Cowards Die Many Times

by Peter Hey

  The PC shook his head. ‘Cybercrime is where I’m hoping to end up. I’ve got an IT degree. Someone who knew what they were doing would probably be able to get into that thing quite easily. They’d have access to all your personal data.’

  Jane frowned. Everyone seemed to have it in for her aged computer. ‘Well good job they were more interested in a couple of bottles of gin and vodka,’ she countered.

  PC Kahn had moved over to the doors. The wooden frames were splintered around the central lock. There was a depression about half an inch wide that could easily have been made by the flat blade of a screwdriver.

  He looked out into the garden beyond. ‘Those walls and all the foliage make it quite secluded at the back. But I saw when I arrived that you’d got access down the side. I presume you were out at work when it happened?’

  ‘I mostly work from home,’ said Jane, ‘but I was away for the night. I stayed at my mother’s near Bournemouth.’

  ‘And you live here on your own?’

  Jane nodded.

  ‘It might have been a good job you weren’t in when they decided to try their luck,’ conjectured the PC.

  ‘Because I’d have killed them you mean, Zahid?’

  The constable looked at Jane sternly. ‘They might have been kids, but kids carry knives these days. Particularly the ones up to no good. We would always advise the public to exercise caution.’

  Jane was about to argue she wasn’t afraid of juvenile yobbos, but stopped herself. ‘I guess you’re right,’ she conceded.

  The PC was trying the door lock. ‘You’ll need to get a carpenter in to make this temporarily secure.’

  Jane waved her hand dismissively. ‘There’s some two-by-one in the shed. When you’ve gone I’ll screw it across at the top and bottom. That’ll do the job.’ She tilted her head slightly to one side. ‘I guess you’re not going to call in forensics?’ she said tentatively.

  The PC still had his back to Jane and was scanning the window panes. ‘I can’t see any sign of fingerprints. I think you’re right, it is just kids and even they know to wear gloves these days. Shame you don’t have CCTV.’

  ‘But no house-to-house enquiries?’ As soon as the words left her mouth Jane felt guilty. ‘Sorry, just kidding again, Zahid. I am grateful you’ve come round. I know it’s not the crime of the century.’

  ‘We take all crime seriously, Ms Madden, but we do have to prioritise our resources, especially in the current climate.’

  ‘Of course. I understand.’

  ‘Look...’ a doubtful expression crossed PC Kahn’s face. ‘...well, there is a counselling service for crime victims. Sometimes the psychological effects can catch you unawares. Having strangers violate your home can be very unsettling.’

  Jane grinned, sympathetic to the process the young officer was obliged to follow. ‘Don’t worry, Zahid. I have my moments, but this isn’t going to stop me sleeping tonight.’

  L.Y.

  Jane sat down at her dining room table and admired her handiwork. The lengths of untreated pine were fixed into the wooden doors with the chunkiest screws she could find. She’d tried to get the battens square, but the lower one had a slight but noticeable droop down to the left. It didn’t matter. It was just a stopgap and no-one would be forcing them again in a hurry. She would have to get someone in to give her a quote for new doors with proper multipoint locks. They’d probably need to do the windows too. It wouldn’t be cheap. The insurance might cover some of it, but there went any hope of buying a new laptop.

  Which was a shame, as it seemed even slower than usual logging in to her email. For once there was no spam in her inbox, just one new message with an intriguing subject line: ‘Thomas Ramsden 1842?-1900’.

  Dear Jane Madden

  It was a great pleasure to receive a message from across the Atlantic. My career was in finance, and I was based in London for several years and met my English husband there. He turned out to be something of a disappointment, but I won’t hold that against you. ;-) It is always interesting to make contact with a fellow genealogist, particularly one who may have new insights into an old mystery. I have been researching my family tree for many years now, although I have recently been concentrating on my East European roots. It is some time since I looked at the man I know as Thomas Ramsden.

