Beneath the Soil
Authors: Fay Sampson
Table of Contents
Recent Titles by Fay Sampson from Severn House
The Suzie Fewings Genealogical Mysteries
IN THE BLOOD
A MALIGNANT HOUSE
THOSE IN PERIL
FATHER UNKNOWN
THE OVERLOOKER
BENEATH THE SOIL
Fay Sampson
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First published in Great Britain and the USA 2014 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
9â15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.
eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2014 by Fay Sampson.
The right of Fay Sampson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Sampson, Fay author.
Beneath the soil. â (A Suzie Fewings genealogical mystery; 6)
1. Fewings, Suzie (Fictitious character)âFiction.
2. MurderâInvestigationâFiction. 3. Women
genealogistsâEnglandâFiction. 4. Detective and mystery
stories.
I. Title II. Series
823.9'14-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8373-5 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-518-5 (ePub)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.
âI
don't believe it!'
Suzie's cry of delighted astonishment burst from the study, where she had settled for an evening's session of family history.
Not long ago, the family history website she subscribed to had added the British Newspaper Archive to its resources. It held huge and potentially exciting possibilities for news of her ancestors, stretching right back to 1710. It would be an enormous job to trawl through it, keying in the names and dates of all her forebears who had lived in the intervening three centuries. So far, she had turned up a few fragments of stories. An ancestor fined for letting his trees overgrow the highway. Obituary notices for another pair of great-great-grandparents. The sad inventory for the sale of a family farm. It all added colour, even if it wasn't sensational.
She hadn't tried it until this evening for her great-great-grandparents Richard and Charlotte Day. Which should she try first? Richard's name? Or Charlotte's? But the latter involved two surnames: her maiden name, Taverner, and her married name, Day.
She took the simpler choice and typed in Richard Day with his birth and death dates.
Two hundred and forty-three entries. He was clearly not the only man with that name. Quickly she scrolled through the abstracts. Most were in the wrong part of the county, or a different occupation.
Suddenly, one name leaped out at her: â
Aggett Cottages
'. Swiftly she checked her files. Yes! St Nectan. That major nineteenth-century move from the country to the edge of the city, after all those centuries of tilling the land: 9 Aggett Cottages.
With growing excitement she struggled to read what came next in the brief extract from the article. The optical character recognition wasn't great. The digitized form of the newsprint came across sadly mangled.
â
Aug 2â¬, Aggett Cottages. Richard Day, dockqard lakourev, was ^oken by breâfhul cries from the £ouse ne^t door
.'
But the meaning was clear.
She was leaning forward eagerly now. This was better than she had expected. What was the cause of those dreadful cries?
She clicked on
VIEW
to read the full newspaper entry.
This time, the image of the original newsprint sprang up before her, clearly legible. All she needed to do was to enlarge it. She clicked on the + symbol and watched the highlighted column zoom towards her. Now she could read the whole story.
Richard Day, dockyard labourer, asleep with Charlotte and their children, had been woken by those dreadful cries in the night. Richard had run next door to find his neighbour, Maud Locke, dead on the kitchen floor with her throat cut. There was no sign of her husband.
Suzie sat back, shocked by this unexpected drama.
Hurriedly, she set up a new search for â
Maud Locke
'. Only three hits. First was the article she had already seen. The second reported that Anthony Locke, also a dockyard labourer, had been apprehended at his brother's house and would be sent to the Assizes on trial for murder.
The third recorded his execution by hanging.
Suzie's first instinct was to run into the garden, to share the colourful story with Nick. Her great-great-grandfather, coming across the horrific scene, the woman next door lying in her kitchen in a pool of blood. Gruesome, but the kind of story that was like gold dust to family historians.
Yet now she sat there, imagining the reality. This had happened to real people. To her people. Murderer and victim were a couple like Richard and Charlotte. Living in the same conditions, doing the same work. Subject to the same difficulties and privations. How nearly might what had happened to Anthony and Maud Locke have been the fate of Richard and Charlotte Day? She shivered. Had their children woken in the night? Her great-grandmother Elizabeth Day had been six years old.
