Lady of Ashes

Books by Christine Trent

 

 

 

 

KENSINGTON BOOKS

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

For my mother, Georgia Carpenter

 

 

 

—Washington Irving (1783–1859)

The idea for this novel came from Mary Oldham, a fellow writer who casually said to me at a writers’ conference, “I’ve always wanted to read a story about a Victorian undertaker.” From that offhand comment a book was born.

I had the great fortune of talking to many experts in the course of researching this book. In particular, I extend thanks to the following : Doug Lyle, MD, for his timeline of forensic science during the Victorian period; Trevor May, historian, for his research on embalming ; Shirley Nicholson, a guide at the Linley-Sambourne House in London and author of
A Victorian Household,
for her kindness toward an American visitor with endless questions about Victorian life; Rosemarie Wood, Chapel Steward at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, for her assistance in understanding how a funeral procession would work inside the chapel; Ms. Eleanor Cracknell from the St. George’s Chapel Archives for her quick response to questions about Prince Albert’s funeral; and Ned Brinsfield, funeral director of Brinsfield Funeral Home, for graciously answering probably the strangest questions of his career.

My editor, Audrey LaFehr, gives me the freedom to write whatever I want, no matter how odd the subject material, and my agent, Helen Breitwieser, always encourages me to think “off the shelf.” It is a pleasure to work with them.

Good friends keep a writer going. My thanks to Mary Russell for spending countless hours driving me to book signings and to Petra Utara for listening over numerous steak and pasta dinners. I am also indebted to Carolyn McHugh and Marian Wheeler for rummaging through used bookstores on their own time to find research books for me.

My brother, Tony Papadakis, is a Civil War enthusiast and provided me with lots of details I would have never thought to look for elsewhere.

Thanks are essential to my beta readers, Georgia Carpenter and Diane Townsend, for reading my manuscript in record time and providing feedback to ensure I made my deadline.

Finally, I thank God for giving me my Jon, who is the best husband I could have ever been granted.

PROLOGUE

 

V
iolet Morgan often wondered why she was so skilled at dressing a corpse, yet was embarrassingly incompetent in the simplest household task, such as selecting draperies or hiring housemaids.

If only they hadn’t moved to fancier lodgings in a more elegant section of London, she wouldn’t be burdened with having to learn a myriad of rules for keeping a proper home. Surely her domestic mismanagement was the source of her husband’s current displeasure. How else could Graham have become so morose and embittered these past few months? Surely it wasn’t the hot weather, which had never before made him so bilious.

Violet picked through her tray of mourning brooches, organizing them neatly for the next customer who wished to make a purchase. She slid the tray of pins into the display case and reached for the pile of papers Graham must have carelessly thrown on top of it. She sorted through the mix of invoices, newspapers, and advertising leaflets. A recent copy of
The Illustrated London News
caught her eye. Graham had circled headlines regarding events in the United States and scribbled in his own comments beside them. Her husband was avidly following current events transpiring across the Atlantic, hoping for destruction on both sides of the U.S. conflict.

One article opined on the expected duration of the conflict raging there. The Americans had recently engaged in hostilities, after years of Southern states bickering with those in the North. Since last month’s first firing of shots at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, much taunting and posturing had occurred. How the citizens of the United States enjoyed fighting. Each side boasted the skirmish would last just a few months, and self-proclaimed experts declared that all the blood to be spilled in the contest could be contained in a single thimble, or wiped up by one handkerchief.

The newspaper agreed, but Violet felt that was foolish optimism. England’s own civil war had gone on for almost a decade and nearly destroyed the country.

And to what end? The Roundheads eliminated the monarchy with the beheading of Charles I in 1649, and by 1660 the monarchy was back with his son, Charles II. Nothing changed, but thousands of lives lost and a king beheaded. Surely the Americans would end up with a fallen leader, too.

Another article, which Graham had not only circled, but drawn brackets around, focused on the South’s hunger for recognition. During the past couple of months, the Southern states had pressed Britain to recognize their burgeoning nation. The poor fools thought they had Britain in a state of helplessness because they controlled much of the world’s cotton, so necessary for England’s cloth mills. They didn’t realize that England had been storing cotton for some time and was flush with it. What the country did need was wheat.

Wheat was produced by the Northern states.

The crafty British politicians, though, were willing to host a confederate delegation in London and let it press its suit for diplomatic recognition, thus not publicly rejecting the South in case it should win the war.

Violet sighed as she separated the pile of papers into related stacks before removing another tray to straighten, this one full of glass-domed mourning brooches. Buyers could weave the hair of the deceased into a fanciful pattern and place it under the glass to create an everlasting keepsake to be pinned to one’s breast.

