Seventy-Seven Clocks

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘No. There was champagne, both before and during the intermission.’

  ‘Did you see any of it being opened?’

  ‘There were quite a few bottles, but as far as I know they were all sealed. I kept an eye on the one Bella drank from. She uncorked it herself and we all had a glass. John, we need to get everyone back to that box and re-create this thing while it’s still fresh in their minds. And I want the press kept out. They’ll catch wind of it soon enough.’

  They ran through the rain to the waiting car.

  Dr Raymond Land, the acting chief, was not a man who enjoyed life, and today he was liking it even less than usual. His narrow shoulders rose and fell as he fidgeted with frustration behind his empty desk. His hand frequently rose to pat the greying hair combed in thin bands across his head. He did not want to be here at all, but if he had to be, he wanted his tenure to be a quiet one. This new unit was too experimental, too chaotic, too unregulated for his taste. Hopefully someone else would arrive to take responsibility for the division. All he had expected to do was keep his head down and stop his wayward detectives from embarrassing everyone, but now they had been landed with this ridiculous case, and he could see shame and public humiliation looming.

  Land did not look up when Arthur Bryant entered the room. ‘I know that you and your partner have evolved your own odd methods of working,’ he began, attempting to keep a quiver from his voice, ‘but this investigation will destroy the unit. Four people, Bryant!’ he exploded. ‘This latest death managed to make the late-morning editions. The press are having a bloody field day. The Sun is running a “Solve It Yourself, Win A Ford Cortina” competition. It’s pandemonium. I don’t think you need me to tell you that we’ve never seen anything like this before.’ He stood by the window with his index fingers pressed into the bridge of his nose. ‘We live in a fractured time. People are becoming uprooted, unemployed. Strikes up and down the country. Heath is the most hopeless PM we’ve had since the war. Men are losing their wives, their families, their jobs, and their homes at an unprecedented rate. Reasons for murder are becoming as absurd as the times.’

  Bryant was well aware of this. Indeed, he had attended Land’s recent lecture on the subject at Hendon Police College.

  ‘Statistically, we’re catching fewer criminals. You know as well as I do that a murder file can only stay open while we receive help from the public. We can’t be expected to search for eternity. And we’re marking more and more homicides unsolved. Now we have three blood relatives in the same family dead in six days, and so far no forensic indications, no decent witnesses, no outside information. These aren’t random acts of violence, for God’s sake. Someone is playing a deliberate, arrogant game with us. What I want to know is, how can so much happen with so little result from this department?’

  ‘Our problem lies in the evidence,’ explained Bryant, ‘or rather the extraordinary surfeit of it. It’s as if there was a team of people involved in each act, altering everything that might be turned to our use. We have plenty of fingerprints but none of them match. Then there’s the problem of motive.’

  ‘What about this German business the Mail’s been talking about, tying the deaths to the Common Market conference?’

  ‘The design of the Whitstables’ sacred flame is admittedly similar to the wartime assassination symbol, but I’m positive it’s just a coincidence. There are no other corroborating factors.’

  ‘You’re positive, are you? How did you manage to protect Bella Whitstable so well that she died while she was in your care?’

  ‘As we have yet to discover how she died, I consider that an unfair remark,’ replied Bryant, stung. ‘And I’d like to point out that in a murder investigation of this sort I would normally have expected as many as sixty men to be drafted on to the case. May and I are working with barely half a dozen staff. It’s essential that we talk to the surviving partner at Jacob and Marks, but because their office is in Norwich neither of us has had time to go there yet.’

  ‘I know,’ said Land angrily, ‘and at the moment there’s not a damned thing I can do about it. It’s this place you’ve built for yourselves. How can you expect organization without structure? It’s all very well wanting to conduct your investigations creatively, but you need to cover the groundwork, just as the Met have to. There’s no hierarchy here—’

  ‘That was intentional.’

  ‘And assuming your information is fully collated, which I doubt, there’s nothing you can do with it because your system doesn’t cross-reference every piece of information received by the police.’

