The Lost Ancestor (13 page)

‘What’s the matter, Mary?’ Edward asked,
sensing her sudden detachment.

‘You mentioned our family.  What on
earth will Caroline, Edie and Mother make of it all?  I doubt they’ll talk
to us ever again.’

‘Your mother will be absolutely fine, Edie
will come round eventually and Caroline—well, who cares about
her
anyway?’  Edward squeezed her hand.  ‘At least you won’t have to
worry about getting used to a new surname!’

Mary smiled and hoped that it was enough
to cover the growing discomfort inside.  She knew, as soon as she saw the
note, what Edward was going to do tonight.  Perhaps she had known sooner,
when they had first made love.  But now it was real and serious, they
would have to tell people.  Tell the other servants at Blackfriars. 
Tell Mrs Cuff and Mr Risler.

Edward began to kiss Mary’s neck, moving
his lips slowly up towards her mouth.  Mary banished thoughts of the
future and reciprocated his kiss.  Edward gently lifted the blanket from
Mary’s shoulders and allowed it to fall to the petal-strewn floor before
beginning to unbutton her dress.

An
unfamiliar sound woke Mary.  Birds singing unusually close by.  She
opened her eyes in horror; she was lying on the wooden floor in the upper part
of the old folly.  ‘Edward!’ she gasped, leaping up and pushing away the
pile of blankets under which they had slept.  She pulled open the door and
peered outside.  The dark, night sky was beginning to yield to
daylight.  The other servants were bound to be awake by now. 
‘Edward, get up!  We need to get back to the house.’

Edward’s eyes pinged open on hearing the
urgency in Mary’s voice.  Instantly he knew what had happened.  The
pair quickly pulled on their clothes.  Mary began to scoop up the
blankets.

‘Leave all that, I’ll come back for it
later,’ Edward urged.

‘What about the candles?  Someone
might see them.’

‘It’ll be okay, nobody ever comes over
here.’

The pair dashed back down the spiral
staircase, aware that they were running out of time.  Edward rowed back to
the boathouse as fast as he could, the oars chopping desperately and noisily at
the water.  Mary’s eyes darted all around them, certain that someone would
see them. 
Everybody
—even the gardeners—rose early.

‘Let’s split up.  I’ll go the longer
way round past the ice house and back in through the meat larder.  See you
at breakfast,’ Edward panted, kissing Mary on the lips.

‘Bye, fiancé!’ Mary called after him,
hurrying back towards the kitchen.

Although
her son, Cecil was now the Earl of Rothborne, Lady Rothborne occasionally liked
to flex and exhibit her seniority within the Mansfield family.  Following
the death of her husband, she insisted on having his former bedroom, located as
it was in the most favourable position of all the rooms in Blackfriars. 
It was situated on the first floor with windows facing south over the main
gardens and windows facing east over one edge of the lake.  Since being
widowed at the age of fifty-two, she had found the need for very little sleep;
she was usually the last family member to retire for the night and the first to
rise.  Today, like most mornings, she enjoyed standing at the east window
watching as the faintest glimmers of the morning sun began to penetrate the
night sky.  On warmer days, she would open the window to let in the
wondrous sound of the blackbirds’ dawn chorus on the early morning
breeze.  For Lady Rothborne, there was no time of day quite like it. 
Everything was still.  The world was at peace and happy.  She looked
out of the window, absorbing the minute changes and new things that she could
see, suddenly made visible by the rising sun.  She spotted something
moving on the path beside the lake. 
A deer, perhaps?
she
wondered.  She squinted hard and pressed her face to the window.  Two
people walking.  Running.  They began to grow into focus.

‘The footman and the third housemaid,’ she
said quietly.  ‘Very interesting.’

Lady Rothborne continued to watch until
the pair had separated and disappeared inside the house using two different
entrances.

A wide smile erupted on her face.

Mary
pushed open the kitchen door and braced herself for a tirade in French, but
Bastion was nowhere to be seen.  The kitchen thankfully looked
deserted.  Mary closed the door and heaved a sigh of relief.  She’d
made it back in without being seen.  Now she just needed to get back
upstairs. 
What was the time?

