Stolen Remains (31 page)

Several of the events and people in this book are real and deserve a mention for the reader.

Lieutenant Colonel Sir Edmund Yeamans Walcott Henderson (1821–1896) was appointed commissioner of police in 1869. He was greatly loved by his men for doing away with petty regulations, such as the ones that forbade officers to vote in elections or to grow facial hair. He also worked diligently for pay increases for his men, started a registry for habitual offenders, and introduced special “schoolmaster sergeants” to increase the literacy of his constables. Henderson was responsible for making significant strides in the growth and organization of a professional detective force, and was made a Knight Commander of the Bath in 1878.

However, his achievements were overshadowed by a police strike in 1872, a police corruption trial in 1877, and the mishandling of the Trafalgar Square Riot of 1886. Upon this last event, Henderson resigned permanently from his position.

Queen Victoria’s closest confidant following the death of her husband, Albert, was John Brown (1826–1883), a Scottish outdoor servant (
ghillie
) who became a close personal servant of the queen’s. He was known for his competence and the complete trust Victoria placed in him. He also inspired jealousy and resentment in those who believed Brown was entirely too relaxed and informal around the sovereign.

This bitterness spawned rumors that Brown was the queen’s lover, a position that is still speculated upon today. I don’t personally think there is any truth in it, not only because she was in open mourning for Albert the remainder of her life, but because Victoria was acutely aware of her position in life. An open dalliance with a servant would have gone against every principle and scruple for which she railed at her children, her ladies-in-waiting, and her cabinet ministers. Queen Victoria was
proper
to a fault, and even if she’d decided to succumb to a dalliance, I don’t think it would have been in such a brazen manner.

At the opposite end of the queen’s favorability spectrum was William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898), prime minister on four separate occasions, with the first time during 1868–1874. Gladstone was known for his oratory, constant reform plans, and his rivalry with Conservative Leader Benjamin Disraeli, as well as his poor relationship with Queen Victoria. Although the queen wasn’t fond of Gladstone, he genuinely admired her.

Also despised by the queen was her son, Albert Edward (“Bertie”), the Prince of Wales (1841–1910), and later King Edward VII. Victoria never forgave him for what she perceived as his role in her husband’s death, when the prince consort visited an errant and unruly Bertie at Cambridge during a particularly damp and chilly week in 1861, despite all indications that the prince consort had been ill for at least two years before his death. Although Bertie dutifully married the beautiful and charming Princess Alexandra (“Alix”) of Denmark (1844–1925), and proceeded to provide six children to the House of Hanover, he never fully regained his mother’s trust.

Alfred Nobel (1833–1896), for whom the famous Nobel Prizes are named, was a Swedish chemist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer who held 350 different patents, of which dynamite was the most famous. In 1888, Nobel’s brother Ludvig died while visiting Cannes, and the newspapers erroneously reported it as Alfred’s death. The obituary, with its condemnation of Nobel’s invention of dynamite (“The merchant of death is dead”), deeply troubled him. Determined that he should not be remembered as someone who became rich by devising ways to kill more people faster, in his will he set aside the bulk of his fortune to establish the five Nobel Prizes. The first three prizes are for physical science, chemistry, and medical science. The fourth prize is literary, and the fifth is awarded to the person or society that renders the greatest service in reducing standing armies or promoting peace. I imagine Nobel had no idea what a lasting impact his prizes would have on the world.

The Suez Canal was the brainchild of Ferdinand de Lesseps (1805–1894), a Frenchman with a varied and distinguished diplomatic career before successfully completing a waterway linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas, effectively connecting East and West with dramatically reduced sailing distances.

The concept of a canal was taken up by Egypt as early as the second millennium B.C. Remnants of an ancient west–east canal were discovered by Napoleon in 1799. The French general contemplated the construction of another canal, running north–south to join the Mediterranean and Red Seas, but his project was abandoned after his engineers mistakenly concluded that the Red Sea was more than thirty feet higher than the Mediterranean.

It was de Lesseps, with his friendly relationship with the Egyptian viceroy, who finally pushed through construction of a canal open to ships of all nations. The Suez Canal Company came into existence in December 1858, with work beginning in April 1859.

