The Clockmaker

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘And you extended credit of thirty shillings.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘For a gold pocket watch? You consider this a fair price?’

  ‘The party needed ready money, I’m sure. Perhaps that was all that was asked for. Sometimes that happens, you understand; there is more hope of a party being able to redeem their object if the loan is not too high.’

  ‘And this is the address given and the name. Miss Adelaide Hay and an address in Lincoln.’

  ‘That’s right, yes. My assistant recalls her well. A red-haired young lady with very pretty eyes, he said. Apparently, the watch belonged to her late uncle.’

  ‘Anything?’ Henry asked Mickey, his attention snapping from the pawnbroker. The man could not tell him anything useful. The address was interesting, though; this Adelaide Hay had given the address of the Goldmann family as her own. Clearly, she knew a lot about Joseph.

  ‘Well, the inscription is there and I think I may have a tiny glimmer of hope. It’s only a partial print and I’m guessing from its placement that it might be a right forefinger. It might be Joseph Levy’s, of course, but we might strike lucky. Direct that light for me, would you?’

  Henry took hold of the desk lamp and directed it down on to the watch. ‘Do you have a second lamp? We need more light.’

  Siddons, fascinated now, bustled to find more light. Mickey angled his camera, trying not to cast shadow. He took three pictures of the partial print, picked out now in black against the gold surface of the watch.

  ‘It’s fragmentary,’ Henry commented, but he could discern loops and whorls. ‘Is that a second?’ he asked, catching a glimpse of something on the rim of the outer case.

  ‘You could be right. Wait until I’ve dealt with this and then we’ll have a look.’ He took another two more pictures, changing his angle a little, and then carefully, delicately brushed the second print.

  ‘That looks different,’ Siddons exclaimed, and Henry could see that he was correct.

  Mickey took more pictures, capturing the ephemeral print, hardly daring to take a breath. Even with the second light, he’d be pushing the film; the negatives would be thin and difficult to process.

  ‘Now, let’s see what we have.’

  Mickey took a glass and examined both marks closely. They were definitely different but, as Henry knew, that could just indicate different fingers on the same hand. Joseph’s hand?

  Mickey flicked quickly through the fingerprint cards he had brought with him. Those from known suspects that local constabularies had identified.

  ‘Now’s the time to cross fingers,’ he said.

  He began by comparing right forefingers, instinct and experience suggesting this might be the likeliest finger to have made that mark on the inner case.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  He began a comparison of the second print and a slow smile spread across his face. ‘We may have a match,’ he said. ‘Of course, it’s only a partial print, but I see enough similarities to bet money on it.’

  Henry took the card from Mickey’s hand. Gus Dickson, robbery with threats, violent affray and theft from persons. His description was of someone tall, well built, broad-shouldered, the sort of man Mrs Parker had observed arguing with the redhead. Or, at least, she’d been a redhead on that occasion. On others she’d been described as brunette or dark, but Henry figured that a change of hair was not so difficult to achieve.

  And there was an address. Recently released, Henry noted, the man would be reporting regularly to the local police.

  ‘We need a place to stay tonight,’ Mickey said. ‘Can you suggest somewhere?’

  ‘Oh, you should try the Mucky Duck.’ He grinned. ‘The Black Swan. Beds are not bad and the food’s not bad either.’ He gave them directions and provided a box into which Mickey could slide the watch.

  ‘So now we find the hotel, telephone our contact at the local police division and then get this boy arrested. We can be in Boston by mid-morning, I reckon.’

  ‘We could try to get a train tonight,’ Henry objected.

  ‘I need dinner and a bed,’ Mickey told the man who was technically his boss. ‘As do you. The locals can pick him up and keep him warm until we get there. It won’t hurt anyone for our man to spend the night in a police cell.’

  Henry gave in, knowing Mickey was right. It should be the local police who collected the suspect.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Gus Dickson was in bed. Addie lay beside him, pretending to be asleep. Fred was already snoring on his camp bed in the tiny kitchen, sounds that could be heard well enough through the thin walls. Fred rarely lost sleep over anything.

