Letters from the Dead (Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mystery Book 7)

by Steve Robinson

  He sat down, opened his laptop with renewed enthusiasm and ran the Families In British India Society database search again, this time not for Dredger, but for the man Dredger had written to. Along with both parts of his name, Tayte entered the year range from 1869 to 1875, supposing that the event he was looking for would have been relatively soon after Dredger sent his letter. Within seconds he was looking at a very short but promising list of records. He opened the first entry. It was from The Times of India, under maritime, arrival and departure notices.

  ‘Touchdown!’ he said a moment later, smiling to himself as he slapped his palm on the desk. ‘There you are,’ he added, scrutinising the record that was now displayed in front of him. At the same time, he helped himself to another Hershey’s Miniature to celebrate the find.

  Tayte was looking at an entry that had been transcribed from The Times of India in 2015. It was titled ‘Arrivals 1870.’ He read his subject’s first and last names back to himself to confirm they were correct, then in the title field he read ‘Sir,’ and it left him in no doubt that the record before him was for the man he was interested in. The name, title and date all fit perfectly. Here was a record showing that Sir Robert Christie arrived in Bombay from Southampton aboard the P&O steamship Golconda on 9 April 1870. It even gave him the name of the ship’s commander: Captain A Coleman. It was a great discovery, although it raised a number of questions.

  ‘Why did Christie go to India?’ he asked himself. ‘Why not Dredger?’

  As far as Tayte could gather from Dredger’s letter to Robert Christie, it had been Dredger’s plan to go to India, equipped with his great-aunt’s letters, offering Christie a share of the ruby if he could find it. Yet there was no mention of Dredger on the FIBIS database, no mention of his being aboard that ship with Christie, or any other ship bound to or from India around that time.

  So what changed? Tayte wondered, supposing that the answer had to be because Cornelius Dredger, for some reason, had been unable to go. He imagined the reason had to be a considerable one. It was his plan, after all, and his letters that would supposedly point the way to the location of the Blood of Rajputana. Tayte doubted he would have backed out of the trip lightly, and yet here was proof that Sir Robert Christie had arrived in India six months after Dredger wrote to him in October 1869.

  The odds of the two events being unrelated were close to impossible as far as Tayte was concerned. Christie, therefore, must have had Dredger’s letters with him. He had gone to India, hoping to use them to locate the Blood of Rajputana in Dredger’s place. It was possible that Dredger had contracted an illness soon after writing his letter, making him unfit for travel, facilitating the need for Christie to go instead. As far as the ruby Tayte was now trying to find was concerned, however, he began to suspect that greed might have played its ugly part, and he feared the worst for Cornelius Dredger.

  Knowing there was one simple, surefire way to find out, and having previously noted that there was nothing of significance in Damian Sinclair’s research for Cornelius Dredger, Tayte brought up another browser screen. This time he opened the FreeBMD website, which gave free access to the birth, marriage and death indexes for England and Wales dating back to 1837, when civil registration began. If Dredger had been unable to go to India with Christie in 1870 because he’d died, the death indexes would tell him so.

  Tayte clicked the search button and selected the record type he was interested in: death. Then he entered both parts of Dredger’s name. Given how unusual his name was, he figured that was probably enough, but he recalled from the address on Dredger’s letter that he lived in the town of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, so for good measure he found Chesterfield on the list of districts and selected it before starting the search. There was only one result. It was beneath the heading ‘Deaths Nov 1869,’ the month after Dredger wrote to Christie. It was all Tayte needed to tell him that his hunch was right. Cornelius Dredger hadn’t gone to India with Sir Robert Christie because by the time Christie had embarked on his voyage, Dredger was dead.

  Tayte noted down the index volume and page number, then he opened a digitally scanned image of the original index to see it for himself. And there it was, halfway down the first column. The information was telling enough, but before Tayte could be sure of foul play on Christie’s part, he needed to know the cause of death. How Dredger had died would tell him whether his death was due to illness or other natural causes, absolving Christie of the dark deeds Tayte had begun to imagine, or perhaps confirming them.

