Stolen Remains

Book 2: Lady of Ashes Mystery

by Christine Trent

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

An undertaker follows a mystery from Windsor Castle to Egyptian tombs: "Violet remains an engaging guide with an unusual perspective on Victorian society." —Publishers Weekly



After establishing her reputation as one of London's most highly regarded undertakers, Violet Harper decided to take her practice to the wilds of the American West. But when her mother falls ill, Violet and her husband, Samuel, are summoned back to England, where her skills are as sought-after as ever. She's honored to undertake the funeral of Anthony Fairmont, the Viscount Raybourn, a close friend of Queen Victoria who died in suspicious circumstances—but it's difficult to perform her services when his body disappears . . .



As the viscount's undertaker, all eyes are on Violet as the Fairmonts and Scotland Yard begin the search for his earthly remains. Forced to exhume her latent talents as a sleuth to preserve her good name, Violet's own investigation takes her from servants' quarters, to the halls of Windsor Castle, to the tombs of ancient Egypt—and the Fairmont family's secrets quickly begin to unravel like a mummy's wrappings. But the closer Violet gets to the truth, the closer she gets to becoming the next missing body . . .

Release date: April 29, 2014

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 305

Sample

Musafirkhana Palace, Cairo, Egypt

March 1869

“This has been a profitable trip, has it not, my dear?” The Prince of Wales gazed down at his prime acquisition from their tour of Egypt: a mummy, which the seller said dated to Egypt’s twenty-sixth dynasty.

What revelations would the twenty-sixth dynasty have for the nineteenth century?

He sipped from his glass of dreadful rosé, wondering if it had been taken from an ancient amphora entombed with the mummies themselves. It tasted like dried wool. The Egyptians had much to commend them, but winemaking was not among their finest talents.

Albert, or Bertie, as his mother Queen Victoria called him when he happened to be in her good graces, was surrounded inside the viceroy’s palace by the closest confidants of his entourage on this trip through Egypt: his elegant wife, Alix; the British explorer, Sir Samuel Baker, along with his unconventional wife, Lady Florence Baker; Lord Raybourn, the queen’s man, sent along to discuss the canal’s opening ceremonies with Isma’il Pasha, the Egyptian viceroy; and Colonel Christopher Teesdale, the prince’s equerry, who’d distinguished himself during the Crimean War fifteen years ago.

All agreeable company except for Lord Raybourn. He was too serious and too concerned with the political events in Egypt, remaining locked up with the viceroy for hours at a time, going over the minutiae of the flotilla lineup and what speeches would be given and by whom.

Why did his mother need to send a tedious old peer to Egypt for such donkeywork? Surely some parliamentary bureaucrat could have done it. Was Lord Raybourn’s real purpose to serve as his mother’s eyes and ears, to report on the Prince of Wales’s activities?

To cast a further pall over the trip, there were no interesting women in the traveling party other than Mrs. Baker, whose dramatic life story as a young Hungarian princess, kidnapped and nearly sold into a harem before being rescued by her future husband, stretched credulity a little far. And Mrs. Baker was far too devoted to her husband to consider the prince’s affections.

Why wasn’t Raybourn working on a private entertainment for the prince, like those involving exotic music and veiled, nubile Egyptian girls that Isma’il Pasha had provided during their cruise down the Nile—rather than worrying about whether the British flag would fly higher than the French one during the opening ceremony?

Bertie looked affectionately at his wife, Alix, who had taken days to recover from the indignation brought on by his visit to meet Pasha’s harem. She was a good woman, and patient, but didn’t understand his voracious appetite for variety in all things. By God, he wasn’t yet thirty years old and there was so much to experience. At least he knew that she was loyal despite his weakness for beauty, and would never spy on him for his mother.

Nor would Lady Susan Vane-Tempest. As much as he’d enjoyed Pasha’s entertainments, Bertie was yearning for his current mistress. He’d considered bringing her along, but that would have been asking too much of his tolerant wife.

Enough ruminating. After days of nodding approvingly at the progress of tons of dirt being shoveled out of the middle of the desert, Bertie was ready for something interesting, and what lay before him was vastly interesting.

The mummy was part of a cache of some thirty mummies supposedly discovered together in a tomb. Sir Samuel insisted the mummies couldn’t possibly be as old as the seller claimed, but what did it matter? A mummy unwrapping party would be great fun, and Bertie planned to send the rest of the cache to museums throughout England and the world. Maybe he’d even send one to Mother’s ostentatious South Kensington Museum, although the British Museum might have a quibble with that idea.

“Who would like to be the first to pull on a bandage?” he asked.

