Seventy-Seven Clocks

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Who runs the alliance now?’

  ‘The whole family has helped out from time to time. There are no outsiders involved.’

  Jerry was disappointed to hear that the guild’s inner organization was nothing more than a family charity. But would Peggy tell her if it wasn’t? ‘Does the alliance keep records of its history?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Peggy, reaching down to scratch the dog about its ears. ‘They’re probably tucked away at the guild, but I don’t see why you need to look at those.’

  ‘We’d like to tell readers about your good works. By the way, why theatre restoration?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why are theatres of particular interest when you usually support churches and hospitals?’

  ‘The alliance has been connected with the London stage since its inception, don’t ask me why. I’m not sure anyone remembers now.’

  ‘I like your brochure.’ Jerry removed it from her pocket. ‘Do you happen to know who designed it?’

  ‘We have freelance people we call upon for printing and suchlike,’ Peggy said, clearly disinterested.

  Jerry flipped through the booklet. ‘I couldn’t help admiring the paintings that illustrate the copy. Holyoake, Sickert, Chapman, Crowe, most of them Royal Academy. Any particular reason for that?’

  ‘Of course. We never do anything without a reason. The Royal Academy had a strong link with the foundation of the alliance, and the connection has been maintained. James Whitstable was an honorary Academy member. I’m not sure why. You’d really have to ask the RA.’ She eyed her Scotch tumbler with longing. ‘Most of the interesting things that happened to our family occurred for the benefit of God, profit, and civic duty. Until now, that is. You’d think we were being punished for some past transgression. But murder and abduction? What kind of transgression would we have had to commit?’

  24 / Closing Ranks

  Bryant insisted on driving his battered yellow Mini Minor to their South London appointment. Although his skill in negotiating major intersections had marginally improved in the last few years (the only useful by-product of endless driving tests failed since the late 1950s), he considered a number of traffic signs to be superfluous, including those that involved changing lanes, giving way, or avoiding pedestrians. Weaving through the lunchtime traffic in Victoria proved to be a logistical challenge, but Bryant remained oblivious to the shouts and honks of dumbfounded fellow motorists. Even highway-hardened lorry drivers blanched and braked when faced with Bryant’s blithe disrespect for the road.

  ‘Leo Marks has sent down masses of documents pertaining to the financial history of the Whitstable empire,’ said May. ‘Janice is going through them, but it’s a laborious job. There are literally hundreds of holding companies going back across the century. The family has been suffering from declining fortunes for years. Their philanthropy is well established and beyond reproach, although their business practices throughout the last century show plenty of nasty tarnishes. Lawsuits, maltreatment of workforce, exploitation of minors, racial discrimination, restrictive practices, stuff like that.’

  ‘The Victorians became less forgiving as they expanded their empire.’ Bryant peered through the windscreen for an all-clear, then stamped down on the accelerator. ‘They felt God was on their side. It’s always a mistake mixing religion and business. Look what happened when Christian soldiers moved into the East India Company. In its early days of trading, it prided itself on empathy for other tribes and creeds, but respect fell away as the desire to convert took hold. We need to find somebody who’s been harmed by the Whitstables in their financial dealings. We might hear a few home truths then.’

  ‘They’ve closed ranks against outsiders, Arthur, ever since we began conducting interviews. Their answers sound rehearsed.’

  ‘Then we’ll conquer by dividing them up.’

  Bryant and his partner walked briskly along the river footpath at Vauxhall, a dismal part of the Embankment barely cheered by sunlight refracting from the leaden waters of the Thames. Daisy Whitstable had been missing for over thirty-six hours. There had been no new developments in the search for the bogus ice-cream van, and now the capital had begun emptying out for the Christmas holidays.

  May kicked out at a stone, sending it skittering. He had never felt so helpless in his search for a common enemy, and the strain of the past two weeks was beginning to show. ‘I think they’ve been told not to speak to us by a senior member of the family,’ he complained.

  ‘I don’t know who. We’ve interviewed virtually all of them.’

