The Lost Ancestor (24 page)

‘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.

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 you’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.’