The Mourning Bells (10 page)

Mr. Crugg would see Roger for himself soon enough.

 

As Mrs. Merriman’s service concluded in the chapel, Violet once again coordinated the movement of the mourners outside and onto the path toward the family’s plot. She had surreptitiously asked two additional men to assist with lifting the woman’s coffin, and she didn’t think anyone noticed the additional muscle carrying the box.

Outside the chapel, four hearses waited, one for Mrs. Merriman and three others for third-class funerals to be conducted after Mrs. Merriman’s. Unlike the private first-class funerals, all third-class funerals for a single day were conducted at one time inside the chapel, so the coffins would be distributed around the room, with the appropriate mourners gathered around each coffin, and the minister would read, pray, and make supplications to the Almighty for all of them at once.

“May your loved ones find peace,” Violet said, nodding solemnly at the third-class mourners, all of whom forgot their own grieving for a moment as they craned their necks in curiosity to see what important or famous people might be among the mourners of a first-class funeral.

Once Mrs. Merriman was ensconced in her grave—and not without grunting and muttered expletives from her pallbearers—Violet murmured condolences to the mourning party and made her way back to the South station to wait for Crugg. A clock on the platform said it was nearly half past one, so she had a wait in front of her. The platform itself was presently deserted except for a young boy in threadbare pants and mismatched shoes sweeping at one end. It gave Violet an idea.

She called him over and handed him a groat. The boy’s eyes lit up, and he stared at the coin, openmouthed.

“What is your name?” Violet asked.

“Benjamin. Benny, me mam calls me.”

The same name as Violet’s son-in-law. “Good afternoon, Benny. How long have you been here?”

The boy wrinkled his nose. “I dunno, m’um. Two hours?” he added, as if hoping that was the right answer.

“Do you remember the crying woman on the platform?”

“The one wot had on them nice clothes?”

“That’s the one. Do you remember where she went?”

Benny frowned. “A man in a black hat and suit took her to the reception rooms. First class, I saw. They must be rich, wot?”

“Did you see them leave the reception rooms later?”

He shook his head. “No, m’um. I had me duties to take care of. I hafta go to the stables and muck the stalls, and help polish the hearses, and bring in the wagon of goods for the refreshment stands, and—”

“That’s fine, Benny. One more question: Do you remember an open coffin on the platform at the same time that the crying woman was here?”

Confusion reigned in the boy’s eyes. “There’s lots of coffins here each day, wot?”

“This was a very fine coffin, made of sycamore maple.”

Benny shrugged. “They all look the same ta me, m’um.”

“That’s all right then. You may go.” The boy clearly didn’t know anything. He scampered off, kissing the coin.

Violet had another idea. She glanced at the platform clock. It was fifteen minutes to the hour. She went inside the station and sought out the stationmaster, Uriah Gedding, in his office. This time, he was crouched over his cat with his back to Violet, cooing at the animal as it attacked a dish of unidentifiable, bloodied meat, gulping it down unchewed as if it were the head of a pride taking the first feed.

Violet shuddered. The animal brought back a terrifying memory of long ago, when she had been accidentally trapped in a lion enclosure at Regent’s Park zoo. She brushed away the thought. She wasn’t about to be cowed into a corner by a silly housecat.

“Mr. Gedding?” she said.

The stationmaster turned and, recognition dawning in his eyes, gave the cat a final pat—earning him a throaty growl as a reward—and rose to greet Violet. “Attending to another funeral today, Mrs. Harper? I presume you’ve encountered no more inconveniently living bodies?”

Violet was in no mood to be mocked. “I don’t have much time, sir. I was wondering if there are any coffins in the pauper waiting room?” Cellars beneath the station had been converted into reception rooms for coffins not immediately claimed, and were also periodically used for pauper funeral services prior to burial in the poor section of the cemetery.

“You’re welcome to check for yourself,” Gedding said, taking a burning oil lamp from a hook on the wall. He escorted her back to the platform and to a door at the rear of one side of the station. The wood door was painted a dismal, drab sepia, and did not suggest a kind welcome at all. Gedding handed her the lamp and unlocked the door.

Violet preceded Gedding down a brick staircase, which was damp and mossy, into the cellars. How did porters haul coffins down here without slipping and sending both themselves and their cargo crashing down to the bottom? Her heels sent tapping echoes into the basement area, and she realized that hers were the only heels she heard. She stopped and turned to say something to Gedding, but he was at the top of the stairs, shutting the door behind him with a firm thud, aided by the wind whipping around the building.

Oh. She had thought he was going to inspect the pauper rooms with her. Perhaps he needed to hand-feed his cat some cream.

Like in the upstairs reception rooms, there was no gas or electricity down here, but it stank of sweat and protracted grief. A dim ray of sunlight filtered in through a narrow window at one end of the cavernous space that was actually aboveground. Otherwise, the oil lamp she lifted was her only source of light.

A few scattered oak benches surrounded a minister’s lectern in the middle of the space. Filling the long wall behind the lectern were wood niches intended to temporarily store coffins. The cavities were all empty except for one used as lamp and oil storage.

She swung the light around the room again and this time saw that there was a coffin lying unceremoniously on the floor at one end of the room, opposite from the window. If she was not mistaken, the lid was askew. She took a deep breath and tap-tap-tapped her way over to it. She held the lamp over it.

The coffin was empty.

