Seventy-Seven Clocks

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Glad you could make it,’ boomed Summerfield, looking about them. ‘Some halfway decent pictures are hung around these walls. Y’know, this business of yours has got me hooked. The Waterhouse study is being authenticated downstairs. I told them it’s genuine but they insist on checking for themselves. Tosspots.’

  They descended a winding marble staircase that led to the workrooms where paintings and sculptures were unpacked and studied. Summerfield pushed open a door marked Access By Appointment Only and led the way across a large white studio, one wall of which consisted of opaque backlit glass, to a cluttered wooden bench, on which lay the study Bryant had discovered in Bella Whitstable’s basement.

  ‘Tell me what relevance you imagine this picture having to our investigation,’ he asked, watching as the historian lowered his bulk on to a corner of the bench. ‘Beyond the fact that one of the victims defaced it, I mean.’

  ‘Ah, I think you understand why I’ve asked you here,’ replied Summerfield. ‘I wondered if you’d see it first.’

  Arthur stood before the study and examined it once more. Although just two thirds of the five-foot-long picture had been blocked with colour and all but two of the figures were only roughly delineated, the formal structure of Waterhouse’s finished painting could easily be discerned.

  ‘Perhaps I should explain my thinking,’ said Arthur, picking up a paintbrush and running his thumb across the sable tip. ‘At an early point in the investigation I became convinced that the answer lay in the Whitstable family’s past. There was a madness of purpose that suggested a curious kind of Victorian sensibility at work. Each death has been achieved with grotesque flair, an oddness beyond anything we find in our bright, modern world. Naturally my partner doesn’t agree, so I’ve been forced to go it alone.’

  He paused to scratch his broad nose with the end of the brush. ‘I only had a vague date, some time at the beginning of the 1880s, and a number, seven. Seven men in an alliance, six courtiers and an emperor gathered in a painting. I tried to imagine seven wealthy businessmen, heads of a successful trading family, forming themselves into a society that would protect their self-made fortunes from harm, a society with an acceptable public face, and perhaps less reputable private pastimes. But how would they commemorate its inception without drawing attention? What would the traditional Victorian do?’

  ‘Commission a painting,’ said Summerfield.

  ‘Exactly. Your comment about Victorians smuggling sex on to their parlour walls in the form of mythological paintings gave me the idea. But there is a problem with the theory. When the details of this club—The Alliance of Eternal Light—finally came to light, I found that its foundation date was some time in 1881. And you say that Waterhouse produced his painting at the end of 1883. I have a two-year discrepancy in the dates . . .’

  ‘I can explain that easily,’ said Summerfield. ‘The first oil sketch for Emperor Honorius was knocked out on a manky old bit of board less than a foot square in 1882, and there was probably a gestation period predating that. So it could easily have been commissioned by your alliance. But you’ve got a bigger problem to think about.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, look at it,’ said Summerfield, waving at the study. ‘If this really was commissioned to celebrate the founding of a new alliance, it doesn’t do a very good job. Think of the subject matter. What the finished painting shows is a society out of control. Honorius’s councillors can’t get his attention because he’s too busy pissing about with his birds. I told you before—as the supreme ruler of an empire, he was a plonker of the first order.’ Summerfield sucked his whiskers, thinking. ‘Suppose this bloke Whitstable chose Waterhouse for the painting, and then the artist discovered something unpleasant about his patron? Talk about having your cake and eating it! Waterhouse got to keep the commission by producing this wonderful, satisfying piece of work, and the artist got back at his patron through the insulting classical allusion contained within the picture.’

  ‘There’s no way of proving that.’

  ‘Perhaps not, until you remember what the finished painting looked like.’ Summerfield scrabbled beneath the study and produced a crumpled colour photocopy, which he proceeded to flatten out on a cleared part of the bench.

  ‘Here,’ he said, pointing at the copy. ‘Remember I told you that the key character changes? In the study, the central figure is the emperor’s attendant. In the end result, he’s been relegated to the background. The former picture shows a group of men in repose. The allusion is greatly reduced in terms of offence. The latter shows a master surrounded by sycophants. It’s as if Waterhouse was intending to have a gentle dig at his patron, as many artists did, but then—some time between 1882 and 1883—discovered that the situation was far worse than he had imagined. So he changed the finished picture.’

  ‘James Whitstable was an educated man, by all accounts. Surely he would have understood the allusion and taken offence?’

  ‘I think that’s exactly what happened. The painting was sold to an Australian gallery soon after its completion. Waterhouse remained true to his ethical code. He produced a magnificent work of art. He simply went too far.’

  ‘Which helps to explain why William Whitstable threw acid on the picture. The painting was an affront to his ancestor, and by extension to his entire family. It was the first time it had been exhibited in this country for a century.’

