Stolen Remains (27 page)

T
oby walked casually through Mayfair, whistling, down toward Hyde Park Corner. From there he hired a cab heading east. What was Violet to do now?

She attempted to follow the hackney on foot, since traffic prevented it from traveling too quickly, but she soon realized that she had no idea how far he intended to travel. So she picked up her own hack at a nearby taxi stand, and, feeling rather foolish, asked the driver to follow Toby’s. “The one with the broken lamp on it.”

“Husband been visiting his mistress, what?” the rough-shaven driver asked from his perch behind and above the enclosed passenger seat. “Goin’ t’ follow him to her place, is ya?”

“No, I’m—never mind.” Violet climbed in, sat against the torn leather seat, and let the driver think whatever he wanted to think, as they drove along Victoria Embankment. Soon they were in Whitechapel, and although the main thoroughfare was not particularly squalid, the warren of dark side streets branching off Whitechapel High Street suggested poverty and suffering that had trampled its occupants down for generations. The children sitting in doorways had particularly vacant looks that made her shiver. Violet instinctively moved to the center of her seat.

The driver rapped on the window to Violet’s left. “Madam, I’m not going too much farther in than this. Likely t’ have the brass lamps stripped off the carriage and to be beaten to death for my boots, as well. T’isn’t a fit place for a lady, neither.”

She knew it was dangerous, but she’d come this far and had to know what Toby was doing, although at least now she knew he was up to nothing virtuous.

“Please, just a bit more. Look, they’re stopping there, at Thomas Street.”

“I’ll go there, but no farther.”

When he stopped, Violet paid him and asked if he’d wait. “Not likely,” he said and hurried off.

Now Violet was alone. Well, her nerves would simply have to settle down. She continued after Toby, who was walking nonchalantly past heaps of trash and debris that served as multi-storied living quarters for a variety of rats and vermin. People stared at Violet in curiosity, but no one bothered her.

It seemed so much darker here. Did the sun forget to shine in Whitechapel?

About halfway down the street was a break in the bleak rows of sooty brick buildings, opening surprisingly onto a small cemetery. In the center of the cemetery was a large red-, blue-, and yellow-striped tent, an incongruous spot of happiness in the middle of the misery.

Toby headed straight for the tent. Violet stayed some distance behind, but she needn’t have bothered, for he was quickly enveloped in the crowd of poor and bedraggled men, women, and children under the tent’s roof. Violet made her way to one corner of the tent, whose pole was lashed to a headstone so old the name was obliterated from it.

Now she saw that a man, probably forty or so years old and wearing a carefully groomed chin beard, stood on a dais with a woman—presumably his wife?—and was shouting at the people inside.

No, he seemed to be whipping them up with enthusiasm.

Wait a minute. No, the man was preaching the gospel. He was an open-air evangelist.

What was Toby doing
here?

As if to answer her question, Toby approached the dais, which caused the man to stop what he was saying. He and his wife warmly greeted Toby, then pulled him up on the dais, to be introduced to the milling crowd. Violet slipped under the tent to hear more clearly.

Once she was inside, she saw a banner hanging from the rear tent wall. It read, “Christian Revival Society.”

Violet was thoroughly confused. How could Toby, who was apparently associated with some sort of insurrectionist movement, also be attracted to a missionary working in an abysmal part of London?

“My friends, some of you remember our good friend, Tobias Bishop.” The preacher clasped an arm around Toby’s shoulders as his wife smiled approvingly. “He’s fed you soup and bread each week the past few months, and has faithfully shared the good news of Jesus Christ with you. Tobias has proven himself a worthy soldier in God’s army, and I am proud to tell you that today he has been promoted to lieutenant. The new uniform he will receive is the mark of his rank in ministry work.”

Applause was scattered and lukewarm. “Where’s Mrs. Booth’s soup?” someone called out. The woman onstage nodded to her husband and stepped down to a table containing a large cauldron. She began ladling out a yellow broth into metal bowls. Toby and the preacher jumped down to help distribute the soup bowls to those gathered under the tent. Some accepted the broth gratefully, others yanked it away, slurped it up, and demanded more.

Toby and his fellow missionaries remained smiling.

