Other books in this series
In the Blood
To the Grave
The Last Queen of England
The Lost Empress
Kindred
Dying Games
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Steve Robinson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
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Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503903104
ISBN-10: 1503903109
Cover design by @blacksheep-uk.com
For my wife, Karen
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
October 1869
Dear Robert,
Further to my recent correspondence, I write to you with great anticipation and excitement over your interest in the aforementioned matter. I have in my possession several letters written by my great-aunt Jane concerning her travels in India. By themselves they mean little. Taken as a whole, however, I believe they represent an extraordinary tale that could prove priceless.
It is in respect of this that I hope to secure your patronage to facilitate an expedition to Jaipur in search of a gemstone of unparalleled size and worth. In return, notwithstanding a favourable outcome, I assure you an equal share of said gemstone in addition to the full return of your investment.
Should these conditions meet with your approval, I am most keen to bring the letters in question to you at your earliest convenience so that you may see for yourself the uncommon opportunity they represent. Needless to say, your discretion in this matter is of the utmost importance.
Your most humble servant,
Cornelius Dredger
Chapter One
Present day
‘Tickets, please!’
Jefferson Tayte stirred reluctantly from the heavy slumber he’d been lulled into by the rhythmic motion of the train. His eyelids peeled open momentarily, and then he closed them again, hoping the conductor had already passed by. A few seconds later, he felt a tap on his shoulder.
‘Your ticket, please.’
Tayte opened his eyes again, more fully this time. He’d been using his suit jacket as a pillow. He yawned as he unrolled it and fished inside the pockets for his ticket. As he did so, he glanced out of the window and noted that the sunlit countryside that had been there when he’d last looked was now replaced by industry and housing. It had also started to rain.
‘April showers,’ he said to the conductor, handing him his ticket. ‘Where are we?’
‘Northumberland. We’ve just left Berwick-upon-Tweed.’
Tayte sat up. ‘Thanks,’ he said, taking back his ticket.
He checked his watch. It was almost one thirty in the afternoon. Having left London at ten that morning, he quickly calculated that his remaining journey time was still around two and a half hours, assuming a smooth changeover at Edinburgh for his onward journey to Perth, where he’d been told a car and chauffeur would be waiting for him. It might have been quicker to fly, but whenever he had an alternative, he preferred to take it on account of the stress he knew his phobia of flying would cause him.
Tayte put his ticket away again. As he did so, he felt the letters that had necessitated his trip to Scotland. He took them out, pinched the sleep from his eyes, and glanced over them again. One had been written by his client, Damian Sinclair, who had contacted him after seeing one of the advertisements Tayte had placed as soon as he’d felt settled enough in his new environment to start rebuilding his career. Sinclair’s letter described a tantalising genealogical brick wall that was all but impossible for a man in Tayte’s profession to ignore. Although brief, it spoke of British India, an illegitimate child, and an unknown four-times-great-grandfather who, despite many years of searching, no one had been able to identify. The other was a copy of an apparently related letter penned by another hand, dated almost 150 years earlier.
Business had been very slow of late. Tayte had only received a handful of calls in recent months, and he’d taken a few assignments as a result, but none had proved to be very interesting to a genealogist with his breadth of experience. The letters from Damian Sinclair, therefore, represented a welcome change, although mention of a valuable gemstone in the older of the two letters was still of some concern. The last thing Tayte wanted to get involved in since leaving his old life in Washington, DC, behind him was a trivial treasure hunt, but of all the assignments he’d taken on lately, this was the only one that excited him. He only hoped his skills as a genealogist hadn’t become too rusty.
He closed his eyes again and recalled his initial meeting with Sinclair, the man he was now travelling to see at his family home near Comrie in Scotland’s Southern Highlands. Sinclair was a stockbroker, and because he largely conducted his business affairs in London, he’d asked Tayte to meet him at the East India Club on St James’s Square, where he was a member. Tayte pictured the lounge bar he’d been taken to by a smartly dressed member of staff wearing black-and-gold livery. The room was plushly decorated, with the high ceilings that were typical of the Regency style. It had cream walls adorned with gold stucco work and gilt-framed portraits, with several chandeliers hanging over a blue-and-yellow carpet, on to which was set an array of red leather Chesterfield chairs and settees.
There had been several other people in the lounge when Tayte entered, largely sitting in pairs, with one or two noses buried in the morning newspapers. Tayte was led towards the leftmost of several tall windows that faced the small parkland at the centre of St James’s Square, where the man he had come to meet was seated in the corner of the room. He rose as Tayte arrived, his posture erect, head high
, accentuating his aquiline features. Like Tayte, Damian Sinclair was over six feet tall, although unlike Tayte, Sinclair was very slim, with pronounced cheekbones that gave the skin beneath them a hollow appearance. Tayte’s initial assessment of the man was that he’d recently been unwell, or that he simply wasn’t getting enough calories in his daily diet.
