The Lost Ancestor (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 2)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  Morton carried the register back to the help desk, returned it to Max and was then issued with the log book for the school. It was an A5-sized, leather-bound book that retained the typical musty smell of such an old document. He could spend hours poring over such wonderful embodiments of history, but knew that he needed to prioritise his searching to the relevant time period. Sitting back at his work station, Morton opened the ledger and flipped to 1896. The book was a day-by-day account of the comings and goings of school life, recorded by the headmaster, Mr P. Vaughn. Morton read the entries with keen historical interest. Despite their lack of direct connection to the Mercer Case, it painted an interesting and colourful picture of Mary and Edith’s early life.

  25th January 1896

  No fewer than 9 children have left the school lately, their parents being obliged to leave the village in search of employment. The children, who have left, were among the best in their various standards.

  2nd February 1896

  Police Constable Groves came this morning about some boys using catapults & damaging the church clock. They were cautioned and their instruments taken away.

  4th May 1896

  Average lower than last week, owing to the "measles" having broken out afresh, and amongst the elder children. It has hitherto been confined to the outskirts of the village—now it is in the midst of us.

  15th October 1896

  School routine resumed as usual though the holidays have been lengthened owing to the delay in picking, caused by rains, the school was not fully attended.

  19th January 1897

  No more than 6 children presented themselves…

  30th May 1897

  The attendance is very thin indeed. The children are employed with their parents in the hop gardens—knitting discontinued.

  25th November 1898

  Four boys away "beating" for Lord Rothborne. Anything seems to be allowed in this village…

  23rd January 1901

  Gave a short lesson on the death of our beloved Queen, who peacefully passed away on Tuesday evening at 6.30 in the year 1901 at Osbourne House, Isle of Wight.

  3rd March 1901

  Singing lessons on Friday morning instead of the usual arithmetic lesson. Mary Mercer and Martha Stone kept in the whole dinner-time on Friday for playing truant on the previous afternoon.

  Morton read the previous entry several times. It was simple and yet spoke volumes about the two girls and their friendship. He hoped that whatever had happened to Martha would be noted in the coming pages. He returned to the ledger and carried on his searches into 1902.

  8th February 1902

  The school is very cold this morning. The correspondent says we cannot have any more coal. The week opens with a very thin attendance owing to the prevailing epidemic of influenza.

  10th February 1902

  Still no coal, and the school very cold. Obliged to let 2 boys saw up Hop Poles to warm the rooms a little, infants nearly crying with cold.

  18th February 1902

  I regret to say that influenza has again broken out amongst the children and one child, Martha Stone died this morning.

  Morton stopped reading and stared at the entry, transfixed.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  How was this possible? As if the headstone had not been proof enough, here it was in black and white: Martha Stone had died. And yet, in 1911 Martha Stone had apparently emigrated to Nova Scotia, where she had remained until at least 1925.

  Morton’s mind went into overdrive as he began to make tentative links between the facts that he already knew, the theories proposed by Jenny and the newly acquired knowledge of Martha Stone’s death. At the moment, it was still tentative to say the least. He needed more—much more—to even consider suggesting anything to Ray Mercer.

  Morton photographed the entry and moved on. On the following page, Martha’s burial was noted.

  1st March 1902

  The little girl (Martha Stone) who was taken ill a few days before the annual inspection was buried to-day. The children sent a wreath & a cross which were placed on her grave. The teachers also sent a wreath & cross.

  After photographing the page and continuing his search, Morton quite soon found another entry that made him sit up with interest.

  18th March 1902

  One girl, Mary Mercer punished, by wearing two placards on her coat, before the whole school, for appalling conduct during her dinner-hour. Her recent conduct has been the subject of a managers’ meeting last week.

  Morton could only speculate at Mary’s behaviour. One possibility was that Martha’s death had had a severe impact on her.

  ‘Anything?’ Jenny suddenly asked, peering over his shoulder at where his index finger pointed. ‘Oh. Naughty girl!’