What was this Christian Revival Society? Violet knew that many churches were involved in reaching the wretched members of society, but she’d never heard of this group before. Perhaps it was time to make her presence known.

“Mrs. Harper!” Toby said as she approached. “How did you know I was here? Have you come to join us?” He handed her a bowl full of steaming broth, which she automatically passed on to a toothless woman with rheumy eyes. In her haste to ingest it, the woman dribbled some of the soup down her chin, so Violet took the bowl and gently tipped it up so that the woman could safely drink it all.

“I confess I’m not sure why I’m here,” she said, handing the empty bowl back to Toby and accepting a fresh one to hand to a shoeless little boy. “I followed you out the door to see where it is you’ve been going in secret. Here I am in a place I never imagined you’d be.”

Toby laughed. It was the first time Violet had seen him do so. He signaled to the preacher, who joined them. “Mr. Booth, may I present Mrs. Violet Harper to you? She is, well, believe it or not, she has become my family’s undertaker. She has also been investigating my family’s problems.”

“William Booth at your service. Welcome to our ragtag little army of God’s soldiers. Are you a good cook?”

“Hardly. I’m mostly handy with a scalpel and cosmetic massage creams.”

“Well, I’m not sure those are useful for saving souls, but we can use every willing body we can get. I’m sure my wife can put you to work. Catherine, this is Mrs. Harper. She wants to help.”

Violet said, “But I’m not here to—”

Her protestations were to no avail. Next thing she knew, she was hauling another kettle out from behind the tent and ladling more soup into bowls. She passed a surprisingly pleasant few hours this way, and in snatches of conversation with Toby learned that he had been visiting the Christian Revival Society for months in secret, for fear of his parents’ reaction. His parents wanted him to learn to be a gentleman, settle down to an appropriate wife, and spend his time on leisurely pursuits of high society using his grandfather’s money.

Toby, however, wanted something more. “My parents’ world is mind-numbingly useless. Here, I can make a difference in the world. The East End might not seem the place to do so, but truly, Mrs. Harper, if you can’t make a difference by sharing love with society’s unlovable, then where can you do so?”

Violet couldn’t argue with that. In a strange way, undertaking was frequently the care and love of those who hadn’t been particularly lovable in life.

She stayed and worked with Toby until he was finished, so that he could escort her back to Raybourn House. She accepted Mr. Booth’s invitation to attend a future society meeting, and, on the way back to Park Street, promised to exercise discretion with Toby’s parents concerning his activities.

She also asked the question that had been burning inside her for hours. “I saw your friend, Mr. Farr, leave Raybourn House recently. James Godfrey was waiting for him in the street, and the two had quite an animated conversation. What is your connection to the man?”

“You mean the tall, gangly gent? The one you found in the Serpentine?”

“Yes. How do you know him?”

“I don’t. Neither did Adam. He thought Adam was a member of the household, and came running up ranting about Uncle Cedric and the Crimea and Egypt and payments due. He demanded to know Uncle Cedric’s whereabouts, which, of course, no one knew at the time. Adam entertained him because he assumed the man was a family friend. When he told me about it later, I was quite surprised.”

Everything about the situation surprised Violet. Nothing made sense so far. Would the pieces ever come together? At least Toby could be eliminated as a suspect in the murder of his uncle. No man so genuinely dedicated to a Christian mission to feed the poor and save souls was likely to be a murderer.

Toby dropped Violet off, saying he would continue on with the cab to Adam Farr’s lodgings for a visit. Except for distant banging downstairs in the kitchen, the house was still quiet. Violet was glad for the peace, as she’d just had an exceedingly long day, starting with a visit to the queen’s elegant royal palace and ending in one of the worst streets of London.

She picked up Mr. Barnum’s book again and settled atop the bedcovers and pillows to read. She awoke with a start as the book crashed to the floor. Once again, she’d fallen asleep while reading, but without the benefit of having Sam around to gently remove the book from her hands and put it away.

Making her realize she hadn’t had a return letter from him in days.

Sam’s letters were like a sweet balm, reminding her of both their past and present together. It was almost like picking up a bottle of Sam’s spicy-scented cologne, unstopping the container, and letting the pleasantness waft over her before putting it away and letting her thoughts remain on days gone by with her steadfast husband.

