The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

by Natasha Pulley

  ‘Shut up,’ Grace said, staring at the dust. ‘Shut up, shut up.’

  Alice straightened her neck, more curious than offended.

  ‘That chalk is still moving because you opened the door.’

  ‘Chalk?’

  Grace ground some more against the blackboard and, when the powder fell and drifted beside the white patch she had made, she traced her finger through it and watched the disturbed particles. ‘I mean to say it holds the shape.’

  ‘Are you feeling well?’ Alice said. She preferred Grace not to write out equations and talk about them in the house. She seemed to acknowledge that while numbers were a necessary part of life, they were, like French postcards, not suitable for a lady.

  ‘No, I’m an idiot. We’re all idiots. I don’t understand how anything is ever discovered in physics if we keep on like this. Motion is relative. You can stand still on earth without feeling that you’re spinning at a hundred and fifty thousand miles per hour and hurtling round the sun, which in turn moves … and chalk dust can hang almost still, despite all that.’

  ‘What does chalk have to do with—’

  ‘Alice,’ Grace said, still looking at the board, ‘I asked you before whether you had spoken to anyone about me, and I said it didn’t matter. I was lying: it does matter extremely. Your employment now depends on the answer. Were you telling the truth?’

  ‘My employment does not depend on the answer, I’ve been here since you were four.’

  Grace turned around. ‘I’m afraid loyalty is a continuous phenomenon. You don’t score points for past action.’

  Alice faltered. Rather than set it down, she stood holding the new tea, which took on a thin white film as the chalk in the air began to fall and settle. ‘No, ma’am. But – I am telling the truth, I swear—’

  ‘Can you tell me where you were today, when you weren’t with me?’

  ‘Eating, in the kitchen!’ Her eyes had filled with tears again.

  ‘So if I ask Mrs Sloam, she will tell me what she cooked for you?’

  ‘Yes, it was ham and egg!’

  ‘Unusual for you, you never seem too keen on ham.’

  ‘She ran out of beef, so we … I haven’t spoken to anyone!’

  ‘Have you seen anyone around the house? Oriental?’

  ‘I wouldn’t speak to a Chinaman, they’re dirty!’ She began to cry again. ‘You can’t turn me away now. I shall talk to Lady Carrow about it, she always—’

  ‘Alice, of course I shan’t turn you away. I just wanted you to answer properly.’

  Alice stared at her with a mixture of relief and resentment.

  Grace turned side on to the blackboard. ‘The fact is that there are two possible scenarios. One, my friend lives with a bombmaker who has very convincingly pretended to be a clairvoyant—’

  ‘Bombmaker!’

  ‘—to the point that he must have been spending hundreds of pounds on it. Or he … well, he’s living proof of a static ether. So you see, it does rather matter if you’re telling the truth.’ Grace rubbed her face. Her skin felt too dry after an evening spent in front of a fire and a night dusted in chalk. ‘He found a spare card I had planted in a deck on the first try. I didn’t tell him there was one. If he didn’t have that from you, he didn’t have it from anyone.’

  Alice was frowning. ‘I never told anybody that, ma’am. Certainly not a horrid little Chinaman.’ She hesitated, then regained her nerve. ‘What exactly does ether have to do with clairvoyants? I hear everyone say it, at séances and so forth, but nobody says what it is.’

  Grace nodded once. ‘Ether is to light as air is to sound, but far more efficient. You will have noticed that when fireworks ignite, you hear the bang after the flash? That is because sound travels more slowly, much more slowly. So we can say that the medium of air conducts sound at a certain speed. As does ether. It conducts light at a speed of about two hundred thousand miles per second. Yes?’

  Alice dipped her head.

