Family Ties (The Mark Pemberton Cases Book 1)

by Nicholas Rhea

  ‘Good afternoon, Father,’ Mark greeted him, and the stout priest straightened up with a groan, putting a hand to his aching back.

  ‘Good afternoon. Really, I should delegate this task to a young parishioner but they all seem so busy these days. So I do it myself, even if it does make me ache all over. I tell myself it’s God getting his own back on me for my fifty-five years of imperfections!’

  ‘He’d have a whale of a time with me then!’ grinned Mark who then introduced himself and Lorraine.

  ‘So how can I help the law?’ asked the priest, who said he was Father Simmons.

  ‘I’m interested in checking your baptismal register for 1916,’ said Mark. ‘We’re in charge of security for the forthcoming visit of Vice-President Hartley of America he’s coming to England to look up his roots.’ Mark embroidered his tale by saying they were filling some family gaps before the arrival of the great man. ‘He’s very interested in Patrick Harland. The Vice-President’s grandfather, Luke Hartley, emigrated from Yorkshire to Canada and then America, and Sophie kept in touch about Patrick. There is a letter telling of his first Holy Communion, for example.’

  ‘Yes, it was a sad day when we lost Patrick. He’s buried here — that’s his grave, the one with the flowers on.’

  ‘He was born in 1916,’ said Mark. ‘I wondered if he was baptised here? It’s the sort of question the Vice-President might ask, and if so, he might wish to pay a visit.’

  ‘Oh, well, come into the presbytery. I’ll have a look at the old records — they’re all on my shelves, from the date the church was consecrated.’

  Father Simmons took them into the presbytery and showed them into his simple study. As the priest pulled the register from the shelf, Mark asked, ‘He’d have been baptised very soon after birth, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Oh yes, especially at that time. He’d have been baptised within three days of being born, not like the Protestants, who waited weeks. Do you know his actual date of birth?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Mark. ‘We’ve just come from Hartleys and they said he was seventy-seven when he died in 1993. That makes his birthday around 1916. That’s as near as I can get.’

  ‘We’ll check from late 1915 right through to the end of 1917,’ said the priest. ‘There were not too many entries at that time. I’ve been through these registers time and time again looking up family births and so forth. Now, Patrick Harland. Let me see when he was baptised.’

  Before beginning his search, Father Simmons produced a bottle of sherry from a cupboard and offered them a glass; both accepted. While they sipped the fine dry sherry, he waded through his register, muttering the names as he turned the pages.

  ‘Harland, Harland, Harland… There’s a Harrison here…mmm…’ But as he turned the pages, he failed to find any reference to Patrick Harland.

  ‘It doesn’t seem he was baptised here,’ said Father Simmons. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Perhaps it was done at another church?’

  ‘Possibly. It would mean checking at every one. We have quite a number of Catholic churches in Hull — eighteen including this one. But knowing the family, Patrick would certainly have been baptised somewhere. I’m surprised it wasn’t done here. Everything else was, this was his family church.’

  ‘Thanks, Father.’ Mark shook him by the hand. ‘I hope the other priests are as helpful.’

  ‘Maybe they will be. I wish you success and will pray for the Vice-President when he visits. I wonder if he’ll come to this church?’

  ‘I don’t think the final itinerary has been drawn up, but he might want to see where Patrick made his first Holy Communion,’ smiled Mark, draining his glass. ‘Well, we’ll be off. Thanks for your help.’

  ‘It was my pleasure,’ said Father Simmons, returning to his weeding as Mark and Lorraine left the premises.

  As they drove away, Mark asked Lorraine, ‘Well, what do you make of that?’

  ‘It makes it even more likely that Patrick was adopted,’ she said. ‘The signs are all there. In 1916, Sophie was unable to produce children, and suddenly there is Patrick who doesn’t have the Caleb name. So he’s clearly not the eldest son of a Hartley. If he’d been Sophie’s own child, he’d have been baptised in the family church, surely?’

  ‘So we can forget him, can we?’ Mark teased her.

  ‘No, we can’t, sir! We must find out where he came from, especially as his mother saw fit to keep in touch with Luke about him.’

