The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7) Read online

  ‘But if you knew where she’d been living in the 1820s..?’ the nephew pushed.

  Morton looked at the three faces vaguely, not understanding. ‘And you think I could just walk up to the house with a metal detector and ask if I can pop into their back garden, start digging, then waltz off with a few carrier bags of guineas?’ he stammered incredulously. He had been asked to do some strange things in his past cases, but this could take the prize for the most bizarre.

  ‘Not exactly like that, no,’ Arthur said.

  ‘They might still be there,’ the niece added.

  ‘I’ve no idea…’ Morton said, happily displaying his bewilderment to the three people sitting opposite him.

  ‘I can see you’re confused,’ Arthur said. ‘Let me put Ann into context for you with a little recent family history. You’ve heard of Fothergill’s—the big London stockbrokers? They got into a bit of trouble during the credit crisis but seem to have pulled out of it okay…’

  Morton nodded, awaiting the inevitable link to Arthur’s family tree.

  ‘That was set up—initially as a bank—by Ann’s son, William, after she died, using the money that he had inherited from her: a substantial amount, I might add. The business prospered and he passed it to his two sons, Frederick and my father, Harry. Now, not to want to cast aspersions on the deceased, my father was a bit of a gambler. He gambled his marriages, gambled his money and tried to gamble the business, before his brother stepped in and bought him out of the company. Fothergill’s flourished. Frederick died a multi-millionaire; my father died penniless.’

  It suddenly dawned on Morton, sitting in this small, neglected bungalow, what was being asked of him. He held his hands aloft, as if surrendering, and gathered up his belongings. ‘Listen, I’m a forensic genealogist, not a gold hunter—you need to employ somebody else—a private detective or… somebody; I don’t know.’ He pushed his chair back and stood to leave.

  Arthur held up his hand. ‘Wait, wait, please,’ he said. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. Yes, there’s an interest—’ he flicked a quick sideways glance to his nephew, ‘—in the guineas, if they still exist, but what I really want to understand is that chasm in Ann’s life between 1820 and 1827, because it clearly had a deep-reaching impact on several generations of the Fothergill family—one, yes, being financial. I don’t want to hire a private investigator—I want to hire you. We’ve read up on some of your past cases and think you’re the right man for the job. What do you say?’

  Morton didn’t know what to say. The case did hold an odd appeal for him, he had to admit. He sat back down, hearing himself saying, ‘I’ll see what I can find, so long as you understand that my research will be directed at Ann Fothergill’s life, with particular reference to the 1820s. What I’m not offering are treasure-hunting services.’

  Arthur smiled. ‘Wonderful. And how will you go about it, exactly, may I ask?’

  Morton supressed a sigh, not liking the implication that his methods were being questioned before he had even begun working on the case. ‘I use a mixture of methods: traditional, like visiting archives, libraries and churchyards; and modern, like DNA testing, the internet and photo analysis. I’ve got subscriptions to all the major genealogy companies and I go to local, regional and national archive centres to find whatever I can—that might be letters, photographs, wills, certificates, newspaper reports… I pull it all together on a wall in my study at home. Basically, I do whatever it takes to complete the case.’

  Arthur nodded. ‘I see.’

  ‘And how long will this take?’ the nephew asked.

  Morton shrugged. ‘If, like your uncle says, you want the job doing thoroughly, then it takes as long as it takes. Some cases I wrap up in a couple of weeks, others take more time.’

  ‘Take as long as you need,’ Arthur reassured.

  ‘Okay. With regard to identifying the father of Ann’s baby, one avenue, which can help corroborate anything else I might find out, is if you take a DNA test,’ Morton said.

  The corners of Arthur’s lips turned down as he nodded in consideration. ‘Yes, if you think it would help.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Morton said, pulling his bag up to the table.

  ‘You’ve got one here already?’ Arthur said.

  ‘I buy a stock of them whenever Ancestry drops the price,’ he said. ‘If we do it now, then I can get it sent off today.’

  ‘Okay,’ Arthur agreed.

  Morton unwrapped the test kit, instructed Arthur to spit into the small test tube, then sealed it and placed it in his bag. A brief smile, then he stood and indicated to the pile of documents on the table. ‘Can I keep hold of these while I work on the case?’

  ‘By all means,’ Arthur said.

  ‘Not this,’ the nephew said, snatching up the gold guinea.

  ‘Can I photograph it, then?’ Morton asked, trying to contain his annoyance.