“I’ll do it,” Florence Baker said, getting up from her chair and approaching the table where the mummy lay. She went straight for the corpse’s feet and unwrapped a length of linen from there. “Everyone knows a corpse’s smelly feet is the last place the underworld spirits would search for valuables, so there’s probably a nice nugget of gold hidden here.”

“Flooey, you are just a pip,” her husband said, laughing.

Her strip broke free without a trinket appearing.

“Now I’ll try,” Sir Samuel said. “I’ll go for the opposite end, shall I?” He loosened a strip of tattered cloth from around the mummy’s head. Again, nothing.

Everyone took turns repeatedly, trying to unravel a strip under which a piece of gold, a precious gem, or other tiny artifact had been hidden for the deceased’s underworld journey.

It was Lord Raybourn, though, who had the first success, holding up his trinket for all to see. “What is it? Some kind of amulet?” Raybourn said.

“That’s an ankh,” Sir Samuel said. “It’s the symbol for life. May you enjoy the richness of life here and in the afterworld.”

“Huzzah!” Colonel Teesdale said, raising his glass. Everyone joined him in the toast, although the prince felt less than enthusiastic over cheering his mother’s spy.

The group continued playing until the final trinket was found, a scarab discovered by Alix in the mummy’s hand.

“What happens with our friend here?” Teesdale said, nodding at the table, which now contained the unwrapped body, resembling a piece of petrified wood.

The prince considered this. “Keep your linen strips and trinkets as souvenirs, and let’s draw straws to determine who the lucky recipient will be to display him in his study.”

After a brief discussion over whether a married couple should have two straws or one—and deciding that they should have two—the group pulled straws from Teesdale’s hand.

“Ah, Your Highness, you enjoy good fortune,” the colonel said. “Where will you display your great find?”

“The princess and I must think carefully on it,” he said, but he was already developing a grand idea for it: somewhere prominent inside Windsor Castle, where it would be sure to give his mother apoplexy. Perhaps then she’d quit sending nannies along to watch over him whenever he left England’s borders.

Anthony Fairmont, the Viscount Raybourn, was heartily sick of Egypt. The heat, the tourists, the European girls looking for husbands, the shouting in the streets that passed for civilized conversation. . . for God’s sake they even had periodic locust plagues, although it was no wonder the Almighty was still trying to get the nation’s attention.

How was it that Prince Albert Edward found this place so delightful?

Even Raybourn’s stay along the lush area bordering the Nile during the Prince of Wales’s tour had been little compensation for his misery. He just wanted to complete his duties and return home to England and what awaited him there.

Instead, he was in conference every day with Isma’il Pasha, negotiating the fine points of what nation would have precedence at November’s opening ceremonies, then he endured the prince’s activities all night into the wee hours of each morning. Was there anything less dignified than drawing straws over the dusty, mummified remains of some ancient being?

Now this. His meeting with Ferdinand de Lesseps had started amicably enough inside the Frenchman’s Cairo villa, although de Lesseps was prickly, as though a dung beetle were running up and down beneath his skin.

“How do you find your stay in Egypt, Lord Raybourn? It ees to your liking?”

“I am impressed with the progress you have made on the canal.”

“It ees an achievement magnifique for France. And the prince, he ees pleased with his visit?”

Yes, the prince’s satisfaction was really the question, wasn’t it?

“He is very pleased with the variety of, ah, entertainments he has been provided. Attending the bazaar incognito was an especial pleasure for him.”

De Lesseps smoothed his mustache, his nerves momentarily calmed. “Oui, I recommended that outing to Isma’il Pasha. But I do not think you are pleased here, Lord Raybourn. Do you have zee wife and children at home you miss? Maybe zee grandchildren?”

Raybourn cleared his throat. This was not a topic he wished to discuss with the Frenchman, no matter how important he was. “My wife died in eighteen thirty-seven, trying to give me another son, who didn’t survive. I have three living children and one grandson to remind me of her, though. What of you, monsieur? Is your family back in France?”

De Lesseps spread his hands. “I am as you are, my lord. My wife, Agathe, and my son Ferdinand Victor died within weeks of each other in eighteen fifty-three. I still have two other sons still living, but it ees not the same, ees it?”

“No, although we must bear up and continue on, monsieur.”

“Oui. It was only when I had the impulse to create the Suez Canal that I was régénérér, made new. You understand?”

Raybourn knew exactly what it meant to have the heart and mind return from an early grave, but that was his own closely held secret. Unfortunately, de Lesseps wasn’t done probing.

“Do you look for another wife, or at least an amour, my lord?”

