A Virtuous Death

by Christine Trent

  “That has to do with the health of prostitutes, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “You are correct. These odious laws were intended to control venereal disease in the army and navy, but all they do is commit these unfortunate girls to workhouses.”

  “Your Highness, I confess I don’t know specifically what the laws do.”

  Louise seemed only too happy to discuss the subject, signaling to Lady Hazel for another cup of tea and settling in for a discourse on it. “The laws were passed five years ago. Because military men are discouraged from marrying, prostitution is viewed as a necessary evil. To shield soldiers and sailors from the social diseases, a prostitute can be arrested at any time and subjected to any manner of personal inspection. If she is declared to be infected, she is confined to a lock hospital until deemed cured. She might be there months.”

  “What is a lock hospital?”

  “A hospital established specifically for the treatment of social diseases. Many naval ports and army towns have them. Mind you, only the fallen girls are sent there, not the men, who are equally responsible for spreading disease.”

  “Does it work?”

  “How can it? The police are only gathering up half the problem.”

  Violet nodded. “So the disease spreads, but only half the infected population is treated.”

  “If that. What’s worse, the conditions in most lock hospitals are dreadful, and there are too few beds, so many of these women are forced into workhouse infirmaries.”

  Violet shuddered. She’d experienced enough of what a workhouse was like to know that it was a place to avoid. The thought of them reminded her of Susanna’s early plight in one of them.

  “Mrs. Butler recognized what a terrible injustice this was, where women must endure humiliating examinations and be subsequently thrown into a hospital no better than a prison, yet the men, who are themselves responsible for the demand for prostitutes, suffer no inconvenience at all. A group, the National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, was formed, but they wouldn’t permit women to join. Ridiculous!”

  “Indeed,” Violet murmured.

  “That’s why she formed the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and we are all members, aren’t we?”

  The other women nodded their heads vigorously.

  “There are over five thousand prostitutes working in London alone, and another twenty thousand or so working through England and Wales. Will all of these women end up dying in workhouses? The men involved must also be subject to examination and treatment, else the laws must be repealed. Repeal is Mrs. Butler’s goal.”

  “How do you help her?”

  “Of course, none of us can demonstrate or write letters, lest our families hear of it. But we donate clothing and shoes and other items for the girls. You see, Mrs. Butler says that if we are going to stop prostitution at all, we must provide a way out for them. She helps them get factory jobs, and we provide them with what they need to look presentable until they can provide for themselves.”

  Violet cleared her throat. “Pardon me, Your Highness, but does the queen know about this?”

  “Of course not. To even mention prostitution around her would send her into an apoplectic fit. We are moralists of a high order, Mrs. Harper, but we are not fools. My mother would banish me to Canada if she knew what we were doing. She believes her daughters have two good uses: to serve as secretary and eventually make a marriage that suits the Crown. Everyone here would suffer if she knew, for she would undoubtedly go straight to Their Lordships and Ladyships to demand an end to their daughters’ activities.”

  It was a plea for secrecy.

  “I understand completely, Your Highness. You may trust that your secret has the confidentiality of the grave.”

  “Charlotte’s secrets weren’t so private, though, were they? Ripley knew, and I’m certain he is connected with her death.”

  Violet didn’t reply to this. How could Louise be so certain? Instead, she changed the subject.

  “You meet in the mews.”

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  “I’m afraid I overheard your voices one day, although I was unable to discern what you were discussing.”

  “We were probably arguing over who was going to make protest flags with Mrs. Butler,” Lady Hazel said.

  “In fact, why don’t you join us for our next meeting, since you know where it is held, Mrs. Harper?” Louise said. “We can use other sympathetic women, and perhaps you might be helpful to our cause, since you are a commoner who passes freely in and out of the palace.”

  Violet hesitated. “I don’t know, Your Highness. I am in your mother’s employ.”

  “She won’t find out. I do things without her knowledge constantly and here I stand to tell the tale. One meeting won’t despoil you, and you may find that you want to do something to help.”

  Violet agreed, against her own better judgment. But when a princess of the Royal House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha asks charmingly for a favor it is nearly impossible to refuse. Violet realized that Princess Louise was far more complex than she’d ever imagined.

  Violet returned to St. James’s Palace that night too lost in thought to even care about eating. Did Lord Marcheford have a hand in his wife’s death? If so, did that make Lady Maud’s death completely unrelated? But what about the fabric she found at both death scenes? The bite marks? Didn’t that link the two women in a manner beyond their mutual friendship? If Lord Marcheford was involved in his wife’s death, for what reason might he be involved in Lady Maud’s? And if he was involved in the deaths of two women surrounding Louise, was he interested in killing more? But why? Just because his wife was involved with a women’s moralist group? No, it was inconceivable.

  Moreover, it was obvious now that Mr. Brown’s secret knowledge was of Louise’s dealings with Mrs. Butler, something of which Victoria would heartily disapprove. Of course, it wasn’t clear how much he knew, other than the obvious, that the women were meeting in private. In fact, he probably knew very little beyond that, which was why Violet was dragged into the situation. Did he expect her to report this to the queen? If so, was he mad? Violet was too entwined with Louise now to report her to her mother.

