Family Ties (The Mark Pemberton Cases Book 1)

by Nicholas Rhea

  But this file was incomplete. It did not record events after 1916 and so Mark had no idea what had become of Luke and his family, nor did it reveal the date of the decease of Caleb and Sarah, the parents.

  The file did, however, itemise the other members of the family, as Mark had already discovered, and he realised that this would provide Vice-President Hartley with a very accurate start to his search into the family roots. It would eliminate the chore of searching through masses of old records and ledgers. He wondered if the current family realised that these old police records existed? Probably not. But did they know of James’s murder? That was something to ask George.

  Mark had already examined the whereabouts of family members at the time of the murder and all could be eliminated. Except Luke. If Mark was to prove Luke guilty of murdering his brother, he’d need more factual information and more witnesses.

  He wandered out of his office to speak to DC Young.

  ‘Duncan,’ he began, ‘has anything else turned up?’

  ‘I’ve found a statement here, sir, one I think will be of interest,’ and he indicated the one he was working on. ‘It’s number 42, cross-referenced to number 18.’

  ‘What’s all that mean in English?’

  ‘Number 18’s from a woman living next door to the general stores in Rosenthorpe, sir, a Mrs Hutchinson; she confirmed that Luke Hartley had passed her cottage at the time he claimed. She saw the pony and trap go past and remembered it because when she looked out of her window, she saw the linesman at the same moment. He was doing his stuff on the railway bridge.’

  ‘Doing what stuff?’

  ‘Tapping the wooden chocks that hold the railway lines in position on the sleepers. Linesmen walked down the line by using the ends of the sleepers as a kind of stepping stone; as they walked, they swung a big hammer and tapped any loose chocks back into their shoes.’

  ‘And this lady saw him?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So why is that important, Duncan?’

  ‘Well, if he was working on the line in the region of that bridge, he’d have a high, long and unobstructed view along the lane towards the cricket field and Wolversdale. He’d be able to see who was using that road because the bridge crosses the road that Luke would have used.’

  ‘Good stuff! And?’

  ‘Well, he did see Luke, sir, in the pony and trap, heading towards the bridge. And better still, sir, he saw Millicent Roe walking away from Rosenthorpe. He claims he saw them walking towards one another, yet neither Luke nor the child say they saw each other.’

  ‘So what can we deduce from that, Duncan?’

  ‘There could be a conflict of timings, sir. I think the timings are crucial. According to the linesman, whose name was Joseph Lapsley, he was working his line on Monday, 11th September 1916, walking down the line towards Rosenthorpe station. He was due to finish there at 4.00pm. He didn’t live in Rosenthorpe, his home was at Lington, two stations up the line. He always caught a train home after work. I ought to add that he was not working on the same branch line as the train carrying James — that came in from Drakenedge, whereas Lapsley was on the other line. That’s the one in from Thornborough. Both lines met at Rosenthorpe, as we know — it was a junction. From there, the lines merged and went towards Rainesbury. Anyway, sir, Lapsley was on the bridge at 3.20pm. He stopped work for a few minutes to light his pipe and as he was looking over the parapet, towards the cricket field, he saw Luke approaching in the pony and trap. Luke was a long way off, but Lapsley was positive it was him. He was approaching Rosenthorpe and was beyond the far end of the cricket field, about ten minutes’ drive from the station.’

  Mark thought for a moment. ‘So if he’d kept going in that direction, he’d have got to the station around 3.30pm, just in time to meet his brother?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But that doesn’t agree with Luke’s own statement, does it, Duncan? According to Luke, he was delayed along the toll road for about twenty minutes which means he would have come past the point where Lapsley saw him about 3.40 or 3.45pm.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. If Lapsley is correct, Luke was lying. I checked with the girl’s statement, Millicent, that is. If she was right, and if she did see a man in a pony and trap in the bushes, it must have been Luke. It couldn’t be anyone else. Lapsley said there were no other ponies and traps or horses and carts on that stretch of lane while he was working on the bridge. The man he saw must have turned into those bushes within minutes of being noticed by Lapsley and it must have been Luke. Lapsley goes on to say that he noticed a chock missing from a shoe on a nearby length of rail and found it lying on the track; he went over to pick it up and tapped it back into position. When he returned to the bridge parapet to continue smoking his pipe only a couple of minutes later or less, Luke, pony and trap had vanished. Lapsley could not see him — the police did ask whether he would have noticed him sitting among the shrubs beside the lane and Lapsley said not. The bushes were too thick; viewed from the railway bridge, they formed an almost impenetrable barrier. But Millicent was still walking away from the village, heading towards the cricket field.’