She ran off copies, snatched the last sheet from the printer and sped in search of someone to share this with.
Millie had spread her teenage limbs over the flowered cushions of the cane settee in the conservatory. She had been flipping through the pages of a magazine, but let it fall with the amused tolerance that only fifteen-year-old daughters, going on sixteen, can show to their parents.
âDon't tell me. You've discovered that we're descended from Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton.'
âWell, no. But what would you say to murder?'
Millie swung her feet to the floor. âDo tell!'
But Suzie stepped past her through the open doors of the conservatory into the summer garden. Nick was mowing the lawn. Suzie knew that this was not a chore, as it would be to her, but a source of satisfaction to his architect's mind to see the stripes of cut grass laid out with geometrical precision.
She waited till he neared the edge of the flower bed and waved the papers at him. She thought how youthful he still looked, with his wavy black hair and shorts, as he switched off the motor and came across the lawn towards her.
Suddenly Suzie felt a little foolish. Was it really right to get so excited over something that had happened a hundred years ago, to someone she was descended from, but whom she had never met?
The smile in Nick's deep blue eyes reassured her. âGo on, then. What have you found this time?'
âI was searching through the newspaper archives and I found that my great-great-grandparents in St Nectan were living next door to a house where a murder took place. Richard Day heard screams and found the body.'
âPoor man!'
Millie was standing behind Suzie, her face now bright with enthusiasm. âA real murder! Fantastic!' Then her face stilled. âExcept that it isn't, is it? I mean, like, it
was
real. Great-great-great-granddaddy walking in and finding that. Gross.'
You form a picture of your ancestors in your mind, Suzie thought. And then something else turns up and the picture changes. Richard would never have been the same person after that discovery.
A tiny voice at the edge of her imagination whispered, âIs there the remotest possibility that Anthony Locke's murdering his wife might have anything to do with Richard living next door?'
She would never know.
âSo I suppose we're off to St Nectan today?' Nick looked enquiringly at her over Saturday breakfast. âSee the scene of crime.'
âWell, no, actually.' Suzie stirred honey into her porridge. âI mean, I
would
like to go back there. Have another look at the house where it happened. But we did that a couple of years ago. Richard and Charlotte's house, I mean. You took some photos. And it's an eighty-mile round trip. I was thinking of something nearer home. Richard Day started out as an agricultural labourer. We've tracked down the farm where he was apprenticed by the Overseers of the Poor when he was eight. We've seen the farm above Moortown where he was working when he met Charlotte. And we know a lot about where her family lived when they moved to the city. But the one place we've never been to is the last farm he was working at, before they took off to St Nectan and he ended up labouring in the city dockyard.'
âFine. So it's a pub lunch in Moortown. How about the Angel?'
âGreat. Then we have to find Saddlers Wood.'
Nick looked up as Tom sauntered into the kitchen. Millie was already pouring herself fruit juice.
âI don't suppose either of you want to come? Fit one more piece into the family jigsaw?'
âNo thanks,' Millie sighed. âHonestly, Mum, can't you think of anything else to do on a Saturday afternoon?'
âWell, actually, yes,' Tom smiled. âI wouldn't mind a pub lunch and a spot of exploration. Count me in. Is there any more of that porridge?'
Suzie felt a glow of affection as he settled into a place at the table beside her. She couldn't really expect her teenage children to share the same passion for family history. She was lucky that Nick was so willing a companion on these expeditions, driving her to remote villages all over the county, exploring farms and churches where her forebears had worked and worshipped, where they had been baptized, married and buried. But it was a particular joy when one of the children indulged her enthusiasm and came too.
Millie put down the carton of fruit juice. âFine. So that's me left on my own.'
âYou can usually find plenty to do on a Saturday. Won't you be going into town with Tamara?'
âNot today. She's got to go to a family wedding ⦠Oh, all right, then. If Tom's going to go â¦'
âIt's not compulsory,' Suzie pointed out.
âMum, I said, I'm coming.'