Sinclair extended a bony hand. ‘Mr Tayte, I presume?’
They shook hands and Tayte nodded, returning his smile. He thought Sinclair a particularly well-spoken man, who perhaps made it a point of pride to pronounce every letter of the words he spoke in a soft Scots accent.
‘Do take a seat,’ Sinclair continued. ‘Given the personal nature of our meeting I thought a quiet little spot in the corner was appropriate.’ He paused and smiled. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me, but I’m too frugal to hire one of their meeting rooms. I’m afraid that where money’s concerned, I conform to all the stereotypical attributes you’ve no doubt heard about Scotsmen.’
Tayte smiled. ‘This is just fine,’ he said as he sat on a small settee with his back to the wall, adjacent to the window. He set his briefcase down beside him and continued to take his host in.
Damian Sinclair looked to be in his early fifties. He was wearing a dark pinstripe suit with a light-blue shirt and a bright candy-stripe tie. There was a gold pocket-watch chain running to his waistcoat pocket, which told Tayte he was perhaps a man of old-fashioned hankerings. His immaculate appearance caused Tayte to wish he’d run an iron over his own suit and buffed his loafers before he’d left home, or selected another of his tan suits altogether. One that wasn’t made of easily creased linen.
‘You don’t like ties, do you?’ Sinclair offered, clearly getting the measure of Tayte in return. ‘I can tell. It doesn’t sit well on you.’
Neckties for gentlemen was a requirement of the club, and Tayte was wearing the only one he owned, which was funeral black. He’d been pulling and fiddling with it since he’d put it on outside the Tube station at Green Park that morning. He thought Sinclair an astute man to have so quickly noticed his discomfort at wearing it.
Tayte grinned, opting to make light of the observation. ‘I believe neckties to be little more than a necessary evil.’
Sinclair sat back and laughed. ‘Good man!’ he said. ‘I admire your honesty. Let me get you a drink. Then we’ll get down to business.’
Sinclair raised a hand. A moment later a waiter in a red velvet jacket and bow tie came to their table.
‘I’ll have a gin and tonic, and my friend here will have . . .’
Sinclair trailed off, gesturing to Tayte.
‘Coffee, please,’ Tayte said. ‘Strong and black.’
‘Espresso, sir? Americano?’
Tayte nodded. ‘That sounds great. I’ll have an Americano with an extra shot of espresso.’
The waiter’s eyes narrowed on Tayte briefly, as if questioning whether he’d heard him right.
‘I have a young son,’ Tayte said, as if to explain his need for the extra caffeine. ‘He’s five months old.’
‘Very good, sir,’ the waiter said. Then he turned on his heel and headed back to the bar.
‘Now then,’ Sinclair said, leaning closer to Tayte. ‘What do you make of that old letter I sent you? I trust it’s piqued your interest?’
‘Very much so,’ Tayte said. He opened his briefcase and took both letters out. ‘Before we discuss it, though, I’d like to address the elephant in the room.’
‘The elephant?’
Tayte looked Sinclair in the eyes. ‘I think you know what I’m referring to. If this is just some kind of treasure hunt, I—’
‘Ah, the gemstone,’ Sinclair cut in. ‘I see what you mean.’
‘Well, is it?’ Tayte asked. ‘Because if it is, you should know right now that I don’t do treasure hunts.’
Sinclair crossed his legs and began tapping his bony fingers together, as if contemplating how best to answer the question. A moment later he said, ‘Not exactly. What I mean to say is that in essence this is connected to a potentially priceless gemstone, but that’s not the reason I wish to solicit your services. As I said in my letter, I’d simply like to know who my paternal four-times-great-grandfather was. Surely, as a genealogist, you of all people can understand my need to find such a missing link in my family tree.’
Tayte understood the need very well. Not knowing who his biological parents were had eaten away at him for most of his adult life. He didn’t quite buy Sinclair’s motives, though. From what he’d read in the letters Sinclair had sent him, it seemed that the gemstone in question and Sinclair’s four-times-great-grandfather were intrinsically linked. That said, if Sinclair wanted him to identify his unknown ancestor, what he did with that information afterwards was his own business.
‘Let’s talk about your ancestor,’ Tayte said. ‘Your letter says you have no idea who he was.’
‘That’s correct. The family’s knowledge of my paternal bloodline ends there. All we know is his first name, which you’ll have read in my letter.’
‘Robert,’ Tayte said. ‘The man the letter from 1869 was sent to.’