  ‘Did the police take this sighting seriously?’

  ‘Yes, sir, it seems so. But Lapsley’s timings were open to argument because he hadn’t a watch with him. He based his timings on the passage of the trains — and the 3.37pm from Rosenthorpe to Thorn-borough had passed him just before he got to the bridge. It was on time, too; it came in at 3.30pm and always waited in Rosenthorpe station on Platform 1, for the one from Drakenedge to come in. That was the one carrying James. James’s train came into Platform 2 at 3.35pm; the Thornborough-bound train always waited a few minutes so that passengers could make the connection if they wished.’

  ‘I think I would have accepted those times from Lapsley,’ said Mark.

  ‘Dawson quizzed him at length about the accuracy of his claims, sir. Lapsley said he was ninety-nine per cent sure his timing was correct because he did that stretch of line once a week and never needed a watch. And he’d never been late booking off duty — he could time his route to the minute, he claimed, what with passing trains, village church clocks striking and so on.’

  ‘But in court, a good defence lawyer would have shot down any such claims to be accurate without a watch,’ said Mark. ‘So what’s Lapsley say about Millicent?’

  ‘He saw the girl walk under the bridge while he was smoking his pipe on top. She was heading away from Rosenthorpe, heading towards the cricket ground and towards Luke and his trap. He felt sure they would have met.’

  ‘But they didn’t, and she said she never saw Luke on the road.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. But there is an explanation. Between the bridge and the far end of the cricket field, there are several rises and dips in the road. Lapsley reckoned the child might not have seen Luke if she’d been in one dip while he was in another. Each would be out of sight of the other, if only for a few moments; after all, she would not be a very tall person.’

  ‘Well done, Duncan. That’s a very astute piece of deduction — and it confirms the child’s story. It means we can accept her timings as accurate.’

  ‘But it doesn’t put Luke in hiding, does it?’

  ‘So where else was he? I reckon this does put him in hiding, waiting for his victim to come along. You know what I think, Duncan? I think Luke set off to meet James with the firm intention of murdering him. He made his plans very carefully. I think the tale of the pony shedding a shoe was a lie; he told that to account for the delay in arriving at the station. In fact, he was early and drove off the lane to hide in the bushes to await James as he walked past. As James strode past, following Millicent along the lane, Luke called for him to enter the bushes. It would be an easy thing to do — perhaps by asking for some kind of help. James would have responded, and I reckon he climbed into the trap. Perhaps there was a conversation, a heated argument even. Then Luke shot him, and he would probably have fallen out of the trap. Luke tried to ma
ke it look like suicide. James’s worries about going to fight in the trenches were well known to the family and so his suicide might not be out of place. Then, having shot James, Luke continued to the station ostensibly to meet him, and thus established a kind of alibi. I think he had a .45 hidden in the trap, perhaps among the tools he mentioned. It would be easy to conceal a revolver or pistol in a hessian tool bag. In the village, he did a bit of shopping and made sure he was seen about the place, especially at the railway station — he spoke to the station master and generally made people aware of his presence. Then he drove home, passing James’s body along the way. I wonder if Lapsley heard the shot? Perhaps he was too far away, perhaps he was making too much noise hammering his chocks home. But I’m convinced Luke is the killer, Duncan.’

  ‘But why would he murder his own brother, sir?’

  ‘That’s what we must find out.’

