Blasphemous!

This gothic horror short story takes place in Charleston, South Carolina in the years following the Civil War. At that time, the area was transformed as the plantations failed without the slaves to do all the work. One man who profited from the war was the local funeral director. You could say that war was good for business. He eventually became the choice of the higher class of former plantation owners when it came time to inter their dearly departed.
Every few days he would bury a rich, bejeweled woman. It just didn't seem right to him to leave all those jewels in the earth. He devised a scheme to separate the jewels from the dead. He enlisted his grave digger to remove the jewels before covering the caskets with soil. This went well until he made a simple mistake!