  First of all, let me say that I was aware of my second cousin Roxanne Armand. I have pencilled in that branch on another copy of my tree that is more complete than the one I choose to publish online. Personally, I have always been wary of DNA tests, though I confess I do not really understand the science or the potential consequences of having your data held somewhere on the great cloud that is the Internet. That said, I follow your reasoning that if Roxanne shares genetic ancestry with your client, then it is very likely I do too.

  Assuming we can rule out the Transylvanian side to my family, that points to my and Roxanne’s great-great-grandparents, Thomas Ramsden (sic) and Mary O’Brien, being the link. I appreciate the tact in your message, but I concur that Thomas is somewhat, let us say, ‘suspect’. Poor Mary was from Ireland and I know quite a lot about her. What I know about Thomas leads me to believe that abandoning his family and subsequent bigamy were wholly in character. I believe him to have been a deeply wicked man. I can only hope his tainted blood is sufficiently diluted in my own.

  My Thomas Ramsden claims to be six years younger than your Thomas Ramsbottom, of course, but that is a relatively small deception and brings his age closer to Mary’s. I have had a brief look for evidence of an official change of name, Ramsbottom to Ramsden, but can find none. But then, I have no record of exactly how or when Giersch became Gish in my family. The stories of emigration officers at Ellis Island casually anglicising surnames are mythical, but many people just made an informal change to fit in with their new neighbors. They registered their children with their Americanized name and it stuck. I’m sure someone like Thomas Ramsbottom would have had no compunction about lying to a city clerk when obtaining his marriage license. No offence to your client, but if I were saddled with a name like that I might change it too. It’s not one I’ve come across before. I think it Trumps my ancestral Bumgartens and Assbergs!

  So what can I tell you about Thomas Ramsden/Ramsbottom? You will have seen what is on my public tree, but I have omitted the more damning details. I am happy to share them with you, but ask that you do not make them generally available on the Web. It is sufficiently long ago that I feel no inherited shame or guilt, but some other descendants might not agree. I subscribe to the philosophy that we do not ‘own’ our family trees.

  I have some precious notes made by mother, probably in the late 1950s. I recognise her handwriting and can date them by the fact she was interviewing her own grandmother, Sarah Kathleen Ramsden, who died in 1959. My mother acknowledges Sarah was apt to be slightly confused, but she was still able to remember her early life and her extended family: cousins, aunts, uncles and so on. It was finding these notes after my mother prematurely passed that got me started with genealogy.

  As you’ve seen from what I have put online, Sarah was the daughter of Thomas Ramsden and Mary O’Brien and her lifespan takes us right back to the 1870s. Sadly her own mother died when she was four and the primary influence on her young character was Thomas’s second wife (or should that be third?), Ester Giersch. Ester had actually been Sarah’s nursemaid. It seems poor Mary suffered from what we would now call postnatal depression and couldn’t cope on her own. Thomas had somehow inveigled himself into the employ of an early New York photographer, and when the old man died (conveniently?) took over the burgeoning business. It flourished, but mainly because of Ester’s acumen and drive. She seems to have been a powerhouse of a woman. Thomas was a waster who liked taking artistic pictures, perhaps even had talent, but Ester pulled the strings and made it all profitable. They ended up with a string of studios across the city. Sarah was a beautiful, beautiful girl. When she was 17, she married Ester’s nephew Georg Giersch, who became known as G
eorge Gish.

  George was somewhat older than his new bride and Ester moved him in to take over the business and effectively paid off Thomas, who then disappeared from the scene. Sarah said she remembered her father crying when he left, but Ester told her that was from weakness and shame.

  And this is where the story takes its darkest turn. Ester said Thomas had killed Sarah’s mother, Mary. The poor woman’s body was found floating in the East River.

  In my mother’s notes made a lifetime later, she’s put an exclamation point and question mark after the word killed. Sarah seemed vague on the exact circumstances. I don’t know whether Thomas’s mistreatment drove Mary to drown herself or he physically held her head under. Sarah certainly couldn’t remember exactly what Ester said, but the message was clear. Her father later tried to get in touch, apparently, but Sarah understandably cut him out of her life.