  ‘We have many lines of inquiry that need to be followed,’ said Bryant wearily. ‘What we need is greater manpower.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Land, picking up a folder and removing its contents. ‘But I don’t need to tell you that there’s a lot of resentment about this unit. Quite a few lads in the Met think you’re being elitist, that the old system isn’t good enough for you any more. They’re waiting for you to hang yourselves. But unless I receive positive proof that someone is physically trying to hinder the investigation, there’s nothing I can do. At least I’ve had a chance to go over your report,’ said Land, brandishing a sheaf of paper. Bryant was pleased that he had found the time to do so; he’d been up most of the weekend assembling it.

  As little as he cared for the superintendent, Bryant knew that Land was a reasonable man, and at the moment represented their only path to increased resources. It was important to have him on their side.

  ‘Before you go through it, I need to explain something to you,’ said Bryant. ‘It’s something I haven’t put in that document. Little more than a feeling, really. We’re looking for more than just a clever murderer. This is about revenge.’

  ‘Don’t start, Bryant. I have a limit.’

  ‘The methods rely on a knowledge of the victims,’ Arthur continued, ‘and the approach is theatrical, as though each death is intended to act as some kind of warning. The standard investigation procedures can’t apply, because these are cold executions, cutting off branches of the family tree. I’m not sure there’s even any malice. It’s more a matter of—pruning. Something quite unprecedented in my experience.’

  ‘Do you have any information on the Whitstable woman’s cause of death yet?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  Land was clearly dissatisfied with his own powerless role in the proceedings. He stood at the window picking a flake of paint from the peeling ledge. ‘I want our backs covered with this one,’ he said carefully. ‘There are rumours that the Australian Commonwealth delegates have been sent death threats. Their arts minister, Carreras, has scheduled another press conference complaining about the lack of security he’s experienced, in order to embarrass our government into official action.’

  ‘We haven’t established a positive connection between—’

  ‘Did you know that, until this morning at least, the minister was staying at the Savoy?’

  ‘Yes, I was aware of that.’

  ‘Were you also aware that he attended the theatre last night?’

  Bryant felt a crawling sensation in his gut. ‘At the Coliseum?’

  ‘The very same. Box L.’

  The box exactly facing the one in which Bella Whitstable was taken ill. Anger rose within him. There was a pattern here. Why could he not see it?

  ‘We’ll step up our inquiries,’ he promised, knowing that it would now be necessary to call a press conference. He would schedule it for late this afternoon. But first, there was a murder to reconstruct.

  On his way out of the office, he walked into Jerry Gates. She had come up to the Mornington Crescent unit in her lunch break, and was still wearing her hotel uniform.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ He frowned at her in displeasure.

  ‘You said you might need to talk to me again.’

  ‘I said I’d call you when I was ready. How did you get in?’

  ‘Sergeant Longbright admitted me. I want to hel
p. I know there’s been another one. If you’d just listen to me for a minute—’

  ‘Miss Gates, neither I nor my partner has a moment to spare right now. Please, go back to work and leave it to us to take the appropriate steps.’

  The police aren’t making any progress, she thought. I can do better on my own. And if anything bad happens, they’ll only have themselves to blame for not listening to me.

  They met in the foyer of the Coliseum, a forlorn, dripping crowd in suits and raincoats, like a party of tourists gathered for a particularly unpopular sightseeing tour. Bereft of their finery they seemed smaller and less significant. They awkwardly offered their condolences to Bryant as if attending the wake before the funeral.

  ‘I’m afraid I must ask you all to come back to the box, and it will be necessary for you to don your outfits once more. It seems morbid, I know, but it’s necessary to recreate the exact circumstances under which Bella Whitstable died. It may help us to understand what happened.’

  Below them, rehearsals continued as the Savoyards struggled back into armour and hose. Bryant stood patiently at the rear of the box with a smirking police photographer while the group dressed. Then he directed them to their places, marking the seat in which Bella collapsed.

