Lady of Ashes (4 page)

Violet wished again for her husband of old, who could make such clever statements to lift her spirits and who was not alternately sad and incensed.

Graham wasn’t on the main floor of the chapel, and the floor opening in the center of the sanctuary—through which a coffin was lowered—was closed. He must be down in the crypt. She went to the hidden door at one side of the chapel and made her way down the narrow, cramped staircase to the vast crypt below. Her black skirts were filthy from brushing along the stone walls.

Burial in a crypt was certainly respectable, as long as one was not unfortunate enough to be of so few resources as to be buried in the poor section of it. Coffins were stacked four deep there, almost as if they represented geologic layers of dirt. Perhaps they were really a testament to the history of London’s people.

It was better than some church graveyards, though, where the poor were reduced to complete ignominy, buried in countless stacks of coffins. She swept away the thought, which was an anathema to any decent undertaker.

Graham was shaking hands with the director, and turned to leave. He frowned at seeing Violet there.

“Why are you here? Why didn’t you wait outside?” His voice was gentle for the director’s benefit, but Violet knew he was unhappy.

Right. Why
hadn’t
she waited for him in their carriage?

The director saved her from having to answer by greeting her. “Mrs. Morgan, a delight to see you again.”

With pleasantries exchanged, she and Graham departed, her husband still concentrating on his scowl. By the time they returned to the mews to ensure Harry had properly returned the funeral carriage, the storm had broken and he was affable once more.

“When does Mr. Laroche arrive to make the calling card?” he asked.

“In a little over a week,” Violet said.

“Very good. You’ll have a replacement for Annie before then, won’t you? I’d like my best suit cleaned and pressed for the sitting. Hopefully the new maid will be more competent than she was.”

Violet sighed. She saw little hope of it.

 

The bell tied to the knob rattled in protest as Violet pushed against the door to the dressmaker’s shop on nearby Bayswater Road. Apparently Mary still hadn’t found the time to repair the lopsided door frame.

Looking about the shop, Violet could see why there had been no opportunity to hire a man to see to the door. Her friend’s shop, which specialized in mourning clothes, was cramped even more than usual. Mannequins wearing half-completed shawls, mourning coats, and black-sashed bonnets were nearly obscured by heaps of folded fabrics and laces, stacks of silk top hats, and a revolving rack stuffed with threads, boxes of buttons, and other trims. The area surrounding Mary’s sewing machine, an Isaac Singer model powered by a foot treadle instead of the old hand-crank type, was lit by candle sconces protected by drip trays along the wall behind it.

A longtime dressmaker, Mary Overfelt had never quite adjusted to gas lighting, fearful of its effect on her fabrics. She worried more about a fire from a gas leak than from the open flame of candles.

Mary emerged from a door at the back of the shop. She picked up a rack of fluttering scarves and hatbands that fell over from the breeze of the opening door. As she rose and patted the impossibly large puff of hair coiled at the back of her head to ensure it hadn’t fallen out of place, she realized that it wasn’t a typical customer who had entered.

“Violet, my dear! What brings you here today?”

“I have the final installment of Mr. Dickens’s
Great Expectations
story from
All the Year Round,
and thought you might like to read it.” Violet offered her friend the periodical, already battered from being toted around and read in snatches of time.

“Ah, so we can finally discover Pip’s fate. What will finally happen between him and Estella? I’ll look forward to this tonight over my bedtime tea. I imagine you enjoyed this far more than
Oliver Twist,
given its unfavorable view of undertakers.”

Mary looked around for a free space to put the magazine. Giving up, she placed it on top of her sewing chair, which must have made for an interesting work experience, since it, too, was heaped with materials and patterns.

“I’d invite you to sit down, but . . .” She held her hands out helplessly.

“Not to worry. I also wanted to see if you’ve received new plates for next year’s mourning fashions.”

“Not yet. Well, perhaps they’ve come by post, who knows?” Mary pointed to a stack of mail on a table in a corner. London’s mail was delivered efficiently two or three times each day, and it was obviously overwhelming the dressmaker.

Poor Mary; her story was a moving one and had brought tears to Violet’s eyes when she heard it one evening over cups of chocolate. Involved in dressmaking from the time she could wield a needle, Mary enjoyed a twenty-two-year bond of love with her husband and their dressmaking shop until Matthew’s untimely death from a malignant growth in his brain.

When her own mourning threatened to consume the forty-five-year-old widow, she moved to London from Cornwall to escape her memories and focus her energies on constructing clothing for others who were suffering as deeply as she. London also had wealthier customers.

Five years later, Mary’s grief had mellowed into a poignant wistfulness, but her reputation for mourning clothing had increased beyond all expectations, making her the most sought-after mourning dressmaker in Paddington. However, Mary’s hair had gone an unusual shade of gray in her grief and was so thick and unmanageable despite her attempts to control it that it seemed as though she was wearing a thundercloud atop her head.

Violet heard of Mary’s growing renown and made it a point to become acquainted with the shop owner two streets away. Surprisingly, the two women discovered many common interests—including books—and a friendship developed between them, despite the twenty-year difference in age. Nowadays their conversation on any given day might be about the latest novel by Mr. Wilkie Collins, or the trouble between the prime minister and his ambitious chancellor of the exchequer over the Reform Act, or even the increasing price of British-produced crape.

Mary picked up a crumpled piece of white crape being sewn as a border for a widow’s bonnet, which was lying across her sewing machine. She folded it neatly, placing it atop another tottering pile of folded squares nearby.

“How was the Stanley funeral?” Mary asked.