  Chapter Nine

  Following her abrupt dismissal by Millicent Roe, Lorraine decided to revisit the Hartley family graves at Wolversdale. There, she reasoned, she might find some clue to the origins of the curious verse that had circulated after James’s death. If James had been such a fine, pure young man, why did the verse say he and his brother had gone to hell? And why call him ‘tainted’ Jimmy Hartley?

  Clearly, there was a good deal more to this murder than had ever reached the ears of the investigating officers or the press of the time; it was odd, she felt, that the local people, even today, would not talk freely about it.

  When she arrived at St Monica’s churchyard, she found that further efforts had been made to tidy the grass around the Hartley tombstones. Here was the starting point for any research into one’s family tree, and it was to this family burial ground that the Vice-President would be brought.

  Lorraine returned to James’s grave and studied the inscription anew, but it failed to provide her with any further clues about his ‘tainted’ taunt. Then she began to hunt for Luke’s grave. She found the grave of George who had died in 1951 aged seventy, Samuel who died in 1955 and Father Matthew Hartley.

  Father Matthew was the priest who’d died in 1961 aged seventy-three, his body being brought back from Lancashire for burial with his family. She remembered that other members of the family, of that era, had moved away, Robert going to live in Newcastle, Jessica in Lincoln, and Thomas and Sophie in Hull. Thomas was buried here, however, doubtless wishing to return to his own roots. Lorraine found the double grave of Sarah and Caleb. Sarah, the daughter of Alice and William Hodgson, had died in 1926 ten years after the death of her beloved son, and Caleb predeceased her in 1922.

  There were several more recent family graves too, those of younger generations, but she could not find a grave for Luke. She returned to her car to check the precise name in her file — it was Luke Caleb Hartley, born 10th March 1879. No date of his death was given simply because he’d been alive at the time of the murder investigation. And so she returned to the tombstones to conduct a detailed search, moving from one to the other in strict sequence as she worked her way among them. Eventually she was convinced that there was no tombstone for Luke Caleb Hartley. Puzzled, she began to search the rest of the graveyard, a mammoth task, but she worked methodically. She did find other Hartleys, perhaps distant cousins, but there was no Luke among them. She did find a Caleb, eldest son of George. This Caleb had died in 1975; and she remembered the man she and Mark Pemberton had met here yesterday.

  He was called George Caleb, she recalled. The grandson of this George and the son of this Caleb, perhaps? She wondered how many Calebs there were in the family. The Vice-President was also Caleb — Caleb Hodgson Hartley — and Hodgson was the maiden name of the matriarch of this family. It was an old Yorkshire moorland custom to name sons after their mothers’ families, and so a lot of Yorkshiremen have borne Christian names which are really family surnames — Readman, Hodgson, Yeoman, Preston, Strickland, Latimer… And so, if Vice-President Hartley wanted to claim some Yorkshire ancestry, he had the right names if nothing else! But, she mused, he also had a more than passing likeness to the George Hartley they’d encountered in this very place.

  Lorraine did consider that he could be buried in an unmarked grave, but for the one-time head of the Hartley family, this was most unlikely. If Luke was not buried here, then he and his family must surely have moved away, she concluded; so was this Luke, the murder suspect, the man who had emigrated? Was he the ancestor of Vice-President Hartley?

  It was an intriguing thought. Lorraine remembered that the George she’d met here now lived at Pike Hill Farm, albeit not in the actual farmhouse. According to what she’d heard from Pemberton at the outset, this was the family farm and Luke, as the eldest son, should have occupied the farmhouse in succession to his father, but it seemed he had not wanted to inherit it.

  His brother George Stanley had taken over the farmstead — so the George seen tidying the graveyard was his grandson.

  Having established that Luke had apparently disappeared, she decided to return to base to prepare for her 6.00pm — 2.00am shift on the reception desk at Thirklewood Hall. Before leaving, she decided to examine the War Memorial. It stood outside the churchyard, in a neat square of stone-flagged ground with iron railings around it. There, under the title ‘Killed in Action 1914-1918’, she saw the name of Eric Hall, a comrade of James Hartley, who had been killed in the battle of the River Aisne on 28th May 1918. But there was no mention of James Reuben Hartley. These were the only two men from Wolversdale who had fought in the First World War. It seemed very few, but out of a population of only seventy or so, it was a considerable number — especially as neither had survived.

