The Lost Ancestor (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 2)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  So that was the official Blackfriars admission which would consign Mary’s misconduct to history. With a heavy heart, Edith set the book back in place, closed the bureau and pushed shut the room door. Returning to her seat, Edith began to worry about how Edward would react to the news. She simply decided to show him the letter and see his response. Would he too feel as she had, that something wasn’t quite right about the situation?

  Moments later, the door opened and Edward apprehensively walked in. He was dressed in his neat livery, his hair was tidy but his face was worn and wearied. Mary’s disappearance had hit him hard.

  ‘Mrs Cuff said you’d heard from her?’ he said, even before Mrs Cuff had shut the door behind him.

  ‘A letter came this morning,’ Edith said, passing it to him.

  Edward took a while to read the letter. Edith watched as his eyes darted around the page, his mind seeming to re-read and question its content.

  ‘What do you think?’ Edith asked, trying to keep her tone as neutral as possible.

  Edward met her eyes, his own filled with tears. ‘It’s not from Mary,’ he said.

  ‘It’s her handwriting,’ Edith insisted.

  ‘But it’s not from her. Do you believe it’s her?’ he asked, his eyes searching her face to understand her thinking. He didn’t wait for a response but continued with his case. ‘I’m telling you, Edie, there’s no way she—’

  ‘I know,’ Edith interposed. ‘There’s no way she would write a letter like that. There’s no way she would have taken off like that. And there’s no way she wouldn’t have told one of us at least.’

  Edward seemed to calm a little upon hearing that he and Edith were allied in their thinking. ‘Now what do we do?’

  Edith shrugged. She had no idea what to do next.

  Lady Rothborne watched from the east window as a black coach drew up at the back entrance to the house. From the carriage, Mr Risler, the butler stepped out with his case. Lady Rothborne took a moment to savour the fact that he had returned from Scotland alone: her despicable nephew, Frederick, had thankfully not returned.

  A quiet knock came from her bedroom door. She recognised the light tapping as belonging to her lady’s maid, Miss Herriot. ‘Enter,’ she bellowed.

  ‘Your coffee is ready in the library, Lady Rothborne,’ Miss Herriot said from the doorway.

  ‘Very good, Miss Herriot. Thank you. Could you have Mr Risler visit me there, please?’

  ‘Yes, Lady Rothborne,’ Miss Herriot said, deferentially backing from the room.

  Lady Rothborne smiled. Frederick Mansfield will not be getting his way.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Morton was exhausted and no amount of caffeine could counteract it. He was slumped at one end of the sofa cradling a large cup of coffee, resting his legs on Juliette, who was sitting at the opposite end. His mind was still rerunning the events of last night. Over and over. It had been truly awful. Upon discovering Douglas Catt’s dead body in the church, Morton had dialled 999 and waited on the phone to an operator until the first police car had arrived. Only then had he dared to turn his car around and venture back to the church. Inside the safe confines of their police car, the first officers on scene had taken his basic details, then referred him to the ambulance crew who had turned up tasked with removing the body. After a few checks, he had been released, apparently not suffering from shock or injury. When he had stepped out of the ambulance it was as though he had entered a wormhole and exited from a place different to that which he had entered. Police tape had criss-crossed each of the entry gates to the church, guarded by policemen and policewomen to keep out a surprisingly large crowd of chattering curious locals. Three white forensics tents had sprung up just in front of the church entrance and between them moved an assortment of personnel in protective white suits and plastic blue shoe-covers. Two further police cars had also emptied their staff into the medley. Morton had been fairly sure that sleepy Winchelsea had not seen anything like this in quite a while.

  Morton had looked bewildered standing at the rear of the ambulance, surveying the scene before him. He hadn’t really had time to process what had happened. Douglas Catt was dead. Could it have been suicide? he wondered. Was his death something to do with the Mercer Case? In his heart, Morton thought that it probably was.

  ‘Morton Farrier?’ a voice had asked, suddenly cutting through the darkness.

  ‘Yes,’ Morton had answered, struggling to make out the face behind the voice.

