Rose Campion and the Stolen Secret

by Lyn Gardner

  Beneath the sacking used to hide the names on it, the headstone of the grave being exhumed was a far plainer affair; a simple stone marked the final resting place of Lily Easingford and her stillborn son, Edward. Mr Snetherbridge stamped his feet, wondering why the family seemed to have selected the most windswept area of the graveyard for their final resting places. Nothing would grow and bloom in this bleak spot. He wondered why they hadn’t chosen the area by the church that was clearly the only sunny spot in the whole blasted place. Oriental lilies stood to attention by the wall, under which was a small grassy knoll carpeted with wild daffodils. He preferred their other name, the Lent lily.

  Mr Snetherbridge looked at Lord Henry, who shivered and pulled his astrakhan coat more tightly around him. A glance at his pocket watch told him it was past two o’clock. The very dead of night. Although the moon was bright, the two men Mr Snetherbridge had brought from London were working by the flickering light of two candlelit lamps. The sweat gleamed on their brows as they dug down into the darkness to find the coffin. They would be warmer still when they had been paid generously to keep their mouths shut, blindfolded and driven the forty-odd miles to the railway station on the edge of the city and dispatched back to London. If they were foolish enough to blab about the strange job they had undertaken they would be unable to identify its location.

  At least his lordship would soon know if Lizzie Gawkin’s story had any foundation. One of the men gave a low shout and Mr Snetherbridge saw them start to clear the soil from the top of the coffin. Mr Snetherbridge looked anxiously around. But who would be out on the moor on a desolate night like tonight? Even the parson, who Lord Easingford referred to as “that dratted busybody” would be safely asleep in his warm bed in the village vicarage. Only the bats and the owls would be there to bear witness. The coffin seemed to be remarkably intact, perhaps preserved by something in this hardy soil, and the men were now digging around the sides so they could slip a rope over either end to lift it to the surface.

  At that moment there came the distant sound of a horse’s hooves. There was a moment of panic. Mr Snetherbridge snuffed out the lamps and signalled to the men to retire into the porch of the church and stay hidden in the shadows. The horse drew nearer, steam rising from its body so for a moment it looked like a spectre from a ghost story, not a real live animal. Mr Snetherbridge signalled to the men to return to the grave and lift the coffin.

  “It’s only Josiah,” he said.

  “What on earth is he doing here?” snapped his lordship.

  “I gave him instructions to come if he had any urgent news. He would only have come all this way if he had good reason,” said Mr Snetherbridge soothingly. Josiah was securing the horse. A few large flakes of snow were beginning to swirl around like ghostly moths.

  Lord Henry and Mr Snetherbridge turned their attention back to the open grave. The men were beginning to drag the coffin upwards. The wood creaked; in places it was rotted through and you could glimpse its dark, secretive shadows. Josiah joined them just as the men began to lever the coffin lid away. He opened his mouth to speak but Lord Easingford held up a hand to silence him. He didn’t want his business discussed in front of the gravediggers, and he wanted to see inside the coffin. There was a creak as the men pulled the coffin lid away entirely. Everyone stared down into it. The coffin was completely empty.

  For several seconds there was a blank, shocked silence. His lordship sank to the ground on one knee.

  “This cannot be,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. Then he recovered from the shock of the absence of the bodies of both Lily and the baby. His face was thunderous.

  “The mother cannot have lived. Rigor mortis had set in – I saw it with my own eyes. The child… Maybe the child did live… Maybe I didn’t—” He broke off. “What does this mean?”

  Mr Snetherbridge took a nervous step backwards. “I don’t know, m’lud,” he said, and wiped the sweat off his top lip.

  His lordship was pacing restlessly up and down. He had buried the woman and her child thirty-two years ago. He had seen the coffin lid hammered in place. He had been rid of them, or so he thought, and now three decades on they were returning to haunt him.