  ‘Light can go anywhere, so ether must be everywhere. Everything moves through it. I always thought that the movement of the world would be measurable, but movement is relative within a closed system, like a planet, as any monkey with a basic understanding of thermodynamics would have guessed if we hadn’t all been so busy trying to measure the wretched stuff. That means that it doesn’t move at all at ground level, except for the other things that move at ground level. People, light, insects, bacteria. The synapses of human brains. Which is where clairvoyance becomes possible, and why the Institute of Psychical Research funds quite a few physicists now. Ether particles knock together like dominoes as soon as they’re disturbed, at the speed of light. If a human being could sense those disturbances, he would know about possibilities as they formed, not as they unfolded. He would know you were going to do something when you decided to do it, not when you did it. And he would know if you were considering it, because that would make a wave too. Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said suddenly.

  It made Alice jump. ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Not you, I’m sorry. I’ve just understood why he lost a dice game. Ether conducts possible effects. But a die has—’

  ‘Exactly even chances?’ Alice said in a small voice.

  ‘Yes. The only thing the ether drag of a regular-sided falling object can tell you is that it is falling. One could be the most sensitive clairvoyant in the world and still lose a game of backgammon.’ She touched the back of her head, which was aching. ‘I had better send a telegram to Thaniel. I should think he would like to know that his friend has been telling him the truth.’

  ‘It’s three in the morning, ma’am, the post office is closed.’

  ‘Of course it is. First thing then.’ She leaned back against the blackboard.

  ‘Oh, ma’am, your dress—’

  ‘Chalk washes out.’ She picked up her tea. It tasted good after working for so long, though chalk-dusty.

  Alice sighed. ‘Did it have to be a clerk from the Foreign Office?’ she said.

  ‘He’s much better than anyone else it could have been.’

  ‘And does he know that he’s going to get an angry visit from Lord Carrow tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes. I asked him. I stayed out late on purpose. Alice, stop looking that way.’

  ‘Well! Oh, and of course his nasty little Chinaman friend didn’t have a word to say about you doing such a foolish—’

  ‘Actually he wasn’t there when we spoke.’ She paused. ‘In fact, I think he would have had something to say about it, if I’d given him the chance.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Yes. I think he … well. He didn’t like me. They seemed quite close.’

  Alice’s expression turned inward. ‘Ma’am,’ she said at last. ‘It can’t be safe to upset a man who knows the future. What’s to stop him making sure that you stray into a carriage crash or under a falling pile of bricks?’

  ‘Human decency, same as everyone else,’ Grace said, but she looked into her tea and felt something twist in her insides.

  EIGHTEEN

  Grace had promised to send a telegram once she was sure of what was going on. Although Thaniel could see that it was unreasonable to expect anything before half past seven in the morning, he kept listening for the door bell while he watched rice boil on the stove. Usually he liked seeing the steam rise, because rice steamed differently to anything else, but he couldn’t concentrate on it. When he opened the workshop door, wanting to see the street through the big window, he found Mori there already. He was transposing some of the most delicate clockwork from the cabinets and into deep, velvet boxes. Thaniel dug his fingernails into the door frame.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said. Since it was before half past seven, prior agreement obliged him to do it in Japanese, which was fortunate. It was difficult to sound unusually strained in a new second language: it was strained all the time.

  ‘Oh, it’s … ’ Mori clicked one of the boxes shut. Thaniel saw him try to arrange the sentence into vocabulary that
was easy to understand, then give up. He broke his normal rule and went into English. ‘The police are coming. I suppose I’ve got an Irish-sounding name. People are more careful with things in boxes.’

  ‘Are they?’ Thaniel said.

  ‘Sometimes. Look … they’re angry, and want to fit up the first likely-looking foreigner, so I’m going to be arrested. But it will get to your office quickly. The British treaties in Japan are fragile at the moment and the Ministry of the Interior will implode when they hear. I’d rather do that and be cleared today than go off to the Lake District and drag it out for weeks. Stop looking at me like that and go to work.’

  ‘They’ll hurt you.’

  ‘Not imaginatively.’

  Thaniel looked to the window again. The street was still empty except for one of the middle Haverly boys. He was weaving through things in the mist no one else could see. Katsu was on his shoulder.

  ‘Are you waiting for post?’ Mori said. ‘It won’t come until tonight. The Knightsbridge office doesn’t open in the morning today.’

  Thaniel let his breath out. ‘I forgot.’

