‘God,’ Soraya said. ‘By why, for goodness' sake?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to work out,’ Juliette said.
The vicar appeared from the church and touched Morton’s sleeve. ‘Lovely reading, Norton, lovely reading. He must have meant a great deal to you.’
Morton smiled politely and tried not to stare at the small furry creature resting on the vicar’s head.
‘Will you be joining us at the crem, Morton?’ Soraya asked. ‘We’re going to be placing Peter’s ashes in his parents’ grave in Sedlescombe churchyard.’
‘Sorry, we’d have loved to come but what with all that happened yesterday we’ve got a lot to sort out,’ he said, questioning in his mind whether it was right to say they would ‘love’ to attend a cremation.
‘I understand. I’ll catch up with you in a day or two. Take care, won’t you.’
Morton and Juliette stood back and watched respectfully as Peter Coldrick’s coffin was carried from the church by six pallbearers and loaded into the waiting hearse.
Juliette took Morton’s hand. ‘Come on then, Norton, let’s go back to your dad’s and order a pizza or something.’
‘Good idea.’
Chapter Twelve
4th April 1944
Frederick James Windsor-Sackville marched purposefully through the wide, oak-panelled hallway, having just arrived from a private Whitehall meeting with several other key members of government. At sixty-four years, Frederick’s severe angular features and unforgiving eyes belied his age. He wore his best suit with a ruby tie and handkerchief from the breast pocket. He had a fine clipped moustache, which he trimmed religiously each morning.
‘Go and fetch David?’ he told one of his staff, who was following slightly behind.
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied, scurrying off to find Frederick’s son, David.
‘I’ll be in my study,’ Frederick barked, striding along the vast hallway, under painted portraits of his distant ancestors. He paused momentarily and looked up at his father’s picture, hanging grandiosely above his study door. Frederick hoped his father would approve of all the sacrifices and difficult decisions he had taken during the course of this ceaseless conflict in order to protect the good name of the Windsor-Sackvilles, a job his son and heir, David would need to continue. He had shown excellent political wit around Parliament, becoming a genuine asset to Churchill’s Coalition Government. With shrewd guidance and direction, he was sure his son could aim for the very top. The Windsor-Sackvilles had to benefit from the war. David’s only misdemeanour so far had been with her, something Frederick had so far kept closely under wraps.
Frederick entered the fastidiously tidy study and sat at his desk, pensively tapping his fingers. ‘Come on, come on,’ he muttered to himself, despising tardiness and dilly-dallying. Of course, he knew where his son would be: in the orchard.
A light tap at the door. ‘Father?’ David said, breathlessly.
‘Come in and sit down. Shut the door.’
David obeyed his father and sat down, knowing that his father had something significant to say.
‘How is she?’ Frederick asked, his eyebrows furrowed.
David’s eyes lit up. ‘Very well. The nurse thinks the baby will be here within the hour.’
Frederick clenched his jaw. Not the news he wanted to hear. ‘Look, I won’t beat around the bush, David. The war is changing direction. Plans are afoot for something big. Something which will turn the tide of war.’
David’s face fell. ‘What does this mean?’
‘I think you know what it means. Over the next few weeks we need to sever all ties with Emily’s family. File everything you have in the archives ready to be destroyed.’
‘And the baby?’ David asked, unable to look his father in the eyes any longer.
Frederick waited until his son glanced up then shook his head solemnly.
‘A boy!’ the nurse called, bundling the baby up and placing it on Emily’s naked breast.
Emily, tired and exhausted, smiled and held the baby tightly to her. A boy! Exactly what she wanted. What they wanted. Needed. A boy to continue the family name. A gentle breeze fluttered in from the orchard outside, cooling the sweat on Emily’s forehead. She looked at the boy, tenderly squirming and writhing in her arms. Just like her, he had bright blue eyes and chestnut-brown hair. He was perfection.
‘Any ideas of names yet?’ the nurse asked.
‘His father wants him to be called James,’ Emily replied.
