C.S. Harris | WHO BURIES THE DEAD

To us, it seems difficult to believe that the British royal family could forget where they buried some of their most famous predecessors. Yet it happened more often than you might think.

Early in 1813, the Prince Regent ordered the construction of a new entrance to the elaborate royal vault built by his father beneath the chapel at Windsor Castle. In the process of digging it out, the workmen accidently broke through into the small brick tomb of Jane Seymour and King Henry VIII. That vault had been intended to be only temporary while Henry built an elaborate mausoleum for himself and his favorite queen. But the grand tomb was never completed, so Henry and Jane were left to molder in a decidedly crude vault the exact location of which was soon forgotten.

But at least everyone knew that Jane and Henry were down there somewhere.

No one had any idea what had happened to the remains of Charles I, beheaded by Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan revolutionaries. So when the workmen broke through into the tomb of Henry and Jane, they were stunned to find a third adult coffin lying off to one side, with a lead coffin strap inscribed, “King Charles, 1648.”

The discovery created quite a sensation. The poet Lord Byron quipped, “Famed for contemptuous breach of sacred ties/By headless Charles see heartless Henry lies.” The Prince Regent (who knew himself to be unpopular and was as haunted by the fate of his Stuart predecessor as by the beheading of the Bourbons across the Channel) arranged a formal opening of the casket, to be performed in his presence. The most exciting question was, Would Charles’s head be found with his body?

I came upon this rather bizarre historical tidbit by chance several years ago while reading one of my nineteenth-century guidebooks to London. I remember thinking, “Huh. Maybe I can use that when my mystery series reaches the spring of 1813.” Then, just a few hours later, I discovered quite by chance that Oliver Cromwell’s head also had a strange history. And that evening, I happened to read about the bizarre fate of Henri IV’s head and the discovery in Holy Trinity church of a head shakily identified as belonging to the Duke of Suffolk, father of Lady Jane Grey. At this point I was in hysterics—all these heads! What were the odds that I would stumble upon their stories all in one day? How could I ignore a coincidence like that?

The result was the tenth book in my Sebastian St. Cyr Regency mystery series, WHO BURIES THE DEAD. The book also features an unknown spinster author named Jane Austen, whose Pride and Prejudice had just been published anonymously. And if you’re wondering what Jane could possibly have to do with all those heads—well, that’s part of the fun.

About WHO BURIES THE DEAD

London, 1813. The vicious decapitation of Stanley Preston, a wealthy, socially ambitious plantation owner, at Bloody Bridge draws Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, into a macabre and increasingly perilous investigation. The discovery near the body of an aged lead coffin strap bearing the inscription King Charles, 1648 suggests a link between this killing and the beheading of the deposed seventeenth- century Stuart monarch. Equally troubling, the victim's kinship to the current Home Secretary draws the notice of Sebastian's powerful father-in-law, Lord Jarvis, who will exploit any means to pursue his own clandestine ends.

Working in concert with his fiercely independent wife, Hero, Sebastian finds his inquiries taking him from the wretched back alleys of Fish Street Hill to the glittering ballrooms of Mayfair as he amasses a list of suspects who range from an eccentric Chelsea curiosity collector to the brother of an unassuming but brilliantly observant spinster named Jane Austen.

But as one brutal murder follows another, it is the connection between the victims and ruthless former army officer Sinclair, Lord Oliphant, that dramatically raises the stakes. Once, Oliphant nearly destroyed Sebastian in a horrific wartime act of carnage and betrayal. Now the vindictive former colonel might well pose a threat not only to Sebastian but to everything—and everyone—Sebastian holds most dear.

About C.S. Harris

Candice Proctor, aka C.S. Harris and C.S. Graham, is the bestselling, award-winning author of more than a dozen novels including the Sebastian St. Cyr Regency mystery series written under the name C.S. Harris, the new C.S. Graham thriller series co-written with Steven Harris, and seven historical romances. She is also the author of a nonfiction historical study of the French Revolution. Her books are available worldwide and have been translated into over twenty different languages.