Why would there be an unoccupied coffin carelessly placed in the pauper waiting rooms? There had to have been an occupant at some point—vacant coffins weren’t placed on the LNR, or at least they wouldn’t be for any reason she could think of. She examined the coffin more closely. It was made of inexpensive white poplar and was definitely not constructed of the same quality as Roger’s. She scanned the box further and could find no maker’s mark. The interior had no mattress, just a thin muslin lining unevenly nailed in along the sides. It was an altogether stark resting place, but probably more than a poor family could afford.

Violet concluded that this had been a rental coffin, and after the shrouded body had been committed to the ground, the hearse driver had dumped it here to await its next trip to London to pick up another occupant. She heartily disapproved of such careless work, but then, she wasn’t in charge of the LNR, nor of Brookwood Cemetery.

She put the lantern on the ground and stood back to think, tapping a forefinger against her lips. Who was this Roger fellow? By the looks of his final home and his fiancée’s clothing, he had obviously been wealthy. Why was his fiancée waiting for him at the train station instead of accompanying the entire mourning party later? Violet wished she could have been present when they all arrived so she could have inquired as to what undertaker they’d used. Instead, she was as—

Bang!
Something crashed into the narrow window edging the ceiling, nearly sending Violet jumping into the empty coffin on her own.

With her heart fluttering, she turned to the window. She could see nothing this far away, except a shadow of something blocking the window’s light. What was it? The thought crept into her mind that someone was trying to frighten her, but who? That thought was replaced by the fear that the object was a human body.

Violet grabbed the oil lamp from the ground and hurried back up the steps to the door. She turned the brass knob, but it spun uselessly in her hand. She rapped on the wood and shouted, “Hello? Hello?” but her voice only echoed behind her downstairs among empty benches and coffin niches.

Had she been intentionally locked into the dank cellar?

She turned the handle once more with the same fruitless result. Then she decided to put more effort into it. With the lamp in her right hand and the knob in her left, she concentrated all of her weight into her left shoulder and threw herself against the door. It gave way immediately and she stumbled back out to the exterior of the building.

How odd. She shut the door and tried to open it again. The knob still didn’t work and her tugs were ineffective. She abandoned the door to go around to the back of the building and inspect the window. Violet laughed in relief and exhaled her fright at what she saw there. A limb had blown off a large beech tree behind the building, whose base was so intertwined with overlapping trunks that it looked like tangled locks of hair. It was no wonder one had snapped off and been carried forward against the window.

How silly Violet now felt, realizing she had been fearful of floating debris and a door that had been stuck shut by the wind.
Honestly, Violet Harper, soon you’ll be jumping at shadows,
she thought. For a moment there, she’d thought she’d have to include Uriah Gedding in her list of dubious characters.

Ignoring her hat’s tails as they fluttered in the wind like demented birds, she returned to the station platform. The clock showed that it was ten minutes past two. The train would be here shortly. Where was Mr. Crugg? She looked inside both reception rooms but saw no trace of him.

Perhaps she should pay Mr. Gedding another visit. He was still in his office, signing some papers, when Violet entered. The cat was curled up on one corner of the desk, apparently so satisfied and sleepy from its earlier meal that it barely lifted its head to acknowledge her presence.

“Did you find what you wanted, Mrs. Harper?” Mr. Gedding asked, cordially laying down his pen to give her his attention.

“Not exactly. Do you know Julian Crugg, another undertaker who frequents the LNR?”

Gedding spread his hands over the documents. “There are many undertakers who pass through here on a daily basis, Mrs. Harper. I cannot be expected to know each by name.”

“He is tall, a bit older than me, and is frequently very . . . agitated.”

“Does he have a shop in Mayfair?” Gedding reached over and absentmindedly scratched the cat on the head. The animal raised its head and presented its neck for further attention, and Gedding complied.

“Yes.”

“Certainly I know who he is. He was here this morning, comforting a woman in the first-class reception room.”

“Have you seen him since?”

“Yes, madam, he returned on the early-afternoon train that went back for mourners.”

Had Crugg forgotten about her in all of the commotion with the fiancée? What of his own funerals? How had he handled them if he’d returned home so soon? Violet shook her head. It was difficult not to be skeptical of everyone around her when everyone behaved so suspiciously.

Samuel Harper was not pleased with what he was hearing. He and Cyril Hayes, who worked for London East Bank, were strolling among the graves inside the churchyard of St. Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, just outside the wall of London. Hayes had insisted on this meeting place, for utmost privacy over what he had to say.

“There is a recently passed law that could spell doom for the banking industry,” Hayes had said, raking through his beard with his fingers. The banker had been the most open and welcoming of all of Sam’s contacts, not that it had thus far resulted in a loan.

“That doesn’t sound very good for either you or me,” Sam said, hoping Hayes would get to the point quickly. He didn’t enjoy treading over the graves of people who had been buried three centuries ago.

“It isn’t. Parliament has passed something so heinous that I cannot imagine what they were thinking. The Debtors Act consolidates all of the country’s bankruptcy laws. In doing so, they have not only abolished debtors’ prisons; it makes dodging a debt a mere misdemeanor.”

“No debtors’ prison at all?” Sam asked.

“Only in the cases where money is owed to the Crown, or the debtor actually has the money but refuses to pay the debt.”

Sam didn’t understand. “That has at least some benefit, doesn’t it?”

“Not in the way they did it. They have also decided to eliminate the arrest on mesne process.”

Sam had been a lawyer back in the United States and understood this well. “So you have lost your ability to have a man put in custody prior to a judge’s order, thus running the risk that he will flee altogether.”

“Precisely. We have little recourse against those who would dodge their debts.”