“Which is?”
“Which is that somewhere between 1957 and 2005 Mena had recovered sufficiently to be discharged into the community. In which case, where would she go? What would she do?”
“Well she didn’t come home,” Jonathan said. “That much is certain.”
Tayte scoffed. “And who could blame her? I shouldn’t think she’d want anything more to do with her old life after all she’d been put through. How could she go back to a family that had abandoned her like that?”
“Yes, I suppose she must have seen it that way.”
They both fell quiet with their thoughts and Tayte went over all the checks he’d already made back home. All he’d found for Mena was a birth certificate. If she had been released into the community he thought there would be some other trace of her, but he recalled that when he’d checked online before leaving Washington there wasn’t even an entry for her in the recent electoral roll registers - not one match. He thought she couldn’t have vanished more thoroughly than if she’d entered into a Federal witness protection programme.
And changed her identity…
Tayte sat up and turned to Jonathan, wide-eyed. “What if she took another name? One she chose for herself this time. Maybe her mother gave her the idea when she sent her to Trinity House under the name of Fitch.”
“But didn’t you already check?”
“I did. But when you change your name by deed poll in the UK, it isn’t automatically logged in any central register. I find that a little scary myself, but it’s true. If the person changing their name elects to enrol the details then it gets recorded in the Enrolment Books of the Supreme Court of Judicature and subsequently gets printed in the London or Belfast Gazette where the details are easy to find. But most people who change their name do so with good reason - they don’t want to go public.”
“So just because you can’t find a change of name, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen?”
“Exactly.”
Tayte thought it would explain why he’d found so little information when he’d looked before, and what better way to put such a traumatic past behind you than to disown that past completely and become someone else? Given everything he’d heard since arriving in England, from talking to the family and friends and those who had come to know Mena at one time or another, he didn’t have to think twice about the name she would have chosen. It seemed entirely obvious to him now.
“Danielson,” he said. “She would have become Mena Danielson.”
“Of course,” Jonathan agreed.
Tayte twisted around and grabbed his briefcase from the back seat. “According to Audrey Marsh, who was at Trinity House while Mena was there, Mena was telling everyone she was married - that she was waiting for her husband to come and fetch her once the war was over - but it was sheer delusion.”
“Perhaps that’s how she managed to deal with her situation.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Tayte said. “And she began to believe in the dream. And later on she took his name. It makes perfect sense.”
He slid his laptop out from his briefcase and booted it up, wondering if it was possible, even now, that Danny had managed to find her and that she had taken his name without officially marrying him, which would have made them both easier to find if anyone came looking. Were they together now? Tayte hoped so and he thought he might soon find out.
“There’s a way we should be able to prove this theory,” he said, tapping keys. “If she did change her name to Mena Danielson it should appear on the electoral roll registers. Normally it’s no good unless you have an address or at least a street name to search by because that’s how the original documents are sorted. But the electoral rolls from 2002 are available online and you can search them by name.”
There were several websites providing this service: some gave free teaser information, but all charged a fee for the full details. Tayte brought up his preferred website for electoral roll searches - one of many subscription websites he used - and entered the name, ‘Mena Danielson’ into the search field. His shoulders slumped when the search returned no matches and he crumpled over the keyboard like the wind had just been knocked out of him.
“Come on,” he said to the screen. “She has to be there.” He needed her to be there.
“Try Philomena Danielson,” Jonathan said.
Tayte sat up again. He punched the name in and started the search again. When the result came back this time he just stared at the screen and shook his head. “Nothing?” He turned to Jonathan, his head still shaking. “This can’t be right.”
“Maybe she chose a different first name, too,” Jonathan offered.
Tayte liked the idea. If Mena wanted to leave her past behind, she couldn’t very well have kept such an unusual name as Mena or Philomena. He’d come across a few mentions of those names in his earlier searches, but they were few and those that he’d found, other than for her birth certificate, hadn’t offered any connection to the Mena he was looking for. The big question now was what name she would have chosen.
“Any thoughts?” he asked. “Any names you’ve heard from the time she would have been at the house?”
“There were two Great Danes,” Jonathan said, “But they were called Xavier and Manfred.”
“There was a teddy bear in the suitcase that was sent to my client,” Tayte said. “Any idea what she called it?”
Jonathan shook his head.
“I’ll do a broad search for Danielson,” Tayte said. “See if any of the names ring any bells.”
He typed ‘Danielson’ into the surname field and this time he left the first name field blank. There were 184 matches: male names, female names and some entries with just an initial. He slid the laptop around so Jonathan could better see it and slowly began to scroll through the list.
“Shout out if anything jumps at you,” he said. Then as he started to scan the list himself, something did.
“Emma!” he said. He turned to Jonathan with a wide smile on his face. “Emma as in Bovary - from the book. Maybe Mena escaped her past through the character in her book.”