  It would take time and a small sum of money to find out, but thanks to the Internet, Tayte knew it would take far less time than it used to. He quickly brought up another website, this time for the Ancestry Shop, where you could buy copies of birth, marriage and death records online. Armed with the index reference he’d just noted down, he knew he’d be looking at a digital copy of Dredger’s death certificate within twenty-four hours, emailed to him while he waited for the paper copy to arrive.

  Tayte pinched his eyes and sat back in his chair, thinking that it had been a productive day, but it wasn’t over yet. He checked his watch and noted that it was a little after four. He still had a couple of hours or so before dinner, which was a good thing because he didn’t have much of an appetite just yet. He looked at the scattering of empty Hershey’s Miniature wrappers to the right of his laptop and it was plain to see why: there wasn’t a single chocolate left among them.

  ‘Some more research, then,’ he told himself, thinking that might help to bring his appetite back. ‘But where next?’ he added, leaning over his keyboard, just as his phone rang.

  ‘Jefferson Tayte,’ he announced as he took the call. He didn’t recognise the number, but it was clear who his caller was as soon as he spoke.

  ‘Mr Tayte, it’s DI Ross.’

  ‘Detective Ross,’ Tayte said. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I was wondering how your research is coming along.’

  Tayte thought he sounded tired. ‘Good, I think. I can’t say I’m much closer to working out where this ruby is just yet, but I feel I’ve made some progress today.’

  ‘That’s good to hear,’ Ross said, although he didn’t sound very upbeat about it.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ Tayte asked, sensing that there was more to Ross’s phone call than he’d as yet divulged.

  ‘No, everything’s far from okay, Mr Tayte. I’ve got forty police officers working on these murders and we’re getting nowhere fast. Meanwhile, dead bodies are piling up around us. I was hoping to hear you were close. If finding out where that ruby is means the end of this killing spree, then the sooner you do so, the better.’

  Tayte almost didn’t want to ask his next question, but once the thought popped into his head, he knew he had to. ‘Has there been another murder?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘So soon?’ Tayte could scarcely believe it. He stood up and began to pace his room, his free hand clamped to the back of his neck as a wave of anxiety gripped him. ‘Who?’

  ‘Moira Macrae,’ Ross said. ‘She was beaten to death in her sitting room this afternoon with one of her own ornaments.’

  ‘Moira Macrae?’ Tayte repeated. He began to feel nauseous. He and Ross had gone to see her just that morning. ‘Are the other members of the syndicate okay?’

  ‘It doesn’t look good for Chrissie MacIntyre,’ Ross said. ‘Officers were sent to her house. The glass in her back door was broken. No one knows where she is. A helicopter with thermal imaging equipment is searching the area behind her house now, but there’s a lot of moorland to cover. As for Ewan Blair, there are two officers waiting outside his house now. His car’s not on his drive so I expect he must be out somewhere.’

  ‘He was here at Drumarthen,’ Tayte said, sitting down again. ‘He came to see me, offering to fence the ruby for me if I found it, for a fifty per cent cut. He left under an hour ago.’

  ‘That sounds just like Ewan Blair,’ Ross said. ‘Well, maybe he’ll be home soon. Callum
Macrae’s still nowhere to be found,’ he added. ‘His car’s still out on the road to Drumarthen where it broke down last night. I don’t know what he’s playing at, but it’s highly suspicious, if you ask me.’

  ‘You think he’s doing this—that he beat his own mother to death?’

  ‘Mr Tayte, I still don’t know what to think just now. One thing’s for sure though—Callum Macrae’s not the blue-eyed boy his mother no doubt believed him to be. If what’s going on here is motivated by money, as it appears to be, I wouldn’t put it past him to have killed her. He’d have taken the crowns from her teeth for the gold inside them given half the chance. Look, I have to go. Will you let Damian know what’s happened?’