“Elegant, I think.” Violet picked up another carelessly tossed piece of fabric, folded it, and added it atop the white crape. She and Mary wordlessly began folding, straightening, and organizing the shop together in companionable silence.

“I entered the chapel after the mourners left,” Violet said, breaking the quiet.

Mary stopped what she was doing to look at her friend with concern. “You did? Was Mr. Morgan inside?”

“He was.”

“Did he see you? Why did you go in?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what possessed me to go in. My husband has been so . . . odd . . . as of late, and I felt somehow compelled to check on things.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing, really. Graham wasn’t happy about it, but he didn’t chastise me as much as usual. Not like he did over Annie.”

“What about Annie?”

Violet picked up a spool of gray thread that had rolled under the sewing table and tossed it onto the revolving rack that Mary was organizing by color and type of trim.

“Graham dismissed her without consulting me. He was displeased with her work, and by extension displeased with me.”

“Hmm. How many maids does this make?”

“Annie was the third in the past year.”

“What will you do now?”

“I don’t know. He expects me to replace her within a week so that his finest suit can be pressed before we sit for a new calling card. Recommendations of nieces and distant family members from our employees and from hired mourners have not proven successful, so I must devise a better way to hire a servant.” Violet shook her head. “I despise handling these household matters, yet it’s so important to Graham. Perhaps he would have been better off with a more domesticated wife.”

“I hardly think he is the one who would be better off, Violet.”

“Sorry?”

“Never mind. Have you placed an advertisement in
The Times
?”

“No. Graham thinks a servant might be put off to know in advance that we’re undertakers.”

“Foolishness! It’s the method Mrs. Beeton recommends.”

“Yes, the indomitable Mrs. Beeton.”

“I’m sure I have
The Times
here somewhere.” Mary approached her stack of mail with determination, managing to rummage through it without toppling it.

“Ah, here we are.” She opened it up and searched for several moments before finding what she wanted and showing it to Violet. “Look, here are not only advertisements placed by employers, but situations wanted by girls willing to work. If Mr. Morgan doesn’t want you to place your own solicitation, surely he won’t object to answering one of these.”

With Mary looking over her shoulder, Violet studied the page, which included a multitude of “situations wanted” running down a single column. Several caught her eye.

“That sounds promising,” Violet said.

Mary shook her head. “Too young. She’ll be flighty. She’s too far away, as well.”

“The railway runs from Enfield Lock to the city center, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, but that just means she’ll want to live at home and ride in each day. Or else she’ll be homesick every day and you’ll have her suffering the pangs of nostalgia.”

Violet continued scanning the list and read another advertisement aloud.

“I rather like this one,” Violet said, “except that her expectations might be too high for a pair of undertakers recently moved up a bit in society. Graham would be pleased with her for certain. What else is there?”

Mary cut her off before she could make comment. “She’s seeking a husband. No sense in it being yours.”

Indeed not.

In the end, though, Violet decided to answer the ad for the middle-aged cook. Within a couple of days of posting a reply, she received a visit from Edith Scrope, a stout woman who wheezed when nodding or shaking her head, and wheezed herself nearly into a fit when Violet told her that the Morgans were undertakers. A strange habit, but not so odd that it would interfere with her duties. Contrary to Mary’s opinion, there was nothing about Edith Scrope that remotely suggested she was on the hunt for a new husband.

Violet hired her on the spot at eighteen pounds per year with an extra allowance for tea, sugar, and beer. She explained the rules of the Morgan household—what few she could remember—and prayed Mrs. Scrope would be a success.

 

“Graham, be still,” Violet said, squeezing his shoulder to stop his fidgeting as she stood behind him inside their shop.

“My collar is scratching me intolerably,” he said. “What did Mrs. Scrope use on it?”

“I don’t know. Shh, Mr. Laroche will never be able to get a proper exposure if you keep moving about.”

The photographer stood hunched over his camera box, which rested on a wood tripod. It had taken an hour for their scene to be posed to Mr. Laroche’s satisfaction. In the end, Graham was seated with his legs crossed and Violet stood behind him with her right hand on his left shoulder. Both wore full undertaker’s garb, and a wreath of lilies hung on a stand to their left.

They’d argued all morning about whether to put a child’s coffin in the scene, with Violet opposed to it on the grounds of it being too ghoulish, whereas Graham thought it more accurately portrayed their profession than just a floral spray. Mr. Laroche put the matter to rest by telling them he wouldn’t be able to fit it properly into the portrait.

It was a hollow victory for Violet, because now Graham was grumpy and dissatisfied with how their photography session was proceeding.

“All done,” Mr. Laroche said, hurriedly gathering up his supplies so he could take his wet plates to the portable darkroom studio parked outside. He had only about ten minutes for the entire developing process before the plates dried.

When he was finished, the photographer returned to the shop, triumphantly brandishing their ambrotype. It was indeed a good likeness of them. A series of pictures from this one ambrotype would be developed onto sheets of paper, each cut into eight individual cards. At a price of less than two shillings per card, it was inexpensive advertisement.

“May I suggest having the image tinted?” Mr. Laroche asked. “I have an excellent colorist who can bring a bit of blush to your cheeks and emphasize the white of the flowers. It will cost just a bit more.”

After agreeing to his price and concluding their transaction, Violet left Graham at the shop while she went home to discuss menus with Mrs. Scrope. Thus far, the woman was proving invaluable. With Mrs. Scrope minding all of their domestic matters, Violet could concentrate fully on their undertaking business. Even Graham was pleased with her work, and except for this morning’s tussle over their portrait sitting, he’d been cheerful and loving for days. Violet could only hope he would remain this contented.