Tayte hoped he was right. The age guide seemed to fit well enough, indicating that the subject was between seventy-five and seventy-nine years old at the time the details were recorded. He clicked the name and was presented with another screen that gave details from the 2002 electoral roll, being the first year that it was possible to opt out of the public register. That there wasn’t a more recent entry told him that this person had chosen to opt out of all subsequent registers. There was an address in Leicestershire, which was also encouraging.
“It’s to the southeast,” Jonathan said. “On the border with Northamptonshire.”
It was the name of the residence Tayte was interested in. As he took his notebook out and wrote it down, his confidence that he had at last found Mena peaked. “It’s a care home,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Logan House Care Home was on the outskirts of Market Harborough, a rural market town divided from the county of Northamptonshire by the river Welland. The near twenty-mile drive took Tayte no more than half an hour and it was almost midday when the voice from the satnav told him he’d reached his destination. The building was a modern structure, painted white with walls of glass and a slate roof that was fitted with solar panels. It was set in open countryside between weeping willows that had long since shed their leaves, their branches draping like veils over the brook that ran close to the property.
Tayte glanced at Jonathan, smiling pensively as he pulled onto the forecourt and parked the car, knowing there was every chance that he was about to meet the girl - the now elderly woman - whose suitcase had brought him all the way from America. And yet he was nervous about what he might find now that he was there.
They got out of the car together and Tayte collected his briefcase from the back seat. He paused as he looked more closely at the place - only the sound of birdsong in his ears.
Could she really be here?<
br />
He had to remind himself that although someone called Emma Danielson had without question been resident at this care home in 2002, he had yet to prove that she and Mena were one and the same person, despite growing odds in favour of that being true. He took a deep breath, knowing there was only one way to find out. They made their way inside.
“Seems nice,” Jonathan said.
Tayte just nodded as he took the interior in. It was a bright reception area, made all the more cordial by the expansive windows and unhindered sunlight that washed through them. He expected to see old people and walking-frames being shuffled from one place to the next, but he saw nothing of the kind. Of the few residents he could see, both here and through an open door that looked in on what appeared to be a visitor and patient lounge area, he saw only women and they were of various ages: some old, others less so. One woman who was sitting by the window in the lounge looked closer to his own age.
As he approached the smiling face that greeted him from behind a curved birch-wood reception desk, he saw that Logan House was not a stereotypical, government run home for the elderly but a privately run facility catering for somewhat different needs. He smiled back at the young rosy-cheeked woman behind the desk, who was dressed in a smart, pale blue tunic, and wondered who was paying Emma Danielson’s bills.
“Hi,” he said. “I’ve come to enquire about a woman who was staying here in 2002 and I was wondering whether you could tell me if she’s still here. Her name’s Emma Danielson. She’d be around eighty four years old.”
Tayte held on to his smile while he waited for a reply. Then an answer came that told him he was about to hit another barrier.
“Are you next of kin?” the woman asked.
Tayte grabbed Jonathan’s arm and pulled him closer. “No, but this is her nephew, Jonathan Lasseter,” he said, still smiling. “He’s a doctor,” he added, like he’d just produced a backstage pass.
“Retired,” Jonathan corrected.
The receptionist began to suck air through her teeth. She shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but we’re only allowed to give information out to the immediate next of kin - parent, husband or child. Is there someone else you can come back with? We’d need to see two forms of identification as well.”
By now, Tayte had already lost his smile. “Her parents are dead,” he said. “To my knowledge she never married and her daughter - whom she was forced to give up for adoption a long time ago - lives in America. I think long-haul travel would be an issue for her.”
“I see,” the woman said. “Well, her daughter can apply for information by post.” She swivelled around in her chair and reached beneath the desk. She brought up two forms and slid them towards Tayte. “She’ll need to fill these in and send them back to us with her ID, and we’d also need to see her adoption records.”
Tayte sighed as he took the forms, knowing the process could take weeks if not months to complete.
“Can’t you at least check your records and tell us if she’s still here?”
“No, I’m sorry. We have a duty of care to our residents. Their needs must always come first. I’m sure you understand.”
Tayte did. Fully. He supposed that this care facility was full of women who had led difficult, probably traumatic lives. The rules were there to protect them.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He gave a weak smile and picked up the forms. “Thanks for your time,” he added as he turned away.
He had only taken two paces when he stopped himself and turned back to the desk.
“What am I thinking,” he said. “My client’s adoption records won’t mention Emma Danielson. You see - that’s not her real name. I mean it’s not the name Emma Danielson was born with. She changed it.” At least, Tayte hoped that was the case.
The woman smiled sympathetically. “Several of the women staying with us are understandably here under a different name,” she said. “Most want to forget their past and we offer to help with that if a guest wishes it. We keep records of any changes of name that occur while a guest is in residence with us.”
