Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper [0]
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Some Historical Notes from the Author
Bibliography
Also by Mary Hooper
Imprint
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For Richard, with love
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Chapter One
Grace, holding on tightly to her precious burden, found the station entrance without much difficulty. The Necropolis Railway ran, just as Mrs Smith the midwife had said, on its own special line from Waterloo to Brookwood Cemetery in the county of Surrey, and it was at the London station, just before eleven o’clock, that the newly bereaved gathered, all dressed in the first stage of deep mourning. The few women whose nervous tension allowed them to attend wore heavy veils, their black crêpe gowns unrelieved by any bright jewellery, buttons or fancy trimmings, while the men wore top hats with a mourning band, formal frock coats and black bombazine cravats. All were waiting for the train which would take them and their loved ones into the countryside, to the great garden of sleep at Brookwood. Here, away from the fogs and filth of London, their dear departed could rest in peace among pines, roses and evergreens.
Grace stood back a little, watching as mourners approached the window of the booking office to buy their tickets. She had never travelled on a train before and, feeling timid and uneasy, wanted to make sure she did everything correctly. When almost everyone else had passed through the ticket office and gone to their relevant waiting rooms, she went to the window.
‘Brookwood, please,’ she asked. ‘A return fare.’
The clerk issuing tickets looked up. ‘First, second or third class, miss?’ he asked in the solicitous tone that employees of the Necropolis Railway had been asked to assume.
‘Third class,’ Grace said, proffering the two shillings that the midwife had given her.
‘You’re not with a funeral party? It’s just you travelling?’
Grace nodded. ‘Just me. I . . . I’m visiting my mother’s grave,’ she lied.
The clerk pushed a thick, black-edged ticket towards her. ‘Then kindly proceed to the appropriate waiting room. You’ll be shown where to go,’ he said. ‘May I remind you that the train leaves at half past eleven precisely. Good day to you.’
Grace took the ticket, stammered her thanks and left the window.
There were three waiting rooms, one for each class, and the people in them – although all in black, of course – were dressed according to their positions in life. Thus the people in second class were clothed neither as elegantly nor as formally as those in the first class, and some of those people in the third class, to judge by their patched garments and dishevelled appearance, seemed little more than paupers. Grace, her garments faded and mended, was able to mingle among the latter quite easily. Bearing their own grief as well as they could, none of the other mourners looked at Grace, a slight, pale girl looking younger than her fifteen years, who kept her eyes to the ground and held a small, linen-wrapped bundle under her arm. If anyone had wondered what it was she carried so close, they might have guessed it to be a spare pair of shoes in case the grounds of the cemetery were muddy, or an extra shawl against the sky suddenly clouding over.
At twenty past eleven precisely, the various parties started moving out of the waiting rooms to board the train, with first-class passengers being bowed to private carriages by representatives of their funeral companies. They boarded first, so they wouldn’t be offended by having to mingle with – or even see – third-class passengers. The coffins of their relatives would also travel apart from the others, so they wouldn