  ‘I have another “seven” for you,’ added Summerfield. ‘John Waterhouse was a Royal Academy painter. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was begun by seven men. Rossetti, Millais, Holman Hunt, and four others dedicated themselves to a “childlike submission to nature.” The actress Ellen Terry once told Bernard Shaw that she always visited Burne-Jones at his studio when it was foggy, because he looked so angelic painting by candlelight. Subsequently the group was joined by many other artists, and Oscar Wilde started poncing around with his sacred lily, wetting himself over the Pre-Raff sensibility because it neatly fitted in with the fact that he was horribly camp. It didn’t help having a fat old queen as a spokesperson, even a brilliant one, and pretty soon everyone started taking the piss out of the Pre-Raffs.’

  ‘Including Gilbert and Sullivan . . .’

  ‘That’s right. One of their productions parodied the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.’

  ‘. . . at the Savoy Theatre.’ Arthur reached for his cap and adjusted it on his head. ‘Peregrine, I can’t tell you what a help you’ve been.’

  ‘Let me know how you get on,’ shouted the historian. ‘I want to see how this one turns out.’

  But by then his friend had already left the gallery workroom.

  30 / Machinery in Motion

  Her eyes flicked wildly back and forth, searching the darkness for demons. The wall clock read four fifty-five a.m. She forced herself to focus on it, driving out the hallucinations. A nurse would call to check on her in five minutes. Perhaps she could find some way of communicating her pain. The muscles in her arms and legs felt like twisting bundles of hot wires. Her brain seared with hellish images. Five more minutes. It wasn’t long to have to hold on.

  ‘Mad Margaret’ lay in the psychiatric ward of the Royal Free Hospital, not a stone’s throw from the cemetery where she’d been attacked. Her teeth were covered with soft rubber shields to prevent her from chewing through her tongue. Restraining straps crossed her chest and pelvis, locking her into the bed. She wanted to scream, to tell them she was not mad. She feared they would take her frantic signaling as proof of insanity.

  Three minutes to go. She tried counting to a hundred, remembering the names of TV programmes, anything to stay awake and aware, at least until—

  Moments before the nurse entered the room to check on her patient, Peggy Harmsworth slipped into a coma, as the chemicals ravaged her nervous system with renewed force and filled her sleep with unimaginable nightmares.

  * * *

  Ever since the murders had been reported in the newspapers, Gwen Gates had gone out of her way to avoid any menti
on of them. This morning, Jerry had interrupted her father’s breakfast to draw attention to the subject, only to hear Gwen hurriedly change the conversation to something less controversial. Jerry looked around the dining room, at the cut-crystal candlesticks set on the polished mahogany table, at the cherub-encrusted mirror above the marble mantelpiece, at the sheer weight and age of the household, and hated the permanence of what she saw.

  Everything her parents owned was built to outlive them. Her father had told her that ‘One doesn’t buy furniture, one inherits it.’ They were pleased to think of themselves as snobs; it meant they had standards worth preserving. Unable to have any more children after the birth of their disastrous daughter, her parents were determined to leave something of value behind.

  Jerry wondered what her mother would say if she knew there was a spy in their midst. Right now, she was waiting for them to leave the house so that she could begin a search of her father’s private study. She had seen Jack clipping newspaper articles, but what did he do with them? She felt sure she would find something interesting in his desk.

  If the Whitstables recognized the cause of their destruction, wouldn’t they take steps to prevent further deaths occurring? What could the family have done that was so terrible they were still being persecuted for it? The slamming of the front door as her father left was the only signal she needed to begin burrowing from within. Jack’s study was his private domain. The door was never locked, but it was understood that no one should enter uninvited.

  The book-lined room was richly textured with inlaid wooden panels. A Victorian escritoire stood on a heavy Chinese rug near the far window. Along one wall stood a pair of Georgian side tables, one of them supporting a nondescript marble bust of Disraeli. A blue crystal ashtray was filled with butts. It was the one room in the house where Jack was permitted to smoke his cigars.

  Jerry made her way over to the desk and tried the drawers. None was locked. She removed the contents from each in turn and studied them, but found nothing of interest.

  When she was younger she had often wondered what her father was doing in his study all afternoon. Riffling through the bills and business correspondence, she saw now that Jack had used the place as a refuge from his wife. Suddenly the room seemed less exotic, diminished by mundane matters.

  She pulled out the lowest drawer, expecting nothing more than correspondence. Instead, she found an old photograph of her mother, in her early twenties. She was standing in a garden with a cluster of anemones in one hand, smiling tightly, shading her eyes from the sun. Jerry had never seen the picture before. It was hard to believe that her mother had ever been this young.

