Free The Mourning Bells by Christine Trent Page B

undesirables at various hospitals and medical universities? He claimed he performed his work legally—and he behaved forthrightly enough—but there were surely dozens of musty old books and magazine clippings in existence that would teach a man how to skirt the law. And a man working around the law was not an honest man. And a dishonest man was more likely to blunder and bungle his way through things.
    The hair should be brushed for at least twenty minutes in the morning, for ten minutes when it is dressed in the middle of the day, and for a like period at night, Mrs. Hale had asserted with authority.
    Violet soon realized, though, that this much brushing in one sitting was tiresome for the arms, especially for Violet, whose right arm had once been scalded and scarred in a train collision, and was easily fatigued. She put down the brush and made up her mind.
    Of her three suspects, Mr. Vernon was the most likely to have been responsible for the ineptitude she thought had been performed on those two men. When she had time tomorrow, she would pay him another visit.
     
    Violet’s hair did seem cleaner in the morning, although Sam didn’t seem to notice anything when he gave her his daily morning kiss on top of her head. Well, better that he didn’t observe anything at all, lest he notice that she had a few gray hairs popping up from some unknown, fertilized bed of them under her scalp. Violet was also glad that Sam hadn’t noticed the weight she’d gained since they’d returned to London, although perhaps he was being intentionally oblivious to it.
    Violet skipped breakfast to get down to the shop as soon as possible. There were suppliers to be paid, and she hoped to hand her envelopes to the postman on his first pass by the shop today, before she headed out to see Mr. Vernon. With that done, she went over the day’s tasks with Harry. There were no funerals scheduled, but Jonathan and Christopher Boyce would be dropping off coffins later in the day, and Harry planned to wait for them, freeing Violet to take as much time as she needed on her mission.
    As a precaution, she picked up the box of chocolates she thought Mr. Upton would have liked, thinking Mr. Vernon might, as well. With the chocolate-covered raspberry blocks under her arm, she made her way to Chelsea.
    Mr. Vernon blinked in confusion at her arrival, as though trying to place an unfamiliar face. Violet mentioned the London Necropolis Railway, and he said, “Of course, I remember you, Mrs. Harper,” but not before Violet noticed a moment of fear reflected in his eyes as he took the box from her and set it aside. Rather ungraciously, in her opinion.
    “Pardon my intrusion,” she said, trying to carefully formulate her next words. “I thought you might like to know that another man came to life at Brookwood yesterday.”
    “That is very interesting, indeed. Did you have an opportunity to speak to him?” The undertaker rubbed the hem of both sides of his vest between his thumbs and forefingers.
    “I did, in fact. He seemed quite perplexed as to why he was in a coffin.”
    “How terrible for the man.”
    Violet tried another approach.
    “Do you deny that you shipped a body to Brookwood yesterday?” She tried to sound imposing but didn’t think the words sounded particularly formidable in her own ear.
    “I had no corpse scheduled yesterday on the LNR,” Vernon replied.
    No, of course not. “Perhaps you forgot that—”
    The shop’s bells rang as a customer entered. The customer was an older man, bleary-eyed and grizzled. Completely ignoring Violet’s presence, he launched into a diatribe against Vernon. “Where have you been? You were supposed to arrive two hours ago. How long are we supposed to wait for you? Have you no decency?”
    Violet stepped away, over to where the undertaker’s few sample coffins lay propped open, to give Vernon a bit of privacy to deal with the man. She understood what it was to have irrational customers. The grieving