  ‘Go to work,’ Mori said. ‘You’ll be arrested too if you stay.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If somebody hits you, you will hit him back. Which is … impeding police business, I think. Go on. Watch for a telegram around five o’clock and hand it over to Francis Fanshaw quickly, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Mori—’

  ‘Steepleton.’

  He did as he was told.

  When he arrived at the office, he stopped at the corner of his desk and looked down at the sleek telegraph machine for a long time. The gears were still shiny and there was no grime yet in the grooves of the transcript wheel. For all things seemed to have changed over the last few weeks, it was hard not to think that, when he boiled it all down, all he had really done was exchange a rickety telegraph for a new model that did just the same thing, more smoothly.

  Fanshaw came in and tipped a folder into the crook of his arm. It was full of lumpy papers pasted with raw telegraph transcripts. ‘Tokyo and Peking dispatches. Go and brief the Minister.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You’re the only one who’s read them all. Off you go. Quick march, he’s waiting.’

  Lord Leveson did not wait for any introductions before he began to ask questions. He was a big, white-haired man who barked more than he spoke. The questions were staccato bursts. All he required was the relevant parts of the dispatches, but since the raw transcripts were peppered with overhead and snatches of shorthand code between operators, he couldn’t read it himself. It dragged on for an hour, and then two, and having decided that Thaniel was better than usual at reading from the transcripts, Leveson handed him the Moscow set too and it all began again. He was only a few lines in when Fanshaw tapped on the door and leaned in.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt. Steepleton, there’s a telegram for you. There’s a courier here who won’t go away until he gives it to you in person.’

  The young post office runner came in and waited while Thaniel signed for the wire. It had been marked double urgent. When he opened it, there was only one line of text inside.

  Mori is genuine. Grace.

  ‘Emergency at home,’ he said. He gave the dispatches to Fanshaw and left.

  He took the train back to Knightsbridge, counting off the stations as the lights came and went through the dark. When he came out, the sun was too bright, and too hot. He had hoped he might arrive before the police, but before he was even in sight of number twenty-seven, he knew they were there already. The street was always busy, because the sort of people who could afford Filigree Street did not work in offices, but the crowd was much denser at the far end than it should have been. The passers-by who were coming toward the shop were looking ahead and slowing, and the ones who had passed it were looking back. He walked quickly and a way opened up for his official-looking clothes.

  Mori was sitting on the pavement. Beside him, close enough to touch him, stood a tall policeman in a uniform too heavy for the heat. He hadn’t chosen to sit there. There were dust-marks on his knees where someone had forced him to kneel down.

  ‘Stop there,’ the policeman said. ‘He’s not open for business.’

  ‘I live here. Mori, are you all right?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said, but he didn’t sound surprised.

  ‘Have you been out here all day?’

  The policeman aimed a brief kick at Mori’s hip. ‘Not a word.’

  ‘Jameson,’ someone called from the door. ‘Bring him in for minute. We’d like to see what he has to say about this.’

  The man pulled Mori up by his arm and pushed him to the door. Thaniel followed. A serious-looking officer met them there. He was holding one of the clockwork birds. It had been smashed to get it open, and the gunpowder packet inside was exposed.

  ‘So then. What do you call this, hey? Jameson, call the four-wheeler down, we’re just about – bloody hell!’

  Mori had snatched the bird and the powder from him. He pulled the string out of the packet. There was a snap.

  ‘Get down!’ the sergeant bellowed.

  Thaniel didn’t. Mori was looking at him, holding the packet in his open hand for him to see, as if there were nobody else in the room. It burst into flame, and a spray of sparks lifted and spun gold and purple through the air, glittering and crackling. Just a firework. It made the workshop seem gloomy by comparison, and the sparks and the smoke smell of the gunpowder made it all, for only a second or so, blend into bright memories of fairs and carnivals. The sparks thinned. The paper packaging had burned to ashes on the instant. Mori brushed his hands and the soft grey rags floated down to the ground.