Sinclair smiled to himself. ‘Aye, Robert, for what good that does us. There were fewer names more popular in Scotland during the early nineteenth century.’
Tayte opened his copy of the letter that had been written in October 1869. ‘So how exactly did you come by this in the first place? I mean, if the man it was sent to was unknown to your family, how did—’
‘I didn’t mean to imply that my ancestor in question was unknown to everyone in my family,’ Sinclair cut in. ‘I believe his son, my three-times-great-grandfather, must have known who he was. For some reason, though, he kept the identity of his father to himself. It’s a logical explanation for how the letter from 1869 came into my family’s possession. I knew nothing about it until my father died. It was one of the many things expressly left to me in his will.’
‘I see,’ Tayte said, becoming more and more curious about who this mysterious ancestor was—and, in light of what he’d just heard, why the man’s son, if he had known who his father was, chose to keep his identity a secret.
Their drinks arrived and Tayte sat forward, placing both letters on the table. ‘You said in your letter that you believe the man who wrote the letter from 1869, Cornelius Dredger, is the key to finding out who your four-times-great-grandfather was.’
‘Aye, well he clearly knew him, didn’t he? And well enough to be on first-name terms.’
‘There’s no address written on the letterhead,’ Tayte said. ‘I guess it’s too much to hope that you have the original envelope.’
Sinclair shook his head. ‘No such luck, I’m afraid.’
Tayte sat back with his coffee. ‘So, just to be clear, all you’re asking me to do here is to identify your ancestor?’
‘That’s it. Nothing more. And from what I’ve heard about you, Mr Tayte, you’re just the man for the job. Are you still interested enough to hear what else I have to say?’
Tayte was. In truth, he’d have liked nothing more than to get started right away. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Please, go on.’
Sinclair took a large sip of his gin and tonic. He smacked his lips as he set the glass down again. ‘That wets the old whistle,’ he said. ‘Now, you may have been wondering why I chose to meet you here at the East India Club.’
‘It had crossed my mind.’
‘Good, because there’s a very important connection to be made concerning my membership credentials. The club was created in 1849. Its original purpose was as a club for the servants of the Honourable East India Company, and for commissioned officers of the army and navy. Nowadays, by virtue of its constitution, the East India is a gentleman’s club with a strict membership policy of election and nomination. I was nominated by my father, who was nominated by his father, who was nominated by—’
‘And so on,’ Tayte said, getting the picture, thinking that the club’s records could perhaps tell him who Sinclair’s u
nknown ancestor was. People researching their own family history often overlooked such minor historical documents in favour of the more obvious records.
It was soon clear, however, that Sinclair had not. ‘No,’ he said, raising his eyebrows. ‘My three-times-great-grandfather was called Angus Fraser. He had a wee girl who married a Sinclair, but that’s by the by. I’ve already checked Angus’s membership with the club. His father made no such nomination. If he had then I’d have no need of your services, would I?’
‘So who did nominate him?’
‘His stepfather. His name was Lachlan Fraser. He was an officer serving in India when Angus was born in 1825. Having raised Angus as his own, it is to Lachlan Fraser that I owe my membership of this club today.’ Sinclair paused, smiling to himself. In a low voice he added, ‘Technically speaking, it seems I may have no right to be a member. You see, it’s common knowledge in the family that my paternal four-times-great-grandmother, Aileen Fraser née MacGregor, had an affair. I’ve come to believe it was with the man I’m trying to identify—this man called Robert, whom Cornelius Dredger wrote to in 1869. I’m a descendant of their offspring.’ He put a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t tell anyone, will you?’
‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ Tayte said, wondering how much research Sinclair had already conducted, and whether there was anything left for him to look into. ‘Have you seen a copy of Angus Fraser’s birth certificate?’
‘Aye, of course. Aileen Fraser is listed as Angus’s mother, but there’s no father listed.’
‘That’s unusual,’ Tayte said. ‘I mean, if Lachlan Fraser raised Angus as his own son, surely he would have added his name to the birth certificate when the child was born, to hide his wife’s indiscretion.’
‘I’m sure he would have done just that—if he’d been around at the time to do so. You see, when Angus was born, Lachlan was feared dead. According to family legend, which has since been backed up to some extent via Lachlan’s East India Company service record, he went missing in 1824, during the First Anglo-Burmese War. His wife, Aileen, had been told her husband had fallen in battle, but that wasn’t the case. Lachlan had been taken prisoner. He wasn’t released until 1826, following the Treaty of Yandabo, which made provision for the release of all British prisoners of war. That was a year after Angus was born.’
Letters from the Dead (Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mystery Book 7) Page 1