Violet frowned and sat up. Letters. Days gone by. What was it her father had said?

Heart pounding, she jumped up and went to the chest of drawers, snatching up the mound of documents and tossing them on the bed to sift through them. A copy of
The Times
with Ellis Catesby’s piece in it, the bill for Mrs. Peet’s funeral, one of Violet’s many lists . . . Where was it?

She thumbed through her letters from Arthur Sinclair. There.

With shaking hands, she once again tore open her father’s letter, written just after Violet had arrived in London.

As the words popped off the page in a stunning, glaring explanation of what had transpired in the Fairmont family, Violet realized who had been responsible for Cedric’s death.

The question was, what should she do about it? Who would believe it?

V
iolet’s first instinct was to run to Scotland Yard and tell Inspectors Hurst and Pratt. But what proof did she have? She’d be no better than Hurst, finagling a theory to fit her notion and running wild with it.

No, she needed evidence.

Violet grabbed all of the papers from the bed and straightened them back into a vague impression of neatness on the chest. She crept into the hallway and went to the top of the stairs, pausing to listen for sounds in the household.

It was as quiet as an abandoned crypt.

Violet made her way down a flight of steps. She heard nothing from the bedrooms on this floor. Down another flight and all was still silent except for the swishing of her skirts. She softly opened the door to Lord Raybourn’s study, its masculine interior lined in walnut and the acrid smell of tobacco smoke still lingering in the air.

If it was anywhere, it would be here. Hurst would most certainly have overlooked it, because it would have meant nothing to him.

Under the watchful eye of a marble bust of Lord Nelson perched on an elegantly carved stand in one corner, Violet started at the most obvious place—Lord Raybourn’s desk. The top was bare except for a tobacco box, a gas lamp, and an old daguerreotype of a woman, framed in silver. The woman’s clothing suggested the keepsake had been taken about thirty years ago. The deceased Lady Raybourn, perhaps?

Surely Mrs. Peet hadn’t been appreciative of having to see it every day.

Violet went to the desk drawers. Surprisingly, none were locked. She searched through them as quickly as possible, while trying not to disturb anything. All of the drawers were as tidy as the desktop. Thinking back on Mr. Poe’s detective stories, she attempted to think like C. Auguste Dupin, who would put himself in the mind of the criminal to logically deduce what he would do next.

The murderer would either destroy the evidence, or hide it very, very well.

She got on her knees and crawled under the desk, looking for any hidden compartments that were sometimes built into furniture. Nothing. She climbed back out and stood, hands on her hips, as she looked around the room. Almost nothing was out of place in here. Either Lord Raybourn was as immaculate as Violet was not, or else Mrs. Peet—or someone else—had swept the place clean after his death . . . or disappearance.

Two overstuffed chairs flanked a table with a chess set on it. It looked as if it had been abandoned in the middle of a match. She lifted the chair cushions and patted the arms and sides of each chair, wondering if evidence might have been secreted inside the furniture. Violet dropped to her knees once again and felt up under the chairs. Nothing.

Detection is hard work,
she thought as she hauled herself back up to a standing position, using the chair’s dense arm for leverage. She should abandon this, report her suspicions to Inspector Hurst, and go back to being a simple undertaker.

Quit grumbling and finish what you’ve started.

Violet turned to the set of bookcases lining one wall. Leather-bound volumes were artfully arranged, both upright and on their sides, with decorative bookends, statuettes, and framed pictures interspersed on the shelves among the books.

Perhaps it was inside one of the books. But how could she ever manage to finger through all of them to find it? It would take hours.

Violet took several steps back and studied the shelves. How would Dupin approach this?

Violet Harper, you’ve become addled. Why would you want to imitate a fictional character, for heaven’s sake? You should try to think like Inspector Hurst.

She shuddered. Perhaps not.

It was then that she noticed that a clock on the bookcase was still running. It certainly wasn’t impossible that stopping the clock had been neglected in the midst of the household’s chaos, but the clock was the only objet d’art that sat atop a thick book that lay on its side. All other art pieces sat on the shelves by themselves, and were not placed on the leather bindings.

Violet lifted the clock from its resting place. It looked to be some kind of French piece—intricate, gilded, and impossibly heavy. She lugged it to the desk and placed it there, then returned for the book. It was larger than most of the other books in the bookcase. The spine said it was a world atlas. Taking it from the shelf, too, she returned to the desk and sat down to flip through it.