  ‘Of course,’ Tayte said, already heading for the door, suddenly wondering where Sinclair had gone that afternoon. It was pure fancy, but as the call ended and he went to break the news, he couldn’t shake the idea that Damian Sinclair might have gone out to pay Moira Macrae a visit, perhaps in connection with the family feud he’d previously heard about.

  Following an early dinner with Sinclair, having told him all about his call from DI Ross, Tayte had had one quick drink with him to help ease the shock of hearing that someone else had been murdered, and then he’d gone to his bed for an early night. He was restless. Someone was on a killing spree in Comrie, and while he was almost certain the reason had something to do with his assignment, he felt powerless to stop it. Sinclair’s reaction to the news that Moira Macrae had been murdered was also keeping him awake. Despite their mutual dislike for one another, she was family. Tayte was surprised to find Sinclair so unmoved by her death, especially given the circumstances. When asked casually where he’d been that afternoon, Sinclair had also taken what Tayte thought was a long time to answer, especially given that he’d apparently only gone out for more whisky. Tayte hadn’t liked to push the matter. Perhaps Sinclair’s hesitancy in answering was simply because his thoughts were with Moira after all.

  Tayte rolled on to his side and tried to fill his head with pleasant thoughts of Jean and their son. He’d called Jean before he turned off his bedside light, just to hear her voice again, and he replayed the telephone conversation over in his head as he drifted in and out of sleep. Then sometime in the quiet of the night he heard a scratching sound and his eyes shot wide open. As he lay there listening, he could feel his heart rate begin to climb. There it was again, a faint but clearly discernible scratching sound, coming from somewhere over by his bedroom door. His first thought was that it was probably mice, and he supposed the old place must be riddled with them. He imagined that such sounds had likely been present every night since his arrival at Drumarthen, only he’d slept too heavily to hear them before. He closed his eyes again and rolled over. Then they shot open again as he heard the unmistakable sound of a creaking floorboard.

  Not mice.

  He sat bolt upright, listening. His heart was now pounding. The sound appeared to have come from somewhere beyond his door, out in the corridor. He checked the time, noting that it was almost one o’clock in the morning—not an hour during which he expected Sinclair or Murray to be up and about. Someone was definitely out there, though, and he was determined to find out who it was and what they were up to. He flung his bedcovers aside and went to the door, trying to be as quiet as possible, but failing miserably. It seemed that every old floorboard he stepped on began to creak and groan under his weight until he reached the door and flung it open.

  At first, the corridor seemed to be in total darkness. Then, as he stepped out of his room and looked to his right, towards the main staircase, he saw a faint amber glow that was rapidly growing fainter. In nothing more than his stars-and-stripes boxer shorts, Tayte followed after it, quickly reaching the top of the stairs where the pale glow of the moon through the narrow upper windows tinted everything with its silver-blue light.

  He paused, listening. Beyond the sound of his own breathing, all was still. He looked below and saw nothing out of the ordinary, so he turned his attention to the opposite corridor, and there it was. There was that faint amber glow again. Whoever had been outside his bedroom door had clearly gone that way. Tayte followed after it, into the east wing.

  The air here quickly began to smell damp and rotten, and it reminded Tayte that for his own safety Murray had told him never to go into the east wing. He’d taken several long paces before he realised where he was, blindly following the light and the occasional creaking sounds he heard. Then, suddenly, the amber light was gone.

  ‘This is madness, JT,’ he whispered to himself.

  He stopped, wishing now that he’d brought his phone with him so he could have used it as a torch. He could just make out another pale trace of moonlight further ahead, which he supposed must be coming from a window or open doorway, but it was dim and distant, the space between them dark and potentially treacherous. He listened again, but beyond his own thumping heart, he could hear no other sound.

  He turned around and slowly began to retrace his steps back towards the landing, drawn like a moth by the glow of the moon. He thought he was lucky to have made it as far as he had. He was sure to hurt himself if he continued his pursuit further into the east wing in the dark.

  ‘Come back when there’s daylight,’ he told himself.