  I found a grave for a Thomas Ramsden of the right age in White Plains, just north of New York City. He died in 1900, a few days into the new century. He was supposedly only 58, but it now seems he was really 64. He had escaped the fiery pit of hell long enough.

  So there you have it. If we combine what I know of Thomas Ramsden’s later life and your information on Thomas Ramsbottom’s beginnings, we have the picture of a complete monster. And I thought my no-good ex-husband was a scoundrel! But seriously, I am really grateful you got in touch and that we have been able to complete the puzzle together. It reminds me why I find genealogical research such a fascinating hobby. All those skeletons just waiting to be unearthed!

  With fond regards

  Linda Esther Yarborough

  PS They were a family of photographers, so I have quite a few pictures taken around that time. I have attached one that captures all the players in our drama. The more I look at it, the more I can sense the underlying tensions and secrets.

  There were actually two files attached to the email. The first was a scan of Sarah Ramsden’s death certificate giving the cause of death as ‘Asphyxia due to Drowning’. The deceased was described as a white housewife of Irish birth who had been resident in the United States for five years. Her lifeless body was found on Blackwell’s Island, which Jane established to now be Roosevelt Island, a narrow strip of land in the middle of the East River, just south of where it is joined by its Harlem sister.

  If the certificate was poignantly haunting, the accompanying monochrome photograph induced a range of emotions from triumph to sadness, to a vague, questioning uncertainty. Jane sat and stared at it for a full 15 minutes, zooming in on the faces, looking for indications of character or emotion. Or guilt.

  It featured four people in what appeared to be a grandly furnished drawing room, but on closer inspection was a painted backdrop. Seated at the front were a smartly dressed couple. The man had his hand resting on the woman’s and both were smiling, though her expression looked forced, seemingly betrayed by eyes closer to tears than laughter. But she was stunning, with shining dark hair contrasting with the palest of skins, her slim figure cloaked in an elegantly simple dress.

  The woman standing behind was altogether sterner in appearance. There was no attempt at warmth and her plain features had a hardness that could be read as ambition. She was more matronly in build and in her strong arms she carried an infant child. The little girl was looking slightly away from the camera, but facially appeared to be a mixture of her two seated parents, and all the prettier for it.

  Jane looked again at the man. Proud, confident, happy? Perhaps. He had aged slightly since last she saw him, but still looked younger than his years. He was still blonde and attractive. His clothing now suggested modest success, but he was still Thomas Ramsbottom.

  Blackwell Holme

  ‘I love the colour of your car. What do they call it – I mean this particular shade?

  Jane thought for a second or two. ‘From memory, I think it was “Spirit Green”. Doesn’t really tell you much.’

  ‘Ooh, I think it does. It tells you a lot. Do you believe in spirits, Jane?’

  ‘No. I guess I’m not very imaginative in that department.’

  ‘I don’t think they’re imagination. I think they’re all around us. To an extent that’s why we’re making this trip, isn’t it?’

  Jane looked across at her passenger. Guy’s cousin Betty had an expectant gleam in her eyes.

  Jane’s attention returned to the road ahead before she replied. ‘Thanks again for coming with me at such short notice. I guess I am hoping to find ghosts of the past. Sometimes places talk to you.’

  Betty nodded her agreement vigorously. ‘Well, you were practically passing by my front door and it’s a long time since I’ve been up to Blackwell myself. Not driving doesn’t help. It’ll be fun showing you around. My Sundays are normally quite dull and this is all very exciting!’

  Jane smiled at her passenger’s enthusiasm. ‘I’ve walked around it on Internet but you can’t get everywhere and it’s just not the same. And it’s often good to talk things through with someone else. It can help clarify things in your own mind.’

  Betty had said she only knew the convoluted route taken by the buses, so Jane had her phone’s satnav providing directions. She had muted the voice and was glancing at the screen cradled on her dashboard. It told her to pull into the right lane at a set of red traffic lights, prior to turning up a relatively minor road that climbed higher into the moors. The day was overcast and there was a vague drizzle landing on the windscreen that confused the car’s automatic wipers into unnecessary activity. With the low roof closed, Jane was having to bend sharply forward to see the signals.

