Footprints At Dawn (Book 2)

Chapter Five

December 2019

Blinking several times as I shifted my focus away from my laptop screen, I knew I had spent more hours than I should have in front of it.

In fact, I had spent the last two days in front of it, and I wasn't writing my novel.

I couldn't stop thinking about the letter Nicholas had written in my journal. The part where he said Constable Doyle was convinced Nicholas had something to do with my disappearance worried me. If Doyle ever found out Nicholas helped me escape out of the police station's holding cell, he would be in a lot of trouble. And I wasn't entirely convinced Doyle wouldn't do something illegal to punish him.

I needed to know the outcome of it. I needed to know if Constable Doyle did find out Nicholas helped me escape, and if he was responsible for Nicholas disappearing without a trace.

So after my weekend at the cottage had come to an end, I had returned to my Hobart home with electricity and internet. I wasted no time hopping onto my laptop searching genealogy websites for Nicholas' death date or place of burial. The only problem was, if Doyle did have something to do with his disappearance, I wasn't going to find any evidence of it. And so far, I hadn't.

I had tried several times since returning to my own time to find something, anything, but all I was doing was going around in circles. Visiting the same websites and finding nothing was frustrating.

I glanced back down at my laptop and checked the time. Thankful it was only 5:20pm, I still had over an hour and a half before my date with Alex. Anna was heading to Bradley's straight after work and they were going to meet me at the restaurant. I knew I had a little bit of time before I had to start getting ready; I wasn't going to go to too much trouble. After all, I had no plans on trying to impress the guy.

Yawning my head off for the third time in two minutes, I decided I needed a break from searching Nicholas' death. I would rather do it when I was more alert, as I certainly didn't want to miss anything important. Besides, it was kind of depressing. It was still hard to comprehend that Nicholas was dead, seeing as he was technically still alive and well in his time and sending me letters.

The text tone on my phone interrupted yet another yawn,  and I reached over and plucked it off the coffee table. I chuckled when I read the message. Anna knew me too well. Try and go to a little trouble tonight. I wanna see makeup. See you soon. A x

After placing the phone back on the coffee table, I went back to my genealogy research. I thought it would be nice to put together a family tree of the Clay's, so I wanted to gather as much information as I could find about the family and their ancestors.

Pulling up the births, deaths and marriages website, I wanted to find images of their certificates, as they always contained helpful information. I knew Thomas, Mary Ellen and Nicholas were all born in England, and Thomas and Mary Ellen were married in England. So the only event that happened in Tasmania was Thomas and Mary Ellen's deaths, so I thought it would be easier to find those first.

Typing in Mary Ellen's name, I found her in no time, having already the death date, which made it a lot easier to find. Clicking on the image, my eyes scanned the death certificate for new information. Huh. Her father's name was William Quinn, and she was born in Nottingham, England. Knowing those little details would help me later.

After downloading the image to my computer, I moved onto Thomas. Typing his name into the search bar and narrowing the results down by the year of his death, I strangely found no results. Even after clearing the death date to broaden my search, I still found no results of any Thomas Clay's dying in the suburb of where Clay's Cottage was located. There were several Thomas Clay's dying in Tasmania in 1854, but the age or birth year did not match the Thomas Clay I was looking for.