  There was a fractional silence in which everything was still. It was long enough for Thaniel to see what had happened to the workshop. Every drawer from the desk was out and emptied, and all the cupboards under and over the cabinets stood open. Everything from inside was over the floor. If it had been put down carefully at first, there was nothing careful about the way the policemen had kicked things aside to make pathways.

  One of the policemen knocked Mori on to his knees again, and there was shouting, and someone pulled out a truncheon.

  ‘Williamson!’

  He hadn’t seen him, but a Clan na Gael bombmaker was an important arrest, and like he hoped, Williamson appeared behind his men. He had been sitting at the back of the room, only watching.

  ‘Either,’ Thaniel said to him, ‘I am going to wire the Foreign Office and tell them that you’re about to beat a false confession from a Japanese nobleman with no motive and no evidence except a firework, and in view of your having not found the Yard bomb in time in the first place, you’ll probably be sacked. Or, you can take your men away. And if you don’t take your hand off that thing now, you’ll have to fight someone your own size,’ he added to the man with the truncheon.

  Williamson was staring at him. ‘You will keep your mouth shut or I shall arrest you too.’

  ‘Then Francis Fanshaw will be asking after me tomorrow when I don’t come to work, won’t he, and it will all be the same but twelve hours delayed.’

  ‘You … idiot.’

  Thaniel shook his head once and waited.

  ‘Everyone! Clear out,’ Williamson shouted, without looking away from him. ‘Yes; now, come on, out.’ To Thaniel, very quietly, ‘And when we do prove him guilty, you’ll damn well go to Broadmoor as an accomplice, you stupid, stupid bastard. Get out of my way.’

  Thaniel moved, and stood by Mori to see them go. Once the last uniformed man was out of the workshop, he took Mori’s hands and pulled him up. The people who had been watching were drifting off now. The Haverly boys on the wall looked disappointed that there had not been a real fight. Thaniel waited for a little while, watching, because he could not imagine that police were a common sight on Filigree Street, and he did not think well enough of London to be sure that everyone would put it down to a mistake. Some women were
talking behind their fans as they walked, heads close together, looking back sometimes.

  ‘Did you know that Gilbert and Sullivan are at the show village today?’ Mori said, bringing him back.

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Research, for an operetta set in Japan. The signs have been up all week.’

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  Thaniel held his neck to move his head and see if any of the shadows on his face were bruises. One was. ‘Liar. I should have stayed this morning. I’m sorry.’

  Mori smiled, only with his eyes. ‘I know you mean that well, but I have to say, I’m a bit offended that you think I couldn’t live through some bruises and some shouting without a man who was born well after I was first on the wrong end of naval guns.’

  ‘When were you?’

  ‘When the British fired on Canton. I mean … they weren’t aiming at me personally, but I think it should still count.’

  ‘Yes, it counts.’ Thaniel coughed, because his throat had closed.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mori said, quietly. Thaniel let him lead him through everything across the floor, back to the front door.

  At Osei’s teashop, the air smelled of rice wine and orange blossom, from the incense frames that the women draped their kimono over after washing them. There was so much pipe smoke in the air that it held the lamplight and turned amber. Whenever anyone moved through it, it was tugged after them, whorling where people went to and fro with drinks and money. Arthur Sullivan, in the flesh and looking younger than he did from the back of an operetta, was playing a jaunty piece on the old piano. He winced whenever he hit the middle C, which had become a horrible chlorine sharp. It was the note Mori had changed two weeks ago. Thaniel looked at him to ask why, but Mori ignored him and ordered some sake.

  The space around the piano had been cleared of tables and chairs, and some of the girls and the children danced while another man with a magnificent grey moustache struggled to explain a story to a group of young men. William Gilbert, he supposed, though he had never seen the man in person. Mori pulled him into the nearest seats as Osei glided by again, this time to set cups between them. Her hair was twisted up with flowers that matched the new sash on her dress, and made her look like summer. She smiled at Mori, who was reading the Japanese newspaper on the table and didn’t notice, or chose not to. Thaniel crinkled the paper down with his fingertip once she had gone.