  He nodded curtly at the hired men to return the coffin to the grave and start to cover it over. It was beginning to snow quite heavily. Good. If they finished the job and left quickly, all evidence that they had disturbed the grave or even been there would be covered over. The job was swiftly done, and the workmen were taken by Mr Snetherbridge to a waiting coach further down the road, where they were given brandy and sent on their way.

  Mr Snetherbridge returned to the graveside. Lord Easingford was staring at the plot as it fast became covered by snow. He had a look of complete bewilderment on his face, as if he was still looking into the empty coffin. Josiah had followed them, whistling as usual under his breath. Mr Snetherbridge frowned, and the younger man realised what he was doing and stopped.

  His lordship turned to Josiah. “What news do you have? Good, I hope. Better than the news the night has brought so far.”

  Josiah licked his lips nervously. “The babe did live.”

  His lordship gave a hollow, angry laugh. “I think we’ve worked that out for ourselves.”

  “I know nothing about the mother; I have no news of her fate,” said Josiah calmly. “But I have good news about her son. He is dead. Recently deceased, as Lizzie Gawkin suggested. Pulled from the river just a couple of weeks ago.”

  His lordship studied him sharply. “You are quite, quite certain of your information? That it was my nephew?”

  Josiah nodded. “I have it from a most reliable source. Someone close to Lizzie Gawkin, but definitely not in her pay. He was an actor and music-hall performer, the usual kind of lowlife.”

  “How can you be sure it’s him?”

  “It fits: from everything Snetherbridge told me and that Lizzie Gawkin told you. But there’s more. There’s the name he was using.” Josiah couldn’t resist giving a dramatic little pause. “Ned Dorset.”

  His lordship’s eyes widened and he nodded. “Promising. Very promising. I care nothing for the mother, Lily, although her absence from the coffin is puzzling. It was the existence of the son I feared. But you are confirming what Lizzie Gawkin said, that he is dead…”

  “There’s more, sir,” said Josiah. “Lizzie Gawkin said that Edward had a child and she’s right. Ned Dorset, as he was calling himself, was married and had a son of his own.”

  “And is that child alive or dead?”

  “Very much alive and currently residing with his mother, the widow Grace, at Campion’s Palace of Varieties and Wonders. Until recently, the family were living in Shoreditch on the other side of the street from the tenements that you own, m’lud.”

  “And what is the son called?” enquired Mr Snetherbridge.

  “Freddie. Short for Frederick Dorset,” said Josiah with a flourish.

  “Does the wife know her deceased husband’s history?” asked his lordship sharply.

  “I can’t say,” said Josiah. “I am still gathering information. I have someone who I have every confidence will provide me with the silver cup, the ribbon and perhaps more. Maybe even some documents.”

  “Good work, Josiah,” said Mr Snetherbridge. He turned to his lordship. “What is to be done with this Grace and Freddie Dorset?”

  “Deal with them as you did my wife, Sarah. It will eliminate the immediate threat that Grace Dorset might start blabbing, and we can make a longer-term plan when we have discovered how much of her husband’s history she knows. Tell me when it is done. Oh, and one more thing: when you have the child, I want you to tell me if he has any kind of birthmark. That may be all the conclusive proof we need.”

  “What kind of mark, m’lud?”

  “A butterfly. The emblem of the Easingford family. Generations of Easingford children have borne one. Almost always situated on the nape of the neck, but not always in that location. I have one; my son has it t
oo. My brother bore one, and so did his son, Edward, so if this Freddie Dorset is a true Easingford it’s likely he bears one as well. Now, we must leave while the snow will still cover our tracks.”

  They disappeared into the night while the snow continued to fall, covering the graveyard and all that had taken place in it in a thick, white shroud.

  It was raining in the quiet London churchyard where Ned Dorset was being buried. Rose stood at the open graveside as the coffin was lowered, holding tightly to Freddie’s small hand. His sobbing mother held his other hand, supported by Thomas.

