Free Death at the Abbey by Christine Trent Page A

back and forth?
    Normally, this would be a third-class funeral, but the duke was paying for it, so it should be something more. Perhaps when she went into Worksop tomorrow to visit Reverend Appleton, she could find some black plumes to attach to the horses pulling the hearse wagon, which would have to be fashioned from equipage already in the duke’s mews.
    Ah yes, she needed a coffin. She would also telegram Boyce and Sons tomorrow from town and ask them to put a stained pine box, with interior and exterior velvet trimmings, on the next train to Nottinghamshire.
    There was so much to be done, and Violet was at a great disadvantage to be working so far away from her shop. Speaking of her shop . . . she then made a list of various items she needed from Morgan Undertaking. That would go into another telegram to Harry Blundell, her business partner.
    Once she was satisfied that she had Mr. Spencer’s funeral in hand, she undressed—always blissfully happy to be rid of her corset—put on her nightgown, and climbed into the bed. The bed was extraordinarily plush and comfortable. The duke hadn’t spared a dime in renovating this room, just as he had surely spent a king’s ransom on the dining room.
    As she snuggled down, she wondered briefly how it was that men like the duke managed to hold so much wealth. Portland was spending fantastic sums to maintain and renovate his estate, with workers buzzing about like bees in a hive, and there seemed no end in sight to what he was doing. It was almost as if he had access to the Crown’s treasury and its seemingly endless supply of the nation’s wealth.

6
    T he following morning, having dispensed with Aristotle in a quickly dug little square of ground under a tree near the rookery—a fitting location, she thought—Violet returned to the dining room to attend to her more important work, tending to Burton Spencer.
    Despite his size, he looked like a tiny doll on the enormous table. The portraits on the wall looked like mourners gathered around to grieve his loss, an image Violet rather liked.
    She pulled away several chairs so that she could stand directly against the table as she worked. One of the parlor maids had left a full washbasin and several cloths on the floor in anticipation of Violet’s work, which the undertaker appreciated.
    â€œNow, Mr. Spencer,” she began, placing her hand over one of his as she smoothed out the tablecloth with her other hand, “I know that you have suffered great indignities over the past day or so, and I am quite sorry for it. I want you to know that today I plan to make you look most presentable. You should also know that His Grace is paying for your funeral and that everyone at Welbeck Abbey will be in attendance, I’m sure, to pay their respects to you. You are not forgotten in your death.”
    Violet patted his knuckles and said, “I hope you will not be offended, but I must undress you in order to clean you. I will be discreet, I promise.”
    His shirt was a loosely constructed piece of yellow nankeen, and she was able to remove it over his head relatively easily, despite his stiff weight. Although Spencer had the height of an older man, his chest and stomach gave the impression of a more immature one, with no sprouted hairs nor any of the roughened skin or scars that most working-class men had developed by their twenties. What Violet did see on Spencer horrified her.
    In the middle of his chest was fierce bruising, as though he had been slammed in the torso several times. She gently laid her hand on his chest, which didn’t even cover the spread of purple.
    This had happened before he fell, but she would estimate not long before. The bright coloring told her it had not had time to fade into the greenish-brown hues that accompanied a bruise’s healing. It couldn’t have happened after death, or the bruise would have never formed.
    More importantly, it wasn’t possible