‘Nice night for it,’ a booming, hollow
voice said.

Mary leapt with fright and turned in the
direction of the voice, which she did not recognise.  An unfamiliar man
was sitting at the table clutching a bottle of red wine.  ‘I just stepped
out for…something,’ Mary stammered.

‘Of course you bloody didn’t,’ he said,
slurring his words.  Whoever he was, he was very drunk.  ‘I’ve been
here since… God knows.  Could be days.  Enough time to know that
you’ve been out all night,’ he accused with a lopsided grin and pointing his
finger.  ‘Naughty.  Very naughty.’ 

Mary stepped closer.  He was
well-spoken and, despite being in a dishevelled state, was clearly not a
servant or tradesman.  He was handsome in a rugged, masculine way with
tousled, slick, black hair and a white shirt, almost entirely unbuttoned,
revealing a well-toned chest and stomach.  ‘Are you Lord Rothborne’s
cousin, Sir?’ Mary ventured.

The man grinned again.  ‘Yup. 
But please don’t tell me I look like that ugly little cad.  I rather hoped
I’d inherited Mummy’s beauty.’

‘I’d heard you were coming—I’m a housemaid
here,’ Mary said, wanting to soften him up in the hope that he wouldn’t then
tell anyone about her nocturnal foray, but also desperate to get back to her
room.

Frederick’s eyes lit up.  ‘A
housemaid.  How delectable.’

Mary shrugged, unsure of how to
respond.  ‘It’s okay.’

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, taking a
gulp of wine from the bottle.

‘Miss Mercer.’

‘What’s your
real
name? 
Surely your mother didn’t name you
Miss Mercer?
’ he said with a laugh.

‘It’s Mary,’ she said, a little
uncomfortably.

‘Mine’s Frederick.’ He stood and offered
her his hand to shake.  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mary.’

Mary reluctantly shook the proffered hand
out of duty to her employer and deference to his class.  ‘Nice to meet
you.  I’d better get on.’  Mary began to move towards the door.

‘Of course, keep the Blackfriars’ wheels
turning,’ he muttered, taking another swig of drink.  ‘Before you go,
could you tell me something?’

Mary stopped close to the door and faced
him.  ‘Of course.’

‘Being a housemaid, you must know a bit
about the bedroom department.’

Mary’s face flushed.  ‘Pardon?’

‘I know, bloody crude of me to ask, but
does my dear cousin actually bed his good lady wife?  Hmm?  I mean,
they’ve been married for what six years and there are no signs of any mini
Mansfields yet, are there?  Most peculiar.’

‘I don’t think I’m in any position to talk
about that,’ Mary answered.

‘They have separate rooms though, don’t
they?’

Mary nodded.

Frederick took another swig of wine. 
‘I only ask because I’m next in line to the Blackfriars throne you see. 
If Cecil doesn’t produce an heir, then this—’ Frederick said gesturing the wine
bottle around the room—‘all comes to me.  Every last piece of God-awful
furniture, every last servant. 
You’ll
be mine, Mary Mercer. 
How would you like that?’

Mary was desperate to leave the company of
this awful drunk. 
How can I get away from him?  Time’s running
out! 

Mary’s heart sank: her time had run
out. 

Standing at the door, mouth agape, was Mrs
Cuff.

‘Miss Mercer, what are you doing in here
with Mr Mansfield?  Where’s your uniform?’ Mrs Cuff stammered, quite
unable to believe her eyes.

‘So, sorry, Lady Housekeeper,’ Frederick
said, turning his attention to Mrs Cuff.  ‘All my fault.  Miss Mercer
heard a noise and came to see what the bother was.  I was the
bother.  All my fault.  Now I’m keeping her chatting.  My
humblest, most sincere apologies.’

Mrs Cuff glared at Mary, seeming to accept
the absurd notion that Mary could possibly have heard a noise from three floors
up in the attic.  ‘Right, well, you’d better get into your uniform and get
to work.’

Mary slunk from the room.

‘Cheerio, Mary,’ Frederick called. 
‘Time I went to bed, I think.’

