The America Ground (The Forensic Genealogist Series Book 4) by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

Author:Nathan Dylan Goodwin [Goodwin, Nathan Dylan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-09-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Morton was once again waiting for the Hastings Reference Library doors to open. He had slept terribly—a spiteful blend of the pain in his shoulder and neck and the images of being bundled off to a desolate farm playing over and over in his mind on a never-ending loop.

He finished his take-out latte and turned to place the cup in the bin, looking over at the run of shops opposite as he did so. Sure enough, the man who had followed him on foot from the car park was there, innocently propped up against the wall eating a sausage roll. He had made, and continued to make, no attempt at discretion. He couldn’t have looked more like a stereotypical villain: jeans, bomber jacket and tattoos creeping up his neck. Where do they find these people? Rent-a-thug?

Morton waved and the man nodded his response.

‘You’re keen!’ a thin wiry man declared, as he unlocked the doors and peered outside. ‘Do come in.’

Morton thanked him and hurried upstairs, bee-lining directly for the parish registers. They were duplicates of those held at The Keep, but the library was much closer to home and, with the sleepless night that Morton had suffered, he wasn’t sure that he could cope with another day of Miss Latimer’s vitriol. He might have ended up hurling a permanent-ban amount of abuse at her.

‘Good morning to you, too!’ a female voice called across to him.

Morton looked up. It was Sally. ‘Oh, sorry. Hello. I’m back again.’

‘Has the case got any better yet?’ she enquired.

‘It’s taken a few dramatic turns,’ Morton answered wryly, as he switched on the microfilm reader.

‘Fascinating,’ Sally said with a grin. ‘If ever you need an assistant, you know where to look. I’d make a good Robin to your Batman.’

Morton laughed. ‘Yeah, I’ll let you know about that one.’

Sally turned to help another customer, leaving Morton to his work. Having located the film for St Leonards Church, Morton buzzed through to the marriage entry of Ann Lovekin and Walter Sellens and printed it out. It bore no difference to the copy that he had received in the post yesterday, except that all signatures, including the witnesses, were original. Knowing that Harriet Lovekin had been married sometime before her sister, Morton began to work backwards in time, hoping that she had married in the same church as her younger sister.

He only needed to work back twelve years until he found it: Harriet Lovekin had married Christopher Elphick on the 25th May 1827. Owing to the period, the certificate gave little information about the two parties except that they were both unmarried. Morton looked again at the date of the wedding—it was just under a month after the girls had been thrown out of the parish of Westwell. A very hasty wedding, by all accounts. Just enough time for three weeks’ banns to be read.

He clicked to print the entry, then wound the film on to baptisms for the same church.

After just a short while, Morton’s index finger came to rest on the surname Elphick.

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