infantile behavior that did him in.”

“I am sorry for your loss, Your Highness.”

The princess reached over for her husband’s hand again. “Mrs. Harper doesn’t blame you for it, though.”

“No, I suppose she cannot. His death was a tidy bit of business for her. It’s the journalists, priests, and undertakers who profit the most from tragedy, isn’t it? You had the great fortune not to be present for my father’s funeral, Alix. If you think the queen is absorbed in her grief now, you should have seen her eight years ago.”

“But we were married less than two years later, remember? I do recall how very . . . somber . . . things were.” The princess smiled again at Violet. “Mrs. Harper, please forgive my husband’s ill temper. There has been so much sadness in the family and the prince now wants only to immerse himself in pleasure so that he isn’t reminded of his sorrows.”

The prince’s eyes were full of affection for his wife. “You understand me well, Alix. Unlike my mother.”

“But we must be patient, right, my love? The queen will eventually come around. In the meantime, it is an easy thing to please her by entertaining Mrs. Harper’s questions.”

The princess was a born diplomat. Violet’s admiration for the woman was deepening by the second.

“I suppose you’re right.” Albert leaned back on the settee and sighed heavily. “All right, undertaker, what do you wish to know about the cursed Lord Raybourn?”

Indeed what
did
Violet wish to know? What would Inspector Hurst ask first?

“So Lord Raybourn was a member of your entourage to Egypt?”

“Yes. My mother added him for her own purposes. Surely you already know that.”

“Right. Of course. Did you spend much time with the viscount?”

“As little as possible. He was a stuffed old prig, really. Rarely joined in on fun and entertainments. Raybourn said he was there to negotiate the opening ceremonies of the Suez Canal with the Egyptian viceroy, but those negotiations took an extraordinarily long time. Frankly, Mrs. Harper, I think he had some other scheme. Perhaps something illegal or unsavory. I’m guessing my mother would be disgusted by him if she knew the truth. Alix, a smoke, please.”

Alexandra rose and crossed the room to a table beneath a large pastoral painting of Sarah Churchill wearing a flowing red dress. As graceful as Marlborough House’s original owner looked in the painting, the princess held herself with much more poise.

Violet watched as Alix pulled several selections from an inlaid mahogany tobacco box. The princess then went to the ornately carved fireplace mantel between two windows of the room, and lifted an odd glass cylinder with a metal top from the mantel. It was as Alix was returning to the prince that Violet observed what she’d originally thought was an old pianoforte in a corner, except that it wasn’t at the right height. In fact, it almost looked, well, like a coffin on a table.

“Your Highness, is that a musical instrument you’ve picked up on your travels?”

“What? Oh, not quite, Mrs. Harper, although it is certainly a souvenir from my time in Egypt. Would you like to see?”

She followed him to the oblong box, which contained . . . it couldn’t be.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Is this a human form carved of wood?”

The prince laughed for the first time. “No, it is actually a human. They are the remains of some ancient Egyptian, mummified thousands of years ago, but without his linen wrappings, which we removed.”

Violet’s butterfly wings were beating rapidly again. “You removed his wrappings, sir?”

“Yes, it was great fun. Several members of my traveling party uncovered gold trinkets and statues from the wrappings, and I won the body itself. Makes a striking piece for this drawing room, doesn’t it?”

Violet had to sit down, lest she be ill. “Yes, Your Highness. Will he be buried?”

“No. Once I tire of him, I’ll send him off to the British Museum. I considered giving him to my mother, but I don’t think she’d appreciate him.” The prince lifted the glass cylinder to his cigar, and flicked a metal lever on top of the jar. Almost instantly, a jet flame hurtled from a tiny nozzle next to the lever. Violet jumped and reflexively let out a squeal.

“Sorry, dear lady. This is my Döbereiner’s lamp. Amazing what a little zinc metal and sulfuric acid can combine to do. Some say it isn’t safe because it’s a hydrogen flame, but it is certainly memorable.”

Alexandra returned the lamp to the mantel and went back to the settee, but Violet wasn’t finished with the mummy, despite her wildly beating heart. “Your Highness, doesn’t this man or woman deserve a decent Christian burial?”

Albert drew deeply on his cigar and blew upward. “He perished thousands of years before Christianity, but I imagine he already had a decent burial, full of fanfare and ritualistic nonsense. For all we know, he spent thousands of years in a pyramid, surrounded by servants and all the comforts of life. Quite decent, wouldn’t you say?”

“Except that now he is quite exposed and in a most undignified position.”

The prince blew another cloud of smoke up toward the plastered ceiling. “Mrs. Harper, are you here to ask questions or to critique my antiquities collection?”