A Grave Matter

by Anna Lee Huber

  He just shook his head.

  I studied his features a moment longer, still trying to understand, and then turned away to drape my apron over an empty easel. When I turned back, he had paced across the room toward the windows, taking in the details of my space. Earl Grey had returned to his pile of blankets.

  “My uncle’s rider must have made excellent time in reaching you for you to arrive so soon,” I commented, still a bit stunned to find Gage in my childhood home.

  He glanced back over his shoulder. “I thought there was some urgency.”

  “Well, yes, of course. I only meant that the fastest I’d hoped for you to arrive, after putting all your things in order in Edinburgh, was tomorrow.”

  He picked up a jar of pigment to examine it. “I was preparing to leave for London. So my preparations for travel had already been made.”

  “Oh, London,” I remarked in some surprise, a knot forming in my stomach. “Are we keeping you from—”

  “No, no,” he replied quickly. “Just a small matter I needed to see to. It can wait.”

  I watched as he continued to study my shelves of pigments, feeling sure he wasn’t telling me something. “You’re certain?”

  “Yes.” He glanced up then and must have sensed my suspicion, for he offered me a sheepish smile. “It concerns a matter on which my father and I disagree. And my letters don’t seem to be swaying him.”

  I nodded, knowing relations between Gage and his father were often tense. “Does he still wish you to return to London?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  I waited for Gage to say more, but he seemed determined not to, so I didn’t press him. I had never met Captain Lord Gage, so I wasn’t certain exactly what type of personality we were dealing with. But knowing his son, and from the things I’d heard about him, I could only guess that Lord Gage was a formidable man used to getting his own way. Gage seemed tired of living by his dictates and under his shadow.

  “Shall I show you to your room, or would you prefer tea first?” I asked, recalling my duties as hostess.

  He crossed the room to rejoin me. “I’m afraid I rode on ahead of my carriage carrying my valet and my luggage, and I doubt they’ve arrived yet. So I hope you’ll forgive my bedraggled appearance a little while longer.”

  He flashed me one of his charming smiles and I arched my eyebrows in reply. He hardly looked bedraggled, and he knew it. I suspected covered in mud he would still look devastatingly attractive. But I was not about to pay him the compliment he was fishing for.

  “Tea, then,” I replied.

  “Kiera,” my brother called, emerging from behind the ferns that shielded the door from my view. “Crabtree told me Mr. Gage has arrived.” His gaze locked on the man in question over my shoulder and his posture stiffened slightly.

  “Yes,” I said turning so that I could see both men. “Mr. Gage, allow me to introduce my brother, Trevor St. Mawr.”

  Gage’s relaxed charm was as evident as ever when he shook hands with Trevor, but I could tell he’d noticed my brother’s slight shift in bearing. It was there in the watchfulness in Gage’s eyes. He had also armored himself, though in subtler manner, one I doubted many others could detect, but it was hovering in the air about them.

  I eyed both men with some misgiving, hoping they weren’t about to begin posturing. I should like them to be friends. Perhaps they simply needed to size each other up without my being in the way.

  “Trevor, will you escort Mr. Gage to the drawing room while I finish cleaning things here. And have tea brought up.”

  I didn’t miss the way Trevor’s gaze darted over the portrait on the easel and the mess I’d made on the table, not seeming to miss a detail.

  “Of course,” he replied, leading him away.

  I cleaned my brushes and palette, and wiped up the paint as best I could, but as the table was already splattered with odd bits of color here and there it didn’t much matter. Then I dashed into the washroom to scrub at my hands and check my face for any stray splotches of paint. I repinned my hair and studied my appearance in the mirror, wondering if it would seem odd if I ran upstairs to change gowns. I decided against it, as too much time had already passed, and who knew where the discussion would wander if I left Trevor and Gage together alone for too long.

  Fortunately, I found both men seated across from each other conversing congenially. I smiled in relief and noticed the tea things were already there, but they had waited for me to pour.