Raybourn shrugged. “We’ll see. What of you? Will you remarry?”

“Ah, for now I am wedded to the Suez Canal. But once it ees finished, maybe I will find another wife. I believe I can make a good case as a husband. I have a long diplomatic career, you know, and have been consul to Cairo, Rotterdam, and Barcelona, among other postings. Of course, right now it ees the completion of the canal that is in some jeopardy, non?”

Raybourn didn’t like the new tone de Lesseps adopted as he started pacing in front of him. The insects were active under the man’s skin again. Maybe it was better to remain on the topic of marriage.

“It ees my concern,” de Lesseps said, “that your Victoria la reine and your parlement are working against me. They do not wish this project to be successful.”

“That isn’t true, monsieur.”

“Then they do not wish me to have my full glory in it.”

Raybourn was silent.

“Aha! I am correct in this. It ees why you have ignored my complaints about the blackmailer who threatens to destroy this project.”

“Monsieur de Lesseps, you can hardly expect the British government to—”

But Ferdinand de Lesseps wasn’t listening as he paced more furiously, working himself into a righteous lather as he enumerated all of Great Britain’s crimes against him.

“This blackmail, it ees an outrage! What will your government do to see to my satisfaction? I am, how you say, persécuté by this man. He believes he ees greater than Ferdinand de Lesseps, but this ees not so. I am le roi, like a king, here in Egypt. I tell this man, ‘Go here,’ and he goes here. I say to this one, ‘Dig at this spot,’ he digs until I say stop. The viceroy ees mon ami, will do anything I wish. But he cannot help with what I wish now, which is for this blackmailer to be found and run through with the sword.”

Lord Raybourn hoped he was successfully maintaining an interested look, one that was tinged with concern. He badly needed a glass of brandy, but would settle for a cup of Egyptian beer. De Lesseps was too agitated to notice his guest’s needs.

“. . . You see that the people, they cheer me in the streets for what I am doing for their country and for the world. But this little insect of a man threatens to expose me. It is . . . it is . . . intolérable. Why am I so badly treated when you, monsieur, your Mr. Stephenson used corvée labor here not long ago?”

Raybourn shifted uncomfortably in his chair. It was unfortunate that Robert Stephenson, who was responsible for Egypt’s first standard-gauge railway being completed in 1854, had used corvée labor, workers who weren’t quite slaves, because they were paid, but didn’t exactly have the freedom of normal workers, either, for they were paid barely enough for food.

“Monsieur de Lesseps, you must understand that Stephenson was not under as much scrutiny as your canal is. Also, his was a vast construction project that required thousands of men, and—”

“Lies, all lies. The Suez Canal project ees the largest construction project ever in the history of humanity. Stephenson’s railroad, pah! Your country uses corvée labor when it suits you, but castigate me for it. Now I have this little blackmailer attempting to ruin me.”

“I will telegraph the prime minister and ask him—”

“Non. If your government gets involved, your newspapers will get involved. I will have no notoriété on this project, not when I am so close to completion.”

Lord Raybourn spread his hands. “What do you want from me, monsieur?”

The Frenchman stamped his foot. “I want action! Immédiate-ment. You must find him and prosecute him.”

What de Lesseps was asking was impossible. Raybourn might be a peer, but he was not the police. Perhaps he could send a discreet message back to Scotland Yard.

“If you will not do this, I will find another way,” de Lesseps said. “But it will be better for you if you take care of it, Lord Raybourn.”

After finally escaping de Lesseps’s verbal clutches, Raybourn returned to his quarters, where he found a telegram waiting for him. It was well coded, with specific instructions in it. Instructions that suddenly made his life very bleak.

As Isma’il Pasha stood on the dock, extolling Egypt’s virtues to him, Bertie positioned himself on the deck of the ship that would take him from Alexandria to other points on his return trip from Egypt: Constantinople, the Crimean battlefields, and Athens. He was especially eager to see Constantinople. Sir Samuel said that the architecture of the Hagia Sophia mosque would remind him of Brighton Pavilion, with its center rounded dome and multiple minarets dotting the complex.

Bertie’s great-uncle, George IV, had built the magnificent and ostentatious palace of Brighton earlier in the century, and the prince wondered if the mosque was equally as unrestrained.

Speaking of unrestrained, Lady Florence was looking rather fetching in her garb, some sort of English interpretation of Egyptian concubine dress. Perhaps she really had spent time in a harem.

Bertie wondered if he could sneak a glance at his pocket watch without being noticed. They would never get to Constantinople if the viceroy’s speech was to last into eternity. Even Alix rustled impatiently next to him, her hand in the crook of his arm as she kept a smile plastered on her face.