  Yet wasn’t it the queen she was responsible to, not Louise? What unholy mess had she just gotten herself into by agreeing to attend a meeting of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts?

  Speaking of the queen, there was her Drawing Room to endure soon, too. What trouble might come with that?

  She wished Sam were home again. When he returned from Wales, she was determined she’d never let him out of her sight again.

  She decided to open up the book she’d been reading, The Humbugs of the World, by American showman P. T. Barnum. She was amused—and not just a little reminded of Mr. Brown—in reading of Barnum’s encounters with medical quacks, hoaxsters, adventurers, and other “humbugs.”

  The morning sky was sending pink rays of light through the draperies of her room by the time Violet had finished the book and finally nodded off to sleep.

  Queen Victoria called together another tarot card reading, so once again Violet sat in the queen’s private rooms, waiting for the cards to be shuffled, given the queen’s touch, and spread out.

  Louise, Beatrice, and the sickly Leopold were all present. The boy seemed pathetically eager to be in the room, and given that he probably had few companions besides tutors and nurses, it was understandable. His sunken eyes were bright with curiosity as he peppered Mr. Brown with questions about the deck. Finally, Victoria called for quiet so that the reading could begin. Leopold wrapped his arms around himself, but whether this was because he was actually cold or because his mother was shushing him Violet wasn’t sure.

  “Mr. Brown,” the queen said. “Please, can you tell us whether there will actually be danger at our next Drawing Room? Others seem to think so.” She shot Violet a dark look as she reached next
to her to stroke Beatrice’s hair.

  No, it was impossible to think that Violet was going to tell the queen about Louise’s activities.

  “Wumman, I will do my best, but you know how reticent the cards have been of late.”

  “Yes, Mr. Brown, we know you will.” The queen was all sunshine for her favorite servant.

  Louise sat out of her mother’s sight, nervously pulling at her sleeves and fingering the buttons on her bodice, her mind clearly elsewhere. Was she bored with the proceedings or nervous that Brown would make some sort of accusation toward her?

  Of course, the woman had lost two friends in the space of mere days. She probably preferred to sit quietly in her rooms, lost in thought, rather than be bound to her mother’s social activities.

  Mr. Brown exuded spirits this evening, and not the supernatural sort, although no one seemed to notice except Violet. Or perhaps the queen chose not to notice it and Louise, Beatrice, and Leopold didn’t notice it for their mother’s sake.

  He gazed at the overturned cards, “hmming” and “ohhing” at them. Victoria and her two youngest children sat forward, rapt, as they waited to see what pronouncement Mr. Brown would make.

  “I hope ye won’t cast me off, thinking I’m a fraud, but once again I cannae give ye good news.”

  “Is it terrible, Mr. Brown?”

  “Yes. Look, here as our subject card we have a Queen of Swords. That represents ye, Your Majesty, but in your capacity as a mother. There is tension between the Queen of Swords and that of her spiritual situation, shown here in the five of swords, which represents spite or sabotage. Someone is nae safe for the Drawing Room, although I don’t think it’s ye, Your Majesty, but someone near you. Someone close.”

  Victoria hugged Beatrice to her. “Baby, perhaps we will have you stay up in your rooms that day.”

  “No, Mother, I’m not afraid.”

  Stirred from her own bleak contemplations, Louise said, “Do you not want to lock up Leopold and me that day, Mother?” Her voice was incredulous. “Will you allow us to come to doom?”

  “It isn’t proper for Leopold to attend, and we will need you nearby to attend to any note taking we’ll need. Mr. Brown said we are not in danger, so surely you won’t be, either, if you remain at my side.”

  Louise clamped her lips and returned to picking at her sleeves.

  “However, we do now see that perhaps it is best if Scotland Yard sends men to protect the day’s proceedings, especially now that Mr. Brown sees misfortune ahead. Can you tell us what might happen, Mr. Brown?”

  Brown pursed his lips between a thumb and forefinger. “The cards are not specific, wumman. This card is a ten of cups. It is normally a sign of harmony, but observe: It is reversed. Therefore it represents conflict and rebellion. I believe it suggests someone who is angry.”

  “Why, anyone who would wish to do someone harm would by necessity be angry, wouldn’t they?” the queen said.

  “This is a different sort of anger. It is passionate and righteous. That’s all I can say.”

  When Victoria declared the reading to be over, Louise stormed out with hardly a word to anyone. Violet rose to leave, but the queen requested that she remain.

  “So, Mrs. Harper, it seems you were correct about needing Scotland Yard here.”

  “I am only trying to help, Your Majesty. I’m afraid I make a blunder of things sometimes, as I am only a mere undertaker.”

  The queen appraised her silently, finally saying, “Indeed. We shall meet again at the Drawing Room.”

  Violet went to Mudie’s Lending Library on Oxford Street, turning over the myriad of questions in her mind as she browsed the latest selections of mystery stories from Mr. Wilkie Collins and others. She supposed that if she was to regularly solve puzzles for the queen she may as well know how detectives think, even if they were fictional.