  It wasn’t until I crossed the room that I realized what subtle, but clever battle lines they had drawn. Each man sat on a settee, Trevor on the sage green damask and Gage on the cream and gold toile, with the tea table positioned between them. No other chairs were drawn close enough to the table to reach the tea things, so they would force me to choose. Would I sit next to my brother or the man with whom my relationship was undefined?

  A less observant person might have thought nothing of the arrangement, but I knew better. I could see the way their eyes cut to one another, the twitch of their fingers on the arm of the settee, especially Trevor’s, who was far less skilled at subterfuge than Gage.

  I slowed my steps, dismayed and then frustrated that they should do this to me. I could not choose without upsetting someone. It was impossible.

  I could feel my smile tightening on my face as the choice was upon me. So I selected the man who had least offended, settling beside Gage on the cream and gold toile. I glared at Trevor over the tea set. Gage was a guest in our home. My brother should know better than to try to discomfort him.

  I’m certain Trevor knew what my glare meant, but far from being chastened, he scowled right back. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, and I set about preparing everyone’s tea.

  Once we had each settled back with our cups of tea and the little lemon cakes our cook prepared that I so adored, Gage introduced the topic for which he’d been summoned to Blakelaw House. I filled him in on the details we’d gathered so far concerning Dodd’s murder, and the theft of the eleventh Earl of Buchan’s bones. Gage listened thoughtfully, asking the occasional question, but mostly just absorbed the information I related. The data I imparted about Lewis Collingwood and his interest in the late earl’s burial seemed to intrigue him particularly.

  “Though,” he puzzled, leaning his fair head back against the settee, “if the grave robbers had only wanted the torc, why would they also go to the trouble to steal the rest of the body?”

  “I wondered the same thing,” I admitted. “But what if they took the bones to distract us from the fact that they took the torc?”

  A slow smile curled his lips. “Devious.”

  I couldn’t help but smile in return. “Yes.”

  Trevor leaned forward to take another cake from the tea tray. “But all of that hinges on the assumption that the torc was buried with the earl, and so far we have no proof of that.” He arched his eyebrows to make his point and then popped the cake in his mouth.

  “Well, our best bet for discovering the truth about that is to speak with Mrs. Moffat in St. Boswells. She prepared the earl’s body for burial.”

  “Then we shall have to pay her a visit tomorrow.” Gage lifted his head, sitting up straighter in his seat, and crossed one booted foot over his knee. “Now,” he declared, eyeing us both closely. “I’m afraid there’s something I must tell you that may have bearing on this investigation.”

  I shared a look of astonishment with Trevor and then leaned forward from my corner of the settee toward Gage. “What do you mean? You’ve uncovered something already?”

  He tapped his fingers against the leather of his boot. “Indirectly. It relates to another inquiry I conducted recently. One that is disturbingly similar.”

  “How so?”

  “It was another body snatching. This one of a grave that was over eleven years old.”

  “So nothing but bones,” I clarified. “And the deceased’s effects? They were left behind?”

  “Yes. The same circumsta
nces. Except . . .” He paused, glancing at both of us again.

  I strained even closer, curious what he would say.

  “About a week after the theft . . . the family received a ransom note.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “A ransom note?” I gasped in disbelief. “For a corpse?”

  Gage nodded. “Yes. Very odd.”

  I sat back, slightly stunned, and then amazed as the possibilities began running through my head. “And fiendishly clever.” The gleam in Gage’s eyes told me he had also considered the implications.

  “What do you mean?” Trevor demanded, frowning in confusion.

  “I take it the family of this other victim is wealthy?” I asked Gage, just to be certain that my speculation lined up with the facts.

  “Very.”