Mary hurried up the stairs to her bedroom,
certain that she would be for it when Mrs Cuff finally caught up with
her.  She opened the door; Clara was just in the process of lifting her
dress up over her body.

‘Where have you been?’ Clara asked.

‘Nowhere exciting,’ Mary replied. 
She no longer trusted that what she said to Clara wouldn’t be gossiped about in
the servants’ hall.

‘Look, I’m sorry about what happened
yesterday, Mary,’ Clara began.  ‘I didn’t mean to betray your trust. 
Can we be friends again?’

‘Just forget it.  Let’s get to work,’
Mary said.

Morton
inserted the memory card from his camera into his laptop and plugged in his
iPhone.  He was sitting in shorts and a t-shirt in his study, sipping at
his fourth cup of coffee of the day.  He drank too much of the stuff;
Juliette was always telling him that he needed to cut back.  She was
right, of course, but it was the one thing that helped him through the
eye-straining slog of staring at a computer screen for hours on end.  The
low bubbling of tourist chatter filtered in through the open study window, the
warm day having brought the visitors to Rye by the coachload.

Morton navigated through the file
directories on his computer until he found the photographs that he had taken on
his camera at Blackfriars.  The first picture was of the back path to the
estate, with the house looming large in the distance.  He lingered on the
image for a few seconds, then turned to the wall of his study covered with
notes, pictures and information from the Mercer Case
.
  He looked
Mary square in the eyes, almost pleading for the time-frozen image to reveal
what had happened on that path that fateful day in 1911.  Turning back to
the laptop, he clicked onto the images taken on his phone; a dull yellow tinge
on each revealed that they were taken in the dimly-lit depths of the
Blackfriars archive.  He knew the contents of the first page: an excerpt
from the Blackfriars wages book.  As he scanned down the page, he caught
Edward Mercer’s name again and scribbled down the date of his last wages: Friday
19
^th
May 1911. 
Where had he gone, just one month after
Mary’s disappearance?  Sacked?  A new job?  Dead? 
The
thought then entered Morton’s mind that maybe, he too had vanished without
trace.  The desire to know more about what happened to Edward was enough
for Morton to hold off temporarily looking at the rest of the images.  A
change of employment would be almost impossible to ascertain; a death search
would be simple.  Opening up the Ancestry website, Morton ran an
open-ended death search and found Edward immediately.  His death was
recorded in the June quarter of 1911 in the Rye registration district.  He
knew that the death may have had nothing to do with Mary’s disappearance, but
since Edward featured on both the family
and
work lists for people close
to Mary around the time of her disappearance, it was certainly an intriguing
lead.

Having become momentarily sidetracked,
ordering a next-day priority death certificate for Edward from the General
Register Office website, Morton switched his focus back to the photographs
taken at Blackfriars.  The second image was of the Day Book, which
mentioned the disastrous start of Mary’s work at Blackfriars.  Morton
re-read the contents of the page then held his breath as he clicked onto the
next image, which he had taken covertly; he hoped that his haste to take the
pictures hadn’t resulted in their being out of focus or illegible. 
Thankfully, the image was clear.  The entries for Monday 10
^th
and Tuesday 11
^th
were brief and routine: food supplies purchased and
landscape works completed around the estate.  Then he came to
Wednesday—the date of Mary’s disappearance.

Wednesday 12
^th
April. 
Lady Philadelphia and some of the female staff returned prematurely from the
hunting trip to Scotland.  Lady Philadelphia suffering from morning
sickness.  Discovered one of the housemaids, Miss Mercer, in Lady
Philadelphia’s bedroom wearing her finest ball gown and some of the most
precious Mansfield jewellery.  Servant dismissed.  Replacement
currently being sought.  Lady Philadelphia much improved upon return to
Blackfriars.  Mrs Cuff.

Morton re-read the entry several times,
trying to absorb the content.  He didn’t know what he had been expecting
to find, but something so trifling and bland left him with a sagging feeling of
disappointment.  Mary had been found wearing the lady of the house’s
clothes and jewellery and was then promptly sacked.  It was understandably
a dismissible offence, but why did Sidney Mersham not want him to see the entry
more than one hundred years later?  Morton stared at the screen.  The
document clearly added new information about Mary’s last known hours, but its
revelation to Morton would not now have damaged the Mansfield reputation: it
was hardly a headline-grabbing scandal.  If it hadn’t been for her subsequent
disappearance, it would have been almost a comical end to her employment with
them. 
What happened next?
he wondered.
 Where did you go
from there, Mary?  What am I not seeing that they don’t want me to see?
 