  ‘All right,’ he said, raising his hands for silence. ‘How many members do we have here?’

  ‘There are twenty-two of us,’ said Oliver Pettigrew. ‘There are more in the society, but we vary in number according to each production. Principal cast members can’t be duplicated, and the main cast of Ida is fifteen.’

  ‘So what does that make the rest of you?’

  ‘Courtiers, Soldiers and Daughters of the Plough.’

  ‘I want everyone to take the positions they held last night, at the time when it was first noticed that Mrs Whitstable was feeling unwell,’ Bryant requested. There followed much shuffling and pulling free of snagged cloaks.

  ‘Wait,’ said Bryant, ‘there’s somebody missing.’ The Savoyards looked at one another, then back at the elderly detective. ‘There was a little beggar in a hat standing against the wall.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Pettigrew. ‘There aren’t any beggars listed in the cast of Ida.’

  ‘I distinctly remember seeing him there,’ said Bryant. ‘A tattered man. Surely someone else must have noticed him.’ He searched the surrounding faces, positive that the assassin had been discovered, but the Savoyards rubbed their chins and shook their heads. He looked back at the empty chair where Bella had collapsed, and the spot beside it where she had put down her handbag. What could the beggar have done to cause her death?

  As he moved toward the door of the box he turned back to the assembled group, who were still watching him and waiting for guidance.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ he told the semicircle of baffled faces. ‘Please check that the constable here has your personal details written down correctly, and we’ll get back to you if there are any further developments.’

  And with that he hastily left the theatre.

  ‘They found no trace of strychnine in the champagne?’

  ‘None whatsoever,’ said Raymond Land. ‘What’s on your mind?’ Bryant had blasted into his office like a rainy night and was proceeding to soak everything with his umbrella and overcoat.

  ‘I was thinking about strychnine,’ he explained. ‘Such an old-fashioned poison. It’s fairly fast-acting, so it would have to have been administered within the theatre box. Why would the murderer make things so difficult for himself? Why pick a drug with such a startling effect, and risk capture by still being on the premises when she began to convulse?’

  He dumped a large opaque plastic bag on Land’s desk. ‘You’d have to be very sure of your method of administration, wouldn’t you?’

  He carefully opened the evidence envelope and withdrew Bella Whitstable’s handbag, still covered in fingerprint dust. ‘When I saw her initial symptoms,’ he continued, ‘I knew that something was paralysing her muscles. Strychnine poisoning starts in the face and neck.’ He fished about in the bag and withdrew an object in a bony fist. ‘How does it look if you buy it in the form of, say, rat poison?’

  ‘It’s a powder,’ said Land. ‘Crystalline and colourless.’

  ‘And it can kill on contact with the skin or the eyes.’ He opened his hand to reveal a powder compact. ‘She applied it herself when she freshened her makeup in the intermission. We’ll run print matches, but it’s likely our beggarman dipped into her bag and doctored the compact while we were watching the first act.’

  Land took the compact from Bryant’s outstretched hand and carefully opened it. Beneath the face pad lay a pool of granules which appeared slightly more crystalline than the fine pink powder below it. ‘Well, I’ll be damned. Someone’s been reading Agatha bleeding Christie.’ He looked up at Bryant in amazement.

  14 / Occultation

  Joseph shone the torch across a paint-streaked brick wall, then up into a network of distant blackened rafters. ‘Come on. It’s safe.’

  ‘I have a problem with the dark,’ she said, peering ahead. ‘It’s a stupid phobia. If there’s a light somewhere I’m okay.’

  ‘There’s a junction box here that controls the lights.’ The torch beam picked up a grey steel cabinet with electrical warning stickers pasted to the doors. ‘All the structural repair work has been completed, but I’m still not supposed to bring anyone else in here. If you fall through the floor you’re not covered by the insurance.’

  They had entered the site of the Savoy Theatre through the wooden surround that encased the redbrick and Portland stone of the building’s ground floor. Joseph wrenched open a door of the cabinet and flicked a row of switches. A handful of dim emergency bulbs threw amber pools of light across the auditorium. Jerry tried to relax her breathing, not daring to think about the surrounding darkness.

