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Vaughn Entwistle

The Angel of Highgate

This book is dedicated to my wife Shelley,

my inamorata now and forever.

1

IN HOPES OF THE RESURRECTION TO COME

October 4th 1859, almost seven a. m. on a Sunday morning. God was in His Heaven. Queen Victoria was on her throne. And Lord Geoffrey Thraxton was prowling the pathways of Highgate Cemetery. Ectoplasmic mists swirled about the brooding mass of stone mausoleums. A ghostly winged form — a carved angel perched atop a grave — crooked a beckoning finger from the gloom. Thraxton ignored the summons and strode on, the fog cupping his face in its cool hands.

Despite the early hour and the somber setting, Thraxton was impeccably dressed in black frock coat and tight, camel-color breeches, a bright yellow cravat knotted at his throat, a gray silk top hat perched at an insolent angle upon his head. In one kid-gloved hand he gripped a walking stick whose grip was formed by a golden phoenix bursting forth from tongues of flame. The other hand, gloveless, stroked the cashmere lining of his coat pocket. In his early thirties, and of above average height and muscular build, Thraxton had a face that could have been said to be both handsome and noble, were it not for a certain weakness in the mouth, a hint of dissolution in the corners of the intense blue eyes.

In the still air, the only sound was the crackle of leaves underfoot, the rattle of robins in the berry bushes, and as the hour struck, the slow, dolorous clang of bells from the nearby Church of St. Michael’s.

To the south lay the city of London, an invisible but palpable presence in the fog, for the smoke coughed up from the sooty throats of its myriad chimneys left a bitter tang of sulfur on the tongue.

Highgate was arguably the most beautiful necropolis in the capital, with its mixture of Classical and Egyptian influenced tombs and mausoleums, including its most celebrated architectural flourish, the Circle of Lebanon, so named for the gnarled cedar that rooted at its center. It was a place for London’s fashionable living to perambulate, as well as a final resting place for London’s fashionable dead to await the Crack of Doom and the body’s resurrection.

At this hour, however, Thraxton had only the latter for company. On a path leading to the Egyptian Avenue, he paused to contemplate the rain-worn face of a stone angel, its eyes cast downward in an expression of profound loss. At that moment, the bells of St. Michael’s peeled a final stroke and fell mute, opening an abyss of silence wherein the world beyond the cemetery fell away, and the dead caught their breath. Then a sorrowful wail drifted from afar, faintly, as if all the stone angels of Highgate were weeping, but soon followed the rattle of carriage wheels, the jingle of horse brasses and the muffled thump of hooves on soft soil.

A rectangular shape loomed in the mist, gathering solidity until it materialized in the form of a hearse drawn by two coal-dark mares, their huge heads nodding with black plumes. Atop the hearse rode two funeral grooms in black frock coats with top hats draped in black crepe. Two more paced behind the hearse on foot, followed by four women in black mourning dresses, their faces darkly veiled. These women were the source of the weeping, which they interspersed with the occasional heart-cracking wail. At the rear of the procession strode two men dressed in daily attire but for the black crepe armbands that marked them as mourners.