The Ghosts of Paradise Place by Andy Conway

Author:Andy Conway [Conway, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: teen & young adult time travel, fiction historical, gaslamp, alternative history, Box set, fantasy historical, urban fantasy series
Publisher: Wallbank
Published: 2019-07-20T22:00:00+00:00

— 19 —

IT WAS CLEAR THAT TIMOTHY wouldn’t give her a chance. There was no point in trying to make the deadline. She would be sacked on Friday because she did not have enough to show him. So screw it, she thought. She would simply pursue her investigation

The only thing she could do was amass data. Collect as much historical evidence as she could, and work from there. It was what she was trained to do. It was her only skill.

She had Florence Cawley’s name and the date of her death. From there she could look her up. She had already found the official reference to her death in the microfiche catalogue, and from there she got her birth date. There was no record of a marriage. She was a spinster witch.

It was approaching her tea break, so she rushed over to the Register Office, through Paradise Forum, over the bridge, across Centenary Square, to the old building facing the Repertory theatre. She spent five pounds on each certificate, the birth certificate and the death certificate, and took them back to her desk.

There was a daughter’s name on the death certificate. A curious thing. If Kath somehow was to go into the past and live in Victorian Moseley, she would have a daughter. She would have a daughter and call her Margaret. She couldn’t imagine choosing that name for her own daughter. So perhaps the father had chosen it. Some man she was to marry in the future. In the past. But there was no record of a marriage. And it didn’t make sense that Kath, who didn’t look much older on the photograph shortly before her death, could have a daughter called Margaret, aged 20 years.

She searched on Margaret Cawley and found her birth date, but she wasn’t there in the microfiche of deaths. She must have changed her name. She would have been married. Kath found her marriage date. Valentine’s Day, 1912. She had married Charles Barrow. From there she found Margaret Barrow in the death fiche. She had died in 1921, aged 53.

It was too late to go to the Register Office and get the death certificate. They would be closing, and Kath had to stay at her post.

Timothy left at five and gave her a nod. Smirking as he entered the elevator.

She pondered how to find more information on Margaret Barrow without the death certificate. It was something of a dead end until the Register Office opened in the morning.

Wills. The record of wills. She found them in a set of giant ledgers bound in red leather. Every will and testament recorded. She found the relevant year and rifled through the pages to find to whom Margaret Barrow had left her fortune.

Something naggingly familiar in the name. Margaret Barrow. As if she had heard the name before. A celebrity of some kind? Had she become famous? Perhaps an actress.

Margaret Barrow had left a modest fortune to her surviving children. So her husband had died before. That was lucky.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.