In the Blood (17 page)

His eyes began to sting.
 
He yawned as he shuffled down the bed to rest his head on a pillow that felt so soft it was barely there.
 
His mind was a confusion of possibilities, but two things remained clear: he needed to see James Fairborne’s will, and he had to pay a visit to the current Forbes family.
 
It was his first rule of genealogy: talk to the family.
 
And there were always two sides.

Across the road, just beyond the shadow of a street lamp at the front of St Maunanus House, a man wearing a three-quarter-length, black leather jacket was partially hidden behind an open broadsheet newspaper, like he was waiting for a bus - only there was no bus stop there.
 
His head was bowed into the pages but his eyes were raised well above them, looking at the house, taking in the name of Tayte’s accommodation from the sign at the end of the driveway.

His eyes drifted to the silver car parked there - to the Ford Focus with the conspicuous hire company logo on the boot hatch.
 
He paused on the registration number while he committed it to memory and when he was satisfied he folded the newspaper and tucked it under his arm.
 
His free hand reached over his chest and through his clothing he felt the outline of a silver crucifix, hanging by a thick leather cord that was almost brittle with age.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Thursday.

I
t was just after 1pm, and having lost more time than he cared to at the record office in Truro, Jefferson Tayte was in Devon, driving through Dartmoor at the end of an eighty mile journey in search of the Forbes - the descendants of James Fairborne’s second wife, Susan.
 
Apart from meeting Penny Wilson - the face behind the voice he’d spoken to so many times from back home in the States - his visit to Truro had been a disappointment.
 
James Fairborne’s last will and testament should have been there according to the indexes but, like so many other Fairborne records, the original and all copies were missing.
 
Penny already had his number and she was looking into it, but he wasn’t holding his breath.

Tayte’s hopes were higher for the afternoon, although he was looking for an address he now realised he had little hope of finding unaided.
 
The map that Judith, his bed and breakfast host, had given him before he left mainly concerned itself with trunk roads, showing little of the area he now found himself in.
 
He’d driven through Buckland-in-the-Moor, skirting Dartmoor Forest for a while before plunging in.
 
Now he was out the other side and none the wiser.

The forest was to his left now; Dartmoor to his right.
 
In the distance he could see the moorland tors and cairns rising from the landscape like swollen bruises, and though not yet raining, the clouds that appeared with his arrival were gathering over Dartmoor.
 
He was looking for a place called Dunworthy.
 
The 1901 census confirmed that the Forbes address at that time was the same address that appeared on all earlier census reports back to 1841.
 
He was taking a chance that the house still belonged to the family a hundred years on, but even if they had moved on, he supposed that whoever lived there now might be able to point him in the right direction.
 
If only he could find Dunworthy.

Tayte slowed the car, looking for clues.
 
In the background a jazzy tune was spilling from the
Chicago
soundtrack CD he’d picked up at a petrol station on the way there, keeping him focused.
 
A cyclist approached over the horizon in bright yellow-and-blue spandex prompting Tayte to pull over.
 
He got out and waved, hoping to stop him for directions.
 
Then he saw another cyclist, this one in lime-green, closing on the first until the pair sped past and a whole bunch of them rose up on the brow of the hill.

Tayte leant back against the car and watched the chasing pack arrive.
 
“Dunworthy?” he called.
 
Most had their heads down and no one seemed to hear him over the whir of racing spokes.
 
“Can you tell me where Dunworthy is?”

The last cyclist in the group sat up, resting his hands on his thighs, panting.
 
He was pointing back the way Tayte had come.
 
“Take a right down there and follow the lane!”

“Thanks!” Tayte called after him, though his gratitude was wasted on the backside that waggled back at him as the cyclist rose above a razor sharp saddle and began to work the pedals.

The Forbes residence was well known in Dunworthy.
 
It was an imposing thatched house on the edge of the village and the gaggle of old dears Tayte had spoken to outside the post office had fought over themselves to rush out directions.
 
The sitting room in which Tayte now found himself was decorated in dusty rose-pink between light oak beams and the entire ground floor had been lowered at some time, adding height so you didn’t have to duck everywhere you went.
 
He was sitting on a William Morris design sofa that matched the curtains, waiting for a pot of tea to brew.
 
Opposite, were his hosts, David and Helen Forbes.

Helen sat back in a button-up blue denim dress, flicking out a mint-green espadrille as she crossed her legs.
 
Tayte thought the spiky hair, which was all the colours of autumn, gave her a funky look that conflicted with the floral surroundings.
 
She looked like she was rebelling against something - age perhaps.
 
David’s hair appeared to be in a race with itself to go grey before it fell out.
 
He looked casual in taupe corduroy trousers and a forest-green shirt.
 
They were sitting perpendicular to a vista of endless landscaped gardens, which they had been nurturing when Tayte arrived.

Helen poured the tea from a Royal Copenhagen teapot.
 
“Do you take sugar, Mr Tayte?”

Tayte edged forward.
 
“Two, please.”
 
He patted his stomach and grinned.
 
“I know I shouldn’t.”

Helen just smiled politely.
 
“This is all rather exciting,” she said.
 
“So what do we do?”

Tayte settled back with his tea.
 
“Well, there’s no real formula, Mrs Forbes.
 
