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. Daniel Joseph Elphick, baptised 10th April 1828, son of Christopher and Harriet Elphick, publican, The Forester’s Arms. He looked at the entry, and pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. Having been forcibly removed from the America Ground following her mother’s murder, Harriet had, just a few short weeks later, married Christopher Elphick and they had set up their own pub, The Forester’s Arms, presumably acting as guardians to her two younger sisters. As hinted at by the two certificates that Morton had received yesterday, the sisters had maintained a closeness their whole lives.
He continued his searches, finding the baptisms of two further children to Christopher and Harriet: Eliza, baptised in 1832 and Maria, baptised in 1833. He could find no record of any children to Ann and Walter Sellens and, when he searched the burial register, he discovered the reason: at the age of twenty-three, Ann Sellens had died. She was buried on the 2nd September 1840, just under a year after she had married. Morton made a note on his pad to order her death certificate, then added Ann’s death to the Lovekin family tree. It appeared that both Ann and Keziah had died childless, leaving just Harriet’s three children for whom Morton to trace the descendants.
Morton picked up his printouts and took them over to Sally. ‘I’d like to pay for these, please—five copies.’
‘That’ll be the grand sum of one pound, please.’
Morton handed over the money. ‘Thank you. Also, you don’t happen to know anything about either the Black Horse or The Forester’s Arms, do you?’
Sally smiled and handed him a receipt. ‘If you’re referring to the Black Horse that was once on the America Ground, then they’re one and the same place.’
Morton shot a quizzical look across the counter.
‘The Black Horse was the gin palace on the America Ground—funnily enough it was located just opposite here, where the big church is now, then when the land was cleared, lots of properties—I think it was around twenty-eight in total—were taken apart brick by brick and moved to new ground in St Leonards.’
‘Really?’ Morton said disbelievingly.
Sally nodded emphatically. ‘The Black Horse was dismantled and rebuilt on Shepherd Street and renamed The Forester’s Arms.’
‘Wow. Then what happened to it?’
‘It became an art gallery at one time then a private residence. I haven’t been up that way for a while, but I assume the building is still there.’
‘Thank you very much—very useful,’ Morton said.
‘See—I could easily be your glamorous assistant!’ Sally grinned.
Morton smiled and headed back to the microfilm reader. He looked at his watch: it was only mid-morning and if he left now, then he would have time to walk to Shepherd Street to find The Forester’s Arms and still have time to pay a well overdue visit to a certain character in the Old Town.
Morton packed up and darted towards the door.
‘Bye, then,’ Sally called after him.
‘Sorry—bye!’ he replied, making his way outside.
Basking in the sunshine, like an obedient dog tied to a lamppost waiting for its master, was to be found his shadow drinking from a can of coke. Morton waved then switched his attention to Holy Trinity Church, which loomed large in front of him. It was impossible to imagine his surroundings as they would have been one hundred and eighty years ago; not a single building around him would have existed and yet there, just in front of him was where crucial elements of the Lovekins’ lives had played out. It was
