The Clockmaker's Secret

by Jack Benton

  Slim shrugged. ‘I’m self-employed. I take as long as I like.’

  ‘Did you meet him, then? Your friend?’

  The sarcasm in the man’s tone caused a ripple of anger in Slim’s stomach, but he forced a casualness into his voice. ‘Amos Birch?’

  ‘Yeah. Gave his clock back to him, did you?’

  ‘Not yet. It’s a work in progress.’

  ‘Look, I don’t know who you are, but I think it might be wise for you to take that clock and go back to where you came from.’

  Slim couldn’t help but smile. He was an ex-marine who’d served time for ABH being threatened by Santa Claus in a green wax jacket. Bunce might have claimed to be ex-military, but it was difficult to see it.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m just intrigued by the sharpness of your tone. I’m just a man looking to sell an old clock.’

  ‘Now, you see, Mr. Hardy, that’s the last thing I think you are.’

  ‘You remembered my name.’

  ‘I wrote it down. Something about you didn’t feel right.’

  ‘Just something?’ Slim sighed, tiring of the games. ‘Look, you want the truth? I’m down here on holiday. I found that clock buried out on Bodmin Moor. The damn thing nearly broke my ankle. It just so happens that my current day job—for better or worse—is as a private investigator. It’s hard to resist a mystery.’

  Bunce wrinkled his nose. ‘Well, that changes things.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The other man nodded, then puffed out his cheeks, as though preparing to reveal some major revelation. Slim lifted an eyebrow.

  ‘You see,’ Bunce said, ‘I was the last person—outside the immediate family—to see Amos Birch alive.’

  12

  ‘So, where is it now, that clock you found?’

  Slim sat across from Geoff Bunce in a café on the corner of Tavistock market. He sipped weak coffee out of a Styrofoam cup and said, ‘I hid it.’

  ‘Where?’

  Slim smiled. ‘Somewhere I’m sure it’ll be safe.’

  Bunce nodded quickly. ‘Right, right. Good idea. So, do you have any idea what happened to Amos?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  ‘But you’re a private investigator, right?’

  ‘I deal mostly with extra-marital affairs and disability frauds,’ Slim said. ‘Nothing too exciting. I’m not making any money off this investigation, so when the trail runs cold I’ll likely disappear back up-country and find a case that pays.’

  ‘Don’t you have any clues?’

  ‘What I have is a mental list of possibilities, and the more I can cross off, the closer I’ll get to figuring out what really happened.’

  ‘What do you have on your list?’

  Slim laughed. ‘Pretty much everything from murder to alien abduction.’

  ‘You don’t really think—’ Bunce cut off abruptly, his nose wrinkling. ‘Ah, a joke. I see.’

  ‘I really have no clue. At the moment I’m just trying to establish the circumstances surrounding his disappearance. Perhaps you can help me with that.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You said you were the last person to see him alive outside his family. How about you tell me about that?’

  Bunce shrugged, looking suddenly uncertain. ‘Well, it was a long time ago now, wasn’t it? We went for a walk on the moors, up to Yarrow Tor, past the abandoned farmhouse over there.’

  ‘Do you remember why?’

  Bunce shrugged one shoulder in a strange, lopsided gesture. ‘It was a usual route. We did it every couple of months. No special reason.’

  ‘Do you remember what you talked about?’

  Bunce shook his head. ‘Ah … it would have been the usual stuff. We weren’t much for deep conversations. We saw each other a lot, you know. It was always gripes about the weather, the odd complaint about politics, that kind of thing.’

  ‘You’re not giving me much to go on.’

  Bunce looked disappointed. ‘I suppose there’s not much to say. I mean, I’d known Amos forever, but we weren’t the kind of close where we’d tell each other everything. He wasn’t that kind of man. People often joked that he preferred clocks to people.’

  ‘You told me that clock was worth a few hundred quid. How good was he, really?’

  Bunce smiled, appearing relieved that Slim had asked a question he could answer.

