The Lost Ancestor (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 2)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  ‘Here we go,’ Mark said, opening up the cardboard wallet containing all his reconnaissance that he had presented to his boss before being given the green light to take out Farrier. He had borrowed a shredder and proceeded to feed it the contents of the file. Piece by piece was chewed and devoured by the machine so that all that was left was the cardboard wallet itself.

  Mark turned to his laptop and brought up the online console. Navigating to the administration panel, Mark moved his cursor to the ‘Format All Data’ icon. Then he spotted that something wasn’t quite right.

  Morton Farrier’s mobile was currently active.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Morton was sitting in a quiet corner of the Winchelsea Farm Kitchen—a traditional shop specialising in local meats, cheeses, jams and produce, with one half of the premises functioning as a charming tearoom. He was slightly early for his appointment with Jenny Greenwood and was growing more and more intrigued by whatever it was that she had to tell him. He checked his emails whilst he waited but there were no new messages. He re-read the email he had received earlier this morning from Bartholomew Maslow containing three attachments related to his grandfather, Jack’s, time at Blackfriars. One was a close-up image of Jack with a nondescript background. The second was of much greater interest to Morton. It was another close-up of Jack with another man. Bartholomew had been good enough to also scan and email the back which revealed old-fashioned script: Me and my best chum, Edward. Morton was looking at a sepia photograph of Jack Maslow with Edward Mercer. Curiously, at some point since the photograph had been developed, somebody had crudely hand-tinted three basic colours: red, green and blue. Interestingly, whoever had undertaken the paint job had given Edward red hair. The post this morning had also brought a written response from a descendant of Walter Risler. The letter was rude and to the point. Dear Mr Farrier, Indeed I do object to your writing. My grandfather’s business is none of yours. I have never heard of Mary Mercer. Roy Risler. He could smile about it now, but its arrival this morning had incensed him. In his fourteen years as a genealogist, Morton had never received such a discourteous response.

  ‘Morton? Hello?’

  The voice made Morton sit up with a jerk, spilling some of his latte. Jenny Greenwood was standing in front of him. ‘Jenny—hi. So sorry. I was drifting away.’

  ‘So I see! I was waving and talking to you but you were on another planet.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Sorry I’m a bit late. I expect you’ve seen all what’s going on out there. It’s like a flippin’ circus.’

  ‘Yeah, I had noticed,’ Morton said. The scene of the crime had certainly calmed down from yesterday but the church was still cordoned off with a small police presence and requisite group of interested locals. Later he might tell her about his involvement in the murder but right now he just wanted to hear what Jenny had to say. ‘Would you like a drink at all?’

  ‘I’ll get it, don’t worry. Would you like anything?’

  ‘No, I’m fine with this for now, thank you.’

  As Jenny caught the attention of a passing waiter, Morton tried to shake his lethargy.

  ‘Right,’ Jenny said, seeming also to want to get straight down to business. ‘So you found out that the wayward Frederick Mansfield is actually my grandfather.’

  Morton smiled and nodded. He really hoped this meeting wasn’t just about her connection to the Mansfields. He didn’t interrupt.

  ‘As I’m sure your detailed research has discovered, he died penniless in 1922, leaving my poor grandmother with a baby to raise alone. He had frittered everything. Family heirlooms, paintings, a valuable Egyptian ceramics collection, jewellery—he either sold it, swapped it or hocked it. But when he died, my grandmother took some consolation from the fact they at least lived in a comfortable house which she could sell to buy something smaller and more practical. Then she discovered that he’d squandered that too. Had he not died, they would have been forced to up and leave within a few weeks anyway to pay his mountain of debts.’

  Jenny’s story, much of which Morton already knew and didn’t feel the need to transcribe as yet, was interrupted when the waiter brought over her Earl Grey.

