The Emerald Comb (32 page)

It was clear, Harding wrote, that for whatever reason, Bartholomew had decided to drop him as a friend. So be it. Harding would not write again. He wished them well.

Bartholomew sighed on reading the letter. It was the end of a chapter of his life. The old friends had been cut away, and now they had to look to the future, and make new friends. He rang the bell for Annie.

‘Tell the cook to start planning a dinner party,’ he said. ‘We shall be inviting a dozen people, and I want to serve them the very best of everything.’

It was time to properly integrate themselves into the local society. He’d invite all the local gentry – the Gaskells from the big house over near Micheldever, Colonel Booth and his wife from the other end of the village, Frank Bonnington from Winchester who he remembered from his youth, and of course Dr Moore and his wife. It would be Agnes’s launch into society as Georgia. And then they would be able to sleep easily, once Agnes was known to all as Georgia.

And dear Barty, that is what we did. Dr Moore welcomed her as an old friend, peering at her through his thick spectacles and declaring her fully recovered since he’d last seen her. Agnes charmed all the guests, and made a close friend of the colonel’s wife, Mrs Booth, who became a frequent visitor to the house. Soon we had return invitations, and thus built ourselves a social life, though we were careful to keep to those few, local people and not tempt fate by going to balls or gatherings in the larger towns. After a year or so, news came that Libby Barton had married and moved to Ireland with her husband. That brought us some peace of mind. On occasion I could even forget that there had ever been another woman. Only the beech sapling which flourished in its sunny spot beside the garden wall served to remind me of my dark past.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Hampshire, July 2013

When I got back from dropping off the kids at their various holiday activities, Simon was still not dressed. I went upstairs and found him in our room, a mound of shirts and jumpers strewn across the bed.

‘Come on, love, or you’ll miss the train. Have you had breakfast?’

He picked up a denim shirt, held it against a pair of jeans and shook his head. ‘Too much like a cowboy. What? Breakfast? No. Can’t face eating anything.’

‘I’ll make you some tea and toast. You must have something.’

He pulled a pair of beige cargo pants out of the wardrobe, and unfolded a Motörhead T-shirt, then threw me a questioning look.

‘Too casual,’ I said. ‘And, Motörhead? For goodness sake, that T-shirt must be a thousand years old.’

He pouted. ‘What’ll I wear, then?’

Good grief, he was like a teenager on his first date. I did have sympathy though. It couldn’t be easy, going off to meet his grown-up daughter for the first time. Simon had the day off work, and was to take the train to London to meet her. They were to meet in the Argyll Arms at eleven am. If all went well, he would take her somewhere for lunch.

I picked up a pale blue polo shirt and a pair of jeans. ‘Here. Safe, and comfortable. It’s warm out, you won’t need a jacket.’

He smiled gratefully and pulled on the clothes. I straightened his collar and tucked the label inside. ‘Come on then, time for a slice of toast, then I’ll drop you at the station.’

‘Thanks, love. I can’t believe how nervous I feel. Are my hands sweaty?’ He held out his palms for me to feel.

‘A little. She’ll be nervous too, it’s only natural. Try to take it easy, though, OK?’

He nodded, and followed me downstairs to the kitchen. I felt like his mother, not his wife, as I made him tea and toast and stood over him while he ate it.

‘Have you got your phone, and your rail ticket? And your wallet?’

He checked his pockets, and nodded.

‘Sunglasses?’

He raised a finger and went to fetch them from the hall table.

‘Amy’s present?’ After agonising for hours, he’d bought her a dainty silver necklace. Nothing too showy or obviously expensive – just a little token gift that he hoped would say to her that he cared.

‘No, Christ, what have I done with it?’ He ran his hands through his hair and looked wildly around him.

‘On the hall table. Next to where you found your sunglasses.’

He smiled sheepishly. ‘Ah.’

‘Newspaper, or book?’

‘What for?’

‘To read on the train.’ For a man who commuted every day he was doing a great impression of someone who’d never travelled by rail before.

‘Oh. Um, I’ll buy a paper at the station.’

‘OK. Right then, we’d better go, or you’ll miss the train. Ready?’

He nodded, biting his lip like a five-year-old on his first day at big school. I ruffled his hair and ushered him out to the car.