There was clearly something he wasn’t quite getting.  Morton read the
entries for the rest of the week: nothing of any consequence had been noted but
for the return of the rest of the household from the hunting expedition.

Saturday 15
^th
April 1911. 
Household all returned from hunting trip to Scotland.  Mr Risler remained
in Scotland with Mr Frederick Mansfield for extended break.

Morton looked at his copy of the letter
that Mary had written from Scotland.  It had been postmarked Monday 17
^th
April.  There was a definite overlap in time when Mary was sacked from
Blackfriars and wrote the letter from Scotland whilst the family were also in
that country. 
Did Mary go to Scotland
because
the family were
there?  Was there someone there she ran to?

He clicked the previewer on to the next
image.  It was for the Day Book commencing Monday 17
^th
April.  Only one entry stood out from mundane estate business:

Tuesday 18
^th
April. 
Doctor visited and confirmed that Lady Philadelphia is expecting a child.

Morton looked at the final image taken
secretly at Blackfriars.  It was for the week prior to Mary’s sacking,
commencing Monday 3
^rd
April 1911.  He carefully read the
page.  Among the routines and incidental comings and goings, he noted down
the entry detailing the Mansfield expedition to Scotland.

Wednesday 5
^th
April.  Lord
Cecil, Lady Philadelphia and Mr Frederick Mansfield departed for Boughton House
for the annual deer hunt.  Accompanying staff: Mr Risler, Mrs Cuff, Jack
Maslow, James Daniels, Edward Mercer, Thomas Redfern, Sarah Herriot, Clara
Ellingham, Eliza Bootle, Susannah Routledge, Agnes Thompson.

Morton examined each name. 
Did
Mary go to Scotland to be with one of you?
he wondered as he stared at the
entry.  He looked curiously at the page as a whole.  Something was
different between the first week and the following two weeks.  He clicked
back and spotted it: the handwriting was different.  The week’s entries
beginning Monday 3
^rd
April and Monday 10
^th
April were
written by the same person and signed off with Mrs Cuff’s signature.  The
week commencing Monday 17
^th
April was written by a different hand
and signed by Mr Risler.  When he looked again at the Day Book for early
January, he saw that it had also been signed off by Mrs Cuff.  He could
only surmise that up to the week of Mary’s sacking, Mrs Cuff was solely
responsible for the Day Book, the entries afterwards being completed by Mr
Risler, the butler.  Not that exciting, but again worth noting. 
Morton’s rising fear that Mrs Cuff might have also died around the same time
was allayed when he confirmed her continued employment as housekeeper in the
wages book. 
If she hadn’t died or left Blackfriars, was it then a
simple coincidence that she stopped being the person to sign off the Day Book
after Mary vanished?
  Morton thought maybe not.  He scribbled the
information on a Post-it note and stuck it to the wall.  He clicked
‘print’ on all the images taken at Blackfriars, ran a yellow highlighter over
the relevant parts, then Blu-Tacked them to the wall.

Morton moved to the open window and
watched the plethora of summer tourists pushing their way up the cobbles of
Mermaid Street.  With casual glances to the growing patchwork of evidence
attached to his wall, Morton allowed his mind to wander around the puzzle of
the Mercer Case
. 
The Scotland coincidence bothered him.  Mary
had apparently written a letter from there, severing all ties with her family
in Sussex at a time when the majority of the Mansfield family and their
domestic servants were on a hunting trip in the same place. 

Returning to his laptop, Morton used the
Scotland’s People website to run meticulous searches in their archives using a
variety of name combinations for Mary.  Of the various Mary Mercers that
showed up, each was demonstrably not the correct person.  Yet she had
written a letter postmarked in Scotland.