  He came to the landing, thinking at first that Murray or Sinclair could accompany him. They knew their way around the old place. They knew where it was safe to tread and where it was not. Maybe they could find out where his night visitor had gone. Perhaps there was some other way into Drumarthen that had been overlooked. Then it occurred to him that it could have been Sinclair or Murray outside his bedroom door. How could he trust them? He resolved to take a look around by himself after daybreak when he could better see where he was going. If there was another way into the house and he could find it, it would at least go some way towards ruling them out.

  Pacing back along the corridor towards his bedroom, he began to wonder why anyone was outside his room in the dead of night at all. His instincts told him they were up to no good. When he arrived back at his bedroom door he saw the reason. As he crossed the threshold, there beneath him, glowing in the faint moonlight against the dark floorboards, was a familiar envelope. Tayte had been so keen to follow after whoever had put it there that he’d missed it when he first opened the door, his eyes still adjusting to the darkness. He stooped and picked it up, knowing before he opened it that it was another of Jane Hardwick’s letters.

  ‘Another murder, another letter,’ Tayte said under his breath as he closed his bedroom door behind him.

  He went to his bed and switched on the lamp. Then he got back into bed and pulled the covers up around him, suddenly feeling the cold night air for the first time. Sitting up against the headboard, he opened the envelope and took out the letter, wondering what Jane had to say about her days in India this time. Then he began to read, and her opening words immediately grabbed his attention.

  My dearest brother,

  I hope you are quite well as I am the same. Today I write to you with a heavy heart and of such shocking news that I am barely able to believe it possible. . .

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jaipur, March 1823

  Two days had passed since Arabella had confided in Jane about her plans to elope with Naresh Bharat Singh. They were sitting on the balcony outside Arabella’s bedroom, waiting. The sun was already low on the crimson horizon. In thirty minutes or so Arabella would be gone, and Jane knew she would miss her as much as if she really were her own daughter. Having fought long and hard with her conscience during the last forty-eight hours, she could not bring herself to betray Arabella’s trust and tell the girl’s father, even if a part of her thought it would ultimately be for the best. And who was she to decide their paths for them? True love as strong as theirs would find a way, as it had for her own father and Sumana after her English mother died. She had to believe that.

  Arabella got to her feet and stood at the balustrade, the soft evening bree
ze gently playing with the loose strands of her hair. ‘I thought I saw him,’ she said, gazing out over the residency walls to the west.

  ‘How will you know it’s him?’ Jane asked. ‘It’s quite a distance.’

  ‘He told me to look for him on the far bank of the stream. He said he’d be standing high in his saddle waving a burning sword as a signal.’

  ‘That sounds very dramatic.’

  ‘Aye, I suppose he means to tie a rag to his sword and set fire to it.’

  ‘Can you see a flame?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ Arabella said, sounding disappointed as she turned back to Jane. She did not sit down again but continued to look towards the sunset for her prince.

  Jane rose and stood beside her. ‘I’ll help you look,’ she said. ‘Then when he comes, we’ll go to meet him together and say our goodbyes by the stream.’

  Arabella shook her head. ‘As much as I’d like to have you with me, Jane, I wouldn’t want you to get into any trouble should anyone see us leave. Captain Fraser has been with Father all day. I’m sure he’s been invited to supper again. I think it’s best you don’t come with me. That way, if I’m discovered, you can tell my father you knew nothing about it. I’ve written him a letter. Pranil is to deliver it once I’ve gone.’

  ‘You mean to go out alone?’

  ‘No, Pranil has offered to carry my travel bag as far as the stream. Then I shall be with Naresh.’

  ‘I saw Pranil outside your room as I came in,’ Jane said. ‘Are you sure you can trust him not to alert your father?’

  ‘I must trust to a great many things if Naresh and I are to be together.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you must. I thought Pranil looked nervous. If he doesn’t control the sweat on his brow none of it will matter. He’ll give the game away for sure.’

  At that moment there was a knock at Arabella’s door and they both turned back into the room. Jane’s first thought was that Arabella’s plans were already discovered, and here was her father come to put an end to them. The door opened slowly.