  She thanked him, then continued. ‘That Frederick was not a great husband or father can’t be contested, and I think my grandmother and mother were probably better off without him, as awful as that sounds.’ Jenny paused to pour her tea into the bone-china cup. ‘The problem lies in the fact that my mother probably was—no certainly was owed a sizeable fortune in inheritance.’

  ‘Right,’ Morton said, unsure of where this conversation was going. ‘But you said Frederick died with debts and no money. Did your mother acquire some money after he died?’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘No, the inheritance should have come my mother’s way in 1959.’ Jenny stared at Morton, waiting for him to make the connection that she evidently thought he should be able to make.

  Morton racked his brains. The date did ring a bell, but his brain was swimming with names and dates. It was obviously a Mansfield-related date, so Morton pushed himself to think through the relevant people alive around that time. Then he got it. ‘Was that when Cecil Mansfield died?’ he asked uncertainly.

  ‘You got it!’ Jenny said, seemingly impressed.

  ‘Okay,’ Morton said, trying to connect the dots. ‘So he died in 1959 and the estate passed to his son, George Mansfield.’

  ‘Exactly.’ She sounded as though her answer were sufficient.

  ‘And it shouldn’t have?’ Morton ventured. ‘It should have passed to your mum?’

  Jenny looked suspiciously around the tearoom, then nodded.

  ‘Why?’

  Jenny took a moment to answer, suddenly appearing nervous. ‘You’re going to probably find it a bit of a fanciful tale—wishful thinking on my part—but…’ Another pause. ‘Take a look at this.’ Jenny placed a Next carrier bag on the table and carefully withdrew a stapled A4 document, which she handed to him.

  Morton took the pages from her and began to read. It was an official document of the British Military—labelled E.504, Militia Attestation for Cecil Mansfield. The first page was a standard admission file for the 3rd Royal Sussex Regiment, noting Cecil’s residence at Blackfriars, his age of seventeen years and the answers to various closed questions concerning eligibility to join the military. The foot of the first page was signed by him and a witness and dated 2nd February 1897. Morton flipped to the second page, already having an inkling as to why Cecil had joined the military at this moment in history. The next page was a description of Cecil upon enlistment:

  Apparent age: 17 years and 3 months

  Height: 5 feet 3 inches

  Weight: 108lbs

  Chest measurement: 32 inches

  Complexion: Dark

  Eyes: Hazel

  Hair: Ginger red

  Religious denomination: Church of England

  Distinctive marks and marks indicating congenital peculiarities or previous disease: None

  At the foot of the second page, Cecil was signed as medically fit by a medical officer. Morton remained silent, trying not to make a judgement as to what this form had to do with Mary Mercer, but rather to digest and understand the historical information that it contained. He flipped over to the third page, which was entitled ‘A Statement of Services of No.7355 Name: C. Mansfield.’ The sheet noted Cecil’s attestation, embodiment, and finally his discharge on the 21st October 1902 for being medically unfit. The final page in the document concerned his military history. As Morton had suspected, Cecil had seen service in South Africa in 1901 and St Helena from the 15th June 1901 until 11th September 1902, for which had had been awarded the ‘South Africa Medal & Clasp.’ Under the heading ‘Wounded’, Cecil’s reason for discharge became clear: ‘Severe G.S. wound to groin.’

  ‘Initial thoughts?’ Jenny asked when he finally looked up from the papers.

  She really was making him work hard. Morton took a mouthful of drink before answering. ‘Cecil volunteered for the
3rd Royal Sussex regiment to serve against the South Africans in the Boer Wars. He was discharged as medically unfit after a gunshot wound to the groin,’ he surmised.

  Jenny seemed disappointed. ‘Come on, you can do better than that,’ she said with a smile. ‘You’re a forensic genealogist.’

  Morton smiled. ‘Okay. I think you’re implying that a gunshot wound to the groin would preclude him from having children and since his son, George, was born in 1911, I think you’re suggesting that he cannot biologically be his. If that were the case, then the Mansfield fortunes should have, according to inheritance laws, passed to your grandmother or mother in 1959.’ Morton suddenly felt on a roll. ‘I think you’re working at Blackfriars in the hope of finding proof of this amongst their archives.’