I’m working on an assignment that’s led me to a relationship between your family and the people I’m working for.
 
I’ve some loose ends I was hoping you could help with.”

“I’m sure we can,” Helen said before she even knew what Tayte wanted to know.

David finished stirring his tea.
 
“I’ve a golf game booked at two.
 
Do you play, Mr Tayte, we’re looking for a fourth?”

“I don’t.
 
Often thought I’d like to, but I never seem to get around to it.”
 
Tayte checked his watch.

“There’s plenty of time,” Helen said, frowning.

Tayte set his cup and saucer down on the table and opened his briefcase.
 
He pulled out the chart, unfolding a section on the table as Helen edged closer, clearing the contents of the table out to the edges to give him more room.

“This is the family tree I’m working on,” Tayte said.
 
He had the names facing them.
 
“It’s for a client back home in the States.
 
Their family settled there in the early 1700s, and just after the revolutionary war - the American War of Independence, that is - most of the family moved back to England.
 
Did you know that around 70 percent of Americans alive today can trace their ancestry back to Great Britain or Ireland?”

Eyebrows rose at hearing the statistic.
 
“That’s a lot of people,” David said.

Helen agreed.
 

Tayte craned his neck around the chart.
 
“You can see here that James Fairborne married Susan Forbes.
 
That was shortly after he arrived in England.”
 
He moved his finger up the chart.
 
“And Susan’s parents, Howard and Eudora Forbes, had two other children.
 
One was Jane Forbes and the other was Charles.”
 
He could see that David’s eyes were buried in the chart.
 
“You, Mr Forbes, are descended from Charles Forbes here.”

David appeared to have forgotten all about golf.
 
Tayte could see he had them both hooked and he loved it.
 
He watched Helen’s quizzical eyes follow her finger over the dependent entries below Jane Forbes and Lavender Parfitt.

“You’ve got the same dates written against these two,” Helen said.
 
Meaning the dates of birth and death for the two children were the same.
 
“Is that a mistake?”

“Sadly not,” Tayte said.

Helen put a hand to her mouth.
 
“The poor things.”

Tayte drew their attention to the pencilled question mark beside Mathew Parfitt.
 
“This is my loose end,” he said, tapping the chart over Mathew’s name.
 
“This is what I’m really hoping you can shed some light on.
 
You see, Mathew shows up as being Jane Forbes’s son, but because of the timing of her other two children, that’s just not possible.”

Tayte finished his tea and returned it to the saucer with a musical tinkle.
 
“What I need to know is where Mathew really came from.
 
My hunch is that the child belonged to one of these people.”
 
He circled a finger around Susan Fairborne and her daughter, Lowenna.

“I know it was a long time ago,” Tayte said, eyeing the display of chocolate macaroons in the centre of the table.
 
“Two hundred years and several generations,” he added, taking the biscuit closest to him.
 
“Do you know anything about Susan or her children?
 
Any history handed down?”

David shook his head and Tayte was getting ready for another disappointment when Helen began to smile.

“Not Susan, so much,” she said.
 
“But Lowenna ... that’s a name I’ve heard.”

David looked at his wife like she’d been leading another life.

“You know something about Lowenna Fairborne?” Tayte asked.

“Only a little,” Helen said.
 
She looked at her husband, her eyes asking questions only David could hear.
 
“But I know someone who can tell you a great deal more.”

David suddenly twigged.

“If that’s alright with you, dear,” Helen said.
 

“Of course,” David replied.
 
His face collapsed into a frown.
 
“If you think you can get any sense out of her.”

“His mother loves to reminisce,” Helen said.
 
“She rambles a little, but I’m convinced her memory’s better than mine.”

David eyed his watch.
 
“Look I’d better get changed.”
 
He rose.
 
“Do excuse me, Mr Tayte.”

Tayte got up with him.
 
“Of course,” he said.
 
“Thanks again for seeing me.”

“Helen can take you in to see Mother,” David said.
 
Then to Helen, he added, “Try not to get her too excited.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

T
he room exuded a subtle fragrance of violets and Yardley English Lavender soap.
 
It was a bright room of white furnishings with accessories in shades of colours that matched the scent.
 
Net curtains glowed at the window despite the changeable Dartmoor weather which by now was beginning to turn.
 
The woman Tayte had been brought to see was sitting up in bed as they arrived.
 
Her hair was pure white like the nets at the window, brushed back high off her brow.
 
She looked old in almost every way save for her eyes and her smile, and her smile softly spoke of a lifetime of kindness.
 
Her skin was like rice paper, with the sheen of pearl-pink silk.

Helen Forbes sat on the bed beside her and held her hand.
 
“I’ve brought someone to see you, Mother,” she said.
 
“His name’s Mr Tayte.
 
He wants to talk to you about Lowenna Fairborne - the girl you’ve told me about.”
 
She looked back at Tayte, who was still standing in the doorway, and drew him in with a flick of her head.
 
“Mr Tayte, this is Emily, David’s mother.”

Tayte approached the bed and stood opposite Helen.

“You won’t be very comfortable standing up, dear,” Emily said.
 
“Sit down and let me see you.”

Tayte smiled and sat on the bed, sinking into a sea of goose-down and feathers.