  “Body snatchers can’t earn more than maybe a dozen guineas per corpse,” I explained to my brother. “And now that the public is aware of their actions and has tightened security at the graveyards in and around Edinburgh and London and the other medical schools, setting watches and using mortsafes and such, it’s much more difficult for them to steal bodies without being caught. Especially since Burke and Hare’s trial two years ago.” The actions of those men were still fresh in the minds of everyone in Edinburgh, particularly the poor, who rightly believed they were more susceptible to similar such schemes.

  Rather than risk being caught while performing the difficult labor of disinterring bodies from the heavily guarded local graveyards, Burke and Hare had begun inviting victims to their lodging house, plying them with alcohol, and smothering them to death. They then sold the bodies to the Surgeons’ Hall at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, hoping the anatomists would not recognize the bodies they were dissecting as missing persons. There was some speculation that the surgeons had known what Burke and Hare were really doing, but it could never be proven. In any case, Burke and Hare were finally caught in November 1828, but not before they’d murdered sixteen people.

  That Sir Anthony’s death and the revelation of my involvement with his work had occurred less than six months after Burke and Hare’s trial had only added fuel to the fire of my scandal. The shock of the discovery of a gently bred female participating in such a gruesome undertaking as human dissection appealed to the morbid fascination of the citizens of London, making it all too easy for vicious rumors about me to begin circulating. I had never prowled the streets, luring unsuspecting young gentlemen to their deaths, or dined on their choicest organs. I was no cannibal, nor did I have anything to do with the procurement of my late husband’s dissection subjects. I merely sketched what he told me to. But the truth did not matter to the public, and soon they were whipped up into such a panic that there was nothing for me to do but leave the city. It simply wasn’t safe for me or my family to stay.

  I still felt bitter that no one had considered my feelings in the matter. Everyone had jumped to the conclusion that I had wished to assist with Sir Anthony’s work, when the truth was that I had been forced to do so. I’d had no desire to take part in the grisly business, and for three years I’d suffered in silence. I’d made the best of it—I’d had no other choice—learning from my late husband’s pompous tutelage, as he still continued to lecture as if speaking to an entire medical theater full of students rather than an audience of one. When Sir Anthony had died, any tears that had stung my eyes had been in relief, not grief, though of course, I’d never let them fall. I couldn’t. Not then.

  I shook away the memory, hoping Gage and Trevor hadn’t noticed how downtrodden my thoughts had become.

  “But older bodies would not have been guarded. Just as Lord Buchan’s wasn’t. Everyone believes they’re safe from any criminals,” Trevor guessed, beginning to understand what Gage and I had already realized.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Think how much more money they could earn ransoming a body back to wealthy relatives. So much less effort and risk, and such a greater reward.”

  “I doubt the laws against kidnapping contain any mention of corpses,” Gage added with an ironic lift to his brow.

  “Or would the corpse, the bones, be considered stolen property?” my brother pointed out.

  Gage nodded his head to concede Trevor’s point. “An interesting conundrum.”

  “Do you mind telling us whose body was stolen . . . kidnapped . . . whichever it is?” I asked Gage.

  “Sir Colum Casselbeck. I was asked to investigate by his son, Sir Robert. Sir Colum’s body was taken from the graveyard at their parish church in Musselburgh.”

  “That’s east of Edinburgh, near the sea, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” He frowned down at his boot where it rested against his knee. His hand flexed where it gripped his ankle. “I’m afraid I wasn’t much help. I was asked to investigate just a few days before the ransom note arrived. I wasn’t able to uncover anything of use, so we decided to follow the ransom note’s instructions and try to catch them that way.” He looked up at me and I could tell he was angered by whatever had happened. “But they were clever. Fiendishly. Isn’t that the word you used?”

  I nodded.

  “They directed us to put the money in a bag wrapped in sealskin and place it in a tiny rowboat that we were to set adrift where the River Esk meets the North Sea in the Firth of Forth at a specific time. We couldn’t follow it by boat, not too closely, or we knew they would never attempt to retrieve the money. So we positioned men along the shore of the headland to watch, and tried to keep the rowboat in our sights from a fishing boat we had taken out into the firth. But the day was already misty and rainy, and as the afternoon progressed, it only grew worse. Soon we couldn’t see farther than a few hundred feet in the fog, and the visibility for the men on land was even worse. Our boat captain said we had to turn back or we risked running into serious trouble ourselves.