  Jenny smiled. ‘Pretty well spot on, yes.’

  Morton was still confused. ‘Right, so…?’ He let his question hang in the air, allowing Jenny to continue her story.

  ‘I’ve done some fairly extensive research at the National Archives, ferreting around various private papers, unit diaries and what have you and, although Cecil is never mentioned by name, one particular battalion commander comes pretty close to a graphic description of injuries which fit with Cecil. The injuries he describes would have left the man in question unable to father a child.’

  ‘So who do you think is George Mansfield’s father, then?’

  ‘That’s one question, but not the one you need to be asking. The question you need to ask is, who is George’s mother?’

  Morton was taken aback. Surely she isn’t suggesting… ‘Really?’ he said, a little too incredulously.

  Jenny shuffled uncomfortably in her seat and took another glance over her shoulder. ‘Really. You might find it an outlandish theory, but I don’t believe that either Cecil or Philadelphia were George’s parents.’

  ‘But he looks so much like them—the hair…’ Morton stopped himself when he realised what he had just said. Mary Mercer’s physical description, with her red hair, dark complexion and hazel eyes matched Cecil’s appearance almost exactly; she would have been perfect to have been chosen to bear a child with Mansfield features. But what about the father? His genes could surely have overridden hers? He recalled the photo of Edward Mercer that he had just looked at. A flash of feeling, like swallowing a cup of freezing ice-water, fired through Morton’s insides. It couldn’t be…

  ‘You’re getting it, aren’t you?’ Jenny said, sipping her tea, but still maintaining eye contact.

  ‘Jenny, this is one hell of a huge leap from Cecil possibly being unable to have children to Mary Mercer being George’s biological mother. Huge. Why was Philadelphia at least not the mother?’

  Jenny shrugged, as if this were an unimportant point to raise. ‘I think you know the answer to that because you suspect who the father might have been.’

  ‘I think, but have absolutely no evidence of this, that Mary Mercer was romantically linked with her cousin, Edward Mercer,’ Morton revealed.

  ‘Did he look like her?’

  Morton withdrew his mobile phone, opened up the email from Bartholomew Maslow and showed Jenny the hand-tinted photo of Jack and Edward. ‘Guess which one’s Edward,’ he said sarcastically.

  Jenny grinned. ‘There you have it, then. You’ve answered it for yourself. Philadelphia wouldn’t have degraded herself with another man when two people under her own roof and with a passing resemblance could give them the child they needed to continue the Mansfield line—keeping it firmly away from my philandering grandfather.’

  Something bothered Morton. ‘How did you suspect, though, that Mary Mercer was the mother of George?’ Morton asked.

  ‘I didn’t, until your letter arrived last week,’ Jenny said, taking another sip of tea. She rummaged again in her Next bag, like it was a bag of magic tricks that she could only access if Morton asked the right questions. She removed some more sheets of paper but held on to them while she spoke. ‘Whilst conducting my own research, I happened upon this article from 1908—three years after Cecil and Philadelphia married.’

  Morton took the piece of paper. It was a photocopy of an extract from the Sussex Express and, rather alarmingly, read strikingly similarly to a mixture of the reports of Edward’s drowning and Mary’s disappearance.

  Suicide by Drowning

  Miss Florence McDougall, seventeen years of age, was found drowned in the lake of the Blackfriars estate on Tuesday of last week. Miss McDougall had been an employee there for two years but had, according to her employers, been suffering from depression. In the days prior, Miss McDougall had privately threatened to take her own life. Her lifeless body was spotted by the head gardener, Mr Charles Phillips, who noticed her distinct red hair on the water surface. The Coroner’s jury found that the deceased had committed suicide whilst of unsound mind.