An hour later I was back in the house with the washing machine, tumble dryer and dishwasher all on, chuntering away, doing the housework for me. I made a pot of coffee, and sat down with my laptop to do some research.

A little later I’d made some progress. I’d found George and Maria Fowles on the 1851 census: living in a village in Kent with their son. They were elderly, both over seventy. Maybe they’d retired from working for Bartholomew and had moved to Kent to end their days with their son. Well then, the bones in the garden did not belong to Maria. In any case, she was probably too old.

That only left Agnes Cutter and Polly Turner. There were so many Turners I’d found it impossible to be certain whether any of them were the Polly I was looking for, so I’d been unable to definitely rule her out. And as for Agnes Cutter, I’d drawn a complete blank. It was an unusual enough name that I felt I ought to be able to find her, either in the 1851 census, in a marriage registration or in a death registration. She was definitely in Kingsley House in early 1841 when the census was taken, but I couldn’t find what had happened to her after that.

Unless it was she who’d ended up buried in our back garden?

It was an odd kind of research to do – normally you’re hoping to find someone but on this occasion I didn’t want to find her in any document after 1841. I didn’t want to be able to rule her out.

Mid-morning, Dad phoned, and we swapped research news. ‘There were twenty-three possible women in the village on the 1841 census,’ he told me. ‘Those in Kingsley House I left for you to do. And of the others, nineteen appear on the 1851 census and I have found death registrations for the other four.’

‘Twenty-three! You must have spent ages researching,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘Yes, and your mother’s going spare. I’ve loved doing it, though. So, either your skeleton is one of your missing servants, or she’s not local.’

‘What do you think?’

‘We will never be able to be sure. I found nothing in the newspapers – no reports of missing women or anything of the kind. I’ll have a look for these servants as well, in case you missed something. Oh, and guess what else I found?’ He sounded excited. ‘The National Portrait Gallery website has a search facility. Have you ever tried looking for any ancestors there?’

‘No. Are there some St Clairs on it, then?’

‘Sadly not our St Clairs. Then I thought of looking for the Hollands, and guess what – there’s a portrait of Georgia!’

‘Wow! Hang on, Dad, just opening up that website now. What did you put in the search box – Holland or Georgia Holland?’

‘Georgia Holland. Have you found her?’

I had. There she was. I gasped to see her – my great-great-great-grandmother smiling demurely at me through my laptop screen. She was pictured standing beside a small table on which stood a vase. She was holding a bunch of garden flowers, and more flowers were strewn across the table, as though she was in the act of arranging them. I peered closely at her face. Blonde hair, caught up at the back and falling in ringlets either side of her face. Green eyes, creamy skin, round face. Her expression was sweet, naïve – here was a girl who had yet to see the dark side of life.

‘Wasn’t she pretty! She must have been very young when this was painted.’ I checked through my notes. ‘Looks like it was painted around the time she got married. She’d have been about seventeen.’

‘That’s when she lived in Brighton as a ward of her uncle’s, didn’t she?’ asked Dad.

‘That’s right. Hold on, just saving a copy of that portrait.’ I right-clicked and saved it to my laptop. ‘Isn’t it brilliant seeing the face of an ancestor?’

‘Certainly is. I’ve found myself wondering if I can see my nose or your forehead in her.’

I peered again at the picture. Perhaps there was something in the shape of her face? But she was only one of my thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents. It would be difficult to spot any kind of family resemblance. Then I saw it, in her hair, a row of jewels holding up her blonde tresses… I zoomed in, enlarging the picture until I could see every brush stroke.

‘Dad, did you see what’s in her hair? It’s the comb, I’m sure of it. That silver and emerald comb we found in the bureau drawer. It is, look, the row of green stones in her hair – they’re in the same pattern as the comb.’

‘So the comb was definitely Georgia’s?’

‘Yes! Oh, wow. I’d wondered if it could have been hers.’ That old buzz of excitement again, to think I not only had a picture but also owned something that had belonged to my great-great-great-grandmother!

‘Which also means it didn’t belong to that poor girl who ended up buried beneath your beech tree,’ said Dad. ‘Shame, in a way. I liked to think it might have been hers.’