“That’s great,” Tayte said, expecting worse. At least there was a chance that Mena had changed her name after she came to Logan House, although he knew there was every possibility that she’d changed it beforehand, in which case the care home would have no record of Mena Fitch or Lasseter and they would not release any records they held for Emma Danielson.
“If your client returns the forms with her documentation,” the woman reiterated, “we can go from there, but there’s really nothing we can do until then.”
“Of course. Thanks for your time,” Tayte said. Then he turned away again and headed outside.
“What do we do now?” Jonathan asked as soon as they were out on the forecourt.
“I’m going to call my client and tell her I’m coming home with these damn forms,” Tayte said.
“So that’s it?”
“What else can I do? If Mena came here under her own name we’ll find out more when the home writes back. If she’s moved on, we should at least get a forwarding address. Then we can confirm for sure whether it’s Mena and try to make contact.”
They reached the car.
“So close,” Jonathan said.
Tayte shrugged. “Sometimes that’s just the way it is.” He didn’t like it, but there it was.
He opened the passenger door and put his briefcase on the seat while he put the forms away. He checked his watch and reached inside his jacket for his phone. It would be early morning in Washington DC, but he couldn’t wait to call his client and he thought she would be keen to hear what he had to say. The call only rang twice before it was answered.
“Mrs Gray?” Tayte said. “Eliza, It’s Jefferson Tayte. I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”
“JT,” Eliza said. “No, of course you haven’t. I’ve been up almost an hour. What have you found?”
Tayte gave his client a brief summary of the research that had led him to Logan House and how he believed that Mena had changed her name to Emma Danielson. He sensed her hopes lift each time he came to one breakthrough and another, and then he felt that hope deflate again when he told her he could go no further.
“They gave me some forms for you to fill out,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s going to take longer than I’d hoped.”
“Oh, dear,” Eliza said. “Could I talk to them on the phone, do you think?”
“I’m afraid not. They need to see some proof of ID and your adoption records.”
The line went silent for several seconds.
“Eliza?”
“I’m coming over,” Eliza said. “I’ll bring all the paperwork with me.”
Tayte knew how much this meant to his client and he understood that she wanted to speed things up. He did, too, but he knew that it would be an uncomfortable journey for her and he hadn’t fully been able to confirm that Emma Danielson was Mena yet.
“I’d like to be certain that I’ve found the right person first,” he said.
“Can you do that?”
Tayte bit his lip. “Through the forms, maybe.”
“But not without them?”
“No, not really. I think I’ve exhausted just about every other avenue I can.”
“And you say there was only one Emma Danielson listed on the UK electoral register?” Eliza said.
“That’s right.”
“And she’s roughly the same age as Mena would have been at the time the register was taken?”
“To within a few years,” Tayte said.
“And don’t you think it’s a big coincidence that the only Emma Danielson on the register was living in a women-only care home in 2002?”
Tayte sighed. “I guess, but there’s another complication. You see, depending on when Mena changed her name, they might not have any knowledge of Mena at all, in which case they won’t be able to give us any information for Emma Danielson.”
“I don’t see how that really changes anything,” Eliza said.
“The forms are the only way we’re going to find out, aren’t they?”
Tayte had to agree.
“Well then it’s settled. I’ll get myself organised and I’ll be there the day after tomorrow. You can pick me up from the airport.”
Tayte knew there was nothing he could say to dissuade Eliza and a part of him was glad she wanted to make the journey. As they said goodbye he just hoped that his research had led him to the right person, although despite his need to be thorough, he felt sure that it was. Eliza had been right there; it had to be Mena. He turned to Jonathan who had been listening to the conversation from the other side of the car.
“She’s coming over,” he said, in case Jonathan had missed anything. “She’ll be here the day after tomorrow.”
“I shall look forward to meeting her,” Jonathan said.
“What am I going to do with myself until then?”
“I’m sure we can find something to keep you amused. Geraldine’s swimming tonight - water aerobics. You wanna go along?”
Tayte snorted. “Definitely not.” He got into the car. “I could use some lunch, though?”
“Good idea,” Jonathan said. “I know a pub not far from here. It’s on the way back.”
As Tayte started the engine his phone rang. Glancing at the display, he saw that the caller’s number was withheld.
“Hi,” he said. “Jefferson Tayte.”
“DI Lundy, Mr Tayte. We spoke on Monday following the murder of Edward Buckley at his home in Hampshire. Whereabouts are you?”
“Market Harborough,” Tayte said, looking at Jonathan.
“Good,” Lundy said. “I was on my way to Leicester to see you, but if you could make your way to the police station at Market Harborough, I’ll make a detour and meet you there. I’m less than an hour away.”
“What’s it about?”
“Oh, it’s nothing to worry about, Mr Tayte. You’re not a suspect or anything. There’s been a further development, that’s all. I’ve got a few more questions I’d like to ask you and I’ve got something to show you. Just ask for me when you get to the station and someone will look after you until I get there.”
JT02 - To The Grave Page 23