The book was full of colorized maps of sections of London, the remainder of England and Great Britain, as well as parts of Europe. It must have cost Lord Raybourn a small fortune to procure it. She nearly forgot what she was looking for as she got caught up in the detailed drawings.

As she turned a page near the back of the volume, though, she found a letter, tucked between Poland and Prussia. Violet’s heart started pounding again as she opened it.

Violet now had the evidence she required. She needed to go to Scotland Yard right away with it, but just then the door opened and Stephen entered. “What are you doing in here?”

Violet looked down at the desk, where the clock, open atlas, and letter lay, all trumpeting out exactly what she had been doing.

“Oh, my dear friend, you should have left well enough alone and just continued to do the task I set out for you—convincing the queen to proceed with the burial. I knew Scotland Yard was too impotent to do anything, but I mistakenly thought you were, too.”

Violet held up the letter. “Why would you keep this? It incriminates you.”

Stephen shook his head sadly. “No, it protects me.”

“But it demonstrates that—”

“I know what it says, but what you don’t understand is that—”

At that moment, Katherine Fairmont entered the room, her pale face brought to life by a deep green satin bonnet and matching dress. Violet was reminded once again of Mrs. Peet’s eyes.

Katherine’s own eyes narrowed as she saw Violet sitting at the desk. Violet rose and stood before the evidence spread in front of her.

“Stephen, what is she doing?”

“I believe she came in looking for something to read and accidentally stumbled—”

“I do not think she ‘stumbled’ at all. I told you that asking her to look for Cedric’s body would bring us nothing but trouble, Stephen.”

“We had to get him back, Kate, to bury the sordid past you were ensnared in.”

“How has that turned out? Your little undertaker friend is standing here accusing us. Dear God, I just can’t take this anymore. My nerves are too brittle for it.” Katherine’s pupils were pinpoints, and she began trembling.

“Sweetheart, there’s no proof. Stay calm. Everything will be fine.”

Katherine put both hands to the sides of her head. “I need another one of my powders. Get one for me, will you?”

“Of course.”

As soon as Stephen left the room, Katherine dropped her hands to her sides and turned on Violet.

“Mrs. Harper, have you nothing better to do than stalk this household? I’ve tried my best to be polite to you, but all you’ve done is harass and persecute us. You are driving this family to the brink of destruction.”

“I don’t understand, Lady Raybourn. Or, rather, it’s still Mrs. Fairmont, isn’t it? I have only tried to get to the bottom of what happened to your father-in-law and brother-in-law, as your husband asked me to do.”

“No! The only request Stephen made of you was to find Cedric’s body. We needed it back before anyone discovered it wasn’t my father-in-law inside. You made everything else your business.”

“So Stephen told you that he’d killed his brother to protect you from him?”

“Of course not. James Godfrey was the one who killed Cedric. All was fine until the queen decided to insert her extra-regal nose into our affairs, thus bringing you into our lives. Why couldn’t everything have just proceeded in a normal fashion?”

“It is hardly normal when your brother-in-law is murdered, Lady Raybourn. Or, should I say, when your husband is.”

Katherine’s eyes dulled. “Oh yes, I suppose he was that, too. Unfortunately for Cedric Fairmont, he returned to London to lay claim to me again. Imagine the hilarity and scandal that would have ensued had society discovered Stephen had married a bigamist.”

“Surely people knew you’d once been married to Cedric.”

“Not really. I was only seventeen and had not yet had a Season. Cedric was a mature man of thirty-six, and he kept me at Willow Tree House while he traipsed around Sussex, bedding down every nubile creature he could find while I waited for his wandering eye to heal. Lord Raybourn arranged our match. How he must have hated me to toss me into that lion’s den of a marriage.”

It would seem that Lord Raybourn had a talent for flinging his children into unsuitable matches. Most would call his own secret match with Mrs. Peet unsuitable, too.