I spent the rest of the morning going through my research and listing who had lived in Kingsley House at each census date. After Bartholomew and Georgia’s deaths in the 1870s there was just Barty junior living here, with a couple of servants. But then on the 1881 census I noticed something I hadn’t spotted before. The transcript of the census on the ancestry website listed a visitor staying with Barty at the time of the census – a man named Tommy Colter. But when I looked closely at the original handwritten census return on the website, I realised it had been transcribed wrongly. Not Tommy Colter, but Tolly Cutter.

Cutter. Agnes’s surname was Cutter. Could there be any link between these two? Agnes Cutter was certainly the right age to be Tolly Cutter’s mother. His age was given as forty on the 1881 census, so he must have been born in early 1841 or late 1840. He was a farm labourer, and his birth place was noted as Woodhall, Lincolnshire. Tolly was an odd name. I googled the words ‘Tolly’ and ‘name’ and found a names website. I gasped – Tolly was listed as a contraction of the name Bartholomew.

So: Agnes worked for Bartholomew and Georgia, and in late 1840 or early 1841 she may have had a baby out of wedlock, whom she named Bartholomew. The baby was born in Lincolnshire. But at the time of the 1841 census, she was living in Kingsley House with no baby. If it was hers, who was looking after him then?

I quickly began researching Tolly Cutter or Bartholomew Cutter, and found him as a baby in 1841 living with his grandparents Mary Cutter, a midwife, and John Cutter, a woodman, in Woodhall. I followed him through the censuses – finding him in the same village and working as an agricultural labourer, marrying, producing three children, and then there was the visit to Barty St Clair around the time of the 1881 census. Why would Barty and Tolly have been in touch? Tolly was the child of a servant once employed by Barty’s father. Why would he then come to stay with Barty, with whom he had no connection? Unless…unless both Bartholomews shared the same father… I could think of no other possible explanation.

It could be worth spending a few quid and ordering his birth certificate to try to find out more. I pulled out my pile of certificates to remind myself what was shown on them. Did birth certs always list the father as well as the mother? Flicking through them, something I’d not noticed before jumped out at me. Little Elizabeth’s death certificate stated Georgia was present at her death. But there was something odd – instead of Georgia’s copperplate signature as witness, like the one on her marriage certificate, there was only an X, and a note written by the clerk:
The mark of Georgia St Clair.
I picked up Isobella’s death certificate. Georgia was present at this daughter’s passing as well. But once again, she had not signed it, and there was only an X.

It was puzzling. Had she been too distraught to sign her name, perhaps? It was the only explanation I could think of. But surely she’d have been able to write her name, even if her signature had come out as a tearful scrawl.

I tracked down Tolly’s birth registration details and sent off an application for a copy of his birth certificate. It would take a week or two to arrive, but it would confirm whether Agnes was indeed Tolly’s mother and with any luck, state who his father was. As for the mystery about Georgia’s signatures, that was something to ponder on.

I’d just about finished when the doorbell rang. It was DI Bradley. He was carrying a small brown cardboard box, which he held out apologetically.

‘We don’t provide pretty urns, I’m afraid, but you’d said you’d like to have this.’

I put a hand to my mouth. ‘Is it…is it her?’

‘Yes, all that’s left. It arrived on my desk a couple of days ago so I thought I’d pop round when I was next in the area.’ He smiled and held out the box again.

‘Thank you. Won’t you come in for a cup of tea?’ I took the box from him and stood aside, but he shook his head.

‘Sorry, can’t stop this time. I’m on a call.’

‘More ancient bones?’

He laughed. ‘Nothing so exciting. A break-in at a school. Probably just bored kids. When do they go back to school?’

‘Not till September. Ages yet. I managed to get shot of them all today and have the house to myself but it’s not always easy to keep them amused.’

‘I bet. Well, do what you will with the ashes. The poor girl, whoever she was.’ He nodded, and walked back to his car.

All too quickly the clock ticked around to three o’clock and it was time to fetch Thomas from his friend’s house, then start preparing dinner for the kids. The twins were due back from their holiday club at five. I hadn’t heard from Simon so did not know whether he’d be back for dinner or not. I wondered how his meeting with Amy was going.