  ‘I agree! I was just teasing you. So how do we find out who Patrick really was? Who were his parents and why was he adopted? Where do we start that kind of enquiry?’

  ‘Official adoption did not start until 1926,’ she said. ‘Therefore there’ll be very few records.’

  ‘Does it really matter who his parents were?’ Mark was thinking aloud. ‘Is he of any real importance to our murder enquiry?’

  ‘Trace, Interrogate and Eliminate, sir? We must eliminate every name that comes within the scope of our enquiry, and that includes Patrick, surely. We have traced him to Hull and to Sophie who felt Luke should know about his progress, but the Pike Hill Hartleys froze Luke out of their lives. They tried to hide Luke’s very existence from the younger generation. So I reckon we must find out more about Patrick before we eliminate him from our enquiries.’

  ‘And that means a trip to St Catherine’s index, does it? That’ll be one almighty chore, searching through those records.’

  ‘Don’t forget, sir, that Luke is our chief suspect and he is also the Vice-President’s grandfather. Our enquiries are taking us all the way back to Luke without our knowing why. Can you imagine the chaos this would cause Vice-President Hartley if he was searching his own roots?’

  ‘I’m more concerned with an unsolved murder than family roots, Lorraine, but I daren’t tell too many people about that! And what about Thomas, eh? Is it just coincidence that he might have been passing through Rosenthorpe station on the very day that his brother died? And surely a man like that would not pass so close to his old home without calling in? I know he didn’t have a car and that people relied heavily on trains; it wouldn’t surprise me if in those days there was a train every two hours or so between Thornborough and Rainesbury. So two questions arise, Lorraine. One: if Thomas was so close to home, why did he not call in? Two: if he did call in, why wasn’t his visit mentioned to the murder team?’

  ‘Do you think the family was covering up something, sir?’

  ‘It looks very much as if they were, but what? To answer that, I think we need to go back to Wolversdale, Lorraine, and I need to talk to George again.’

  ‘And what about that rhyme, sir? I mean, could the word hell be a corruption of Hull? Jimmy Hartley’s gone to Hull and his brother’s gone as well. The words might have changed over the years. And it’s possible that the brother referred to could be Thomas. So did James ever go to Hull for any reason? Do we know that?’

  ‘That’s one for Duncan Young and HOLMES to answer for us, but it’s another interesting theory.’

  ‘And you’ll need to find train times for 11th September 1916, won’t you, sir.’

  ‘You keep calling me sir, even when we’re alone! I do have a Christian name, you know, and it’s not Caleb!’

  ‘Force of habit — I’m sorry. Ignore me when I do that — but it is a mark of respect, Mark! If I call you sir for most of the time, I won’t be disrespectful in public, will I?’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. Rank is a bloody nuisance at times. It means you can’t be friends with whoever you want just because they’re of a different rank. I hate it, to be honest.’

  ‘But I don’t mind calling you sir, sir!’

  ‘I do. I hate it…really I do.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember to call you Mark, sir, when we’re alone.’

  ‘Like now?’

  She grinned, having teased him, and slipped her hand through his arm.

  ‘Where to now?’ she asked.

  ‘Back to Thirklewood Hall, I think. I want to check Luke�
�s signature if that’s possible, but without the Americans realising why I have one of his statements on a murder file! I wonder if anything else has happened while we’ve been away?’

  Chapter Fifteen

  After the Detective Superintendent had left Pike Hill Farm that morning, George Hartley had called his wife.

  ‘Christine,’ he’d shouted into the kitchen. ‘When we were living in t’farmhouse, can you remember what happened to Great Uncle James’s stuff?’

  ‘That old trunk, you mean?’ She’d come into the lounge, drying a cup that the men had been using.

  ‘Aye, a big brown tin trunk it was. My dad told me to take good care on’t, not to throw t’stuff out, it used to belong to Great Uncle James.’

  ‘Well, it was there when we left, in that box room at the back of t’house, upstairs. Under a lot of other things, old boxes of this and that, stuff that had been there for years.’

  ‘Our Alan knows not to chuck it out, doesn’t he?’