‘Lovely name!’ the nurse exclaimed.
Chapter Thirteen
Friday
Morton was sitting outside The Clockhouse Tearoom in Sedlescombe in a t-shirt and jeans, with a pair of binoculars dangling from his neck, rubbing his tired eyes. He had barely slept last night, having spent much of the night mulling over the Coldrick Case. He had countless more questions than he had answers, yet the involvement of the Windsor-Sackvilles was becoming impossible to doubt. As a forensic genealogist, he needed firm, concrete proof – the type to be found in archives and record offices. He had spent most of the previous evening using his father’s prehistoric PC to search www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/ - the portal used for locating government and private documents in England and Wales from the eighth century to the present day. He began by searching general key words, leaving the date, repository, place and region fields blank, then gradually began to narrow and refine his search. As the evening wore on, he had gained a better understanding of the political roles of the Windsor-Saville family, but crucially, there were no private records pertaining to the family in any repository. All the documents he found links to, even those recently released under various closure and secrecy rules, were innocuous ones relating to the business of government – nothing which would give him the evidence he needed to find a link from James Coldrick to the Windsor-Sackvilles. Whilst he was online Morton had searched the birth index for a James Windsor-Sackville born circa 1944. He wasn’t surprised to read that ‘No matches found’ was the answer. If James Coldrick was indeed the illegitimate son of Sir David James Peregrine and Maria Charlotte Windsor-Sackville then he doubted that they would be so blatant to have registered his birth for the entire world to see.
A young, blonde waitress set a tray down in front of Morton with a flirtatious smile. He thanked her and couldn’t resist a glance at her svelte figure as she tottered back inside the tearoom. Rather inexplicably, he felt quite relaxed, as if he was on a jaunt in the countryside and had happened upon a twee, genteel tearoom, replete with floral crockery and lace doilies. Maybe it was sitting on the patio on a hot, still day that was having a calming influence on him.
As he poured himself a filter coffee, Morton looked across at the pair of tall, grand, iron gates, which barred entry to Charingsby. If answers to the questions he sought existed, then they would be found behind those gates. All that could be seen of Charingsby was a gravel, beech-lined drive cutting through a billiard-table lawn. Nothing of the house could be glimpsed from outside – probably just the way the Windsor-Sackvilles liked it. Morton was here for one very simple reason: he wanted to gain entry into the estate. Last night he had spotted an anomaly and potential lead, which he needed to explore. According to the Ordinance Survey map, the sprawling estate of Charingsby incorporated a gatehouse cottage, a run of tied workers’ cottages, various out-buildings and a stable complex - something which corresponded with Google Maps. However, whilst carefully examining the whole estate using the aerial satellite function on Google Maps, Morton spotted a small, pale-coloured building set in the middle of what, according to the map, should have been solid, ancient woodland. He cross-referenced the location on www.old-maps.co.uk/, where he pulled up images of the estate from 1841, 1873, 1908 and 1949. The building appeared on the first three maps, yet was absent by 1949. A missing building on a map would not usually have warranted the plan he was about to execute. However, the fact that in the background of the photograph of James Coldrick as a baby was a small, pale-
coloured building rang alarm bells in Morton’s head. The fact that there was a tall chimney to the west of the building was impossible to ignore.
Morton drank a mouthful of coffee. Gaining entry was going to be difficult and illegal, much to Juliette’s dismay when he had told her of his plans. She had decided that she could no longer wait for the insurance money to come through, so she called her best friend, Rita and the two of them went to Tunbridge Wells to buy some clothes. ‘A lot of clothes, Morton’ she had warned him. He could hardly protest. He was happy enough for the time being helping himself to Jeremy’s wardrobe and all that he had asked Juliette to buy for him was a new laptop, since he’d inadvertently lost two in just over a week. Given all that had happened, he would rather be wandering aimlessly between Next, Top Man, River Island and H&M, trying on new clothes than hatching a plan of how best to enter the lair of the Windsor-Sackvilles. Juliette had told him it was quite possibly the single most stupid thing he could do since they were very likely the people who had tried to kill them both two days ago. He agreed with her but made the trip to Sedlescombe nonetheless.