  ‘He was like a mathematician with his hands. Most craftsmen have one particular skill, but Amos was a complete package. He did all the designing, the carvings, as well as built all the mechanical internal workings by hand. Do you have any idea how hard it is to fashion clock parts by hand? A day’s work will make you one or two small parts. It’s labour-intensive, and few people these days have that kind of concentration. He was a rare breed, was Amos.’

  ‘How many did he make?’

  ‘Not all that many. Two or three a year. Some were commissions, I believe, others private sales. He wasn’t in a hurry. He had no desire to be rich. He liked his moors, liked the quiet life. His farm turned a small profit—despite what many people say—and the sale of his clocks brought in enough extra to give him that little level of luxury.’

  ‘Is it likely someone could have held a grudge toward him? Perhaps a failed sale, or a deal gone wrong?’

  ‘Possible, but I’d doubt it. Amos was a humbly likable man.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Bunce gave his beard a tug. ‘He was inoffensive, that’s the best way I could put it. He was quietly spoken, and never had a bad word to say about anyone. He buried himself in his work. And his work was good. Who could complain about clocks made with such love and care? I mean, how often do cuckoo clocks break? How many times have you walked into a pub and seen a broken one on the wall in a corner? Amos’s clocks, though … I mean, how long was that clock buried? Twenty years? And yet you can wind it straight up and have it working again just like that? No clock you buy in a shop will have that kind of durability. Built to last, Amos’s clocks were.’

  Bunce had nothing more of interest to say, so Slim took his number, made his excuses, and left. He had reached the bus station and was standing in line for a ticket when a thought struck him.

  He took out Bunce’s number and called the antiques dealer.

  ‘Need me again so soon?’

  Slim smiled. ‘I just had a quick question. With a clock like the one I found, how often would you suggest winding it?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, once every few months. Amos used to make these incredible springs. You could wind them and they’d last for ages.’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’

  When he got back to the guesthouse, Mrs. Greyson was dusting in the hall. Slim gave her a polite good evening, then hurried up to his room. There, he pulled out the clock from under the bed and sat listening to the ticking for a few minutes. Then he turned it over, removed the wooden panel Bunce had left unscrewed, and looked at the clock mechanism. The small dial which wound the clock was reverberating slightly with each tick.

  He frowned, touching it lightly with a finger, noticing the lack of grime compared to the rest of the clock.

  Every few months, Bunce had said. If the clock had been buried for twenty odd years, the spring would have wound down long ago.

  Slim hadn’t wound it, which left him with the question: who had?

  13

  Someone knew the location of the buried clock, and cared enough about it to return every few months to wind it. Such an action required a reason. Sentimentality was one, but that took the most effort, something likely to wane over time. Who could possibly want the clock to continue running, and why? As Slim turned it over, his mind was blank. Ornate, yes, but it was just a clock. Sure, the cuckoo mechanism made an appreciable noise, but nothing that could be heard from underground. Slim had thought it broken until the little wooden bird had burst out of its box to surprise him.

  Slim replaced the clock under his bed, slipped on his jacket
and headed out into the night. It was time to step into the closest thing Penleven had to a bear pit in search of further information—the Crown. Drinkers liked to talk, but if Amos Birch still had enemies, there Slim would likely find them.

  He took a deep breath and pushed through the doors. A clock over the bar said half past nine. Four faces turned toward him. An old man perched on a stool, his face a wrinkled dishcloth surrounded by rebelling white hair. Two men playing cards at a table near a crackling fire: one wiry thin and hollow-eyed, as though he considered food a mortal enemy, the other hard-faced and thick with builder’s muscle. Tattoos poked below the hem of a t-shirt straining against knotted biceps as he glared at a pair of sevens before pushing a handful of coins across the table.

  ‘Pint?’

  The fourth person, a woman Slim would kindly consider muscular, unkindly as dumpy, watched him from behind the bar. An unbuttoned blouse revealed a triangle of cleavage optimistic enough to deflect attention from her face, where overlarge eyebrows and a slightly sour set of her lips killed off any last possibility of attractiveness.