  ‘You told him not to,’ Mrs Hartley had said. ‘You explained it was heirlooms, stuff that had belonged to James before he died, and Alan said he’d not have it removed, not ever. It’ll stay there for when Paul Caleb takes over t’farm and he’ll hand it down.’

  ‘I never did have a look inside yon trunk,’ George had told her. ‘I’ve no idea what’s in there.’

  ‘Me neither,’ she’d admitted. ‘It was sort of sacred, if you know what I mean, I’d have felt dirty if I touched anything of his. I would have felt I was trespassing, interfering with his belongings, so I never looked inside either. Anyway, why do you want to know all this?’

  ‘You know that Vice-President chap who’s coming, well, the police are looking after his security and they’re checking on all t’family, helping him to trace his ancestors. That detective chap reckons the American will be interested in Great Uncle James, him being shot in t’first war. So I thought I might check his things over, just in case there was summat that would interest those Yanks. Heirlooms and things, personal bits and pieces to look at.’

  ‘Does that mean we are related to the American?’

  ‘I reckon we could be cousins — we should find out for certain before too long. The American’s dad went to Canada from Yorkshire in 1916, they called him Luke Caleb Hartley. Now my dad never said owt about a Luke Caleb and there’s nowt in our family bible, but the police reckon he did come from here. They’re doing a bit of checking up, you see, ready for when t’American gets here.’

  ‘I can’t say I want a lot of American tourists tramping over our land checking their family roots,’ Christine had remarked.

  ‘Our graveyard at St Monica’s should keep ’em happy,’ he’d laughed. ‘Great Uncle James is there, and there’s the grave of Sarah and Caleb and some others.’

  ‘So you don’t intend selling things from James’s trunk?’

  ‘No! ’Course I don’t. I just want to see what’s inside. There’s no harm in that — it might help us to trace our relations from t’past. I don’t know anyone else who’s looked inside, do you?’

  ‘Your dad always said he’d never looked, he said the trunk had to stay with the farmhouse so long as Hartleys lived there, and so, apart from dusting it once a week, I never looked inside either. It was allus locked, anyway. Mind, I can’t remember anybody saying we shouldn’t look.’

  ‘Right. Well, I’ve got t’key, it passes from father to son, and I reckon this visit by an American Vice-President who might happen to be a distant relation of ours is a good enough reason to open it up. Come along, I’m going over to t’farmhouse to find it.’

  ‘You go without me, I’ve enough to do without stirring up a lot of mouldy dust. Let me know what you find.’

  And so George, a heavy-footed man, had stomped across the yard to the house where Alan’s wife, Jennifer, was sweeping the flagstones. The key to the trunk was in his hands.

  ‘Hello, Dad,’ she’d smiled. She was a solidly built woman of thirty-five with a scarf around her fair hair and a smile on her handsome pink cheeks. She wore a pair of green Wellington boots, jeans and a colourful sweater. ‘What brings you here this morning?’

  ‘That chest of Great Uncle James’s stuff. It’s in the loft, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Alan said it was best there, better than being in the house. He felt the kids wouldn’t be tempted to try and open it and use whatever’s inside for playing with.’

  ‘Does it contain clothes, you reckon?’

  ‘Well, it might hold some army uniform, him being a soldier, and if it does, they’d be in there nicking the stuff for fancy dress parties or whatever. So it’s safe, Dad, if that’s bothering you.’

  ‘I want to have a look inside,’ announced George. ‘It’s to do with that American chap that’s coming.’

  ‘Well, we might find out at long last exactly what’s in there, so help yourself. You know the way.’

  He tramped up the first flight of stairs in the spacious house which had been his home since childhood, the memories stirring as the familiar sights, sounds and scents assailed him. Then he clambered up the narrow flight of wooden stairs into the loft. Years before, the loft had been equipped with a stout wooden floor so that it could be used for storage and even serve as sleeping accommodation if required. George had installed electric lights and central heating, so it was now a cosy, dry and comfortable room, large enough to sleep half a dozen guests if necessary.

  There were roof windows too, and they boasted stunning views across the moors.

