Overtaking hordesof ambling visitors, Morton finally reached Lady Maria Charlotte’s childhoodbedroom. The word that sprang into his mind when he took in the room, wasclinical. He realised that, of course, it might not have been thatway when she was growing up here, that this mocked-up version of her bedroommight be nothing more than a National Trust volunteer second-guessinghistory. All of the furniture, the walnut wardrobe, bedstead, chest ofdrawers and writing bureau were kept several feet away from the public by athick sausage of red rope and a multi-lingual sign stating ‘Do Not Cross’.
Morton tookanother cursory glance around the room and, for the first time, noticed a largesepia photograph hanging beside the door. A label below the photographread ‘Maria Charlotte Spencer, 1921’. He studied the photo carefully andput his training from Dr Baumgartner to work. She was diminutive, shylylooking out at the hundreds of visitors who trooped through her bedroom everyweek. Her dress was a high-quality pristine white, pearl-lined yoke witha matching ribbon tied neatly atop her dark wavy hair. Behind her was thepainted backdrop of a grand staircase, which told Morton that it was a studioportrait. His assessment of the photograph type and clothing agreed withthe stated date of the early 1920s. Morton pulled out his iPhone,selected the close-up photo of James Coldrick’s mother and held it beside thephotograph of Lady Maria; he was certain that they were not the sameperson. James Coldrick’s mother had much softer, rounder features with anatural beauty that came without the aid of the careful make-up and lightingused in the photograph of Lady Maria. Their eye shapes were, almostimperceptibly, different; Lady Maria’s were more pinched and severe than thealmond, smiling eyes of James’s mother. Although their hair colour andthickness were initially similar, when Morton studied their hairlines, henoticed they were entirely different.
A NationalTrust volunteer entered the room and he quickly lowered his iPhone. Notquite quickly enough. ‘What’s that you’ve got there then?’ the volunteerasked curiously. She was a fragile-looking woman in her mid to lateeighties. Her name badge identified her as Jean.
‘Just apicture,’ Morton said vaguely. He had hoped to slip quickly and quietlyin and out of Mote Ridge but reasoned that it wouldn’t do any harm to speak toa volunteer. From past experience, Morton found that these people wereusually pretty clued up on property in which they volunteered. They wereoften privy to snippets and anecdotes which were absent from the laminatedinformation sheets or guide books. ‘Do you think that the woman in thisphoto could be Lady Maria?’ Morton asked, raising the phone level with theportrait photograph.
Jean raised herglasses from the string around her neck but quickly shook her heademphatically. ‘No, I wouldn't say so. Do you know when it wastaken?’
Mortonconsidered giving the very precise answer of the seventh of May 1944, butsettled for, ‘1944.’
‘Definitelynot, then. She was in America at that point. If you go over to theOld Stables at the far side of the courtyard, we have a photo exhibition andamong them are pictures of her during the war.’
‘America? What was she doing there?’
‘Her fathersent her out there for safety as soon as the Germans started bombing, sometimeearly in 1940,’ Jean said.
‘When did shecome back to Britain?’
‘1945, only afew months prior to her marriage to Sir David.’
‘Oh, I see,’Morton said. It was looking highly unlikely that she was James Coldrick’smother. There was only one further possibility, and that was that shegave birth in America, which would explain why there was no birth entry in theEnglish registers. Morton posed the question of a possible child to Jean,who burst into laughter.
She seemedalmost offended at the very idea. ‘Heavens above! What on earthmade you ask me that? Goodness me, no, absolutely not. No,’ shesaid. ‘Her first child was Philip, whom she gave birth to in 1946. Heavens!’
Mortonshrugged. ‘Just an idea.’ He left Jean in a fit of giggles and madehis way back towards the courtyard. He wouldn’t be fulfilling the forensicpart of his job title if he didn’t take a look at the photoexhibition. On his way across the courtyard Morton spotted the giftshop. He ducked inside and picked up a brand new pair of binoculars toreplace his father’s pair that had inadvertently become another casualty of theColdrick Case.
He pulled outthe map of Mote Ridge and made his way to the Old Stables, a converted stableblock containing a potted history of the Spencer family and their ties withMote Ridge. Morton moved among a gaggle of pensioners, closely readingthe frankly over-the-top quantity of material relating to Princess Diana,despite her only connection to Mote Ridge being that her great great greatgrandfather had been born there. It was hardly her ancestral seat, butthe pensioners seemed to be lapping up the displays, cooing over pictures ofthe infant princes. Photographs of the infant Prince George seemed to beparticularly popular with the visitors.
Morton passedby the information pertaining to centuries-old members of the Spencer familyuntil he came to Lady Maria. Just as Jean had said, there were fourphotographs of her in America during the war. The sceptic in him saidthat the photos had nothing in them identifiably American, but that wasn’t thepoint. The point was that the woman in photos was the same as the girl inthe portrait he had just seen, the same as the old, doddery lady at theSedlescombe Fete on Saturday; not James Coldrick’s mother. Therewas no doubt now in Morton’s mind: M did not stand for Maria CharlotteWindsor-Sackville née Spencer.
Feelingdejectedly back at square one with the question of James Coldrick’s parentage,Morton left Mote Ridge.
Morton was relieved to find that it wasn’ta case of déjà vu he’d experienced the previous night. He arrivedat the Conquest Hospital and nothing he had dreamt about actuallyoccurred. He parked a long way from the main entrance, paid the parkingfee and made his way to the