  ‘No family is impregnable, Arthur. There must be a weak link. We can’t just wait until someone breaks from the party line.’

  On the previous evening, the detectives had attempted to speak to Mina Whitstable, the bedridden mother of William, Peter, and Bella. For the last five years the old lady’s grip on reality had been tenuous, and the deaths of her children had provided the final push into mental aphasia. They were now pinning their hopes on Edith Eleanor Whitstable, a contemporary of Mina and something of an outsider, judging by the rest of the family’s comments about her.

  Edith was an irascible sixty-seven-year-old matriarch who owed little loyalty to those around her. Referring to her earlier interview with Sergeant Longbright, May saw that the woman had often been critical of the Whitstables’ business empire, in which she had once taken an active role. Three months earlier she had moved out of the district where she had spent most of her life, choosing to live instead on a small gated estate by the river. May was interested in finding out why. Bryant tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to a number of large redbrick buildings with arched windows.

  ‘I must have written the address down wrong. This is the old Sarson’s vinegar factory.’

  ‘Not any more,’ said May. ‘Looks like it’s been converted into town houses.’

  ‘This sort of property is for single professionals, not dowagers. Why on earth would she want to move here?’

  ‘Perhaps her old house was too large for her to manage.’

  The detectives found themselves in a mock- Elizabethan courtyard of pale herringbone brick. ‘How did she sound on the phone?’ asked May as they searched for the old lady’s apartment number.

  ‘Nervous. Certainly not the dragon I was expecting. Here we are.’

  Edith Whitstable resided in a ground-floor apartment on the far side of the estate. She had a small manicured garden with brass carriage lamps set in the front wall. The setting seemed out of character for a Whitstable. Bryant gave May a puzzled look as he rang the doorbell and loosened a voluminous purple scarf.

  The bird-boned woman who answered the door welcomed them with pleasing warmth.

  ‘You found us,’ she said, taking their coats. ‘I’ve already made tea, or would you prefer something stronger on a raw day like this?’

  ‘Good idea, it’s cold enough to freeze the—’ said Bryant before a look from May stopped him. ‘Tea will be fine.’

  The apartment had the sparse decoration of a newlyweds’ home. If Edith Whitstable had brought any of her old furniture with her, it wasn’t in evidence. A number of iron crucifixes lined the hallway, and there were several more austere religious icons in the lounge.

  ‘I understand you wish to ask me more questions,’ she said, setting down a tea tray and starting to lay out the cups. Her hands sported pale indentations from wearing rings that had now been removed. Her dress was floral, cheap, off the peg. Around her neck was a large silver cross. Bryant supposed that she must have fallen upon hard times. Yet, when they had met at Mornington Crescent, he remembered that she had been wearing a pearl brooch and a mink coat.

  ‘It shouldn’t take long.’ May checked his notes. ‘Your husband Samuel died two years ago, is that right?’

  ‘Yes. Cancer of the spine. He was in pain for a long time. The children were a great help.’

  ‘You have two boys, don’t you? Jack and Harry?’

  ‘Hardly boys, Mr May
. They’re in their early fifties.’

  ‘What relation were you to William, Peter, and Bella Whitstable?’

  ‘They were my cousins. We can all be traced back to James and Rosamunde in the middle of the last century. I suppose you know all about them?’

  ‘No, our investigations don’t go back quite that far.’

  ‘Oh, but they should! James was a fascinating man— kind, charming, a devout Christian. He carried out so many wonderful works, as did his children. Alfred, his oldest son, founded several charitable missions in the East End, you know.’

  ‘What about Daisy Whitstable?’

  ‘A terrible business,’ said Edith without hesitation. ‘Her grandparents are also my cousins. Her paternal grandfather was shot down in the Second World War.’

  A clang of metal sounded in the next room, followed by a grunt. Edith chose to ignore it.

  ‘I understand you recently moved house,’ said Bryant. ‘You must miss the old place, seeing as you grew up there. The recession can’t have been favourable to family fortunes.’

  ‘Selling up has had its good and bad sides, Mr Bryant,’ Edith said, nervously brushing the fingers of her right hand over her cross. ‘It has brought our family closer together. And it has helped me to rediscover my devotion to Our Saviour.’