  “At first I wondered if the little rowboat had been lost to us all. But then, two days later, Sir Colum’s bones were found in a bag in a pew in their parish church, just as the thieves promised.” He shook his head. “They must have known what the weather was like on that part of the coast, and where the sea currents usually ran. That’s the only way I can figure they would take such a risk collecting the ransom in that manner.”

  I leaned forward and began setting our teacups and saucers back on the tray. “I assume you’re thinking what I’m thinking. That somehow these two robberies might be connected?”

  “If it’s worked once, why wouldn’t they try it again?”

  Trevor handed me his cup and saucer. “I suppose we’ll know for sure if Buchan receives a ransom note.”

  “But . . .” I paused, staring at the delicate, china teapot. “What of Dodd?” I glanced at Gage. “I suppose no one was hurt when they robbed Sir Colum’s grave?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But maybe they weren’t interrupted.”

  “So Dodd truly was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I murmured, thinking of Willie, of the guilt he clearly felt for not accompanying his mentor.

  “That would be my theory. That is, if the same group of men perpetrated both body snatchings.”

  “So if the criminals are the same,” I mused, sitting back against the settee, “how are they choosing their victims? Do the late Earl of Buchan and Sir Colum have anything in common?”

  Gage pivoted so that he could see me more fully, draping his arm across the back of the settee. “I don’t know. But I did wonder about this Society of Antiquaries you mentioned. You said Collingwood’s torc was supposedly donated to the group, and that Lord Buchan was a founding member.”

  I nodded in confirmation.

  “I wonder if Sir Colum was also a member.”

  “It’s as good a place as any to start. And we can ask the current Lord Buchan whether he knows when we visit him tomorrow. I thought you would wish to see the disturbed grave and the spot where Dodd was killed as early as possible.”

  “I would.” He glanced at Trevor and then back to me. “I also want t
o write to a friend of mine in Edinburgh. He’s a sergeant in their new police force, and I’m curious whether he can tell me if there have been any other similar grave robberies.”

  “You think there might be more?” I asked in surprise.

  “Maybe. There’s no reason to think that Sir Colum was the first. And if there have been more, then that gives us a wider circle to search for clues and connections. These body snatchers have to be choosing their victims somehow, even if their motive is only greed.”

  “It’s often as good a reason as any,” Trevor remarked.

  I noticed he was more relaxed than when our conversation had first begun. I hoped that meant he was finished antagonizing Gage, and that whatever had troubled him about our guest had been put aside. I knew my brother viewed himself as my protector, but if that was the way he intended to exert his role, then I planned to protest. Surely he knew that our brother-in-law, Philip, considered Gage a friend, and normally Trevor trusted Philip’s judgment.

  But I also knew that our sister, Alana, had been writing to him, and I had to wonder once again just what she had told him about the relationship between Gage and me. Which called into question how much Alana actually knew. For instance, did she realize that Gage had visited me in my bedchamber both at Gairloch Castle and Dalmay House, innocent as it had been? Did she know we had kissed? Several times, in fact. I had told her nothing of these things, but my sister was nothing if not resourceful, and disturbingly accurate at reading my expression. With the way he’d acted upon Gage’s arrival, I was only too grateful that Trevor was out of practice with that skill.

  Crabtree knocked on the drawing room door to inform us that Gage’s valet and his luggage had arrived.

  “Then please show Mr. Gage up to the Evergreen Room,” I told him, rising to my feet with Gage.

  “Wouldn’t he be more comfortable in the Sunset Suite?” Trevor interrupted.

  I turned to my brother in surprise. “Grandmama’s old room?”

  Trevor cleared his throat. “Er . . . yes.”