To think of all those American soldiers who would die ignominious deaths, heaped into mass graves, without the distinction of a proper funeral and burial. How could her husband, a man whose profession was to bring dignity to death, wish for mass slaughter?

She replaced the second tray. The display case looked much better now that it was tidied up inside and out. She moved over to the linen closet, its door discreetly hidden in the wallpaper at the back of the room. Inside were shelves stacked with bolts of black crape for draping over windows, black Chantilly lace for mourning shawls, and fine cambric cotton for winding sheets. Except the cambric had all tumbled to the ground in a heap. How had that happened?

“Graham?” she called out. “Did you let our cambric fall to the floor?” Only when there were no customers at Morgan Undertaking would she dare raise her voice above the gentlest of tones.

“For what reason would I have done that? Maybe Will was the sloppy one going through it,” he replied from the shop’s reception area.

Perhaps, but Will was usually as careful as Violet.

Violet glanced at the mantel clock over the fireplace. Nearly ten o’clock in the morning, time to visit the Stanley family. She gathered up her cavernous undertaker’s bag, filled with embalming fluids, tinted skin creams, cutting tools, syringes, fabric swatches, and her book of compiled drawings of coffins, mourning fashions, flowers, and memorial stones. Going to the display case, she pulled out a selection of mourning jewelry and added the pieces to her bag.

Violet lifted her undertaker’s hat from its stand and tied the sash under her chin. The extra-long, flowing tails of black crape wrapped around the hat’s crown were a symbol of her trade. Graham wore his own hat adorned with black crape when meeting with customers, as well. She peered into a mirror she kept next to the hat stand, pinched her cheeks to bring some color into them, and tucked an errant strand of hair under the brim of her hat before putting on black gloves. In his more jovial days, Graham used to tease her that one day he’d be rich because he’d cut off and sell her long hair, which he deemed the color of newly minted bronze ha’pennies and of even more value in its beauty.

With a quick farewell to her husband, she left the premises and boarded a horse-drawn green omnibus for Belgravia. Graham always insisted that they hire private cabs for transport to meetings with grieving families, contending it was more representative of the Morgans’ socially elevated state, but Violet was still uncomfortable with their new entry into higher circles and usually ignored his demand. She wasn’t quite sure their income supported the luxuries Graham contended were their due. The omnibus, London’s horse-drawn public transport, cost a mere threepence to travel to most places through central London, and only sixpence to travel farther out.

She exited the omnibus a few blocks from the address she had been given, and walked the rest of the way.

The Stanleys lived in an up-and-coming neighborhood on the outer edges of Belgravia, an area known for its wealthy—and usually aristocratic—residents. The Stanleys’ townhome wasn’t quite as stately as the residences nearby, being situated in a long row of recently built units that reflected the current construction craze in London.

Nevertheless, this district was a few steps up from the London locale where she and Graham had settled after inheriting his father’s undertaking shop. Graham’s ambition was eventually to move to Mayfair, maybe even Park Lane, yet Violet was just as happy in their Grafton Terrace townhome in Kentish Town, a very respectable area north of Regent’s Park.

Mostly respectable, anyway. They did have odd neighbors, Karl and Jenny Marx, who named all of their daughters after Jenny. Mr. Marx seemed to have no occupation other than writing letters and essays every day, sometimes under the name “A. Williams.” There was also neighborhood gossip that Mr. Marx, or Williams, had fathered a child with his housekeeper, but Violet stayed out of such tittle-tattle. She lived in a pleasant area and had no desire to stir up anything ugly.

There was no black crape festooned under the windows and above the doors of the Stanley residence. Violet made a mental note of it as she pressed the “Visitors” bell. Some debate existed as to whether or not an undertaker should be using the “Servants” bell, but in Violet’s opinion, anyone assisting the family with a proper departure from their earthly existence was certainly entitled the rank of Visitor.

A maid with swollen eyes and dressed in black opened the door. Immediately recognizing who Violet must be by her garb and large black bag, the young woman silently led Violet to the front parlor and closed the door before going to seek out her mistress.

The Stanleys were far wealthier than she and Graham were. A new grand piano, polished within an inch of its ivory-keyed life, stood prominently in one corner as a testament to fashion. The windows were draped in three separate layers of material, a sign that the Stanleys took current trends very seriously. Multiple linings were expensive, but kept out the dirt, heat, and noise from the street. The papered walls proudly displayed paintings and bric-a-brac, while the wood floors were covered with bright, intricately designed carpets. Violet’s own attempts at interior decoration fell far short of the Stanleys’ remarkable expressions of taste.