  ‘I should imagine the money helped, too,’ added Bryant.

  ‘It’s no secret that we’ve had financial difficulties since Samuel died. With the house sold I’m solvent once more.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have borrowed from someone else in the family?’

  ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be, Mr May. Besides, none of us are as wealthy as we used to be, so we can’t lean on each other for financial support.’

  Another clang and grunt sounded from the next room.

  ‘You say you’ve been brought closer together as a family, Mrs Whitstable. Some cynics have suggested that’s because of the recent assaults. Perhaps you all want to keep an eye on each other.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting that one of us killed them?’

  ‘You tell me,’ said Bryant irritably. He hated having to fight his way through the family’s layers of obfuscation and misdirection.

  ‘It’s quite impossible,’ said Edith, affronted, her hand now clasping the cross at her throat. ‘We may be larger and a little more eccentric than the average English family, but at heart we get on very well together. We are not demonstrative in our loyalties and affections. Nor do we believe in hysterics or histrionics. We go about our duties as honest English folk who have worked hard for their homeland and their children. In that respect we’re really quite normal.’

  Bryant looked doubtful. A clang and a shouted oath boomed through the wall. Edith smiled peacefully. May threw his partner a look. ‘Is there somebody in the next room, Mrs Whitstable?’ he asked.

  ‘You must forgive the boys,’ she explained. ‘I’m living with my grandchildren, my Harry’s sons. They’re doing their exercises.’ She turned in her chair and called out. ‘Steven, Jeffrey, would you come here please?’

  Two musclebound young men entered the lounge. They were identical: both blond, both broad, both narrow-eyed and feral-featured. They had been lifting weights, and were out of breath. Both had silver crosses fastened around broad necks.

  One of them lowered a vast arm to his grandmother’s shoulder. ‘Is everything all right, Edith?’ he asked, looking sourly at the detectives. His crystal-cutter accent suggested public schooling.

  ‘Fine, boys. My friends were just leaving,’ she said with a nervous smile. The detectives rose awkwardly and were ushered from the lounge. Bryant tried to see into the other rooms as they were being returned to the hall, but one of the twins threw his arm across the corridor, barring the way. ‘We’ll see them out for you if you like,’ he offered.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Edith firmly. ‘Everything’s fine.’

  The boy caught his brother’s eye and held it, smiling. ‘Praise the Lord,’ he said.

  ‘Just like any normal family,’ snorted Bryant as they marched back along the Embankment path.

  ‘Well, she doesn’t look as if she’s been abducted,’ replied May. ‘She’s not being held there against her will.’

  ‘Maybe not, but she was minding her words. I’m willing to bet that her grandsons have been installed to keep watch over her.’

  ‘I don’t know, Arthur. We have to be able to trust somebody. She sounded perfectly innocent.’

  ‘When it comes to the Whitstables,’ said Bryant, ‘innocent is not a word that readily springs to mind.’ Talking to Edith about James Makepeace Whitstable had confirmed his suspicions. Although the family’s allies and enemies had been created in the distant past, their influence reached through to the present. Connections were maintained. Duty was done. That was the common link—the all-pervading Victorian sense of duty.

  He was sure that even now the trail was far from cold and the danger far from over. God forbid she was dead, for there would be a public outcry of such proportions that it would threaten the entire investigation. They were expected to produce a culprit, and fast.

  Bryant had a hunch that they were seeking no modern-day murderer. The answer might lie buried in the convoluted lineage of the Whitstable family, but he felt sure it was simple—and still waiting to be unearthed.

  25 / Sevens

  ‘I’m still hungry.’

  Daisy Whitstable wiped the chocolate from her mouth. Her dress was filthy and crawling with lice, and even though the tunnel door was shut she was shivering in the bitter winter air. She had eaten nothing but ice cream since her capture. The wet brick arches had taken on a more sinister appearance since the van’s dying battery had faded its headlights. A neon tube had been plugged into the wall, and threw just enough light across the floor to keep vermin at bay.