  As she passed a hand over the leather bindings, she wondered, had Mr. Brown’s latest card reading just smoothed the path for Violet with the queen? Did he truly know something about the Drawing Room event? Or was he playacting, and were all of these readings simply pretty little tricks used to entertain the queen? Tricks that Violet had somehow managed to twist into all manner of association with real events?

  She wondered what help Mr. Collins could offer, handing over her borrowing slip to the clerk for a half dozen of Collins’s novels and taking them back to St. James’s Palace.

  It was obvious that Mr. Collins either was a rank optimist or had no idea what he was talking about, since his stories, despite their complexities, always ended with a tidy resolution. Violet was finding real life to be far more opaque and frustrating.

  She sighed and closed the book. It was time to go to the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts meeting. Such a long name, almost as bad as the London Master Bakers’ Pension and Almshouse Society she’d once seen advertised in a newspaper.

  Violet returned to Buckingham Palace mews and this time was completely ignored by the staff, which by now must be used to her presence. She rapped lightly on the door where she’d overheard Louise talking before.

  She heard: “Enter.” Was that a snuffle behind the command?

  To Violet’s surprise, Louise was the only person in the sparsely furnished room, which looked as though it served as a gathering place for the groomsmen, with several rough tables and chairs on the unfinished wood floor, and a corner with several broken mounting blocks in it. Louise sat at a table in the middle of the room, agitatedly working a handkerchief through her fingers, her eyes swollen and red.

  Where were the other women?

  Louise looked at her bleakly. “I suppose I forgot to send you a message. The meeting has been canceled.”

  “Did your mother find out?”

  “Yes, and what an uproar there was. I thought the chandeliers would come crashing down. I suspect the servants were too frightened to even put their ears to the door. It was awful.”

  “So the Ladies National Association for—so the meetings are now canceled permanently?”

  “What? No, no, Mother knows nothing about our moralist group.”

  “But you canceled—”

  “She found out about Ducky and me.”

  Ah.

  Violet sat down next to the princess. “What happened?”

  “Some stupid cow of a maid was cleaning my rooms and came upon a note he’d written me. He always cautioned me to burn them, but this one had the sweetest poem in it and I couldn’t bear to get rid of it. She ran straight to Mother with it. God help the maid if I ever find out who it was.”

  “The queen does not approve.” This was a statement, not a question. Of course the queen didn’t approve. Duckworth was a clergyman, not a foreign prince. He was of no use to the monarchy and England’s future.

  “No, she does not. After she was done shouting the plaster off the walls, she summoned Ducky and summarily dismissed him. So I have lost my love and Leopold lost his tutor.” Louise blew into her handkerchief. “One disaster after another occurs to me, all of it involving the loss of those I love. First Maud, then Charlotte. Now, worst of all, Ducky.”

  “Perhaps Her Majesty will change her mind once she calms down.”

  Louise laughed sharply. “Mrs. Harper, surely you have known my mother long enough to know that where she loves, she loves completely, and where she hates, well, God has created a special purgatory for those unfortunate souls who have experienced her wrath. She is especially unforgiving of those who she deems have committed moral offenses, particularly those of the, um, romantic kind. No, the Reverend Duckworth will not be back.”

  “I am so very sorry.”

  “I canceled our meeting because I couldn’t possibly concentrate, and I look like a bedraggled cat. I was so committed to carrying on with the committee, not only for the good we do, but to honor Maud’s and Charlotte’s memories. Now, though, I’m just—I feel—I don’t know. How has everything gone so wrong so quickly?”

&n
bsp; Violet put out a comforting hand but yanked it back. She couldn’t touch a member of royalty as though she were a doll to hug.

  “Your Highness, there is always hope—”

  “It got even worse. Mother said she would start working in earnest to find an appropriate husband for me. She’s having a list of all available princes across Europe drawn up, including Russia. She said I will pick from them.” Louise’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “But I will have my revenge.”

  Violet felt the hairs on her neck stand up. “Please, you aren’t planning anything that would be considered . . . treasonous, are you?”

  “Actually, it might be an offense against the monarch. I suppose no one has gotten away with it since Henry the Eighth’s sister Mary. Unless you count that misalliance of my granduncle, George the Fourth.”

  “Your Highness?”

  “I told her that if I must take a husband who isn’t Ducky, then it will be a British subject. I’ll not submit myself to some foreign state, with foreign food and a foreign language I’ll never learn and foreign servants who will laugh at me behind my back. Why should I leave London? Mother has plenty of other children to marry off to royal kingdoms and duchies. I wish to stay here and marry someone of my liking.”

  “What did the queen say?”

  “Oh, she was sufficiently outraged. There was more storming and wailing, but I’m determined to have my way. I don’t want to be trapped in a marriage where I’m merely my husband’s adornment. I want to be useful. Like Mrs. Butler is. Her husband supports her activities. In fact, he has suffered in his own career because of what she’s doing. Can you imagine such devotion? That’s the sort of husband I want.”

  A rather improbable scenario for a princess of England.

  “Yes, Your Highness. Perhaps you will be blessed with such.”