Drinking the dregs of his coffee, and
vowing it to be his last cup of the day, Morton opened up the digital image of
Mary’s letter.  In the new knowledge of Mary’s dismissal, one phrase stuck
out. 
I have behaved and acted in an unforgivable manner, which, if you
were to learn of the whole matter, would bring embarrassment to the Mercer
name.
 Wearing the mistress of the house’s clothes and jewellery was
not behaving in an unforgivable manner, even by Edwardian standards.

It didn’t take a degree module in
graphology to work out that Mary Mercer was the definite author of the letter,
although having a degree module in graphology compelled Morton to look more
closely.  He zoomed in close to the letter and studied the formation of
the letters carefully.  As he worked, he retrieved lectures from the
stored repositories of his mind, given by his esteemed lecturer, Dr
Baumgartner, whom Morton greatly admired.  Dr Baumgartner had taught him
to study everything as if through a slow-motion macro lens: meticulously,
painstakingly and intricately.  It was because of those lectures that
Morton spotted the anomaly.  Yes, the letter was written by Mary Mercer,
but there was a subtle underlying stress and tension in the way that she had
formed the strokes on the page.  Morton then compared her handwriting to
that found on the note left at Edith’s grave.  That the letter revealed
that she was more stressed and anxious than when she wrote the note placed on her
twin’s grave, spoke volumes to Morton.  He considered the possibilities:
that Mary really did go to Scotland to escape an embarrassing exit from
Blackfriars; that she went to Scotland to go
to
someone from
Blackfriars, or that somehow she was forced to write the letter.  The only
way that Mary could have remained in Scotland was under a pseudonym, since she
failed to appear in any official records there. 
Unless she used
Scotland as a stepping stone to somewhere else,
Morton thought.  He
remembered that Ray Mercer had told him that emigration records had drawn a
blank, but maybe he was searching
English
disembarkation records. 
Morton opened up the Outward Passenger Lists 1890-1960 on the Findmypast
website, filtering the results with a departure place of Scotland. 
Although he was hopeful with this line of enquiry, he was unsurprised to find
that there were no good matches for Mary Mercer.  Spending a lot of time
changing the search parameters returned the same frustrating answer: zero
matches.

Morton noticed that he was slumped in his
chair, having spent a ridiculous number of hours gaping at the laptop
screen.  He rubbed his eyes and stood from the desk.  He returned to
the open window and drew in a long, deep breath, holding it before slowly
releasing it into the still air.  The streets below were much quieter
now.  Morton looked at the time: 4:46.  Juliette would be home any
moment; it was almost time to stop searching.  Almost.  He decided to
use what little time he had left until she arrived throwing the search wide
open.  He removed all the search filters and searched all outward
passenger lists under the name Mercer.  Eight thousand, five hundred and
thirty one results.  A needle in a haystack and a pointless waste of
time.  He removed the forename and surname and simply searched under the
exact birthplace of Winchelsea.  One match.  Edith Leyden. 
Morton clicked to see the original image.  The page pertained to a
crossing of the
RMS Celtic II
from Liverpool bound for Canada,
disembarking 18
^th
December 1925.  Morton scanned down the
alphabetised list of passengers until he found her.

Name:
Mrs Edith Leyden

Last
address in the United Kingdom:
Wisteria Cottage, Winchelsea

Port
at which passenger has contracted to land:
Halifax, Canada

Proposed
address at destination:
4
West Street, Halifax, Canada

Profession,
occupation or calling:
Housewife

Age
of passenger:
32

Country
of last permanent residence:
England

Morton
printed the page then found her return voyage to England two weeks later on
board the
Albania.
  To some family historians, the record provided
an interesting snapshot of a two-week holiday in Canada.  For Morton, it
provided another potential avenue for research.  He now needed to know who
was residing at 4 West Street, Halifax in 1925.  Morton wrote the Canadian
address on a post-it note and attached it to his laptop screen.  He was
about to start up a new search when he heard the front door slamming
shut.  Morton smiled and went downstairs to meet Juliette.  A sharp,
wonderful smell of fresh chips wafted out from the kitchen.  Morton
followed the scent and found a sweaty Juliette in tracksuit bottoms, casual
t-shirt and no make-up, running herself a glass of tap water.