‘Mama! No! No, it can’t be!’ Rebecca flung herself across her mother’s body and wept. She was vaguely aware of a weight on top of her – Sarah, also sobbing loudly. She reached for Sarah’s hand and clutched it tightly, and drew strength from feeling Sarah squeeze her hand in return. Despite their earlier differences, they would need to help each other through this terrible tragedy. Her mother, dead, from a broken neck! How could that have happened? One moment she was there, admonishing Sarah for flirting with Charles, and the next she was gone. So sudden, so terrible, so shocking. Nothing would ever be the same again.
April 2015
Gemma hadn’t planned on telling Roger that she’d become engaged first thing on Monday morning but she couldn’t help herself; it just slipped out before she’d even hung up her jacket or switched on her laptop.
Roger looked vaguely surprised by her announcement. ‘Wow, erm, well done, Gemma, I mean, congratulations. Yes, congratulations, that’s the word. Splendid news.’ He nodded at her, and swallowed hard making his Adam’s apple bob up and down. ‘Would you like a coffee?’
She smiled at him. It was typical of Roger to be not quite sure how to react to her news. But at least he’d said congratulations, which was more than her best friend had done. ‘Yes, please, Roger. Then if it’s OK with you, I want to start researching the shooting at Red Hill Hall that those duelling pistols were apparently used in. Can I buy a month’s subscription to the newspaper archive website on the museum’s account?’
‘Of course. I’m as fascinated as you are by this. Let me know if you find anything interesting.’ He coughed and shuffled his feet for a moment. ‘Right then. I’ll fetch that coffee. I really am pleased for you about the engagement. Yes, delighted.’
Gemma grinned and shook her head as he left the back room. Dear old Roger. Socially awkward but such a lovely person to work for. She started up her laptop and set to work on the research.
By the time Roger returned with the coffee, she’d set up the newspaper archive subscription, run a search on ‘Red Hill Hall’ and ‘duel’, and had already found and downloaded her first article. It was from what appeared to be a popular gossip magazine. She scanned it quickly, her eyes widening as she took in its contents.
‘Roger, listen to this.’ She began reading.
‘The Curse of Red Hill Hall? If any Esteemed Readers of this publication are invited to stay at Red Hill Hall in the county of Dorset, they should perhaps consider their response carefully, for the place appears to be cursed. First the lady of the house took a tumble down the stairs and broke her neck, though one must ask whether she was perhaps pushed; then the gentleman of the house died suddenly of a broken heart, though again one wonders whether he was perhaps poisoned; and in the most recent tragedy the two daughters of Red Hill Hall were found in a cellar, mortally wounded. A pair of duelling pistols was found, both discharged, at the scene. The hunt is on for the murderer who apparently escaped by means of the door to the coal cellar. It occurs to your Author that our Esteemed Readers are unlikely to be furnished with an invitation to stay at Red Hill Hall, for there would appear to be no one left there to act as host or hostess. What will become of the house and estate your Author does not know, but should such information be forthcoming he will of course share it in a future edition of this magazine.’
Gemma looked up from her reading. ‘Wow. The whole family seems to have died in suspicious circumstances. The place was cursed indeed!’
Roger laughed. ‘What publication was that?’
‘County Tall Tales. Hmm. Sounds a bit like a red top.’
‘The clue’s in the name. Tall tales, indeed. But nevertheless, there could be some truth buried under all the sensationalism. Keep looking, would be my advice, and hopefully some more reliable papers will have covered those events. What date’s on the magazine?’
Gemma peered at her computer screen. ‘August 1838.’
Roger nodded. ‘Compulsory registration of deaths began in 1837. So if all those tragedies were recent when that was written, you might be able to find the death certificates. You’ll need the names of the deceased, of course. Which hopefully you’ll find in some other articles. At least you have a rough timeframe now for the shooting – summer of 1838 or a little before. No telling how up to date this rag would have been with its news. Well, you’ve got your coffee now. I need to open up out front. Good luck!’
Gemma took a sip of her coffee, created a folder on the laptop and saved the article she’d found, before going back to her search results on the newspaper archive website. By playing around with search terms and setting the date range as April to October 1838 she soon found a number of reports of the shooting. She saved each article and jotted down the main facts as she found them. It had happened in August 1838, and the two victims were Rebecca Winton and Sarah Cooper. In some articles they were described as sisters, despite the different surnames, and in others Rebecca was referred to as Miss Winton, and Sarah as a servant. None of the reports was clear as to exactly which, if either, died. Some newspapers reported that both girls died, while others reported they were just badly injured, or that only one had died. The one thing they were all agreed upon is that the perpetrator had escaped, leaving the pistols dropped beside the wounded girls, and that he was still at large. The public was invited to come forward with any information they might have about the murderer, although no reward was offered.
Gemma felt more and more intrigued by the story. She had to know exactly who had died, and what the girls’ relationship to each other was. And was the perpetrator ever caught? She jotted down a list of questions to follow up. If she could discover the whole story, she could make a laminated poster to display alongside the pistols in the museum. It was the sort of exhibit that went down well, especially with school groups who loved anything a bit gory.
Roger returned to check on progress. ‘You can look for death registrations under those two names,’ he said. ‘And search for newspaper articles for the following twelve months to see if anyone was caught. Might also be worth having a look at the 1841 census to see who lived in Red Hill Hall then – after the shooting of course, but if that gossip magazine article is correct and the master and mistress of the house had also died, it’d be interesting to see what happened to the estate.’
Gemma noted all this down. Clearly there was more than a day’s work here! ‘Was there an earlier census? So we could find out who lived in the hall before the shooting?’
Roger shook his head. ‘No, the 1841 census was the first complete census in England. But if it was an important country house, there could be some other records somewhere. It’d just be a case of tracking them down. Not sure I can justify you doing all the work on museum time, however. I wonder what became of the hall itself, whether it’s still in existence or not?’
‘Oh, I can answer that,’ Gemma said, smiling. ‘It’s now a country house hotel. I’m going there in June – Ben’s sister is getting married there.’
‘Ah, right! Could be worth getting in touch and finding out if they have any archived papers stored away somewhere. Probably not if it’s a hotel but you never know. Do what you can online first. And if there’s any chance of you cataloguing a few more boxes of fossils in between the research, I’d be ever so grateful.’ Roger flashed her a goofy grin and patted her shoulder as he left.
Gemma left the museum that evening in a fabulous mood. She’d enjoyed the research, and even the next couple of boxes of artefacts she’d opened had contained interesting items rather than boring old fossils (a set of Victorian postage scales and a collection of gorgeous Edwardian evening bags). All day, every now and again, she’d remembered that she was now engaged to Ben, and that had given her a little fizz of excitement. As she skipped down the museum steps she checked her watch. Ben should be home by now, and on a whim she decided to go round to his flat rather than straight home to hers. She popped into a supermarket