The excavation took ten years, with Egypt providing corvée labor during part of the project. Unlike slavery, the worker under a corvée labor system is not owned outright, and is generally free in many respects except for how he labors. Corvée labor extends back to many societies’ ancient times, and was used as recently as prerevolutionary France. In ancient Egypt, specifically, peasants were seized to help in government projects, such as in the building of pyramids and assisting during Nile River floods. Peasants were also sentenced to corvée labor for non-payment of taxes (an interesting twist on debtors’ prison).

Great Britain loudly protested the use of corvée labor for the Suez Canal project, as they had officially outlawed slavery in 1834. Corvée labor was no longer being used on the project by the time I include it in late 1868.

De Lesseps was a powerful and wealthy man, and was nearly like a king in Egypt, cheered everywhere he went. Unfortunately, he overestimated how much traffic would be using the canal by tenfold, so that within two years of the canal’s completion, he was booed everywhere he went. Today, more than fifty ships per day travel the 120-mile route, amounting to eight percent of the world’s shipping traffic.

Britain purchased Egypt’s shares in the Suez Canal in 1875, as the African nation was desperate to raise money to pay off its own debts.

As a footnote to de Lesseps’s career, it is interesting to note that he also attempted to dig the Panama Canal in 1879, but the project was thwarted by epidemics of malaria and yellow fever, insufficient capital, and financial corruption. The project was picked up by the United States in 1904.

The reader may wonder why Violet doesn’t use formaldehyde as an embalming agent. Formaldehyde was conclusively identified in 1869 when August Wilhelm von Hofmann mixed air with methanol over a heated platinum spiral as a metal catalyst, with formaldehyde as the resulting product. Unfortunately, its preservative qualities were not noted until 1888, so any embalming in this time period would have been performed with ingredients such as alcohol, bichloride of mercury, creosote, nitrate of potassium, turpentine, and zinc chloride.

Toby Bishop joins William Booth’s Christian Revival Society, which was founded in 1865 as the North London Christian Mission. In 1878, Booth reorganized the mission, basing it upon a military structure and becoming its first general. Booth expressed the organization’s mission in terms of the “three S’s” that best described their work with the down-and-out, ranging from alcoholics to morphine addicts, to prostitutes and other “undesirables” of polite society: “first, soup; second, soap; and finally, salvation.”

Booth’s group became known as the Salvation Army. Today the organization has a presence in more than a hundred countries, and is famous for its iconic bell ringers in front of shops during the Christmas season.

A couple of small liberties I took with the historical record are worth pointing out.

Violet and Stephen travel along Victoria Embankment on their way to Smithfield meat market. This road, built both to relieve congestion in the Strand and Fleet Street and to provide London with a modern sewer system, was not actually completed until 1870, the year after the story takes place.

Also, I have Violet picking up a copy of
Funeral Service Journal
from Morgan Undertaking, in order to investigate other undertakers. This journal did not actually begin publication until 1886.

Beeton, Isabella.
Beeton’s Book of Household Management
(Facsimile Edition). London: Jonathan Cape Limited, 1968.

Brett, Mary.
Fashionable Mourning Jewelry, Clothing & Customs
. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2006.

Karabell, Zachary.
Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

May, Trevor.
The Victorian Undertaker
. Oxford: Shire Publications, 1996.

Nicholson, Shirley.
A Victorian Household
. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1988.

Picard, Liza.
Victorian London: The Tale of a City 1840–1870
. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005.

Shpayer-Makov, Haia.
The Ascent of the Detective: Police Sleuths in Victorian and Edwardian England
. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Underwood, Peter.
Queen Victoria’s Other World
. London: Harrap, 1986.

© Jax Photography 2013

C
HRISTINE
T
RENT
lives in the Mid-Atlantic region with her husband, Jon, and five cats: Caesar, Claudia, Livia, Marcus, and Octavian. When she isn’t writing, you can usually find her scrapbooking, planning a trip to England, or haunting bookstores. She is currently working on the next book in the Lady of Ashes historical mystery series. Please visit Christine at
www.ChristineTrent.com
.