  The nephew slid the coin back across the table and Morton pulled out his mobile and took several photos of it.

  ‘Thank you. I’ll be in touch,’ Morton said, shaking their hands, and then making his way to the front door, with Arthur following closely behind.

  ‘Cheerio,’ Arthur said.

  Morton said goodbye, stepping out into a cold, windy afternoon and hurried to his Mini. He started the ignition and pulled away—homeward-bound. As he took a fleeting glance back at Arthur Fothergill’s bungalow, an uneasy feeling about this case murmured inside of him. It intrigued him, yes, but it also slightly troubled him.

  Morton arrived back at his home in Rye, East Sussex twenty minutes later. His main reason for taking this ominous case in the first place had been due to its proximity to home. He did not like being away from his wife, Juliette, and their eleven-month-old daughter, Grace, for longer than was absolutely necessary. He bounded up the stairs to his home—The House with Two Front Doors—with an inane grin on his face. In truth, the recent genealogical cases, which he had undertaken, had paled in comparison with his new role as a father, which he loved.

  ‘Hi,’ Morton called out. ‘Hungry and thirsty forensic genealogist here.’

  ‘Shh!’ Juliette whispered, rushing from the kitchen.

  But it was too late. From upstairs came Grace’s startled scream.

  Juliette rolled her eyes: ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Morton apologised. ‘I’ll go.’ He took the stairs two at a time and entered Grace’s darkened bedroom. ‘Hey, hey,’ he soothed, bending over her cot and lifting her out. ‘Did I wake you up?’ He held her to his shoulder and gently jiggled her against him. Her sobbing began to subside, and Morton sank down into the chair beside her cot. Holding her small hands in his, he stood her up on his thighs, and her brown eyes widened as she blinked away her final tears. She looked a comic sight, bouncing up and down with glee, as her dark brown hair—too short to be styled or tied back—shot about in its own dogmatic direction.

  Morton’s eyes began to adjust to the low light. The room was painted in soft pink and white, complemented by drawings of rabbits and flowers in the same colour scheme—a far cry from the room to which they had brought her home eleven months ago. Owing to a slight blunder at the twenty-week scan, they had decorated the room in various shades of blue, believing that they would be having a boy. Morton grinned now at the mix-up. It was their own stupid fault—they had been warned by the nurse conducting the scan that she had not been completely certain of the baby’s gender.

  ‘She can come downstairs now and I’ll feed her,’ Juliette called up.

  ‘Shall we go and have some dinner?’ Morton said to Grace, in a strange, childlike voice which he reserved for dogs and infants. ‘Shall we? Go and see Mummy?’ He carried her down the stairs to the kitchen. ‘What’s on the menu, then?’ he asked.

  Juliette lifted up a small blue pot containing some home-made concoction of hers. ‘Dover sole, butternut squash, apple and kale.’

  ‘Delicious,’ Morton enthused to Grace, as he sat her in the highchair. ‘Think I’ll giv
e that one a miss, though. I meant what are we having?’

  ‘Whatever you’re making, darling,’ she said, pointedly.

  ‘Fish and chips?’ he suggested.

  ‘Perfect,’ Juliette answered, heating up the baby food on the hob.

  ‘Hello, by the way,’ Morton said, kissing her. ‘Did you have a productive day?’

  She stared at him as though he had just asked the most ludicrous question in the world. ‘I haven’t even got around to getting dressed; that says it all.’

  ‘You’ll miss it when you go back to work on Wednesday, though.’

  ‘Of course I will, I’m absolutely dreading it,’ she answered. ‘The only good thing being—’ she placed her hands over Grace’s ears, ‘—that I’ll have adults to talk to.’ She removed her hands from Grace’s head, kissed her on the forehead and began to spoon some of the indistinguishable mush into her mouth.

  ‘Do I not count as an adult, then?’

  Juliette’s look of incredulity answered the question for her.

  ‘Right, on that note,’ Morton began, ‘I’m heading out for a take-away. Any fish preference?’

  ‘Skate wing or plaice, if they’ve got it, thanks.’

  ‘See you in a few minutes,’ Morton called, heading back out the front door.