  Here were disused beds, mattresses, chairs and curtains, boxes of childhood toys, some of which would be worth a fortune for collectors, old paintings, fire screens… The loft was the repository of family belongings spanning a century at least and probably longer. As George stood and looked at the bewildering array of objects, he realised that if ever the farm required an injection of capital, then a useful sum could be raised by auctioning some of these items as antiques.

  But that was not of immediate concern. Right now, his objective was the tin chest of Great Uncle James. He found it with no trouble; it had been pushed into a convenient space against a wall and on it rested an old ironing board, two deck chairs and the top of a kitchen table, recently used as a board for cutting and preparing wallpaper. Shifting these oddments, George revealed the old trunk. In rough handwriting on top, done in whitewash or paint, was the name ‘James Reuben Hartley’. The trunk, some four feet long by two feet wide, stood about two feet high and had a rounded lid. A clasp fastened the lid and it was securely padlocked.

  As he stood above the trunk, George now felt a distinct unwillingness to open it. After what the policeman had told him, he felt that it might reveal something unpleasant.

  Already, his family traditions had been jolted by the truth about James’s death, but there was the additional mystery of Luke. Why had the present generations not been told about Great Uncle Luke and his emigration? George, approaching the end of his own life, was wise enough to realise that he was under no obligation to tell anyone what he might find here; he could allow the family traditions and legends to continue. He could let everyone continue in the belief that James had died an honourable if mysterious death, and he considered there was little need to inform them that there had once been a Great Uncle Luke who was master of Pike Hill Farm. But, at the same time, George was astute enough to see that if these Americans did begin to delve very deeply into the family background, then they would surely uncover the truths — just as the policeman had done, so very quickly. And perhaps that policeman knew more about Luke? After all, Luke was the founder of the American branch of the family so somebody overseas must know a good deal about him. There were bound to be some facts that had been obscured since his departure from Pike Hill Farm in 1916.

  It was with mixed feelings, therefore, that George Hartley brushed away the dust, unlocked the clasp and raised the lid of James’s trunk. It was very dark in this corner and he was unable to see the contents, so he gripped one of the handl
es at the end and hauled the trunk a few yards.

  Once it was nearer the centre of the floor, the light was above it and now he could carry out his inspection. The first impression was that it had been neatly and systematically packed. The contents appeared to have been carefully handled and positioned; an old army blanket covered the top, and underneath everything was neat and tidily stored. George did not feel like disturbing the contents. But, as the senior member of the Hartleys, facing what might be a family crisis centred upon James, he felt that he must go through the trunk.

  As he cast aside the old blanket, he saw a pile of books in one corner and lifted them out to inspect them; they comprised children’s books of the last century and early years of this one. Slipped among them was a rosary, a statue of St James the Great and some medallions of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Christopher. There were some juvenile religious books, a child’s missal, a First Communion book, a catechism, a picture book of the gospels and another about the life of Jesus. There were novels too: he found an 1877 edition of Black Beauty which said inside, ‘Sarah, her book, Christmas 1877’. Sarah would be James’s mother, George’s own great grandmother — George felt sure she had packed this trunk as a memorial to her beloved son.

  She had included Cranford by Mrs Gaskell with coloured pen-and-ink sketches, and among several books of poems were the works of Burns, Cowper and Milton, the last being a school prize awarded to Sarah in 1864. From this, he deduced that James had liked reading.

  There were some photographs of James as a child, James as a growing boy and later as a teenager with a sheep-dog at his side. One taken of him in his early twenties showed him with a central parting in his dark hair and a bushy moustache, the fashion of the time.

  There were the letters that James had sent home during his training with the Green Howards, all tied in a parcel with a piece of pink ribbon, and mementoes of his formative years such as his First Communion certificate, a confirmation picture of the Last Supper and a handwriting prize for winning a schools handwriting competition. There were some small and childish wooden creations — a cross, a bookrack, a toothbrush holder, all apparently made by James in woodwork classes at school because they were among his arithmetic exercise books. There was one of his essays too, written when he was nine. It was called ‘Our Farm’ and revealed an almost idyllic lifestyle: James spending time exploring the woods and moors, finding barn owl nests in the barn or helping to feed the hens. There were some watercolour paintings too, the artist being ‘James Hartley, aged 8 ¾’.