The Grave Tattoo
She raked through her drawer till she found some nicotine gum. She didn’t want to talk to the Hammer, but she had a nasty feeling that it was going to come down to that. Not that the prospect frightened her; it was the thought of another pointless fencing match that would take the case no further forward that she dreaded. But there was no getting away from it. This was a murder inquiry and in these days of cold case squads, it could be professional suicide to leave any stone unturned, as several of her senior colleagues had been finding out lately.
Please let Kumar find Jane Gresham, she thought. And please let Jane Gresham know where we can find Tenille.
Matthew smiled at his pupils, a genuine smile that transformed the sulk his face had become in repose these days. It pointed up his resemblance to his sister, whose more optimistic take on life had given a sunnier cast to her features. It was a smile his son saw more than anyone else, and his pupils had learned to relax under its warmth. ‘You’ve all done really well,’ he said, the praise sincere. He’d been pleasantly surprised by how far everyone had managed to trace back their family trees and the detail they’d managed to acquire. The executions varied, admittedly. A couple were computer-generated, complete with scanned-in photographs; both produced by the children of incomers whose parents worked in IT. But even Jonathan Bramley, whose handwriting still made Matthew despair, had made a decent attempt at making his family tree look as it should.
‘This is going to make a very impressive centrepiece for our end-of-term display,’ Matthew continued. ‘So we’ve got plenty of time to see if we can go even further back into history. What we’re also going to be doing is looking in more detail at the sort of lives our ancestors led–what their living conditions were like, what sorts of jobs they did, what their family relationships were.’
He smiled again. ‘But before we get into that, I want Sam and Jonathan to come up here with their family trees.’
The two boys eyed each other as they walked to the front of the class. Sam looked wary, Jonathan surly. Sam’s project was beautifully laid out, clear and informative. Jonathan’s looked even more wanting alongside it, but it was clear enough for Matthew’s purposes. ‘Have you two looked at each other’s work?’ Matthew asked, squatting down so he was on a level with both boys.
Both shook their heads. ‘OK. Now, turn around to face the class and hold them up so we can all see them.’ Matthew paused while they did as they were asked. The first thing we notice with these two family trees is that both Sam and Jonathan can trace their descent back several generations. That’s because they both come from families that are local. It’s only been in the last thirty years or so that people have become so mobile. Before that, most people stayed pretty close to the place where they’d been born. If they moved more than twenty miles or so, it was generally because of the need to find work. My grandfather, for example, moved from Cornwall to Cumbria because he was a miner and the tin mines in Cornwall were closing. But he heard there was work here mining slate and so he left his home and his family and came to Cumbria. He married a local girl, and so he stayed.
‘Sam and Jonathan come from a long line of Cumbrians. And if we look back in time six generations,’ Matthew said, standing behind the boys and running his finger back up the branches, ‘we find something very interesting indeed. Here’s Sam’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, Arthur Clewlow. And here’s Jonathan’s great-great-great-grandmother May Bramley. And her name before she was married was May Clewlow. And then if we look one branch higher up the tree, we can see that Jonathan and Sam’s family come from a common root–the marriage between Arnold Clewlow and Dorcas Mayson in August 1851.’ He rumpled their hair.
‘So if the body in the bog is Sam Clewlow’s monkey ancestor, Jonathan, I guess he’s made a monkey of you too.’
Jane rubbed her eyes, but they felt just as gritty and tired when she opened them again. There was no question about it, parish registers had never been compiled with an eye to legibility. Crabbed scrawls vied with minuscule script, curlicues confused her and abbreviations puzzled her. Even with the aid of a magnifying glass, it was a struggle to make sense of the entries. She didn’t envy the poor sods charged with the data entry of the records that had already been made available online. It also made her wonder just how accurate those online records were. She was accustomed to reading old manuscripts, but there were some entries she’d had to give up on, others that were barely decipherable and yet more whose interpretation was debatable. Had a weaver in Ambleside in 1851 really called his son Endocrine? She thought not, but could imagine no other word that fitted the scribble.
The task Jane had set herself was wearisome and far less entertaining than her usual research. Generally when she was pursuing her scholarly interests, she would come across interesting little asides and byways that provided some leaven in the lump. But the County Records Office was all lump.
Jane sighed and turned back to another dusty volume. She sincerely hoped Dan was having more success than she was.
Jake sat cross-legged on the bed, his laptop open before him. The dial-up connection via the phone point was tediously slow compared to wireless access, but he wanted privacy for his piracy. He booted up Jane’s email program and was pleased to see that, as he’d suspected, she’d left her password stored on the dial-up screen. He hesitated for a moment. What he was planning was about as shabby as it got. And Jake didn’t like to think of himself as shabby. But he had his future to consider. Frankly, a little shabbiness was neither here nor there if that was all that stood between him and the literary find of the century.