  Gus, though, was losing a lot of sleep lately, and the reason for that was currently settled on the edge of the bed, her back to him. Although she was pretending to sleep, the stiffness of her back was ramrod and as unlike a woman at rest as it was possible to be.

  Gus still got what he wanted from her, of course. She wasn’t that stupid, and he didn’t really care that it was given grudgingly and – increasingly, lately – passively. He didn’t really care what Addie thought about anything and particularly not about sex. What right did she have to think about that anyway? Not when she’d given herself to some skinny Jew boy. Gus wasn’t sure what offended him more: the skinniness, the lack of manliness all round or the fact that she’d given it to a Jew.

  She had him; what the hell did she want or need with anything or anyone else? What right had she to expect a damn thing?

  Addie moved, just slightly. She must have really dropped off, Gus thought, and then startled awake. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. And to think he’d once had genuine feelings for her. Thought she might be worth hanging on to.

  Well, not any more.

  Gus sat up and then leaned over to where Addie lay and took her by the shoulder. He rolled her on her back.

  ‘Not now, Gus. Please.’

  ‘What the fuck, Addie! What d’you mean, not now? You don’t get to decide.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Look, I don’t want to be angry with you. I don’t want to hurt you, but you push me too far. You know that?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Gus.’

  But she wasn’t sorry. He could hear that. She didn’t give a damn; maybe she never had. ‘Turned your head, didn’t he? You’re a bloody stupid bitch, Addie, you know that. We had it good and you …’

  ‘I thought he loved me, Gus.’

  ‘Loved you! Fuck it, Addie, you betrayed him. You can’t tell me you felt a damn thing. You smiled your smile and you did everything I told you to, and the poor bugger followed you like a little lamb. All he had to do was hand it over. He said he was getting money but he lied to you, Addie. Lied. And if you try to tell me it was any different to that, you’re lying to yourself.’

  She turned away and he didn’t stop her. She was no fun anymore. He wanted rid. She wasn’t even any good as a distraction. He’d point out a mark to her and in the old days she’d be on it. There she’d have been – that smile, that little tilt of the head, that feeling she gave the poor sods that they were special and that she’d singled them out.

  But now!

  Gus got out of bed and wandered over to the window, drew the curtain aside and stared down into the empty street. The rain had cleared and the sky was full of stars.

  ‘I’m off out,’ he told her.

  ‘Where are you going?’ She sounded oddly panicked, as though, much as she hated him being close to her, she hated more the idea of being alone or of him being elsewhere.

  The sound of splintering wood followed by shouting and booted feet on the stairs interrupted them. The constable barged through the door, truncheon in hand, another behind him.

  Gus was knocked to the ground before he even had the idea of resisting. He heard Fred shout from the other room and Addie, clutching the sheets, began to scream.

  ‘Fuck it,’ Gus swore.

  ‘Language, sonny.’

  Gus yelled in pain as the constable hit him again.


  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘Has the woman said anything yet?’ Henry asked. As there were no female officers in the Boston constabulary, a matron had been called in to supervise Adelaide.

  ‘Not yet, Inspector. She was … in bed when the constables made the arrests. They found a neighbour to be with her while she dressed and then I came in. She slept a little and ate breakfast, but she’s refused to say anything to the sergeant and said little enough to me.’

  She sounded aggrieved. Henry nodded. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘And the men?’

  ‘Been interviewed, but I don’t think Sergeant Todd has got much out of either of them.’

  Henry opened the tiny window in the cell door and peered through at Addie. She glanced up and then looked away, disinterested.

  Henry returned to the office where Sergeant Todd was waiting for them.

  ‘I took statements,’ he said. ‘Such as they are. Frederick Welton is playing dumb, insisting he was just staying for a night or two and knows nothing. Mr Gregory, aka Gus Dickson, is a cocky bugger and is likewise insisting on his innocence; reckons he was manhandled and wants legal counsel.’