  Pulling his coat tight, he sauntered up the cobbles of Mermaid Street, then down The Mint to Marino’s fish and chip shop. Come rain or shine, there was always a queue to be found here and today was no exception. But it was always worth the wait; they did the best fish and chips in Rye. Morton stood in line, scrolling through the camera roll on his mobile. Hundreds—thousands—of pictures of Grace over the last few months gave way to the images which he had just taken of Arthur Fothergill’s gold guinea. When he thought of this latest case, an edgy sensation rose in his stomach. What was it about it that bothered him so much? He still could not put his finger on the problem. Maybe it was just the anxiety of starting up another complex case. The ones, which he had taken on since Grace’s birth, had been standard, simple ones which had been completed with little fuss and little travel from home; this one felt as though—given his circumstances—he might have bitten off rather more than he could chew. How many records did he think existed between 1820 and 1827, anyway? He guessed he would find out tomorrow when he commenced work on the case.

  The queue shifted, and Morton shuffled forwards, closer to the tantalising waft of hot batter. He slowly swiped through the images of Grace with a wide grin on his face. Time had implausibly vaulted since her birth and that helpless thing which they had brought home from the William Harvey Hospital now had her own discrete personality. The most recent photographs and videos of Grace were of her standing unaided. Incredible.

  ‘Hello?’ a voice said, not for the first time, Morton realised, pocketing his mobile.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said to the grinning man behind the counter. ‘Two portions of plaice and chips, please.’

  ‘Coming right up.’

  After a short wait, Morton was presented with two open packets of food, which he doused in salt and vinegar, then began the short trek back home, all the while trying to resist the tormenting smell floating up from the take-away bag.

  Arriving home, he didn’t want to make the same mistake as earlier, so he crept inside and noiselessly closed the front door behind him. Silence.

  He popped his head around the lounge door and smiled. Juliette, mouth gaping wide, was fast asleep on the sofa and in her hand, she was clutching the baby video monitor, which meant that Grace was back in her cot asleep. Despite the fish and chips being ready to eat, he decided to let Juliette sleep, so he slowly snuck up the stairs to his study and quietly pushed the door closed.

  Sitting down, he unravelled one of the packets and began to devour the food, as though he had not eaten in several weeks. As he ate, he looked at the four framed photographs which were perched on the edge of his desk; individual pictures that formed the portrait of his fragmented family. On the left was the first ever photo of Grace, taken just minutes after she had been born. She was in his arms wrapped tightly in a white knitted blanket, quietly staring at him, as tears streamed down his tired face.

  Morton shoved a piece of fish into his mouth as his eyes moved on to the next photograph on his desk—his adoptive parents and adoptive brother, Jeremy. He sighed as he stared at them, recalling the day when, at sixteen years of age, the man whom he had called Dad, Peter, blurted out the truth: that he had been adopted. It had taken another twenty-three years for him to reveal finally the identity of his biological mother: Peter’s sister, Margaret, the person he had spent his entire life calling ‘Aunty’.

  The adjacent photograph was the sole known image of Morton’s biological mother and father together. It had been taken on the 5th January 1974—the last day that the two of them would ever spend with one another. It was a photo which often drew his attention whilst he would sit here at the desk. Sometimes, he fantasised about a different life—one where his biological parents had raised him together. The reverie often played out like a choose-your-own-adventure story, where sometimes his father, Jack—an American—would return to England upon discovering that he was going to be a father and the three of them would live happily ever after in a Kentish seaside cottage. Other times, his pregnant Aunty Margaret would defy the will of those encouraging her to give up the child and instead take herself off to the East Coast of America, where the three of them would live in a house on the shores of Cape Cod.

  He smiled at his indulgent sentimentality and looked at the final photograph on his desk: his and Juliette’s wedding day eighteen months ago. The photographer had done his best in trying to Photoshop out the black eye that Morton had received when the genealogical case upon which he had been working had turned violent. The case had made the headlines of the local newspapers after Morton had inadvertently unearthed a seventy-year child-selling racket. The two perpetrators, Shaohao Chen and Tamara Forsdyke were now both serving five-year prison sentences for their parts in the case. The wall in front of Morton, upon which he collated evidence from his genealogical investigations, had been rammed with information pertaining to this difficult case. Now, it was entirely empty.

  He threw a handful of chips into his mouth, wiped his greasy fingers onto his jeans, then took a piece of plain paper and wrote ‘Ann Fothergill’ in large letters and stuck it in the centre of the wall.

  The Fothergill Case had begun.

  Almost an hour later, Morton’s initial investigations ended when a bedraggled Juliette stumbled into the room. ‘I feel like death,’ she said, slumping down dramatically onto the floor.