  Apart from Lizzie Gawkin, who had taken to her bed since the robbery, the whole of Campion’s had turned out for the service and Thomas had closed the theatre for the day as a mark of respect. The Campion’s folk had done their best to find black mourning clothes. So much so that it was apparent several of them had raided the costume store. O’Leary was wearing a black cloak with a fur trim that Rosie recognised from the melodrama Spring-heeled Jack, and Molly had decked herself out in a dress that had been used in the pantomime Babes in the Wood. Several others were wearing wraps and shawls purloined from the Campion’s costume store to cover more flamboyant colours. Every now and then a dark shawl would slip and there would be a flash of vibrant red or orange as if the Campion’s performers were exotic birds trying desperately to camouflage themselves. They weren’t doing a very good job of it, thought Rose. She knew it would have made Ned laugh. Not that there was much else to laugh at today.

  There were also some hall people who had worked with Ned in pantomime at the Shaftesbury, and some stagehands and performers from the Fortune in Shoreditch, but there was no family. Like Grace, Rose thought it likely that Ned was a runaway. She wondered whether there was a mother somewhere who left a light burning in the porch every night in case her son returned. Now he never would.

  Rose spotted a man in the crowd she didn’t know, standing slightly apart from the rest. He had a small waxed moustache and he was wearing a low crown bowler hat. There was something about the way he slouched disrespectfully against a weeping angel statue that made Rose confident he wasn’t a mourner. So why was he here? She wondered whether he was a policeman. But he didn’t look like a rozzer. He kept staring at Effie, who kept her eyes firmly lowered as if trying to avoid his gaze. Did they know each other?

  Aurora was wondering about the man too. There was something familiar about him but she couldn’t place him. She glanced at Rose, who gave her a wan little smile. Since the bicycle performance a few nights ago her life had improved immeasurably. Lizzie was so bereft at the theft of her box that she seemed to have quite lost interest in Aurora and was more or less leaving her to her own devices.

  Lizzie had raged about her loss, and demanded the place be turned upside down. There had been a search but, as several people pointed out, leaving a snoozing O’Leary on the stage door was a bit like saying “Come on in!” to every Tom, Dick or Harry who happened to be passing. What with the workmen coming in and out, and the flower and laundry deliveries, anyone could have passed through Campion’s that afternoon, taking Lizzie’s box with them.It served Lizzie right for not keeping her trunk locked.

  Thomas had complete faith in the Campion’s performers and backstage staff – who all knew that stealing would never be tolerated. When Thomas proposed that they call the police, Lizzie had seemed as opposed to the idea as she was to telling anyone exactly what was in the box. She had merely just kept muttering, “My treasure. Priceless. Irreplaceable.”

  “And probably stolen too,” Rose had observed. Aurora wondered if Rose was right. Why would Lizzie have a silver cup belonging to the Easingford family? Was she trying to blackmail them in some way as she had other people? She remembered the envelope she had glimpsed in the hansom cab, the one addressed to a residence in Silver Square. Could it be the home of the Easingford family? She glanced around the crowd. Her eyes came to rest on Lottie. She looked more closely. She was sure that Lottie was wearing her shawl, the one that the laundry swore blind they had returned but which Aurora couldn’t find. She didn’t mind one bit. She just wished that Lottie had asked.

  The service was drawing to an end. The gravedigger lifted the first clod of earth on to the coffin. Grace and Freddie stepped forward, reached into their pockets and pulled out some brightly coloured pieces of paper. They threw them over the grave and as the wind caught some of them it was apparent that they were shaped like butterflies, fluttering brightly before they fell and covering the top of the coffin so its surface danced with colour.

  As the mourners started to walk down the church path, Rose heard the man with the moustache muttering, “Butterflies, eh? Well, well, well,” to himself. He smiled as if something important had just fallen into place. She turned to make sure that she got a long, hard look at his face. As she did so, she saw a ghostly figure standing behind a gravestone. It was Ned. He looked straight at her and nodded as if encouraging her on. Then he simply disappeared. She looked around quickly to see if anyone else had spotted him.