  ‘What for, if he’s innocent?’ Henry asked.

  ‘I’ll take Dickson,’ Mickey said. ‘Sergeant Todd, if you can have another go at Fred Welton, and Chief Inspector Johnstone will question the young woman. Shall we reconvene at midday?’

  There was a shortage of space in the borough police headquarters. Henry had been allocated a tiny room behind the kitchen that he guessed was usually just used for storage. A small table and three chairs had been moved in, but the matron would be sitting in the open doorway.

  Not ideal, Henry thought, but it would do. Priority had clearly been given to the interviews with the male suspects – the woman just an afterthought. He’d seen the look of surprise on Todd’s face when Henry had not chosen to interview Gus Dickson himself, and still more surprise that he had let Mickey make the allocation.

  Adelaide Hay was brought in. She looked pale, wore no lipstick, and her red hair had been left to tumble about her face and shoulders. That she had dressed in haste was obvious. No stockings and an old cardigan thrown on over her green dress.

  She didn’t even look up at Henry as the matron seated her at the table.

  ‘Would you like some water?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I know you had a relationship with Joseph Levy. I know you were present when he died. I want to know what happened.’

  ‘I don’t know any Joseph Levy.’ It was said without conviction.

  ‘You went to Grimsby, pawned his watch. The pawnbroker could identify you.’

  ‘So? I pawned a watch.’

  ‘The address you gave – it was the address of Joseph Levy’s fiancée. How did you know that?’

  For the first time she lifted her gaze to look at him. Her eyes were deeply green and, Henry could see, brimming with tears.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘How did you get involved with Joseph Levy? What happened on the day he died?’

  Addie shook her head.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Don’t lie to me.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You know that Joseph told his fiancée he was in love with you.’

  ‘He what?’ She looked shocked. Bright colour touched her cheeks and lips and then faded again.

  ‘Did he die because of you? He wanted you to go away with him, didn’t he? I said, didn’t he?’ Henry raised his voice and brought his hand down on the table with a sharp slap. Addie jumped, as did the matron. She looked about to object and Henry raised a hand to silence her.

  ‘He asked you to leave with him. Is that so?’

  This time she nodded.

  ‘And how were you going to live? Where were you going to go? What did he offer you, Adelaide?’

  ‘He really said he loved me?’

  ‘Apparently so. And you repaid him how? By betraying him to Dickson? Did you tell Dickson that you were leaving with Joseph Levy? Was he jealous? Or did he think Joseph had something worth stealing – something more than his watch and chain?’ He paused momentarily. ‘And where did the chain go? Pawn it somewhere else, did you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I hid it in my coat lining,’ she said. ‘Gus found it.’

  ‘And he hit you? I’m told you are badly bruised.’

  She shrugged, as though it were nothing. What did anything matter now?

  ‘And so he followed you off the train? Was that what you’d agreed with Gus Dickson? That you would lure Joseph from the train? We know from witness statements that you were involved in an altercation with a man matching the description of Gus Dickson. Did you quarrel about Joseph Levy?’

  ‘Gus was mad with me.’

  ‘So they had travelled ahead of you by an earlier train? You got on at another stop, hoping to avoid them? So why didn’t you just stay on the train? If you saw them at the station, Gus Dickson and Fred Welton, then why didn’t you just stay on the train? Why get out to confront them, if not to lure Joseph from the safety of the train? No, that wasn’t how it happened, was it, Adelaide? You had it all planned with Welton and Dickson. You would get on the train as arranged with Joseph Levy and then you would leave the train at Bardney, knowing the poor sap would follow you, and you handed him over to your friends, knowing what they would do to him.’

  Because that was the way we had always done it. That’s what I was there for, to make a scene while they did the business.

  She stood suddenly, taking Henry by surprise, and leaned across the table, shouting in his face, ‘He lied to me, didn’t he? He was just like all the rest, all full of talk. I trusted him. He said he’d have money and we could go away, but he had nothing. Didn’t have a pot to piss in.’