He had considered waltzing innocently up to the high-tech video entry system mounted on the high brick wall beside the gates and simply asking to be permitted to view their archives. Owners of such stately homes he’d encountered on previous jobs had been only too willing to allow him to delve into their private papers. Somehow, he didn’t think the Windsor-Sackvilles would be so accommodating.
Morton had come prepared, having rummaged around his father’s house for items he thought he might need. He found a backpack, which he filled with a pair of National Trust binoculars, digital camera, an Ordinance Survey map of the area, a torch, box of matches, a bottle of water and a notepad and pen. The addition of a pair of wire-cutters and a crowbar destroyed the image that he was the archetypal country rambler.
Morton took a sip of coffee and pulled out the camera to check if anything was still on the memory card. He legitimized his recent carefree rummaging and plundering of his father’s personal belongings by thinking of himself as some kind of executor-in-waiting. What with his mother being dead, Jeremy away in Cyprus, it would fall to him to sort out his father’s affairs. He blithely skipped through countless images of his father’s garden, then came to an out-of-focus image of his father, Jeremy, a young man and an old woman holding ice-creams up to the camera. The orange time-code stamp in the corner dated the photos to last summer. He skipped the camera on to a photo of his father with his arms around the old woman, whom Morton could clearly identify as Madge, the lady who had spent most of Jeremy’s leaving party washing up in the kitchen. She had seemed so nice, and yet here she was, swanning around Coniston and the Lake District with his father, Jeremy and an unidentified man. The more photos Morton saw, the angrier he became. His father had taken this woman to Coniston and seemingly revisited all the places that they had gone to as a family just before his mother had died. He wasn’t sure what he was most angry at, the fact that his father was apparently seeing someone else, or the fact that he hadn’t been told about it. What was his father doing with an old, grandmotherly type like her anyway? Then he realised that he was comparing her to his mother as she was when she died. How old would his mother be now? Sixty-nine? Christ, she’d be a wrinkly old woman herself. He hovered over the ‘Erase All’ option but thought better of it, switched the camera off and tucked it away back in the rucksack before he did something he might regret.
He finished his cake and coffee and left a generous tip, hoping that the buxom blonde would find the money and not the scowling frump behind the till. With his sunglasses perched on his nose, Morton casually strolled across the street to the gates of Charingsby. The village, bathed in total sunshine, was entirely deserted, as if there had been some kind of an evacuation order. It sent a sinister chill down his spine when his eyes fell on the gothic, shadowy structure of St George’s Nursing Home, just a stone’s throw away from the Windsor-Sackvilles. He rested his head on the cold iron bars but, even with his head pressed to them, could only catch a glimpse of the house, tiny and obscure in the distance.
Morton slowly ambled along the road beside the village green, enjoying the warm sun on his neck and a brief moment to take stock of the charming village. It looked as though Charingsby, having been occupied by the Windsor-Sackvilles since the fifteenth century, had existed long before the majority of the village. Most of the houses along the main road provided a convenient hermetic seal around the edge of the estate.
He continued steadily through the village, until he came to a public footpath post, which was slowly being strangled by an insidious weave of dark-green ivy. The sign pointed perpendicular to the road, running beside a row of delightful houses, called Riverside Cottages. The map confirmed that a river, after which the cottages were presumably named, ran across two fields then entered a wood at the edge of the Charingsby estate. Morton took a swig of water and stared at the river meandering into the distance; he just needed to follow it and he’d be inside. He downed the drink, crossed into the freshly-ploughed field and began to trudge through the calf-length grass around the edge, keeping close to the river and trying to look as much like a rambler on a pleasant walk as he could.
As the safety of the road slowly disappeared behind him, Morton wondered if he should quickly give Juliette an update. He had given her a rough overview of his plans, but thought now might be a good idea to give her his exact location. Somewhere for the search party to start looking for him if he failed to return home tonight. He took his mobile out and, rather predictably, there was no signal. That was that then.