  ‘Detective Inspector Harding,’ he had said. He was a tall serious man in plain clothes with a scowl on his face. ‘I need to ask you a few questions.’

  Morton had nodded. As the person who had found the body, Morton knew that he would face a barrage of questions. He had also known that, unless it was suicide, for the moment at least he was likely to be the number one suspect.

  Detective Inspector Harding had led Morton through a throng of police personnel into the churchyard. Finding a spot away from the prying ears and eyes of the crowd, and with just sufficient light from one of the huge floodlights, he had begun his questioning, all the while maintaining a disbelieving scowl on his face.

  Morton had answered the questions as best he could and even volunteered all that had gone on with Douglas during the course of the Mercer Case.

  ‘So this guy has been taking pictures of you and your girlfriend? Threatening you? Then you get a message to meet here and he ends up dead. That all sounds a little strange, wouldn’t you say?’ His frown had at last disappeared and turned into a smile. But it was a fake smile, one which had spoken volumes of his disbelief.

  ‘Is there any way it could have been suicide?’ Morton had asked.

  Detective Inspector Harding had laughed. It was a full, belly laugh that was so loud that two nearby policewomen turned to see the cause of the hilarity. ‘Only if he was a very clever man who could defy the laws of physics.’

  ‘Okay, just a thought,’ Morton had replied, feeling somewhat sheepish.

  Detective Inspector Harding had ended the questioning by telling him that they might need to speak to him again as the investigation progressed.

  ‘You’re lucky they didn’t lock you up last night,’ Juliette mused, jolting Morton back to the present. ‘Your alibi—me—only lasts until a few moments before Douglas was murdered. You could be the person who killed him.’

  Morton pulled an incredulous face. ‘Thanks for that.’

  ‘I’m just saying, you were there at the time of the murder and you’ve got motive—the guy threatened you and your occasionally stunning girlfriend—just not stunning in the pictures that he took.’

  ‘I don’t rule out being framed for it,’ Morton answered. He was acutely aware that what they talked about half-heartedly was actually a possibility. ‘That’s not my biggest worry, though…’

  Juliette looked at him and waited for him to continue.

  ‘I think I should have been the one carried off in the body bag last night—not Douglas.’

  Juliette nodded slowly as if processing the information, but Morton knew that Juliette would have already reached that conclusion herself long ago. ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Because whoever sent that false email to me had hacked into my account and arranged the meeting with me—Douglas was just there because he was following me. It was just chance that the killer got to him first. I guess in the darkness of the church the killer thought it was me. Either that or Douglas got in the way—but I doubt it or else the killer would have stuck around until I got there.’

  ‘But I don’t get why two different sets of people are so adamant that you stop working on finding a housemaid who disappeared more than a hundred years ago. It doesn’t add up.’

  Morton shrugged. ‘I still don’t know. All I can think is that Mary Mercer discovered something that finding what happened to her would now reveal…I don’t know. It’s all guesswork at the moment. Something could obviously still cause real damage.’

  ‘If y
ou’re right about all this, you’ve got a period of grace where the killer thinks you’re dead. Use that time to get on with cracking the case.’ Juliette pushed his legs off her. ‘Now stop moping and get on with it, Mr Farrier.’

  ‘What are you up to today?’

  ‘Not sure yet. I might pop to the shops. Pick up something nice for dinner.’

  ‘Fancy giving me a fresh set of eyes?’ Morton asked. Although not a great lover of the finer points of genealogy, Juliette could rarely resist sharing her opinion on the reasoning, motivations and detection aspects of the bigger cases on which he had worked. Today, Morton was glad of some assistance since his own brain was running on flat batteries.

  ‘Why not. Come on, then,’ she said, standing up and offering him her hand.

  He took her hand and stood heavily, his body weight dragging him down, making a dramatic performance of standing.

  Upstairs in the study Morton used his notepad and the wall, covered with Mercer Case information, to talk Juliette through every aspect of his work so far. In her own brooding way and with few words, Juliette broadly agreed with his summations.

  ‘I need to see this in a more linear way,’ she said. ‘I can’t follow your logic when it’s all pinned up haphazardly like that. I need a timeline of some sort.’ She pulled a piece of A4 paper from the printer and then proceeded to roughly tear it into three strips. ‘Right, let’s start at the beginning.’