  Morton turned. ‘Yeah. I just found Martha’s death—she died of the flu.’

  She lowered her glasses and looked at Morton. ‘Are you now thinking that Mary travelled to Canada under a pseudonym, using her dead school friend’s name?’

  ‘It’s certainly a theory,’ Morton said nonchalantly.

  ‘Oh, come on, Morton,’ Jenny persisted. ‘It’s looking much more probable than a theory.’

  Morton was indignant in his belief that he should never accept something as fact without substantial proof. His usual ideal was three pieces of separate evidence. ‘We’ll see. How are you getting on?’

  Jenny turned her nose up. ‘Not great. I found George’s baptism fairly quickly. It was in November 1911, just a few weeks after his birth. I’ve taken a photo of it, but there’s nothing unusual about it—same for his marriage. I’ve spent the rest of the time on the Findmypast website digging around, but nothing so far.’

  From the desk in front of him, Morton noticed his phone light up. Juliette was calling. ‘Just need to take this—can you watch my stuff for a moment?’

  ‘Of course,’ Jenny replied.

  Morton answered the call with a hushed whisper. ‘Hang on,’ he said, as Max pressed the door release, allowing him to leave the Reference Room. Once safely in the lobby, Morton returned the phone to his ear. ‘Hi, Juliette. You okay?’

  ‘Yeah, fine. You?’ Juliette said.

  ‘Interesting day—will tell all later,’ he said, taking a seat at one of the small round tables. ‘I’m doing some research at The Keep at the moment. Oh, that reminds me—I’m going to call in on Dad on the way home—do what you suggested and talk to him about Aunty Margaret and the wedding.’

  ‘That’s good. I’ll be finishing work in about an hour. Listen, I just wanted to ring to tell you that I’ve been making discreet enquiries at work today about the investigation into Douglas Catt’s murder. At the moment they’re none the wiser about why he was shot. One theory is that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, like you wondered. But, Douglas seems to have a lot of enemies and the killer wasn’t a professional hit-man, like you thought he might have been.’

  ‘How do they know that?’ Morton asked.

  ‘He just made a lot of mistakes. The kill wasn’t clean, he left footprints and DNA material, and grainy CCTV from the pub over the road shows him tripping over a gravestone in the churchyard. A bit hapless and bungling really. Even so, be careful, because he’s not been caught yet and, if you’re right, then he could still be after you.’

  ‘Will do,’ he muttered. All the while he was ensconced in the archives he felt safe enough. He was more worried about her, but he knew that she couldn’t be safer anywhere else than surrounded by dozens of police officers.

  ‘The other reason I was ringing was because, whilst I was in the station today, I had a chance to speak to Susan Catt. I caught her quickly as she was leaving following another interview.’

  ‘Did you ask her why her husband was so desperate for me to stop my work?’ Morton asked.

  ‘Well, in a bit more of a diplomatic, pillar of the community kind of way, yes. She wouldn’t reveal anything to me but she wants to meet you. I’ll text you her mobile number in a minute.’r />
  Could be interesting, Morton thought.

  ‘Just be careful,’ Juliette warned. ‘Meet her somewhere public. I don’t trust her at all.’

  ‘You don’t think she killed Douglas, do you?’ Morton asked incredulously.

  Juliette laughed in a mocking way. ‘No chance. I said the killer was hapless, not a dappy wet fish. Plus, she’s got a very good alibi for the evening of the murder.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Got to go—about to go off on patrol now. See you later. Love you.’

  ‘Love you too—see you tonight.’

  ‘Be careful!’ she warned.

  ‘I will. Bye.’ Morton ended the call and sat for a moment thinking about the next steps that he needed to take. He should go online and find Martha’s parents in 1911. If the census enumerator had done his job properly, and they had told the truth, then their entry on the 1911 census should show that they had lost a child. It would be worth checking if passport applications existed and disembarkation records for the period, too. Could Mary have escaped Blackfriars, leaving her child behind and run off to Canada under a false name? As much as he had initially doubted the theory, more and more evidence was rising to the surface to prove, rather than to disprove it, at least the latter part of that theory.