“. . . that the idea of a canal, although now to be completed by Monsieur de Lesseps with our help, was originally an Egyptian idea, one rooted in our ancient and glorious culture, an idea of the legendary Pharaoh Sesostris . . .” Isma’il Pasha said, his voice booming so that people crowding around him on shore could hear. The man was in his finest dress, with a red bucket-shaped hat on his head, and his chest covered with bright badges and medals.

Monsieur de Lesseps stood next to the viceroy, his chest puffed in pride over the comparisons between his idea and that of an ancient pharaoh’s.

While Pasha talked, the prince thought forward to the rest of his trip. The Crimean battlefields were not much to Bertie’s taste—how could touring empty expanses of land and hearing about artillery, military tactics, counteroffensives, and casualty totals be of interest to anyone other than Colonel Teesdale?

“. . . but when he found that the sea was higher than the land, he stopped. Later, King Darius also made strides on a waterway passage between the Heroopolite Gulf and the Red Sea. . . .”

But the colonel had been a dedicated servant, so a stop at the battlefields where he’d once risked his life was not too onerous for the prince.

“. . . Ptolemy the Second made a trench as far as the Bitter Lakes. . . .”

Athens should prove to be entertaining. Alix had talked of nothing but the Parthenon the past two days in their room, a sign that she, too, was ready to see sights other than the Nile.

“. . . and even the French conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, found remnants of an ancient east–west canal late in the last century.. . .”

Did Bertie detect a note of conclusion in the viceroy’s voice? A whistle sounded in the distance, which he hoped was a signal to clear the waterway for his vessel.

“. . . and so we wish Your Highnesses fair winds in your journey home, with hopes that we will be honored again with your presence at the opening ceremony. . . .”

Bertie nodded regally to the viceroy, while Alix gave a delicate wave to the cheering crowds. Finally, they were off. There was so much more of life to be tasted, sampled, and enjoyed before returning home to England.

London

May 1869

Harriet Peet lifted the saddle of lamb for an expert sniff. “Mr. Litchfield, you cannot possibly mean to tell me you just got this in. Why, it’s a week old if it’s a day.”

“Ah, Mrs. Peet, I don’t know how that was left in the case. I meant to send it to the workhouse yesterday. Let me show you another cut. How about this one? So fresh it’s practically still bleating, it is.”

Harriet took the proffered chunk of meat cradled loosely in paper. She didn’t need to smell it to know that it was, indeed, a fresh cut. But she wasn’t about to let Mr. Litchfield off that easily.

“You know I’ll not tolerate tainted meat. Lord Raybourn’s table must be perfect.”

“Yes, of course, Mrs. Peet. May I offer His Lordship a discount for your trouble?”

With the wrapped lamb in hand and Lord Raybourn’s account not much lighter for it, Harriet Peet went on her way to visit the grocer for a tin of tea. She’d be sure to inspect that, as well, lest he try to slip her used leaves that had been brewed, dried again, and repackaged.

As if any storekeeper could actually slip something past Harriet Peet, Lord Raybourn’s housekeeper these past fifteen years . . . and hopefully soon to become, well, something more. A rare smile dared make an appearance on her face as she waited for the tea to be weighed.

Speaking of something more, she should pick up some butter. “Two pounds of cow’s butter, too, if you please,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” said the owner’s boy working behind the counter. “Shall I have everything sent over to Lord Raybourn’s residence?”

“No, don’t bother. I’ll carry it with me.” There was no time to wait for a deliveryman. She needed to return quickly and change into something finer than her regular work dress. Lord Raybourn was returning this afternoon from his diplomatic mission to Egypt with the Prince of Wales, and he had promised to marry her when he returned.

Imagining it again brought a decided warmth to her neck. The Viscountess Raybourn. Lady Raybourn, his children would have to call her. She might expire from pleasure the first time she witnessed his frumpy daughter, Dorothy, spit the title out between her teeth.

“Ma’am, are you feeling well?” the grocer’s boy asked.

Harriet realized she’d been laughing to herself. If she wasn’t careful, people would start thinking she was a bit balmy.

“I’m quite well, thank you. Please charge Lord Raybourn’s account,” she said with a wave of her hand as she departed.

She entered Raybourn House, built in the reign of King George IV of shimmering Bath stone, through the servants’ entrance, just as she always did at Lord Raybourn’s Willow Tree House estate in Sussex. Not for much longer, though. Soon, she’d be something as rare as a silver teapot in a coal miner’s house: a lower-class woman elevated to the peerage. Lord Raybourn—Anthony, as she called him in their private moments—was already buying her new dresses and hats and gloves in preparation for the moment, although they were all stored in trunks for now.