Here was a family that would demand a funeral of nearly aristocratic proportions.

The same maid opened the door to the room again, and a middle-aged woman, haggard beyond her years and dressed head-to-toe in black, entered. Violet nodded solemnly.

The other woman spoke first. “Mrs. Morgan? I’m Adelaide Stanley. Thank you for coming to attend to my Edward.” The woman brought an extravagantly laced handkerchief to her eyes. “I can hardly believe he’s gone. Such a good husband he was. I don’t know how we’ll manage.” Mrs. Stanley twisted the soaked handkerchief in her hands.

“God finds a way to help us manage,” Violet said, pulling a spare cloth from her sleeve and discreetly handing it to the woman, who accepted it with a fresh flow of tears. “Where is Mr. Stanley?”

“Upstairs in his bedroom. So calm and peaceful he was when he passed. Like an angel, despite the torture he endured from pneumonia. Do you wish to see him now?”

Violet considered. Mrs. Stanley was truly grieving, but was relatively composed, unlike some of the hysterical relatives Violet usually encountered, so it might be best to address practical matters first in case her customer should later collapse.

“Why don’t we discuss Mr. Stanley’s ceremony first?” she suggested.

“Of course, as you wish.” Mrs. Stanley rang a bell and gave instructions for tea to another maid who appeared, dressed much like the first one. Violet and her customer sat in deeply plushed, heavily carved chairs and chatted innocuously until the maid returned. After steaming cups had been poured, the maid withdrew, and Violet pressed into the delicacy of arranging a proper funeral.

“I saw immediately upon approaching your elegant front door that Mr. Stanley was a man of some importance, is that not so?”

“Indeed. Edward made us quite comfortable through investment in the London and Birmingham rail line back in the forties. Once it merged with Grand Junction and the Manchester and Birmingham Railways, well, Edward had proven himself to be a very astute investor. He had many influential friends.”

“Quite so. And this parlor tells me you are a woman of impeccable taste. Your extensive blue-and-white china collection is to be commended.”

Mrs. Stanley was no longer crying. “You are kind to notice, Mrs. Morgan. Mr. Stanley and I strove to present the right sort of furnishings befitting our station. The china is all antique, you know, none of those newly manufactured pieces that have become so popular with the masses.”

Violet shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Graham had ordered several new imported blue-and-white vases and jardinières to ornament their home.

“Of course,” she replied, removing her gloves and opening her bag, which lay at her feet. “Mr. Stanley wasn’t part of a burial club, was he?” Violet withdrew her undertaker’s book.

“My, no. We never expected him to go so soon. We never had any thought of it.”

“Actually, I applaud the fact that you never did this. Many burial clubs are operated by unscrupulous undertakers who tell grieving widows that they cannot pay out the money until the club’s committee meets in three months’ time. Naturally, since the burial must be completed quickly, she cannot wait, and the undertaker offers to loan her the money, and charges an exorbitant sum for the funeral.

“My husband and I would never engage in such a practice. I’m simply relieved that we don’t have to try to wrest your money from such a club. You and Mr. Stanley were very wise not to have been deceived by one of these dishonest groups.”

Violet reached over and patted Mrs. Stanley’s hand, and received a grateful smile in return. She continued. “There is much you can do to ensure Mr. Stanley’s status is properly recognized at his funeral. Let me show you.” Laying the book open in her lap so that Mrs. Stanley could see it, Violet flipped through sections marked “Poor,” “Working Class,” and “Tradesman,” stopping just short of “Titled” to the section marked “Society.”

“Most people of your position opt for a hearse with two pairs of horses, two mourning coaches each with pairs, nineteen plumes of ostrich feathers as well as velvet coverings for the horses, eleven men as pages, coachmen with truncheons and wands, and an attendant wearing a silk hatband.”

Mrs. Stanley’s eyes grew wide. “Oh my. Is all of that necessary?”

Violet flipped backward in the book to the section marked “Tradesman.” “Please be assured, we can assist you at a variety of levels. We could pare down to a hearse with a pair and just one mourning coach, and reduce the mourning company to just eight pages and coachmen.”

“And that is the standard for what those in the trades do?”

“Yes, madam. For a tradesman such as a railway officer or a solicitor. The cost of such a funeral is around fourteen pounds sterling.”

Mrs. Stanley frowned. “And for the other one? With all of the horses and mourners?”

“A bit more, at twenty-three pounds, ten shillings.”

“I see. That is certainly well within our abilities. It wouldn’t do for my husband to have a funeral that wasn’t worthy of him.”