  ‘You look like death,’ Morton agreed.

  ‘Thanks. Is my dinner cold?’

  Morton placed his hand on the remaining packet of fish and chips. ‘Yep. Time of death…about an hour ago.’

  Juliette groaned. ‘You should have woken me up.’

  ‘Yeah, that would have gone down well. I’ll go and warm them up for you,’ Morton said, sliding out from behind his desk. ‘Come downstairs with me and I’ll tell you about the case I’ve just started.’ He pointed at the wall. Colourful string now threaded out from Ann Fothergill’s name to a small collection of papers which related to her life.

  ‘Oh God, please don’t,’ Juliette replied, following him down the stairs. ‘I think it’d more than I can take. Just heat up the food, stick the television on and let me snuggle up next to you.’

  ‘Okay,’ Morton said with a laugh.

  They entered the kitchen and Juliette slumped down at the table, using her arm as a pillow.

  With precision timing, Grace began to wail.

  Morton looked at Juliette and grinned.

  Chapter Three

  The day was miserable. The whole of the town of Rye—so heavily reliant on tourism—seemed to sit glumly under the despair of the dismal clouds that lingered overhead. Morton had cranked the central heating right up and had even resorted to pulling on his thick winter car
digan to try and counteract the dreariness of the day. He stared out of his study window through the incessant rain to the wet cobbles below. He hadn’t clapped eyes on a single soul for several minutes.

  ‘Come on, get back to it,’ he told himself. He needed to make good use of the next three days; Juliette had taken Grace to visit her mum, Margot, leaving a strangely quiet house behind. He strolled over to the investigation wall. Below Ann Fothergill’s name, Morton had added the key dates for his research: 1820-1827. A very small window of time. Pre-census and pre-civil registration, it was a period not exactly renowned for its abundance of genealogical records. However, in order to understand those seven years of Ann’s life, he needed to have as complete a picture as possible of the years which had preceded and succeeded them. Arthur had furnished Morton with copies of the 1841, 1851 and 1861 censuses. In each of them, Ann was described as a publican and living at the same property: Honey Pot House, Castle Avenue, Dover, Kent. Other residents, including an impressive array of domestic servants and her son, William Fothergill, came and went across the three decades.

  The last official document of Ann’s life was her death certificate. She had died 2nd December 1869, aged sixty-six years at Honey Pot House. Her cause of death was listed as ‘paralysis and age’. The informant of the death was her son, William, who had been ‘in attendance’. According to the scant reference details of Ann’s will, which Morton had accessed last night on the Ancestry website, William had inherited a substantial sum from his mother: ‘…effects under £12,000’. Morton had then placed an order for a full copy of her will.

  About Ann’s early life prior to the period in question, Arthur had given him very little information. Morton logged on to the FindmyPast website and typed ‘Ann Fothergill’ into the search box of their newspaper collection. The top result, dated 10th December 1820, was the report from which Arthur had yesterday quoted significant excerpts: ‘Maidstone Petty Sessions. Saturday—Before the Mayor (R.Haynes, Esq.) and J.L. Lowry, Esq—thirty-sixth appearance of Ann Fothergill, a woman charged with being drunk and disorderly in Strond Street, Dover, on the night of 26th November; also charged with assaulting Police Constable Pennells; also charged with having wilfully, and against the peace of His Majesty the King, very much alarmed the inmates of the Compass Inn, Strond Street, and broken one of the windows of that establishment, to the value of 5s. Mr William Driver, landlord of the Compass Inn, said that on the previous evening the lady, who had so frequently honoured the bench with her presence, came to his house in a happy state of inebriation, and evidently labouring under the effects of some ‘slight sensations’, which rendered her conduct highly reprehensible. On seeing her in this state he politely told her to leave the house, when without the slightest cause she placed herself in an attitude to fight, and ultimately threw a pot at his head which fortunately missed it. She then with the ‘pride and dignity of a queen’, walked towards the door as though she was disgusted and intended to leave the house, but upon opening the door, was confronted by Police Constable Pennells. Prisoner then picked up a chair and threw it with malicious intent at the officer, striking the side of his head. The prisoner, an illiterate vagrant, was according to Superintendent Blundell, only liberated from prison on the previous morning. His Worship expressed his regret that the Court could not dispose of her permanently, for she appeared to be a perfect pest to society. She was then committed to prison for two months.’