  ‘I promised to update you on what I’d found out,’ she croaked huskily through restricted breaths. The lights changed and Jane straightened and turned the wheel. ‘Here we go,’ she said, mainly to herself.

  Having failed several driving tests, Betty was sensitive to the difficulties of junctions, right turns in particular, and had temporarily ceased her normally relentless chatter. She resumed with gusto.

  ‘Yes, on the phone it sounded like you’d got some real hard proof. I guess that’s the difference between you professionals and us amateurs. Or should that be, we amateurs? Anyway, doesn’t matter. I’m afraid I get so excited when I think I’ve found something or someone new, you know, a record of a marriage, another child, the name of a parent, that I don’t necessarily check that it’s, well, 100% right. I add it to my tree and then look for the next one. I might even celebrate with a cheeky chocolate biscuit!’ She smirked and looked across for approval. ‘If I’ve been naughty and bought some,’ she added contritely.

  Jane eyes flicked sideways again and caught the tail end of the grin. ‘We all make mistakes from time to time,’ she conceded. ‘Genealogy is relatively easy when people stay put. When they move, certainly when they leave the country, it gets a bit more challenging.’

  ‘And you said my great-great…’ Betty shrugged away the calculation. ‘...whatever it was, great, something, grandfather adopted an alias as well?’

  ‘That’s right. “Bottom” was changed to “den” – he became Thomas Ramsden.’

  Betty’s eyes narrowed. For some reason that name resonated, but Jane was still talking and the thought passed.

  ‘It’s as if he really didn’t want to be found. Which, of course, having been a total bastard, he didn’t.’ Jane felt a twinge of guilt and quickly added, ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t be so rude about your antecedent. It’s just… well, everything says he wasn’t a very nice man. But we’ve all got some crap in our ancestral closet. It’s not our fault and it doesn’t change…’ She momentarily hesitated as she pondered the truth of what she was saying. ‘It doesn’t change who we are.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more. That’s so, so right,’ gushed Betty. ‘We are who we choose to be. I’m a big believer in karma. “According as you act, and according as you behave, so will you be. A person of good acts will become good.” And good things will happen to them. That’s my mantra.’

&nbs
p; ‘Shame about our bad acts,’ mumbled Jane, her words lost under the noise of the engine as it laboured with the incline.

  The road had become lonely as it crossed a barren hilltop, the treeless landscape dominated by tufts of reed and yellow-green marsh grass growing in peaty bog. Jane felt her mood starting to mirror the desolation and pulled herself together.

  ‘So, let me tell you the full story,’ she said.

  ‘I’m all ears.’ Betty folded her arms over her seatbelt and sat up as straight as she could in the low bucket seat.

  ‘Okay,’ began Jane. ‘So, last time we met I told you that your death record for Thomas Ramsbottom was wrong. It wasn’t our man. And you said you’d heard a suggestion he might have deserted his family and gone to America?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I remember. I thought he looked too nice in that photograph, but I’ve never been a good judge of men.’

  ‘Well,’ continued Jane, ‘I found a Thomas Ramsbottom on a ship’s manifest arriving in New York in 1873.’

  ‘How exciting!’

  ‘Yes. His age was right and it turned out he was travelling with someone who lived in the same village. They were heading for the coal fields of Ohio. His companion had family out there already.’

  ‘Thomas had been a coal miner hadn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right,’ confirmed Jane. ‘He’d also worked in a cotton mill. But there’d been a boiler explosion that killed his oldest son.’

  ‘How awful!’

  ‘His wife was pregnant at the time and they named the new baby after the boy who died. And then Thomas swans off to a find a new life, leaving her and six kids in his wake.’

  ‘Dreadful, simply dreadful. Can’t some men be so, well, dreadful?’ Betty sounded almost close to tears.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ consoled Jane. ‘They’re all long dead and I think they were probably better off without him. I’m afraid he had more lives to wreck in America.’