  And so, for the next two hours, Morton and Juliette created a crude hand-drawn timeline for the key events surrounding the disappearance of Mary Mercer.

  ‘I’ve just got something new to add to the timeline. Well, maybe not actually—I’m not sure it helps,’ Morton said, wafting his mobile in front of Juliette. ‘Nova Scotia Archives have got back to me.’

  ‘And?’ Juliette said, poised with a pen and the timeline.

  ‘Dear Mr Farrier. Thank you for your e-mail. Nova Scotia Archives has printed “Lists of Voters for the City of Halifax” (RG 5 Series E. Vol. 28). It is somewhat large and is too fragile to photocopy. The names are divided by wards and within each ward names are divided by men and women, giving name, occupation and address. I have looked at the years you requested and have the following information, which I trust is of use: 1921-1925 gives the same occupant: Martha Stone, teacher. 1926-1930 Michael Fellows, Fruiterer, Julia Fellows, laundress. Kind regards, Martin Lythgoe, Reference Archivist.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Juliette mused, gazing at the timeline. ‘It is of interest when you look at what happened in 1925.’

  Morton stood beside Juliette, wondering at what extra information she had been able to glean from this latest email that he hadn’t.

  ‘Edith Leyton travels out to visit Martha in 1925. That same year, Martha moves out. Possibly a coincidence, or did something between her and Edith happen to make her move on?’

  Morton wasn’t convinced that the two things were necessarily connected to each other, never mind the disappearance of Mary Mercer. It was looking increasingly like a dead end. ‘I’m keeping an open mind on it… But I think Edith visiting her old neighbour in Canada in 1925 is just a holiday. The fact that Martha then moved out afterwards is just a coincidence.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in coincidences?’

  Morton shrugged. There was something about Martha and Edith that pricked at his genealogical intuition.

  ‘Look at this,’ Juliette said excitedly. She drummed a finger on the images of Dr Leyden's leases for Wisteria Cottage. ‘Guess which year Edith’s husband's rent-free lease expired?’

  ‘1925?’ Morton suggested.

  ‘Exactly. Something happened to Edith that year, Morton,’ Juliette said. She paused and ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Okay. What about this. In 1925 Edith sets about trying to find her twin again, having failed for the previous fourteen years. She goes out to see Martha, who knows something about it. Martha gets spooked and runs away. Edith comes home.’

  Morton laughed. ‘Jesus, I really hope you don’t use that kind of logic at work, Juliette. That’s ninety percent fiction and ten percent fact. What about the other piece of information about the rental of Wisteria Cottage coming to an end? You didn’t incorporate that into your lovely story.’

  Juliette thought for a moment. ‘Didn’t you say she split up with Dr Leyden?’

  Morton nodded.

  ‘There you go, then, she splits up and moves out. New adventure to Canada. Done.’

  Morton smiled. ‘I might just ask Ray when his grandmother divorced Dr Leyden, just out of interest. Other than that, I really don’t see much more point in pursuing the Canada and Martha Stone avenue. For the moment, at least.’

  ‘Can’t say I didn’t try. Drink?’

  ‘Coffee, please,’ Morton said with a grin. He knew what was coming next.

  ‘One decaf coffee coming right up,’ Juliette said and disappeared from the room.

  Whilst he was alone in the room, Morton stared at the wall that Juliette had dubbed haphazard. It might look chaotic, but each little pin, Post-it and string connection made sense in Morton’s head. At the centre of it all was the photo of Mary. The last known picture ever taken of her. He sent the latest email from the Nova Scotia Archives to the printer and added the information to the wall then emailed Ray Mercer asking if he knew when his grandmother divorced.

  ‘Here you go, sir,’ Juliette said as she entered the study and set down Morton’s coffee.

  ‘Thank you, madam,’ Morton replied.

  Juliette clutched a mug in both hands. ‘Listen, unless you need me more here, I’m going to go and try and find a present for Jeremy and Guy.’

  ‘We’ve got two months yet.’