That was all the argument he needed to overcome his scruples. Jane’s inbox contained a stack of emails that had been read and saved as new; Jake knew from experience that these were emails that she had either not yet answered or else was keeping close to hand for easy reference. There was only one unread message in the box, and as soon as Jake saw the sender’s name, his curiosity burned harder. If Anthony Catto was writing to Jane, it was most likely something to do with her research. But if he read it before Jane, she would realise someone had hacked her account. And nobody but he had her account details. That realisation would scupper any chance he had of getting her on his side.
The alternative was to open it and then delete it. If it was important, he could always fake an email from Jane to Anthony asking him to resend it. Before he could have second thoughts, he opened the email.
Dear Jane,
I’ve been in touch this morning with the document team at the British Library and they’ve agreed to examine the letters with a view to authentication and attribution. Well done you for finding them and for understanding their potential significance.
After our conversation yesterday, I remembered something that does loosely tie in to your hypothesis. WW wrote in 1841 re the Windermere area: ‘So much was this region considered out of the way until a late period that persons who had fled from justice used often to resort thither for concealment, and some were so bold as not infrequently to make excursions from the place of their retreat for the purpose of committing fresh offences.’ It seems a rather curious thing for him to say unless he had some personal knowledge, don’t you think?
Let me know how you fare with Dorcas.
Best Wishes
Anthony
‘Son of a bitch,’ Jake said softly. So she had found something after all. Something that gave support to her Fletcher Christian theory.
Eager now, he called up Jane’s sent mail. The last item in the box was addressed to Dan Seabourne. He remembered Dan–his smart repartee, his groomed good looks and his thinly-shrouded dislike of Jake. Dan had always been close to Jane. If she was going to confide in any of her colleagues, he would be the one. Impatiently, he opened the email and knew he’d struck gold. Jane referred to a letter from Mary Wordsworth about some mysterious material in William’s hand. She’d also included a copy of a letter from their son John. Supposedly to help Dan in searching for Dorcas Mason’s descendants at F
amily Records. Hastily, Jake copied both emails and forwarded them to his own mailbox. Then he composed a quick note to Anthony Catto, posing as Jane, claiming to have accidentally deleted Anthony’s message and asking him to send it again. His final act was to delete copies of what he’d sent. A computer expert would doubtless be able to recover what he’d done, but he didn’t imagine his laptop would ever attract the interest of one of those. He’d done enough to cover his tracks, he was convinced.
He closed down Jane’s account then opened his own email, checking the forwarded messages had arrived safely in his mailbox. Then he reached for his mobile and called Caroline. ‘I know what she’s got,’ he announced without preamble when she answered the phone.
‘She told you?’
‘Not exactly. I hacked into her email.’
‘So is it good?’
Jake ran through what he had uncovered. ‘There was definitely something,’ he concluded. ‘Whether it’s still around is a different story. But as long as I can get alongside her, we can let Jane do the legwork.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Caroline said slowly. ‘No reason why we shouldn’t try to steal a march on her. By all means, carry on with our original plan. It won’t hurt to know exactly where Jane is up to. But if we can get to Dorcas’s descendants ahead of Jane, so much the better.’
‘How are we going to do that?’
‘We’ll hire a professional to search the records in London.’ Caroline was brisk and businesslike.
‘Where would we find one of those?’
‘I know a probate lawyer at Lincoln’s Inn. He’s always having to track down stuff like that. You’ve no idea how people lie when there’s money at stake. So where is she now?’
‘I don’t know. I tried to follow her this morning but I lost her thanks to some roadworks.’
‘Never mind. At least you’ve got something to show for the day. I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything from London. And good luck with Jane, darling. Do what you have to do.’
The rain that drizzled relentlessly over the Lake District was also soaking Derbyshire. Tenille was oblivious to it. Her backpack was a pillow between her head and the rain-spattered window of the bus that dawdled up from Ashbourne to Buxton. It was her fourth bus of the day and she was weary to her bones.
Oxford hadn’t had much to offer in the way of shelter. Because there were people on the city centre streets well into the small hours, there were also police officers patrolling. The few possible places she spotted in the area round the bus station were already occupied by people she didn’t want to doss down next to, even if they’d been willing to share. She didn’t want to go too far from the bus station either, in case she couldn’t find her way back for the early bus that would take her on the next leg of her journey. She’d ended up in an alley behind a restaurant, squeezed in between two dumpsters that stank of rotting food. Her sleep had been fitful because she was so cramped that she kept waking with pins and needles in her legs. The night had seemed to go on forever.
By the time Tenille dragged herself back to the bus station, she was seriously questioning the wisdom of her plan. Maybe she should just head for the nearest cop shop and hand herself in. It couldn’t be more uncomfortable than last night. But by the time she’d breakfasted on a bacon butty and a can of Coke, her resolve had reasserted itself. She’d climbed on board the 7.22 to Banbury, determined to make it to Fellhead. She wasn’t sure what Jane would be able to do. But Jane was the only adult in her world that she trusted to be able to do something. And besides, it was Jane who had got her into this mess. It was Jane’s job to get her out of it.