When he entered the second field, which was being used for sheep-grazing, the footpath deviated, veering sharply away from the river in front of him. He knew that once he stepped foot off the path he lost all defence that he was simply enjoying a walk in the Sussex countryside.
It was now or never.
With a deep and decisive breath, he left the designated path behind and crossed the dry, crusty brown field towards the woods, carefully following the winding river. As the distance between him and the footpath increased, Morton half wondered if a gun-mounted jeep would suddenly roar out of nowhere, just like he had seen on television when people tried to approach Area 51 in the Nevada desert. But no gun-mounted jeep appeared, just a fat hare making a break for the hedgerow.
A few minutes later, he reached the edge of the woods and realised that his plan of simply lifting a section of fencing and passing underneath wouldn’t be so straightforward; at the boundary of the woods the river was forced into a narrow, concrete tube in order to pass under a heavy-duty, two-metre-high fence topped with a vicious, double-curl of barbed wire. Morton tugged at the base of the fence but it was rigid, appearing to be fixed into the ground. He had to resort to Plan B and took out the pair of wire-cutters that he had hoped he wouldn’t need. First, he scanned the woodland with his father’s National Trust binoculars, which were remarkably powerful given that they were probably a free gift. There was no sign of life beyond a pair of blackbirds pecking furiously at an ant-infested mound of earth, so he pulled out the cutters and took a final, fleeting glance around him. He couldn’t see anybody, but in these high-tech days that meant nothing. He’d once heard that the military were using satellites so powerful that they could read the text on a newspaper lying on the pavement. God only knew who was watching him from outer space as he clipped through the metal.
Six minutes later, Morton had crudely cut a hole large enough to squeeze through. He knelt onto the grass and, with a deep breath and a final check around him, he curled back the section of severed fence and crawled into the lion’s den, dragging his backpack behind him. He stood up and looked around. Nothing had changed in those few feet, yet being on the inside he felt strangely closer to James Coldrick. Closer to the truth somehow. Peter Coldrick’s words from Tuesday sprang into his mind. It’s as if my family are all enclosed in a walled garden which has no door.
Maybe he had ju
st found that door.
Morton pulled on the backpack, sweat beginning to bead on his forehead, and began to walk cautiously under the cooling canopy provided by mature oaks, beeches and sycamores. He judged that in three or four hundred yards he would arrive at the building.
He trod carefully but quickly through a carpet of wild garlic and late-flowering bluebells, deliberately choosing where his feet fell, so as to avoid leaving an obvious path of crushed plants. Finally, the thick woodland yielded to a grassland clearing. And there, at the centre, was the building he sought: a small, dilapidated cottage. Chunks of off-white plaster had fallen away, revealing cracked, bare bricks. Windows were either broken or boarded up. The place had suffered decades of decay and neglect. Adding to the sense of eeriness and uneasiness Morton was feeling, the plum trees surrounding the house, which he had identified in the photograph were all bare, their barren branches seeming to have died with the house.
Sweat began to trickle down his back. His heart was racing from the quick pace that he had crossed the woods, but now it refused to slow down. He slowly moved closer to the building.
Morton recalled the photograph of James Coldrick as a baby. This was definitely where it had been taken.
He knew this cottage was significant.
Despite more than sixty years of woodland growth, the top of a towering, herringbone-brick chimney was still visible in the background. The chimney belonged to Charingsby.
He took out his father’s digital camera and began taking photographs. Although the original image of James Coldrick as a baby had perished, along with the rest of his Coldrick Case Incident Wall, he had thankfully stored a high-resolution copy in his cloud space, which he had had the foresight to retrieve last night, downloading it to his Photo Stream, in case there was no internet connection today. He held his phone up and stood exactly where the photographer had snapped James Coldrick as a baby in 1944, wondering what had gone so terribly wrong for that smiling, happy woman and her new-born son.
Hiding the Past (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 1) Page 15