L
ADY OF
A
SHES

Only a woman with an iron backbone could succeed as an undertaker in Victorian London, but Violet Morgan takes great pride in her trade. While her husband, Graham, is preoccupied with elevating their station in society, Violet is cultivating a sterling reputation for Morgan Undertaking. She is empathetic, well versed in funeral fashions, and comfortable with death’s role in life—until its chilling rattle comes knocking on her own front door.

Violet’s peculiar but happy life soon begins to unravel as Graham becomes obsessed with his own demons and all but abandons her as he plans a vengeful scheme. And the solace she’s always found in her work evaporates like a departing soul when she suspects that some of the deceased she’s dressed have been murdered. When Graham’s plotting leads to his disappearance, Violet takes full control of the business and is commissioned for an undertaking of royal proportions. But she’s certain there’s a killer lurking in the London fog, and the next funeral may be her own.

In this unrestrained tale that is equal parts courage, compassion, and intrigue, Christine Trent tells of love and loss in the rigidly decorous world of Victorian society.

BY THE KING’S DESIGN

Strong-willed Annabelle Stirling is more than capable of running the family draper shop after the untimely death of her parents. Under her father’s tutelage, she became a talented cloth merchant, while her brother, Wesley, the true heir, was busy philandering about Yorkshire. Knowing she must change with the times to survive, Belle installs new machinery that finishes twice the fabric in half the time it takes by hand. But not everyone is so enthusiastic.

Soon, riled up by Belle’s competitors, the outmoded workers seek violent revenge. Her shop destroyed, Belle travels to London to seek redress from Parliament. While there, the prince regent, future King George IV, commissions her to provide fabrics for his Royal Pavilion. As Belle’s renown spreads, she meets handsome cabinetmaker Putnam Boyce, but worries that marriage will mean sacrificing her now flourishing shop. And after Wesley plots to kidnap the newly crowned king—whose indiscretions are surfacing—she finds herself entangled in a duplicitous world of shifting allegiances.

Painting a vivid portrait of life in the British Regency, Christine Trent spins a harrowing tale of ambition, vengeance, love, and complex loyalties against the dynamic backdrop of the early Industrial Revolution.

A ROYAL LIKENESS

As heiress to the famous Laurent Fashion Dolls business, Marguerite Ashby’s future seems secure. But France still seethes with violence in the wake of the Revolution. And when Marguerite’s husband, Nicholas, is killed during a riot at their shop, she leaves home vowing never to return. Instead, the young widow travels to Edinburgh and joins her old friend, Marie Tussaud, who has established a touring wax exhibition.

Under the great Tussaud’s patient instruction, Marguerite learns to mold wax into stunningly lifelike creations. When Prime Minister William Pitt commissions a wax figure of military hero Admiral Nelson, Marguerite becomes immersed in a dangerous adventure—and earns the admiration of two very different men. And as Britain battles to overthrow Napoleon and flush out spies against the Crown, Marguerite will find her own loyalties, and her heart, under fire from all sides.

With wit, flair, and a masterful eye for telling details, Christine Trent brings one of history’s most fascinating eras to vibrant life in an unforgettable story of desire, ambition, treachery, and courage.

THE QUEEN’S DOLLMAKER

On the brink of revolution, with a tide of hate turned against the decadent royal court, France is in turmoil—as is the life of one young woman forced to leave her beloved Paris. After a fire destroys her home and family, Claudette Laurent is struggling to survive in London. But one precious gift remains: her talent for creating exquisite dolls that Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France herself, cherishes. When the queen requests a meeting, Claudette seizes the opportunity to promote her business, and to return home....

Amid the violence and unrest, Claudette befriends the queen, who bears no resemblance to the figurehead rapidly becoming the scapegoat of the Revolution. But when Claudette herself is lured into a web of deadly political intrigue, it becomes clear that friendship with France’s most despised woman has grim consequences. Now, overshadowed by the specter of Madame Guillotine, the queen’s dollmaker will face the ultimate test.

Infused with the passion and excitement of a country—and an unforgettable heroine—on the threshold of radical change, this captivating novel propels readers into a beguiling world of opulence, adventure, and danger, from the rough streets of eighteenth-century London to France’s lavish Palace of Versailles.