I had often mused about what sort of captain I would make should I ever be fortunate enough to become master of my own ship. And I confess that many times on the outward voyage I had considered how differently I would run the ship from my captain. Putting these notions into practice proved to be no mean feat. I knew I would have to master those gestures that would indicate to the men that their welfare was at my heart, that I deserved their respect and that I was worthy of command. I wanted to enforce discipline without autocracy, and so from the very start I encouraged the men to hold meetings to discuss how we should proceed. On the second day after the mutiny, I ordered the royals to be cut up and sewn into uniforms for the crew, giving up my own officer’s kit to provide a blue edging. I believed that this would impress the natives, but also that it would engender a spirit of comradeship and orderliness among my crew. I also supervised the division of the goods and chattels of those who had left with Bligh. In short, I tried to be the man I would have liked to serve under.
20
Matthew couldn’t hide his pleasure at Jane’s absence when he arrived at the farm with Gabriel for their regular Friday teatime visit. With Jane not there, he was deferred to, his opinion seldom challenged, his presence welcomed gratefully as if he were bestowing a precious gift. Which, of course, he believed without reservation that he was.
And so he enjoyed bringing Gabriel for tea with his grandparents. Naturally, they fussed over the baby, but Matthew regarded that as releasing him from any tedious aspect of Gabriel’s care. He loved his son, no question of that. He simply wasn’t very keen on the practical application of that love, particularly where it pertained to the changing of nappies and the preparing of feeds.
‘Jane gone back to London, then?’ he said, almost as soon as he’d settled Gabriel on the ragrug on the kitchen floor with a clutch of toys around him. ‘I thought she’d soon get bored back here.’
‘She’s anything but bored,’ Judy said. ‘She’s making real progress. She found a letter at the Jerwood Centre yesterday and she went off first thing to the County Records Office at Carlisle to try and track down some woman who worked for the Wordsworths.’
‘Waste of time,’ Matthew scoffed. ‘But that’s academia for you. Any will-o’-the-wisp that catches their attention and they’re off, grant application in hand, desperate to talk it up.’
‘Jane’s not like that,’ Judy said, sitting down on the floor beside Gabriel and tickling his tummy. Gabriel gurgled and laughed, squirming under her fingers. ‘She really believes in what she’s doing.’
Matthew rolled his eyes. ‘She should try working in the real world for a week, see how she liked that. Doing what I do would have her on her knees in a day.’
Allan Gresham walked into the kitchen in time to hear his son’s words. He didn’t have to be told who he was referring to. ‘Jane does work in the real world, Matthew. She serves behind a bar, she teaches students. She’s never gone a summer without having a job. And on top of that, she does her own work. You can’t accuse your sister of sitting back and taking handouts.’
‘Maybe not. But she gets to do exactly what she wants. Always has. She doesn’t have responsibilities like I have.’
Allan said nothing. He had learned to ignore his son’s perennial discontent. Engaging with it only reinforced it. He walked across the kitchen and put the kettle on as Jane walked in. Her face lit up when she saw her nephew waving legs and arms in the air. ‘Hello, Gabriel,’ she said, crossing straight to where her mother was playing with him. She squatted down and held out a finger for him to grasp. ‘God, he’s gorgeous,’ she said. Her voice changed to the register people adopt with babies. ‘You are gorgeous, aren’t you, Mr Man?’
‘And hello to you too, Jane,’ Matthew said.
‘Did you have a good day?’ her mother asked, stepping into her familiar role as buffer zone before Jane could respond.
Jane sat back on her heels. ‘Disappointing. It’s bizarre. It’s as if this woman disappears into thin air. I’ve got the birth certificate, I’ve seen the letter from Mary saying she was leaving in 1851 to get married, but there’s no trace of the marriage certificate. I searched all the registers up to the end of 1853, but not a sign. And no death recorded either. Dorcas Mason vanished without trace.’
Matthew hid his surprise at a name he’d seen only that day. ‘Who?’ he said.
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bsp; Jane picked up her nephew and got to her feet, smiling into his face. ‘Dorcas Mason. She worked as a maid for the Wordsworths.’
‘Why are you interested in a maid? Was old Willie having a bit of hanky panky with the serving girls?’
Jane glared at him. ‘Even if he hadn’t been a devoted and faithful husband, by the time she came to work for the family I think he was well past being interested.’
‘So what’s the big deal about Dorcas what’s-her-name?’ Matthew persisted, pretending uncertainty.
‘Mary Wordsworth found some sort of manuscript after William’s death. Whatever it was, it upset her. She sent it to her son John because she said it touched him and his family. John was married to Isabella Christian Curwen, the daughter of Fletcher Christian’s cousin.’