  Morton made his way back to the Reference Room, swanning past Miss Latimer just like the good old days where their mutual hatred needed no disguise.

  ‘Right,’ Morton said when he reached Jenny at his workstation. ‘I’m going to see if historic passport applications are available online—I’m fairly sure that the National Archives has some on their website. If so, would you mind trawling them to see if you can find anything for Martha Stone or Mary Mercer in 1911?’

  ‘I’d be delighted,’ Jenny said, rubbing her hands with glee.

  Morton opened up a web browser and navigated to the National Archives website. He used their search facility to look up passport applications and quickly found what he was looking for. ‘Here,’ he said to Jenny. ‘FO—for Foreign Office—611. Then go to file 21, which covers the period 1909-1912. It’s a free document but pretty large by the looks of it,’ he said as he clicked to download the file. ‘Three hundred and sixty-three hand-written pages.’ Morton turned to Jenny with a grin then began scrolling down through the file.

  ‘Shouldn’t take long—it’s in alphabetical order,’ Jenny noted.

  ‘Hmm, but only by first letter. You then need to search through pages and pages of haphazard surnames beginning with M and S. Is that okay?’

  ‘Oh yes, absolutely!’ Jenny said. ‘I’ll get right to it.’

  ‘Great,’ Morton said, watching Jenny head back into the Reading Room. Normally, he liked to research everything for himself, but with this slightly outlandish theory and the approaching closure of the archives for the day, he was happy to delegate some of the less important work to someone else.

  Morton used the Ancestry website to gain the necessary reference to order Martha Stone’s death certificate; he then placed the order on a priority service. The certificate would be unlikely to give him any new information, but he wanted to really make sure that there was only one Martha Stone and that she had died and was buried in Winchelsea, thus making the Martha Stone living in Nova Scotia someone living under a false name.

  Next, Morton turned his attention to the 1911 census. Within seconds he had the record of Martha Stone’s parents. They were still living in Peace Cottage, Friar’s Road. The census return showed that they had been married for twenty-three years. One child had been born alive. One child had died. There were no surviving children to James and Flora Stone.

  Morton saved the image of the census return, now having sufficient evidence to show that Martha Stone had died and that somebody was living under a false name in Canada. Somebody that Edith Leyden visited in 1925.

  Opening up a fresh web browser, Morton ran some generic Google searches into gaining false passports for the period around Mary’s disappearance. He discovered that photographs of the passport holder were only added in 1914, so Mary could easily have passed as someone else born within just a few years of her. Morton knew, as many genealogists knew, that it was only until very recently that anyone could gain an original birth certificate if they could provide enough of the background family details included on them. One hundred years ago, it would have been even easier. Mary would have known the Stone family well enough to have been able to answer the basic questions asked in order to gain a birth certificate and then a passport.

  A while later, Jenny returned. ‘Nothing under Mercer, but I found this,’ she said with a telling grin. She held up her digital camera with the rear-viewer facing Morton. He strained his eyes to see. November 26th 1911, Stone, Miss Martha. It was brief, but firm proof that someone had been issued with a passport under that name.

  ‘Take a seat,’ Morton instructed. ‘Let’s see if this Martha Stone appears on passenger lists.’

  Jenny pulled up a swivel chair and tucked herself up close to Morton’s chair. ‘It’s getting very exciting!’

  Morton smiled and opened up a search for outward passenger lists 1890-1960. He typed in Martha Stone, date of travel 1911. One result. Morton clicked to see a scan of the original page.

  Returns of passengers leaving the United Kingdom in ships bound for places out of Europe, and not within the Mediterranean Sea.