  ‘That image—of the poor girl’s red hair splayed out on the lake at Blackfriars haunted me,’ Jenny said. ‘Whenever I see the lake now, I see her hair.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I don’t know why, but something about Florence captivated me. The more I thought about how Cecil and Philadelphia couldn’t have had a child, the more obvious it seemed that they would have found someone close by with some physical characteristics that would throw off suspicion that the child might not have been theirs. Anyway, I couldn’t persuade Sidney Mersham to let me look in the archives, so it was on the back-burner when I received your letter.’

  Morton nodded. ‘Do you think that Florence and Mary were willing participants?’ he asked, already fearing the answer.

  Jenny screwed up her face. ‘It doesn’t seem like it to me.’

  ‘But if Mary had unwillingly had her child taken from her and survived—why didn’t she return for him or just not give him up?’

  ‘The answer to that might forever be consigned to the vaults of history, Morton.’

  Time passed with neither of them speaking, both absorbed in their own thoughts.

  Morton thought about the Scotland connection. Maybe she went there in order to give birth. But then where did she go? Evidently not the same way of Florence McDougall and Edward Mercer, since she turned up in Winchelsea in 1962. He considered the letter that Mary had written from Scotland about having done something which caused sadness, shame and embarrassment. Could this be it? It was certainly more substantial than trying on an employer’s clothes. Then he considered that he had waltzed into the Mansfield archives with very few questions. ‘But why, then, did the current Mansfields allow me unprecedented access to their archives, when they wouldn’t even allow their own employee?’ he said.

  Jenny smiled. ‘Have you never heard of the saying ‘keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer’?’

  She had a point. Then Morton remembered that Sidney had not willingly let him see the Day Book for the time of Mary’s disappearance—he had only learnt of what had happened that day through deception.

  ‘But…’ Morton had too many questions to know even where to begin. The theory had more holes in it than a colander. ‘Okay. So, let’s say you’re correct. How on earth would we set about proving it? What we have on paper—concrete evidence—amounts to nothing at all. We’d look like a laughing stock. I’m taking it you’ve got your eye on a pretty sizeable court case?’

  ‘Perhaps. But that’s a long way down the line. You tell me how we proceed from here.’

  There was a question. Morton held Jenny’s gaze, as he thought about all that he had just been told. He hated the fact that there was so little evidence—it went directly against his whole genealogical ethos. Yet, despite this, his instincts told him that Jenny could be onto something. If she were correct, then they would have one hell of a job proving it. DNA would be the simplest answer if he were following a direct male lineage, but the switching between sexes from Ray Mercer’s generation to Edith and Mary’s parents left only one type of DNA test available: the autosomal test, which looks at the twenty-two pairs of non-sex chromosomes. From what he knew about the test, it was sh
aky at best. As the generations increase, the odds of sharing autosomal DNA decrease. Not to mention the fact that no member of the Mansfield family would willingly agree to a test. For the moment, Morton ruled out the use of DNA to prove or disprove the theory, which left him with very few options for the time being.

  ‘I think,’ Morton began. ‘If your theory is right, then the answer will come when I find out what happened to Mary. Speaking of which...’ He glanced at his watch. He had arranged to meet with the vicar of Winchelsea in fifteen minutes’ time. Whilst most documents pertaining to the church had long ago been transferred to East Sussex Archives, the vicar had told Morton that a small bundle—mainly comprised of letters—was still held at the vicarage. ‘I’ve got an appointment with the vicar of St Thomas’s church in a moment, so I need to dash.’

  Jenny’s eyes lit up. ‘Bit presumptuous, but can I come?’ she asked.

  Morton was slightly taken aback at the question. He usually liked to work alone, although an extra pair of hands might just be useful on this occasion. ‘Yeah, sure. Okay.’

  Jenny smiled. ‘Drink up then.’ She finished the last dregs of her tea and stood to pay.