Putting away the butter and tea in the larder and keeping the mutton out on the worktable to prepare later, she went up the servants’ stairs to her attic room to change into a full emerald skirt with a black jacket edged in the same green, which had spent several months in her trunk. Anthony always said the color showed off her eyes and gave her a feline quality.

A stout feline to be sure, but I still have some appeal left to me.

She hummed contentedly as she transformed herself before her tiny tabletop mirror. As a last measure, she clipped a pair of jade bobs to her ears, turning to one side to admire them against their matching necklace. Anthony would so enjoy setting his eyes on her in this combination after so many weeks away in Egypt.

He wasn’t expecting her to be at the train station, waiting for him. She had a momentary bit of discomfort, for Lord Raybourn had taken Madame Brusse and Larkin, his cook and valet, with him, and seeing her dressed this way would broadcast to them what her relationship with their master was.

Anthony had not yet said they could make their relationship public.

Mrs. Peet shrugged. Anthony said they would announce their engagement upon his return, so what difference did it make that Madame Brusse and Larkin would know sooner? They were the ones who needed to get adjusted to it the fastest, anyway, given her elevation above them in the household.

She arrived early at St. Pancras station, after stepping fastidiously past the construction on the Midland Grand Hotel taking place right outside the station. It was difficult to see yet what it would look like when finished, but by the quantity of brick lying about, she guessed it would be magnificent. Rumor had it the hotel would have gold leaf walls and a fireplace in every room. Imagine that! Not even Lord Raybourn could afford so much finery.

She stopped to examine her skirts inside the station. Satisfied that they hadn’t been sullied by construction dust, she found the platform where Anthony’s train was due to arrive. Many other British subjects had also gathered in the station, which was decorated with flags and bunting to welcome the Prince and Princess of Wales home from their trip.

I am the only one here who doesn’t care about the royal return.

As the prince’s train came steaming into the station, the crowds began cheering their welcome. The members of his entourage disembarked to polite clapping, followed by more wild shouts of approval when Prince Albert Edward stepped out and gallantly offered an arm to his wife. The public loved the beautiful and charming Alexandra of Denmark, and went rapturous with joy at the sight of her.

The crowds dispersed to follow the prince and his entourage. Mrs. Peet was nearly alone on the platform.

What had happened? Why wasn’t Lord Raybourn with the prince? Where was he? She waited through the arrival of several more trains, hoping that perhaps he had been delayed somehow and would be along shortly. But it became evident that Lord Raybourn was not arriving home today.

Or perhaps he’d arrived on an earlier train, and was waiting on her now at Raybourn House. With that encouraging thought, Mrs. Peet returned home by omnibus, again entering by the servants’ entrance. How strange it must seem to anyone watching out a window, to see a woman so finely dressed entering through the rear.

Madame Brusse wasn’t in the kitchens, but Mrs. Peet didn’t stop to consider whether that was meaningful. She went as quickly as she could up the narrow servants’ staircase to see if Anthony was in his study or his bedroom.

Best to stop first on the ground floor to see if the postman had dropped mail through the door slot.

There was mail lying on the floor, but it was what else lay on the floor that sent Harriet Peet, a dedicated housekeeper so full of self-control that her employer’s children had no idea of her relationship with their widowed father, into paroxysms of terrified screaming, punctuated only by ragged gasps for air.

At the bottom of the stairs, sharing space on the black-and-white-tiled floor with the day’s mail, Lord Raybourn lay sprawled in his dark olive smoking jacket, one of his favorite Turkish cigarettes, half-smoked and crushed, lying next to him.

The blood, though. All of the dark, foul-smelling blood emanating from her dear Lord Raybourn’s face. She backed away, not wanting to soil the dark green dress that Lord Raybourn loved so well on her.

Harriet Peet was certain she would continue screaming into the next century. In fact, she was screaming so much that the irony of protecting a dress so as not to disappoint a dead man was completely lost on her.

Edmund Henderson blotted the words before him and read the document over one more time with satisfaction.

It was an advertisement he planned to submit to the London Illustrated News, since they placed their advertisements in far more prominent locations than The Times. He was seeking detectives to add to his new, centralized force of elite inspectors. Right now there were only twenty-six detectives and one desk sergeant, not nearly enough for a city of three million. His plan was to increase the force to over two hundred and ensure that he, as commissioner of police, would determine which crimes could be solved by divisional detectives in local police departments, and which were “higher . . .