Morton scooped up the three books and returned them to the shelves, next retrieving the registers for St Clements Church.
Taking the burial register first, he jumped to 1827. He was in luck—the burial ceremonies were performed by G. Matthews, the same vicar who had buried Eliza. Sure enough, he turned the pages and soon found her entry. Knowing that she had been buried in St Clements Church, Morton hoped that she had also married there and that it had possibly even been the place of her baptism.
He worked through to the end of the volume, then began searching backwards in time from the date of Eliza’s burial. Very soon, he found another Lovekin.
Name: Joseph Lovekin
Abode: The Priory Ground
When buried: 4th April 1827
Age: 45
By whom the Ceremony was performed: G. Matthews
As with all the other burial ceremonies performed by G. Matthews, Joseph’s cause of death was helpfully appended: ‘Accidentally drowned.’
Morton looked at the entry and considered its implications. Looking at his age at death, Joseph Lovekin was likely to have been either Eliza’s husband or, if she were unmarried, her brother.
He drew a tenuous line from Eliza’s name to Joseph’s on his notepad.
Beside him on the table, his phone lit up with the announcement of a text message from Juliette. ‘Be home late tonight—been called to a major incident!! Hope you’re enjoying your Bunny work! Xx’. Morton looked at the screen, hating the inherent danger in her job as a policewoman. Only Juliette could follow the words major incident with two exclamation marks. What was it? A fire? A train crash? An armed robbery? A terrorist attack? He needed not to think about it—to distract himself. He looked at the time on his phone: one hour exactly until closing.
With renewed vigour, Morton began searching the St Clements Church marriage register.
He worked through it, checking every name written on each entry, but time was running out. As he neared the end of the tome without success, he recalled from an account that he had read about the lawlessness of the America Ground, that many of the residents there lived in a state of concubinage. Were Eliza and Joseph living together without having first married? Or was Joseph not Eliza’s husband at all, but her brother or maybe her cousin? Morton wondered.
Next, he scoured the general register for St Clements Church, which ran 1690-1812, running his finger carefully down the name column on each page, still hoping to find a baptism or marriage entry for Eliza.
When the ledger had yielded him nothing, he looked at the clock, which seemed to be conspiring against him by stealing huge leaps of time between glances and leaving him just twelve minutes.
As the effects of the caffeine waned, a despondent lethargy began to creep upon him; it was time to call it a day. He had succeeded in locating the church of Eliza’s burial and found a potential husband for her.
Time to go home.
Chapter Four
3rd February 1827, The Priory Ground, outside Hastings, Sussex
The Priory Ground, outside Hastings: four acres of land, close to the abandoned Priory of the Augustinian order of Black Canons; donated by the sea and bestowed upon the town by a series of devastating storms in the thirteenth century, it lay dormant and desolate for four hundred years. Gradually, led by a group of rope-makers, this land was sliced into small parcels, upon which sprang a variety of homes and business concerns. Begrimed ramshackle wooden huts sat incongruously beside substantial buildings of stone and timber. By the mid-1820s, a complete community of close to two hundred properties had arisen, with more than a thousand people calling the Priory Ground their home: carpenters and cabinet-makers dwelt alongside mast-makers, millers and mariners; ostlers and brewers made neighbours among coachmen, labourers and butchers; tax collectors inhabited the same forsaken walkways and darkened alleys as those whose very existence there was to defy any kind of official duty. It was an unruly, raucous mixture of town and village, where a stranger might lose anything from his handkerchief to his life.
It was to this nefarious spot in Southern England that there came, four Michaelmases ago, the Lovekin family: Joseph, his wife Eliza and their children, Harriet, Keziah and Ann. Joseph, for many years itinerant and with dubious employment history (extending from labouring to smuggling) had heard word of the opportunities presented by new land beyond the boundary and jurisdiction of the town of Hastings. Within a few short weeks of their arrival, he had taken advantage of the recent forty per cent reduction in spirit duty and established the first public house on the Priory Ground: a grand gin palace akin to those found in most English cities, whose origins could be traced back to the poor streets of the capital city. The edifice, which bore the name the Black Horse, stood out amongst the motley collection of buildings that surrounded it: a fine ornamental front, replete with pilasters, carved entablature and handsome cornicing. The doors and windows were glazed with large squares of plate glass and the building was fitted with costly oil lighting. Inside this gaudily decorated gin palace, which housed not a single chair or table, were to be found a roomful of working men and women who sought refuge from their gruelling and grim daily lives. Behind one long mahogany bar, Joseph and Eliza Lovekin plied their poor clientele with liquor from barrelheads named Old Tom, Cream of the Valley and Celebrated Butter Gin.
Immediately adjacent to the Black Horse was a small, simple tenement of timber construction in which the Lovekin family resided. It was here, behind the street door and in total darkness, that Harriet Lovekin stood. At eighteen years of age, she was the eldest