  Slim hesitated, his eyes locked on the glass held at a tilt toward the nearest beer tap. So easy to undo so much work. With a knot in his stomach, he said, ‘I’m driving,’ in a timid voice that felt unfamiliar.

  ‘I didn’t hear your car come in.’

  She had tilted her head away from the glass. Her bosom gave a little tremble, and Slim forced himself not to look. She was the wrong side of forty, but probably less wrong than he.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he muttered.

  She nodded. ‘We’ve got free on tap. That do? Probably near its sell-by, but it tastes like piss anyway.’

  ‘That’ll be fine.’

  Slim took a stool by the bar, leaving an empty spot between himself and the old man. The two men playing cards were behind him, their outlines reflected in a glass wine cabinet behind the bar.

  ‘You’s the lad eats in the family room,’ the old man said. ‘You shy? Ain’t no one be afraid of in here.’

  Slim was just preparing a reply when the woman said, ‘He’s the one been asking about old Amos.’

  Before Slim could answer, she added, ‘We don’t get much to talk about in a place like this. You’re the biggest gossip practically since he ran off.’

  She thumped a frothing pint on the bar mat nearest to him. Slim eyed it with suspicion. Non-alcoholic, it might be, but it looked remarkably like the real thing.

  ‘Nah, there was Mary’s passing, then there was Celia, then—’

  ‘All right, Reg. Was a figure of speech.’

  ‘I like a good mystery,’ Slim said.

  ‘Heard you was a private eye,’ the woman said. ‘Got your eye on anyone?’ She winked then burst into horsey laughter, slapping the edge of the bar with one hand.

  ‘June’s husband left her,’ Reg said. ‘I’d watch out. She’ll take anyone.’

  ‘You can forget it!’ June said. Then, to Slim, she added, ‘Don’t listen to him. No idea what’s going on half the time.’

  Slim smiled as he let the banter run on a while. It was quickly apparent that Reg was a regular, the kind of ever-present who kept a pub running during the long, dark winter. After half an hour, a middle-aged couple entered, took a table at the far end of the bar and made a food order which kept June busy for a while. Slim sipped his metal-tasting pint of beer-flavoured water, nodding as Reg spun tales of country life so easily forgettable that when Reg started on another about a broken-down tractor, Slim was sure he had heard it before.

  Eventually, as he had hoped, conversation came back around to Amos Birch.

  ‘You know, I was a bit younger, but we both went to the same primary. They had one up in Boswinnick, but it’s gone now. Back in those days we all bused over the moor to Liskeard Secondary but Birch never went there. Some said he was a bit odd, you know, but back then you didn’t have to go school all that long. His father ran Worth Farm, needed his help. When the old man died, farm was his. Caused many a scowl when Celia sold it. Said you could find Birches at Worth Farm back in the Domesday Book. Sold out their legacy, that girl did.’

  ‘Why?’

  Reg sighed. ‘Ah, who knows? Girl wasn’t much liked round here, for one reason or another. Didn’t really fit the scene, you city folk might say.’

  Slim had more questions, but Reg downed the last quarter of his drink and stood up.

  ‘Well, that’s me done. Goodnight to you.’

  Slim watched him walk out. Behind him, the two men continued their card game. June returned from serving food and looked surprised to see Reg gone.

  ‘He just left,’ Slim said.

  June frowned. She was about to speak when a chair scraped and the tattooed man stood up. Slim listened to his footsteps as he made his way to the bar, Slim’s military sixth sense detecting tension, a threat.

  He didn’t move as the man leaned close. Warm ale breath tickled his ear.

  ‘You want to watch about asking too many questions,’ the man said. ‘Some folk might be happy to talk, but others might prefer the past to stay where it is.’

  ‘Michael, that’s enough,’ June said in a low voice.

  Slim tensed. His army muscles had softened in the eighteen years since his dishonourable discharge, but he still knew a trick or two if it came to a fight. He waited to see what would happen. Michael maintained his threatening pose a few moments longer, then turned and stalked back to his table.

