Morton suspected that the final report, not included with the letter as mentioned, had been detached long ago and was what he had just read in the case file box. So, Samuel Banister had possibly been assisted to a new life in Chicago. Interesting, Morton thought, as he photographed the dispatch.
The penultimate letter in the box was written by another Bow Street officer, Daniel Bishop, and Morton had been about to leave it in place and put the rest of the letters back on top of it and return the box, when he spotted Jonas’s name within the text. The short memo was clearly in response to a direct question from Bow Street: ‘…I have heard nothing at all of Blackwood nor Nightingale since they embarked on their latest case…’ Although it did not say so, the implication was clear, that Jonas Blackwood and Thomas Nightingale had not returned or made contact when they should have done, at least up to the point when this letter had been written. He quickly checked the date: 30th October 1826.
Something bothered Morton. He quickly leapt up and hurried to the collections counter, where he had to stand behind a doddery old man, who was informing the grey-haired assistant all about something in which she clearly had no interest. Morton coughed loudly, hoping to make clear that he was waiting to be seen.
It worked. The old man told the lady that he would let her get on and promptly shuffled off across the room with a gentle nod to Morton.
‘Has the box I just handed in gone back yet?’ Morton said quickly.
The grey-haired lady frowned and turned to look to the side.
Morton saw it at the same time as she, being pulled away on a white trolley stacked with finished documents. ‘I’d like it back,’ he blurted, ‘please.’
Though seemingly irritated by his apparent ineptitude, she called out for her colleague to stop and plucked the box from the trolley. ‘I’ll need the other document back first,’ she said, clutching it to her chest, as if he somehow meant to do harm to the contents.
Morton nodded, carefully packed the letters away into the box, aware that he was being scrutinised, then returned it to her. Once it was safely on the desk in front of the lady, she passed the box to him for a second time. ‘I just needed to double-check something,’ he said, feeling the need to justify himself.
‘Shall I keep this one back?’ she asked, placing a hand on the returned correspondence. ‘Just in case?’
‘Not a bad idea,’ Morton said, only half-joking.
She arched an eyebrow and settled on leaving the box exactly where it was, whilst watching as Morton went back to his table.
He flicked rapidly through the pile of cases until he reached the report of the arson attacks, which Blackwood and Nightingale had been called upon to investigate, and of which he had caught a glimpse earlier.
Date: 18th October 1826
Location: Ramsgate, Kent
Nature of investigation: Arson
By whom directed: Mr Bull
Principal Officer(s): Jonas Blackwood & Thomas Nightingale
Detail: To investigate with discretion a series of deliberate arson attacks against the person and property of Mr Isaac Bull, local squire, and to apprehend the culprit(s).
Summary:
The summary had been left blank, which both puzzled Morton and added to a rising suspicion inside of him. He made a hasty check of the case files which had preceded it: all of them had been completed—to a lesser or greater extent—fully.
Something was amiss.
Morton closed his eyes, shutting out the muffled sound of researchers milling about around him, and the hushed voices, and the watchful stare of the grey-haired lady. In his mind, he took the names, locations and dates of the parts which troubled him, assembling and analysing them, then rearranging them in a different order when they refused to cohere.
A while later, he had created a narrative, which made some degree of sense to him; it was one which needed to be proven or disproven but could not be ignored or left in its current speculative state.
Opening his laptop, he saw that another email had arrived from his Aunty Margaret. Despite the heightened desire to test his new theory on an aspect of the Fothergill Case, he clicked to read the message: ‘Hi again. Well, yes, my father was away a great deal with business. He had a large number of suppliers who were out of town and he used to say it was this uniqueness that made his business stand out from the likes of Bobby & Co. It was all we were used to, but I suppose from the perspective of a stranger it would have seemed odd how often he was away. It caused some problems at home—I remember your father had a big row with him once in the 70s—challenging him on why he’d seen his van parked up in some back street of Sevenoaks! Have no idea now of the whys and wherefores, but there you have it. Soon after that your mother and father moved out and I wasn’t too long behind them! Families! Love, M x.’
There was something there, in the part about the argument in the 70s, which he would like to raise with her again, next time they were face-to-face. Whatever the finer detail of the disagreement had been, it had held sufficient depth at the time to have remained in her memory.
He minimized his emails, and opened a web browser, logging on to the British Newspaper Archive, where he ran a search for Jonas Blackwood and Thomas Nightingale. Several results, but the first was the one which he wanted.
‘Ramsgate Herald. 5th November 1826. Missing. Two persons by the names of Thomas Nightingale and Jonas Blackwood, who left London on the 17th October last, and who arrived
