Stolen Remains Read Online Free PDF Page B

baffled.
    In fact, anything having to do with domestic affairs she either handled badly or not at all. She remembered having gone through five maids in only two years when she’d lived in London, mostly due to her own incompetence at supervising them.
    Fortunately, Sam wasn’t troubled by her lack of domestic expertise, and, in Colorado, she and Susanna had gotten by with periodic day help.
    Broth. Perhaps she should use a portion of Mother’s leftover broth and stir some of the vegetables into it.
    Violet took out a chopping knife and went to work attacking the onions, leeks, and parsnips, heaping them in a big pile in the center of the table.
    “Viiiiolet,” came the plaintive cry from her mother’s bedroom. Perhaps if Violet ignored it, her mother might settle down to sleep. She resumed her chopping.
    “Tea, dear, I need some tea. Extra sugar, if you please.”
    Violet put down the knife. Tea was simpler than putting together a meal, anyway. She rose and lifted the kettle that rested on the cast-iron range’s burner. Still plenty of water in it. She lit the burner and assembled a tray with teapot, cup, saucer, spoon, sugar, and milk.
    She wondered when Sam and her father would return. The two men had escaped early in the morning, ostensibly to visit the Grand Hotel along the waterfront in Brighton. They wanted to see the hotel’s vertical omnibus, a hydraulically powered lift. Could she will them to come home and take a turn at her mother’s bedside?
    Not for the first time, she thought about her undertaking business back in the Colorado Territory. Susanna was competent, and more empathetic with the dead and grieving than anyone she’d ever known, but at twenty years old she was just so young . Violet had started in undertaking at the same age, but wasn’t running a shop by herself. How was the town taking to Susanna as the proprietress?
    Sam had asked his assistant to keep an eye on Susanna. Perhaps he was helping her in the shop, too. Such a nice young man, and so clearly taken with Susanna. Maybe there was even a wedding in their future.
    As well as Eliza was doing now, they should be able to go back to Colorado soon enough to determine if there were nuptials in the air.
    The kettle was whistling. She poured steaming water into the teapot and carried the tray to her mother. Just as she set the tray down at the foot of the bed, she heard an insistent rapping at the front door.
    “Just a moment, Mother.” She went to the front door to find an urchin in a telegraph office uniform outside, holding a piece of paper.
    “A telegram for you, ma’am.”
    Curious. The boy tipped his hat at Violet before departing.
    She tore it open and read the message, transcribed from a ciphered code in a slanted handwriting by a telegraph operator.
    Your presence requested at Windsor Castle for an
indefinite stay to complete particular funeral
arrangements please ask for Major Cowell take the
London and South Western train from Brighton to
Windsor & Eton station this afternoon a carriage will be
waiting for you Victoria R.I.
    Queen Victoria, Regina Imperatrix, wanted to see her. This afternoon? And another royal funeral? Whose could it be? Surely nothing had happened to the Prince of Wales? Violet had to give the queen credit for figuring out where she was. She hadn’t seen the queen in four years, since Violet had left England for the United States in 1865.
    Prior to that, she had been summoned to the queen’s presence periodically after serving as the assistant undertaker for Prince Albert’s funeral. Victoria enjoyed reliving her husband’s funeral, even though, as monarch, she had not been permitted to attend the service. Instead, she’d called on Violet to provide all of the details over and over in excruciating detail.
    Surely the queen hadn’t discovered Violet had returned to England, and wanted to discuss Albert’s funeral again?
    Male laughter outside signaled that her own husband and her father had