The legal phrases and familiar headings steadied him. This is what I know, thought Benedict. This is the kind of thing I’ve been studying for the last two years. Property law and the rights of ownership and the complexities of land transfer.
Holly Lodge, it seemed, had been built in 1820. There was a record of the purchase of some land by a Mr Simcox, described as an importer of fine teas. Benedict imagined a genial gentleman, making a modest success in business, building himself a fine new house in a smart part of London, indulgently tolerant of his wife’s aspirations.
A proliferation of later Simcoxes seemed to have inherited the place after the importer’s death, but they appeared to be a weakly breed, because there were five separate deeds of transfer, and each time a note was appending saying, ‘On the death of Alfred – on the demise of Octavius – of Leviticus – the freehold messuage and lands known as Holly Lodge in the district of Highbury, County of London, were transferred absolutely . . .’
Benedict liked seeing how a house was passed down in a family or – in this case – passed across, from elder brother to younger brother, or perhaps cousin. It was interesting as well to see reference to the old geographical boundaries of London – there had been no Inner London in those days. He spared a moment to consider this, then turned to the next document.
This was an H.M. Land Registry certificate, stating that the land on which Holly Lodge stood had been registered in 1870 when the last of the Simcoxes had sold the house to a Mr Aloysius Totteridge, described as an accountant. Clipped to this was a further transfer of title, dated 1888, recording that on the death of Aloysius, his entire estate, including Holly Lodge, had passed to his widow.
Mrs Florence Totteridge.
So she was real, thought Benedict, sitting back. The raddled harridan who ushered hopeful and priapic gentlemen to the bedrooms of Cerise and Romilly and several others, was real. But does that mean the rest of it’s real? That stuff about sin-eating and the watchtower?
The murders had been real, though. Declan had already killed one man, and if those newspaper accounts could be trusted, there were four more still to be killed.
He closed the bureau, thrust the Deeds back into his bag and went down the stairs and out into the street.
Michael’s Oxford career to date had not included tracking down elusive Irish priests, whose provenance seemed dubious and whose probity was certainly questionable, but if Father Nicholas Sheehan had existed, it should be possible to find him. If he could not do so at Oxford, where research into arcane byways of the past was the norm, he might as well give up.
The start of Oriel College’s Hilary Term was, as he had told Benedict, a bit crowded. Michael was caught up with energizing his students after the exigencies of their various Christmas festivities, and with the demands of his editor for Wilberforce’s various adventures, and it was a week before he could focus properly on Benedict’s story.
He began by way of Oxford’s Theology Faculty, strayed into the Ian Ramsey and the MacDonald Research Centres as a matter of course, (both of which proved to be dead ends), and found his way to the Faculty’s library in St Giles. He liked St Giles and he liked the library, which had a pleasingly unassuming air.
It was eleven o’clock. He would work for two hours, then have lunch in one of the nearby restaurants that scattered this part of Oxford. Several had looked interesting – he and Nell might have a meal here sometime.
The time passed without him noticing it. He was not on very familiar ground, and he wound a tangled path through learned treatises on the Old Testament, the New Testament, and on Doctrines and Ethics of various flavours and persuasions. It was all no doubt deeply interesting, but it was not what he wanted. He wanted books listing ordained priests – almanacs and year books and directories. Even privately printed memoirs from obscure and long-defunct parishes and people.
Then, shortly after twelve, he found a bookcase tucked in a corner of one of the rooms with twelve editions of Thom’s Irish Almanacs. They reposed on the lowest shelf, neatly stacked in date order, and the dates ranged from 1860 to 1899. If Nicholas Sheehan had existed, according to Owen he would be recorded in Thom. Michael seized the books, disturbing a cloud of dust and dispossessing half a dozen indignant spiders of their homes, and carried them, armful by armful, to the quiet reading room before they could vanish and render Nicholas Sheehan as ethereal as ever.
At first he thought he was not going to find anything. He leafed through pages upon pages of entries, poring over the small print until his eyes ached. The lists were arranged alphabetically, which was one mercy, and there were columns showing the date of each priest’s ordination, the place where he had actually been ordained and, in a few cases, a name indicating who the presiding bishop had been.
By the time Michael reached the 1860s, he was almost prepared to give up, and he was certainly in a mood to throw the estimable Alexander Thom and his entire works across the floor.
And then, quite suddenly, there it was. Nicholas Luke Sheehan. Admitted to St Patrick’s Monastery near Galway in 1870, where his Abbot had been Fergal McMahon. In September 1874, Nicholas Sheehan had been admitted to Holy Orders by Bishop John Delaney.
He existed, thought Michael. And it all fits – the dates, the name. But one of the basic rules of research was to find at least two primary sources, so he made notes of everything, then headed for the index section. This was mostly on computer, and Michael keyed in a request for any material on Abbot Fergal McMahon of St Patrick’s Monastery, and Bishop John Delaney.
There was nothing on the Bishop, but the request for the Abbot turned up one entry.