  Slim sipped what remained of his pint, then stood up. ‘I think I’ll be going,’ he said.

  June gave him a sorry look then wished him goodnight.

  Outside, a gale had got up, ragging the hedgerows, throwing squalls of rain out of the dark that raked at Slim’s face before retreating like a lunging animal. Slim pulled his jacket up around his neck and hunched down, wondering what, if anything, he had gained from his pub visit.

  The lights of the guesthouse had appeared through a stand of trees when Slim paused. A regular tapping sound came over the top of the wind.

  Running feet.

  Slim cursed his slow reactions. The newcomer was too close for him to take cover; his silhouette would be visible against the grey sky to someone with eyes adjusted to the dark.

  He turned, bringing his fists up, waiting for Michael’s attack, hoping the man hadn’t had time to find a weapon.

  A woman’s gasp came from a feminine shape stumbling to a halt behind him.

  ‘Slim?’

  ‘June?’

  Her hand touched his shoulder. ‘Slim, I can’t be long. I have to hurry back. They think I’m in the kitchens. I just wanted to say sorry for Michael.’

  ‘I’ve suffered worse.’

  ‘He’s not normally like that. It’s just that … he was with Celia. You know, back then.’

  ‘Back when?’

  ‘When Amos disappeared. Michael was Celia’s boyfriend at the time.’

  ‘And what does that matter?’

  ‘Amos’s disappearance … they were engaged at the time, but afterward she broke it off, and he’s never gotten over it.’

  14

  Slim didn’t sleep well, tossing and turning as images of knives flashing out of the dark kept him waking up through the early hours.

  After saying good morning to Mrs. Greyson, he walked up the road to the end of the village, then up a winding lane to a hilltop with a view across Penleven. There he was able to pick up a faint mobile phone signal.

  After a couple of minutes his phone buzzed, updating with a missed call from Kay. Slim called back.

  ‘Kay. What do you have for me?’

  ‘I won’t ask what you’re mixed up in this time, Slim.’

  ‘Was there a message on the paper?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kay cleared his throat. ‘“Charlotte, your time is forever. I will wait for you, always.” There’s a second line too, but it’s nearly illegible. In fact, I’m not sure it’s anything at all. There are a series of dashes which could be simple underlines. There’s a
word near the beginning that looks like “amser”. In the middle, there’s a word which looks like “puppy”, but that’s it. At the end there’s an initial I can’t quite make out because the paper is slightly damaged. It looks like an A.’

  Slim closed his eyes and nodded. ‘Nice work. Anything else you can give me?’

  ‘I’ll scan everything and send it down to you by the next post. I want to keep the original for a while, if that’s okay. I have a friend who works in forensics who might be able to tell us something about the paper. And it’s handwritten, of course. You could perhaps identify it if you took samples from suspects.’

  Slim thanked Kay and hung up. He was buzzing with excitement, almost enough to send him back to the Crown to celebrate. Don’t go there, he reminded himself. The clear mind of sobriety was proving quite useful.

  Instead of answers, he just had more questions, and one was prominent above the others.

  Who was Charlotte?

  15

  ‘Michael? Michael Polson, you mean? Yes, I know him. Comes into the shop from time to time.’ The shopkeeper, whose name Slim had now learned was Mrs. Waite, returned to packing Slim’s bag. ‘Anything else, Mr… um….’

  ‘Hardy.’

  ‘Mr. Hardy?’

  ‘That’s all for now. Do you know where I could find Michael?’

  ‘The pub, I’d expect. He’s a bit rough around the edges, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Outside the pub, where could I find him?’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, most likely over at Lodge, on the edge of the moor. He used to work at Worth Farm but moved over to Lodge after Amos disappeared.’

  ‘Lodge?’

  ‘Lodge Farm. It’s owned by Peter Entwhistle, although he’s too old to be seen out much these days.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Can I ask why you’re after him?’

  Slim smiled. Behind her eyes he could see the gossip motors warming up. It wasn’t unlikely that Mrs Greyson would know of his business before he returned.