“Stephen was very sympathetic to my plight, and was a great comfort to me in those days. Cedric eventually became bored with his existence—or maybe he ran through every willing woman in Sussex—and decided to join the war effort. He didn’t even discuss it with me, his wife. He merely abandoned me. About a year after Cedric’s departure, with no word from him, Stephen and I naturally grew to love each other. We were of an age, and Stephen was nothing like his older brother. When Cedric was eventually declared dead, it left Stephen and me free to marry.”

Surely this was the secret Nelly told Stephen she’d been keeping all these years.

“I had no idea Cedric was still alive until I received his letter asking me to come to Park Street. Stephen was in London for business at the time, so I assumed it was from him.”

“Didn’t the handwriting suggest it was from Cedric?”

“Cedric was
dead,
remember? And it looked reasonably close to Stephen’s. I had no reason to suspect otherwise. I came to London, and was startled to find Cedric here, lounging about in my father-in-law’s smoking jacket and puffing on a cigarette, as arrogant as he was the day he left Willow Tree House for the Crimea.”

“Did you argue?”

Katherine folded her arms around herself, as if warding off a chill. “You cannot imagine how we argued. It was a dozen years of pent-up anger on both sides. He laughed about his ability to imitate Stephen’s handwriting and referred to me as a willful dupe. I called him the most depraved and dissolute of men. I’m embarrassed to think of it now. When I realized he might become violent toward me, I fled the house.

“In the street, I saw a man that I now realize was James Godfrey. I watched as Godfrey climbed the steps into the house. A few minutes later I heard a bang in the house, but over the sound of street traffic it was hard to tell exactly what it was. Godfrey left moments after that.”

Violet shook her head. “Why would Godfrey kill his wartime friend?”

“I’ve wondered the same thing. I think it must be that he asked Cedric for a reward for services rendered while Cedric was injured and ill, and Cedric refused. Godfrey was probably incensed out of his mind and reacted in fury. When he later calmed down, I imagine the guilt of it drove him to kill himself.”

“But . . . that means that he murdered his friend, then came around looking for Cedric, claiming he was still alive.”

Katherine nodded sadly. “Stephen and I have spent many hours puzzling that out. Why do such a thing? We can only figure he was greatly interested in the Raybourn family fortune, and invented a way to partake of it.”

“I don’t understand. Why didn’t you report this before? It would have cleared up many things.”

“As I said, the damage would have been extensive. We didn’t want my marriage to Cedric dragged through the newspapers for public ridicule. When Mrs. Peet assumed Cedric was my father-in-law, it occurred to us that it was no bad thing to let everyone think the same thing and later work out the details of what would happen when my father-in-law returned home. It pains me, though, to imagine she killed herself thinking it was Lord Raybourn shot dead.”

Stephen’s and Katherine’s foolish behavior seemed to be an enormous problem, but for the moment Violet needed to get down to Scotland Yard.

“Darling, there you are.” Katherine turned to Stephen, who had just returned with a glass filled with a chalky-looking fluid. She drank deeply from the glass before setting it down on the desk. “That will make things better, I’m sure. Mrs. Harper and I were just discussing Cedric’s unfortunate demise.”

“You told her everything?”

Katherine nodded.

Stephen smiled. “I’m glad you understand, Violet. I should have known you would. You’re almost a part of the family now.”

With a few murmurs of sympathy, Violet managed to extricate herself from Lord Raybourn’s study. She hurried upstairs and packed her reticule with her father’s and Cedric’s letters, and went as quickly as she could to Scotland Yard.

She was shown into the paneled room where she usually met the detectives. They were both there, with Hurst reading from various pieces of correspondence spread all over the wood surface, while Pratt scribbled notes from Hurst’s dictation.

Pratt broke into a smile at seeing Violet. “Ah, Mrs. Harper, you’re just in time. We’ve discovered some communications that we think—”

As usual, Hurst blustered past his colleague. “How can we help you, Mrs. Harper? We’re quite busy at the moment. We believe we have finally solved our blackmailing case.”

“Congratulations, sir,” she said. “How did you manage it?”

Hurst was happy to share the results of his expertise. “We intercepted a blackmail note and traced the paper through its watermark to Wright’s Stationers here in London. Only one customer had purchased this particular paper in the past few months, a Mr. Smith, which is most likely a false name. Mrs. Wright gave us Mr. Smith’s address. We were just completing our notes and plan to go see him. So, what is it that you want?”