  ‘Yeah, but you know what you’re like at leaving things to the last minute.’

  Morton avoided her gaze. ‘I’ve been thinking-’

  ‘Oh, God—that’s never a good thing,’ Juliette said.

  ‘I’m not going to go to the wedding—’ Morton began.

  ‘What? You can’t—’

  ‘Before you interrupt—I’m just not ready to see her yet. I can’t do it, Juliette.’ Many anxiety-wrought moments had passed since the day that his adoptive father had told him about the identity of his biological mother. That had been hard enough, but he had also learnt that his Aunty Margaret had been raped. His own, biological father was a rapist. He couldn’t even bear to try and think that awful truth through. ‘I just can’t face Aunty Margaret. I don’t even know if Dad’s told her that I know. You know what he's like.’

  Juliette reached out and took his hand. ‘Look, I’ll support you whatever you decide but I think you’ll regret missing Jeremy’s wedding. You two have built so many bridges in the last few months. I think he’d be gutted that you weren’t there.’

  She was right, of course. He and Jeremy were getting on like real brothers for the first time in their lives. And yet, he couldn’t get past the fact that he wasn’t ready to see his Aunty Margaret with what he now knew about her.

  ‘Listen, why don’t you go and speak to your dad face to face? Ask him what your aunt knows and how she feels; it’s a conversation that needs to happen regardless of the wedding.’

  ‘Okay,’ Morton found himself saying. He knew that he needed to do it, but without Juliette pushing him forward, it would have become another conversation that the Farrier household swept under the carpet, as they always had done with other contentious topics. ‘I’ll go over in the next couple of days and talk to him.’

  Juliette smiled reassuringly. ‘Are you coming to the shops to look for a gift?’

  ‘I’ll stay, if you don’t mind.’

  Juliette rolled her eyes playfully and pecked him on the lips. ‘Don’t do anything silly. In fact, don’t leave the house.’

  Morton saluted her. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Taking a mouthful of coffee, Morton studied each of the pieces of coloured wool that fed from Mary’s picture. He had pursued many research avenues but now it was time to go back to the begin
ning. Morton picked up his notepad and flicked back to the first pages of notes. He carefully re-read each page, paying attention for any potential oversights. When he was convinced that nothing had been missed so far, he returned to the page with the people surrounding Mary at the time of her disappearance. He was still waiting on responses from living relatives of her family and her work colleagues; the only people to respond so far had been Jenny Greenwood and Bartholomew Maslow. Morton remembered then that he hadn’t yet replied to the genuine email from Bartholomew, so set about a quick reply accepting his offer of the photos of his grandfather, Jack.

  Morton considered what to do next. He remembered what Juliette had said about staying put for the day. She had said it half-jokingly but the plain reality was that a murder investigation was currently ongoing which involved him. And, if his theory was correct, then somebody out there wanted him dead. No, he was definitely happy to stay home today.

  He looked up at the timeline they had created together and focussed in on 1925. Could Juliette have been right about something going on that year? Although he had just asked Ray Mercer about Edith's divorce date, he set about finding the answer for himself. He knew that some divorce records were open to the public but were not yet available online. Morton accessed the National Archives website and quickly found that divorce case files were available for 1858-1937. He completed the relevant search request documents and clicked ‘send’.

  The man was sure that he had found a new career in espionage or covert operations. He could now be hired out for good money. As he caressed the Sig Sauer handgun on the desk in front of him, he replayed last night’s events and the ease with which he had put a bullet through Morton Farrier’s skull. It had been exactly like playing Grand Theft Auto on the computer. Hold the gun, pull the trigger. Dead. Simple as that. He felt no remorse. Why should he care about some dumbass genealogist who was snooping in places he had no business snooping? It was the end of this particular job and his employers had told him to return to his normal duties. He looked at his name badge. Mark Drury, security guard. Well, that was all about to change. Now he was Mark Drury, hit-man. Mark Drury, spy. He grinned as he held the gun up and pretended to shoot random objects around the room. Now that Morton Farrier was dead, Mark had been told to destroy everything. Every last bit of evidence, the phone tap—everything.