  Daisy was resilient, but her confidence was fading. She could no longer tell if it was day or night. Her ankles were loosely tied with a piece of nylon cord, and she was sick of scraping her knees on the rough concrete floor. She had given up crying. Tears only made her captor more upset.

  ‘Can’t I have something that isn’t ice cream?’ She was glad she could not see him. He was there, though. He was always there among the oil cans and coils of rope, crouching in the darkest corner with his head resting on his knees. Whenever he came closer she tried to move away, even though he had shown no desire to hurt her. She had stopped trying to understand why her mother and father had not come to take her home. Perhaps she was being punished. Suppose she never saw them, or her brother, ever again? Against her will, she began to whimper.

  In the corner, her captor stirred and rose slowly to his feet. She tried to stifle her tears but it was too late. He was shuffling toward her now, and would push her back into the corner of the bench, as he had done before.

  Or so she thought, until she saw that this time he was carrying a hooked knife in one hand.

  Maggie Armitage’s face had been created specifically for smiling. She beamed reassuringly at her clients, her eyes waning to happy crescents, and massaged their hands consolingly as she provided conviction enough for both of them. This was an important part of her function, for as the Grand Leader of the Camden Town Coven, Maggie was often the harbinger of distressing news.

  Every Monday night, she and the six remaining members of her sect met in the gloomy flat above the World’s End public house opposite Camden Town Tube station, and attempted to provide some psychic balm for the city’s wounds. Evil could not be stopped, merely held at bay, but at least its victims could be aided and, if possible, forewarned.

  John will be furious if he finds out I’ve agreed to this meeting, thought Bryant. May held no belief in the Hereafter, but his partner kept an open mind. In the past, information provided by the cheery white witch had proved to be correct, and had helped to close a number of longstanding police files. This good work went unacknowledged by the Met, who regarded fringe operators with the same distrust doctors r
eserve for practitioners of alternative medicine. The News of the World ran too many exposés on bogus covens. In years to come they would replace them with features on celebrity sex romps, but for now they were content to run photographs of naked women prancing around bonfires.

  Bryant surveyed the ground-floor hall of the Victoria and Albert Museum, wondering why Maggie had specifically asked to meet him here, in this shadowy edifice of marble and stone. He turned to find her striding briskly between the glass cases, her spectacles swinging on an amber chain at her bosom. In keeping with the festive season, she had enough dangling plastic ornaments about her person to decorate a small Norwegian pine.

  ‘Dear thing, how well you look!’ she cried, causing several members of the public to turn disapprovingly. ‘I hope you didn’t mind coming here, but I’m with Maureen and daren’t let her out of my sight. She’s sitting her British Pagan Rites exam next week and I said I’d help with the research, but she’s a bit of a klepto and tends to heave open the cases when I’m not looking. She’s liable to have Aleister Crowley’s soup spoons up her jumper before you know it.’

  ‘So you’re in here uncovering forgotten symbolic rituals, eh?’ Bryant asked, beaming jovially.

  ‘Actually I was in the gift shop admiring their casserole covers, but I’m on a diet so let’s not dwell. Maureen’s doing her Fellowship of Isis and Dion Fortune—it always sounds like a fifties singer, don’t you think?—and lately she’s developed the habit of dropping into trances, so she needs some looking after, especially when we’re on her scooter. I think you’ve met her.’

  ‘I remember meeting a very pretty Jamaican girl a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Oh, Katherine’s still with us, but she’s called Freya now and won’t talk to anyone who doesn’t acknowledge her god, Odin. Her husband’s not pleased because he’s on night work and keeps forgetting.’ Maggie paused for a breath and donned her spectacles. Her eyes swam at him from sparkling plastic frames. ‘I wanted to talk to you rather urgently, as it happens. The coven has a resident numerologist named Nigel. He’s very good at Chaos Theory, which is just as well because his math is terrible, and at the moment he keeps coming up with sevens. Sevens, sevens everywhere, and it all seems connected with you. Or rather, with your investigation. You’d better follow me.’