  Port of Departure: Bristol. Date of departure: December 12th 1911

  Ship’s name: Royal Edward

  Steamship line: Royal Line, Canadian Northern Steamships Limited

  Where bound: Halifax, Canada

  Morton scrolled down the list of passengers until he found her.

  Martha Stone, 3rd class, housemaid, single, English, aged 21.

  Both Morton and Jenny stared at the screen for some time before either of them spoke.

  ‘What date was George Mansfield baptised?’ Morton finally asked.

  Jenny switched her camera back on and scrolled through the images that she had taken. ‘Twenty-first of November.’

  ‘And you thought that was about three weeks after his birth?’ Morton quizzed.

  ‘About that. I remember that he was definitely born in November 1911.’

  Morton nodded. ‘Okay. Nine months prior to that takes us to…’ he stopped and thought for a moment. ‘February 1911—when Mary and Edward were working and living under the same roof. Two months later, Edward tries to get a marriage licence but Mary disappears. One month after that, he turns up dead in the Blackfriars lake. Then nothing happens.’

  ‘Until we reach November,’ Jenny continued, ‘when George Mansfield is born. Soon after, a female, who knew Martha Stone very well, travels to Canada, where she remains until at least 1925 when Edith Leyden travels out to see her.’ Jenny paused. ‘And then Martha Stone’s trail goes cold.’

  ‘Let’s try and find her,’ Morton said, returning his focus to his laptop. He opened up the Canadian Ancestry website to search the millions of records available pertaining to Canada. First, he tried Nova Scotia death records 1890-1960, but his search returned zero hits. ‘So she didn’t die in Nova Scotia before 1960,’ Morton mumbled, before widening his search to the rest of the country. Of the few possibilities that appeared on screen, it took just a few minutes of cross-referencing in other records to eliminate them.

  Jenny sighed. ‘Doesn’t look like Martha remained in Canada, does it?’

  ‘Well, not necessarily,’ Morton said. ‘We don’t have any more censuses available to us and, if she died in Nova Scotia after 1960, then she wouldn’t show up. She could very easily have lived in the next house and we’d not know about it. I could pay the Nova Scotia Archives to search for her, but judging by their email, it would be quite a lengthy process.’ He was already processing his next step and began quickly tapping at the keyboard. ‘Here we are. Canada Voter’s Lists 1935 to 1980.’

  Jenny watched with nervous anticipation as Morton typed Martha’s name into the search box.
Several results in five-yearly blocks appeared onscreen. ‘Looks like she’s in Ontario in 1935,’ Jenny said excitedly. ‘Click it!’

  Morton smiled and did as he was told. ‘Stone, Miss Martha, teacher.’

  ‘Living at...’ Jenny pushed her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose. ‘102 Wellington Street.’

  Morton returned to the previous screen, scrolled down to the next block of entries and selected 1940. ‘Still at the same address,’ Morton confirmed. He then repeated the process, checking and finding her living at the same address every five years.

  ‘She’s gone,’ Jenny said, when the 1965 Voter List failed to show Martha. He continued his search until 1980 but there was no sign of her.

  Morton frowned and double-checked the results list but to no avail. ‘So… Martha lived in Ontario from 1935 until sometime between 1960 and 1965. Death records online only run to 1938, so there’s every possibility that she died there. When I get home tonight, I’ll run some searches and contact cemeteries in the area.’

  ‘What about passenger lists?’ Jenny asked. ‘She could have come back to England.’

  ‘Yeah, that thought had crossed my mind,’ Morton said. ‘The problem is most available passenger lists end in 1960, when we know she was still alive and well in Ontario. I’ll look into it more later. The fact that she was a teacher up until 1960 in one city is interesting. There might be records for her. There’s also a good possibility that children she once taught might still remember her.’

  ‘And how do you plan on finding them?’ Jenny laughed.

  ‘I’m not—I’m going to get them to come to me. That’s what forums and message boards are for, Mrs Greenwood!’ Morton teased.