  The matron grabbed Addie’s shoulders and pressed her back into her chair. Henry was unmoved.

  ‘So,’ he said, continuing in the same tone as before, ‘you saw your friends on the platform and you got off the train. You proceeded to argue, and Joseph, thinking you were in trouble, followed you off the train and across the platform. You and your friends persuaded or threatened him so that he left the station with you and then you robbed and killed Joseph Levy and you hid his body by the river Witham.’

  Addie sat back, arms folded across her body, and looked at the wall above Henry’s head.

  ‘And you were party to all of this, Adelaide. He fell in love with you, wanted to give you a better life than you had with the likes of Gus Dickson. But no. You are as black-hearted as your friends. You betrayed him, no doubt laughed with Dickson about this poor fool you’d taken in, but that was the problem, wasn’t it, Addie? He was a poor fool. You had expectations and poor, foolish Joseph failed to meet them, so you—’

  ‘He lied to me.’ She shouted the words and then repeated them more quietly. ‘He lied to me. He said he’d have money, that he could take me away. I never wanted to tell Gus, but he forced it out of me, just like he forced every other bloody thing. But when he got off that train, all he had to do was hand it over and they’d have let him go.’

  ‘You really believe that?’ Henry asked. He had lowered his voice now, forcing Addie to pay attention, to listen closely. ‘You really believe that they’d have let him go? He could name you; he could describe them. All he had to do was shout for help and the porters or the guard would have come running. But he trusted you, believed you would get back on the train with him, that the two of you could be together. Isn’t that what he thought, Adelaide?’

  Henry stood this time and gestured for the matron to take Addie away. It was enough for now.

  Then he wandered through to the little kitchen and helped himself to a mug of tea and thought things through.

  Why had Joseph and Adelaide not boarded the train together in Lincoln?

  Well, the answer to that one was simple, perhaps. His ersatz in-laws had come to see him off. But did that make sense? Why had they escorted him to the station? They didn’t know about Adelaide
– except that Joseph had told Rebecca that he was in love. Had she revealed this to her family?

  He thought back to what Rebecca had told him, checking through his notes. The girl had said that Joseph revealed his love for Adelaide and that Rebecca had tried to buy some time by asking to delay the wedding. Clearly, she’d hoped for a change of heart or at least wanted to wait until Joseph was out of the house before revealing what he’d told her.

  Adelaide must have caught a train out of Lincoln, got off at the next station, ready to get back on to the next train – the train Joseph told her he would be catching. As likely as not, this earlier train had also carried her male associates to Bardney, and they’d hung around – or lain low – until the next train arrived just under an hour later.

  Joseph had clearly decided that they should not acknowledge one another and had most likely been surprised when she had left the train at Bardney. Looking from the window, he must have been shocked to see Gus Dickson and Fred Welton.

  ‘Did he know what she was?’ Henry wondered aloud. ‘Did she tell him about them?’

  She must have done. If she and Joseph were intimate, he would undoubtedly have seen the bruises.

  So where was this money supposed to be coming from? And did Henry believe Adelaide’s claim that Joseph had nothing worth stealing – apart from the watch and chain – when Dickson and his associate had so brutally attacked him?

  Henry enquired as to where Fred Welton was being interviewed. He slipped quietly into the room and signalled to Sergeant Todd that he should continue. A constable sat at the side of the room, taking notes, and Henry leaned against the wall beside him, watching Fred Welton.

  Welton was the smaller of the two men. Skinny and hollow-cheeked and not as tall as Adelaide Hay or Gus Dickson. So which had wielded the knife and which had struck with the brick? On balance, Henry would have Welton down as the knife man, striking slightly upwards beneath the ribs. The brick had landed with considerable force on the back of Joseph’s head and spoke of a taller, more robust frame having wielded it.

  Glancing at the constable’s notes, Henry gathered that their suspect hadn’t had much to say for himself, but Henry’s presence seemed to change that. Fred kept glancing in Henry’s direction and announced more than once that his being brought here was ‘a bleeding liberty’. He was suddenly unsettled.