  Part of the interior of the theatre was still blackened and fire-ravaged, but the proscenium arch and the stage beyond it had been fully restored, and waited under sheets of heavy plastic to be unveiled once more before an audience.

  ‘You wouldn’t think we were just two weeks away from opening, would you?’ Joseph said. ‘Nobody thought it would ever open again after the fire. It doesn’t look as if the paintwork’s going to be dry by the time they admit the paying public. Theatres and restaurants—I’ve worked in both, and you’re always busy up to the last minute.’

  Many of the surrounding seats had been newly installed, and were covered in cloths. As Jerry followed him down the side aisle, she could hear distant rain falling on glass far above them.

  ‘Richard D’Oyly Carte was ahead of his time,’ he called back. ‘His theatre was designed for all-round visibility, no matter what you’d paid for your ticket. He abolished tipping the attendants and gave them decent wages instead. Best of all, he ditched all the dingy dark walls and heavy velvets favoured by the Victorians. This whole place was a blaze of yellow satin, white and gold paintwork. The seats were bright blue and the boxes were red. And the vestibule floor was paved in black-and-white marble. It was a monument to light and cool style. The medieval palace of the Princes of Savoy used to stand on this site. I think Carte was trying to recapture that spirit.’ He pulled himself up on the stage and beckoned for her to join him.

  ‘The Tasaka Corporation are paying for most of the restoration,’ he explained, walking to the rear of the stage. ‘They’ll also help to decide management policy.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like you’re even half ready to open,’ she said, clambering up on to the front of the stage.

  ‘But we will be open, in the New Year. It will be a Japanese-British co-production, and they’ll have touring rights for the East. Mr Miyagawa is hoping that the Savoy will become a forum for world theatre. I keep thinking my luck will run out.’

  Jerry watched as he strode back and forth across the stage, a tall figure dressed in black with an extraordinary knotted tumble of hair. She wanted to run up and press her fingers over his heart, t
o feel the life pulsing inside him.

  Somewhere in the rear of the penumbral auditorium there was a yielding sound, like a roll of rope uncoiling. Jerry paused on the stair and listened. The slithering was lost in a renewed stress of rain on the roof. Ahead, metal drums and tangles of wiring blocked the way.

  ‘Where are you?’ she called. ‘Be careful you don’t fall over.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he replied, his voice muffled by the curtain hanging at one side of the proscenium arch. ‘I know my way around.’

  The sound which reached her ears this time was much nearer. A metallic rasping, as if steel cables were dropping past one another.

  ‘Joseph,’ she called, ‘are we the only people in here?’

  There was no reply. The hanging lights strung across the stage flickered momentarily, causing patchwork light to jigsaw between the pipework and the walls.

  ‘Joseph?’ Jerry squeezed through the gap between a pair of steel stanchions and walked deeper into the stage area. The wings were dark with equipment and debris. Above, boards creaked as if a weight had been gently laid across them.

  She glanced up, but could see nothing.

  Surely he wouldn’t just have left her here? She walked slowly toward the orchestra pit, moving between deep pools of shade. The chill air pricked at the flesh on her arms, ghosts of the theatre passing by. It felt as if someone was watching her. She smiled at the thought; after all, she was standing on a stage.

  There was a ping of metal, and a small steel bolt bounced on the floorboards beside her. She looked up at a gantry half covered in dust sheets. She sensed the figure before seeing it. A small man, wrapped in a brown cloth like some period stage character, was crouched between the bars like a motionless insect, staring silently down at her.

  Jerry cried out in horror as the figure jumped to its feet and kicked away from the wall.

  With a creak and a groan the gantry began moving toward her. Planks cascaded to the floor in a series of timed explosions. As she turned to run, she knew that the steel stack had been shoved free of its moorings, and would land on top of her. Ahead lay the orchestra pit, its depth impossible to calculate, its floor lost in shadow.