  “Are you all right, Rosie?” asked Thomas. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Thomas was doing the accounts. Audiences at Campion’s had been up over the last week. Crowds had been queuing to see Rose and Aurora’s bicycle act. The girls had been working hard on it and it was a winner.

  Income was up, but Thomas’s costs were up too. Lizzie Gawkin was milking him for everything she could get, saying she had to take into account her losses as a result of the theft, and the fact that she had been about to sign a very lucrative contract for Aurora at the Blackfriars. Thomas might have told Lizzie to stuff her demands, as he could easily have found somebody else to do the bicycle act with Rose, but the thought of poor Aurora being turned into a spectacle at the Blackfriars – one of London’s rowdiest dens of iniquity – was too much for Thomas’s kind heart to bear. Besides, she and Rose seemed to be striking up a friendship now that Lizzie was less in evidence. Aurora had even left her lodging house and moved into Campion’s for a few days, sharing top to tail in the bed with Rose.

  There were other costs too. He intended to look after Grace and Freddie, and had found a little house for them just round the corner. They were going to move in later today. He glanced out of the window and saw Grace and the boy stepping into a carriage. They were briefly returning to Shoreditch to collect the last of their meagre possessions, although Grace hadn’t even been sure there’d be anything left to collect.

  He’d offered to accompany them but Grace had declined. Thomas respected her decision, suspecting that she didn’t want him to see the circumstances in which the little family had been living. Thomas hated London’s slum landlords, often rich, landed gentry who lived far away in splendour on their fine estates, while their tenants existed in squalor in run-down housing that was a danger to their health.

  The carriage containing Grace and Freddie set off and Thomas returned to his columns of figures, determined that it would be the last trip to the slums they’d ever have to make.

  Rose and Aurora were on the stage in the empty theatre rehearsing their act. Effie was sitting in the auditorium watching while she mended some of the ballet girls’ costumes. The girls completed a circuit on the bicycle and jumped off laughing. Rose suddenly had an idea.

  “What if you dressed as a boy? It would give the act a more daring edge. The crowd would go wild for it,” said Rose. “You’d make such a beautiful boy, Aurora.”

  “Not as beautiful as the girl Freddie makes when Lottie and the other girls dress him up. When he dances the cancan with them between shows, nobody would ever know he was a boy.”

  “I know. They even call him Dora!” said Rose. “He’s so sweet, and he loves it. He’s a performer through and through, like Ned was. I wonder whether Grace would allow him to do it on stage. I used to dance alongside the girls when I was a tot and it was very popular.”

  Lottie, who had offered to cast a critical eye over Rose and Aurora’s act, arrived in the auditorium
just in time to hear the end of their conversation.

  “Gracie don’t mind. I asked her before they went to Shoreditch,” she said.

  “Did they go on their own?” asked Rose sharply. The stranger at the funeral had unsettled her.

  Lottie nodded. “Thomas offered to go but Grace wasn’t ’aving it.”

  “It ain’t a nice place,” said Effie. “Full of lowlife.”

  “Effie,” said Rose, “who was that man at the funeral, the one with the low crown bowler and the moustache like a slug? He looked at you as if he knew you.”

  Effie blushed. “Nah, I don’t know him from Adam.”

  “Who’s Adam?” chorused Aurora and Lottie together, and they fell about laughing. Rose laughed too, but she was certain that Effie was lying.

  Lizzie sat up in bed with a jug of gin by her side and considered how to make the best of the situation. After the theft of the box, she had raged and wailed. All her patience had come to naught.

  It felt as if everything had gone wrong as soon as she’d set foot back in Southwark. She couldn’t believe her eyes when, coming out of the post office on that first morning, she had run into the very last man on earth that she expected to see. She’d know that open, handsome face anywhere. How could she ever forget it, or the look of trust on his face when he had tenderly handed over his tiny baby daughter to her and implored Lizzie to keep her safe until he could return to fetch her. He’d barely looked a day older than he had on that day, almost thirteen years ago now, though his face then had been etched with grief for his wife, Louisa, who had died from fever after giving birth.