Dour, dumpy Queen Victoria, who spent half her life in black, seems an unlikely protagonist for a gothic novel of intrigue and suspense. But then, who better to be at the center of a mystery that revolves around the death of Albert, the prince consort, than the wife who venerated him?
In an acknowledgment at the end of “A Flaw in the Blood,” Stephanie Barron writes that Prince Albert’s death at age 42 could have been stomach cancer or a perforated ulcer, but it “almost certainly was not typhoid,” which is the cause listed in the history books. Barron takes the uncertainty one step further: Could Albert have committed suicide or even been murdered?
It’s the stuff of a good mystery, and Barron is a master at crafting English period pieces. Using Albert’s strange death, she tells a complicated story of Georgiana Armistead, a rarity as a female doctor, who has a secret connection to the prince; her friend and protector, the wild Irishman Patrick Fitzgerald; and their nemesis, Wolfgang Graf von Stuhlen, a boyhood friend of the prince’s.
On the night of Albert’s death, Fitzgerald is called to Windsor for no discernible reason. He takes Georgie with him, and on their way home, their coach is overturned and the driver killed when the horses run into a palisade of lashed poles set in the roadway. The two survive, but when Fitzgerald returns to London, he discovers his law partner has been murdered. Then Georgie’s lodgings are ransacked and her letters from the prince stolen.
Added to that, a patient of Georgie’s, a 14-year-old prostitute suffering from the aftereffects of an abortion, is smothered, and Georgie is charged with the murder of mother and infant.
So in fear for their lives, Fitzgerald and Georgie flee to his remote estate, a moldering pile of rock that is home to Fitzgerald’s wife, dying of syphilis, and his estranged son. Von Stuhlen is hot on their trail, however, so the two decamp for France, where they meet up with the queen’s young son, Leopold, a hemophiliac. A flaw in the blood refers to the hemophilia that devastated Victoria’s descendents, but as the plot progresses, the flaw develops a more sinister meaning.
The villain, von Stuhlen, is obvious from the beginning, so the mystery is why he’s chasing them. Is von Stuhlen after the pair for his own reasons — Georgiana shamed him when she publicly rebuffed his advances — or is he acting on orders of the self-absorbed queen?
Barron depicts Victoria as selfish and spiteful, even before she was laid low by her husband’s death. Mourning makes her insufferable. Chapters of the Fitzgerald-Georgiana saga alternate with Victoria’s diary excerpts showing her self-centeredness and her disdain for her children. Barron is at her cleverest when she creates scenes with Victoria’s children, who among themselves, refer to their mother as “Eliza.” They don’t like her much.
“A Flaw in the Blood” is a beautifully written novel, filled with twists and turns, many of which seem like dead ends until the oh- my-God ending, which leaves the reader wondering, Could this be true?
Barron, who lives in Denver, not only delivers a satisfying mystery; she immerses her readers in the majesty and depravity of Victorian London. Anyone who has read her nine Jane Austen mysteries knows Barron is a stickler for period detail in setting as well as manners and language.
“A Flaw in the Blood” is set in royal palaces as well as a fetid tenement where the prostitute and her drunken mother live. You’ll smell the scented chambers at Windsor and the filth in the hovel, along with the Victorian hypocrisy. And you will be so caught up in the characters that you’ll wish Barron would turn Georgie and Patrick into a series, just as she did with Jane Austen.
Sandra Dallas is a Denver novelist.
A Flaw in the Blood
by Stephanie Barron, $24
