The Skeleton Tree by Diane Janes (reading women TXT) 📕

‘Let’s finish the census first. We’ve only got 1871 left,’ Wendy said.

‘I suppose 1881 will be available in a couple of years,’ Joan said. ‘What a nuisance this hundred years’ business is.’

By 1871 James and Maria’s family had increased still further. Elizabeth – a young woman of twenty-one – was still at home and now had another four siblings, Eleanor and Joanna, who were ‘scholars’, Madeline Victoria, who was three, and baby Francis Michael, who was just two months old. In contrast, the number of servants living in the house had reduced to just three: Hannah Colbeck, aged twenty-five, Alice Croft, aged eighteen, and Edward Graves, aged twenty-nine, none of whom had been at The Ashes ten years earlier.

The searchers turned their attention to the parish registers next. These were also on microfilm and the two women were soon cursing the Victorian incumbent of Bishop Barnard, whose handwriting was extremely difficult to decipher. In spite of this, they quickly realized that the census had under-represented James and Maria’s progeny. It was a rare year in which the couple had not presented an infant for baptism, but the burial register provided an answer for the absence of Charlotte, Amy, James Henry, Philippa, Catherine, Sophia, and even poor little Francis Michael had not survived many weeks beyond his 1871 census appearance. In 1873 Maria Coates herself was laid to rest in the churchyard.

‘What an existence,’ said Joan. ‘Married at twenty, pregnant for the next twenty-three years, dead at forty-five. Thank heavens for birth control! Let’s go and find some lunch.’

In the afternoon they followed up the various Coates children in the parish registers. All the daughters had been married in Bishop Barnard. George, heir to the house, had married elsewhere, but his four children had been baptised in the parish church. Three had pre-deceased him, and the only surviving son, Albert George, was identifiable from the name they had seen on the war memorial. With George Coates’s burial in 1919, entries in the name of Coates ceased to appear in the parish registers.

‘It’s quite sad, really,’ Wendy mused. ‘I imagine when James Coates built his house he thought his family would be there for generation after generation, but in spite of having all those children, the family barely lasted seventy years.’

‘We’ve still got well over an hour before they close,’ Joan said. ‘What do you say we have a look at the local newspapers for the time when Dora disappeared?’

Wendy had been privately hankering after exactly the same thing but had hesitated to say so for fear of upsetting Joan.

‘The North Eastern Gazette was worth three halfpence of anybody’s money,’ Wendy said a few minutes later, when they had fetched the relevant film and fitted it on their reader. ‘Look at this “Join the Silent Column”. And the cinema listings! You could have gone and seen a different film every night of the week. I love these advertisements too. “Ladies lock-knit directoire knickers, exceptionally well cut, all colours two shillings, usual price two shillings and eleven pence.’

‘Sounds like a bargain.’

Wendy wound the reel on again.

‘Look.’ Joan’s voice rose slightly above the archive-appropriate whisper. ‘Here’s the first mention of it. “Dora Duncan, aged fifteen, the daughter of Mr and Mrs Herbert Duncan of The Ashes, Bishop Barnard, failed to return home yesterday evening after going for a cycle ride. Local police are appealing for anyone who may have seen Dora to come forward. She has blonde hair, blue eyes and was wearing a blue cotton dress. She was last seen riding a black bicycle”.’

The following day, the paper carried a much bigger piece explaining that Dora had left home alone in the afternoon and was believed to have been cycling along the track leading to Holm Farm at around three p.m. Concern was mounting, the report added, since there was no known reason why Dora would have absented herself from home. Police and volunteers were searching fields and woodland nearby. The photograph of Dora which accompanied the article had not reproduced well, and it was impossible for them to be sure from the grainy microfilm whether Dora had even been smiling for the camera. Only the shape of her hair and the white semi-circles of her collar stood out with any clarity.

Concern was mounting! Wendy could only imagine the state she would have been in if it had been Tara or Katie who was missing.

Though the paper continued to devote some space to Dora each day, with subsequent editions naming Dora’s siblings and explaining that she had been doing well at school and had numerous friends, there were no fresh developments until a full week had gone by.

‘Fresh lead in schoolgirl’s disappearance,’ Joan read. ‘Child witness, nine-year-old Peggy Disberry, has told police that she believes she saw Dora Duncan on the afternoon she went missing. Peggy Disberry was unavailable for comment yesterday, blah, blah … police are pursuing this new lead … blah blah … But what is the new lead? What did this Peggy Disberry see?’

‘Wind the film on to the next day,’ Wendy said. ‘There might be something there.’

They combed the following day’s edition, and the next day and the day after that, but the coverage of Dora’s disappearance had faltered to a halt due to lack of new information.

‘I wonder what the child saw?’

‘It may have been nothing. Particularly as it took her a whole week to come forward.’

‘She may have been attention-seeking.’

‘Well, we’ve found out an awful lot about the Coates family,’ said Joan, as they walked towards the car park.

‘But nothing new about Dora. I was just thinking what a lot of babies have been born at The Ashes. Did your aunt Elaine have her children there too?’

‘I don’t know. Probably. Women mostly did have their children at home in those days, though I suppose she could have afforded a nursing home if she’d wanted one. I’m still thinking about that Peggy girl in the newspaper. What was her name again?’

‘Disley?’