  As she was leaving the churchyard, she noticed the parish priest entering the main door of his church. She called out to him.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, er, Father.’ She was not accustomed to speaking to Catholic priests and was not quite certain of the correct form of address.

  ‘Yes?’ He was a man of medium height with a shock of jet-black hair, dark eyes and a ready smile. There was more than a hint of Irish in his accent as he said, ‘Can I help you now, miss?’

  ‘I was looking at the Hartley graves.’ She was speaking as she approached him. ‘And there is no Luke. I wondered if you knew anything about him? He was the eldest of the family, around the turn of the century, that was…’

  ‘And why would you be interested in him?’ was the question put to her.

  She decided to admit her identity and said she was involved in the security arrangements for the forthcoming visit of Vice-President Hartley. She knew the priest must be aware of that visit, as the Vice-President was clearly going to visit the family graves. But she made no mention of the murder link.

  ‘So I’m occupying my time looking up his family history,’ she concluded. ‘It makes my work much more meaningful.’

  ‘I’m fairly new here, my girl.’ He smiled. ‘Two years it is since I arrived. I’m afraid I don’t know the family background, other than that one of them was killed in the First World War, when he was in the army. Fighting for his country. Some of the Hartley’s still come to this church, I’m delighted to say, but a lot don’t.’

  ‘James,’ she said, as if to give credence to her presence. ‘James was the one who died during the war. I wondered if there was any record of Luke’s death in your parish registers.’

  ‘If he’s not in the graveyard, my girl, he won’t be in my register. There’s a stone for every Hartley.’

  His manner was somewhat dismissive and so Lorraine did not pursue the matter at this point. She could always inspect the parish registers at some future date if it was really necessary. She returned to her car and drove back to Thirklewood Hall.

  Meanwhile, Mark Pemberton had re-examined the statement made by Maurice Proctor, the station master of Rosenthorpe, to see if he could glean any further clues about the precise timing of Luke’s arrival at the station. But the statement was not sufficiently precise. It did confirm that Luke had arrived sometime after
the departure of the train from which his brother had alighted, but Proctor could not be precise. He guessed Luke arrived about twenty minutes or half an hour after the train had gone.

  Proctor had also mentioned the fact that Luke had then hung around the village and the station for an hour or so, just in case his brother turned up. When James failed to arrive, Luke had set off upon his return journey and, upon departing, had said he hoped to catch up with James along the way. But, reasoned Pemberton, this was by no means an alibi.

  Mark also found statements made by Mr and Mrs Hartley, the parents of Luke and James. They confirmed Luke’s departure from the farm in the pony and trap at 2.30pm on Monday, 11th September 1916. Luke had said he wanted to set off in good time so as not to be late, and that he’d be back with James around half-past four. Luke had returned to the farm much later than he’d expected because of waiting for James.

  James’s mother had stressed in her statement that James was unhappy about going to France but did say he had never shown any sign of being suicidal. One of the factors which had increased concern in both James and his mother was the reports in the English newspapers about the struggle in the Somme. In a battle on 1st July 1916, eleven British divisions had left their trenches to fight the Germans and more than 57,400 had become casualties. Major Stewart Shand of the 10th Battalion had won the VC for his bravery near Fricourt; he was killed in action on 16th July while helping his men to climb out of the trenches under machine-gun fire. Reports of this kind had upset Mrs Hartley, making her worry even more about James’s future. Then there’d been reports of trench fever, of men fighting and sleeping knee-deep in mud, of lice-ridden clothes, rotting corpses lying everywhere… And Mark thought that Mrs Hartley was being a normal mother worrying in a normal way about her son going off to fight.

  While he was re-examining the old file, Lorraine returned. It was about four thirty and she popped into Mark’s office looking excited.