  As she studied the picture, she realized that another quality shone through it. Gwen looked happy to be alive. She radiated joy. Before the thwarted ambition, the bitterness and the recriminations, she had been attractive and carefree. Then had come a series of setbacks: the knowledge that she could have no more children; the fading of Jack’s interest in her; and the contemptuous, destructive anger of her only daughter.

  Suddenly Jerry was filled with remorse for the grief she had caused her family.

  ‘My God, it’s cold in here,’ complained Bryant, clapping his arms around his shoulders. ‘If I’d known I was going to be standing in a crypt on Christmas Eve I’d have worn a thicker vest. Did you see the crowds waiting outside the main gate?’

  The detectives were attending a prayer-giving for Daisy Whitstable at St Peter’s Church, Highgate. They had returned to the nearby vault where Peggy Harmsworth had been attacked, to take another look at the scene of the attack. The forensic team had finished their work, but the area was still closed off to the public. The site was attracting ghoulish observers. They pressed against the railings, pointing out the crypt to each other.

  Although the outside of the family vault was overgrown with ferns, the white marble interior was clean and well tended. Eight members of the Whitstable family were buried here, as well as Peggy’s husband. Each was sealed behind a small door marked with a brass plaque, and every door was fitted with a brass holder containing a single white flower. Behind them the wedged-open portal flushed staleness from the tomb with loamy morning air.

  ‘I must say it’s not the kind of behaviour you expect from a respectable middle-aged woman,’ said Bryant, eyeing the vault wall.

  ‘Who can tell these days?’ replied his partner, looking around. ‘Especially with this family.’ A routine check had turned up a police file for Peggy Harmsworth. Four years earlier she had been convicted for possession of cocaine. Yesterday, several grams of white powder had been found in one of the brass holders within the vault. Wary of keeping drugs at home, it seemed that Peggy had been in the habit of stashing her supply in the nearby family mausoleum. Little did she know that by the 1980s, dinnerparty guests would happily be racking it across their coffee tables.

  ‘She’d arranged to meet a friend for drinks on Wednesday night,’ said May, his smartly combed hair ruffling against the low ceiling. ‘She stopped off to collect the drug on the way. There was an empty vial in her purse. But her supply had been doctored. Either Denjhi forced her to take the new mixture, or she couldn’t wait for a taste.’

  ‘Longbright says Forensics are getting conflicting results,’ said Bryant, peering into each of the holders in turn. ‘Did you see the list they’ve turned up so far? Atropine, meadow saffron, panther mushroom, betel-nut seed. There are other strains they haven’t yet identified. Nobody seems to know what the combined effect might be. Do you think she’s going to be all right?’

  ‘I don’t know. It sounds like a pretty lethal mix.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to fathom out the sequence of events. See how this sounds. It begins with Max Jacob being summoned to London by his old friend and client, Peter Whitstable. Peter wants Jacob to oversee the removal of the Japanese from the Savoy deal. He’s earmarked the theatre for his prestige charity, CROWET. Peter is determined to own the theatre. He resorts to subterfuge, arranging to have one of the heads of the Tasaka Corporation compromised. The number 216 is written in Jacob’s diary, the number of the hotel room where the incriminating blackmail material will be held.

  ‘Jacob is the go-between in this little blackmail plot; perhaps he’s acted for Peter before in a similar capacity. He arrives at the hotel, but there’s a mix-up. He’s given the wrong room. And before he can sort out the situation, he is killed.’

  ‘But the photographs still find their target,’ said May.

  ‘Indeed.’ Arthur folded his scarf beneath his bottom and seated himself on a shadowed bench. ‘Someone gets into the room and removes the pictures in a hurry, leaving one behind. We have Miss Gates’s evidence to support that. The compromised businessman is exposed and the buyout collapses.’

  ‘Jacob was murdered before the Japanese were forced to abandon the theatre deal, which rules out any idea of a revenge killing on their part.’

  ‘True. The Bible found by Jerry in Max Jacob’s room belonged to William Whitstable. Perhaps it was a gift, or the lawyer was returning it. Jacob was Jewish, so we must assume that the Bible had symbolic value only. The highlighting of all those passages to do with light and dark suggests some deeper significance.’

  ‘I’d forgotten about that,’ May admitted. He glanced down at his watch. ‘The service is due to start.’

  Below them, the pale city lay in gathering frosty fog. Arthur was gazing off at the horizon, his thoughts unreadable. ‘We’re inches away from losing everything we’ve ever worked for,’ he said. ‘It will mean the end of both our careers. The Inspectorate can appoint a fullscale inquiry into our methods. We could even face criminal charges.’

  ‘The case will go somewhere else, and it’ll get a new team. They’ll have our data, but no physical experience of the investigation. In the time it takes for them to catch up, others will be dead.’

  Bryant gave no reply.

  ‘I know you have ideas you’re not telling me about, Arthur. You always do.’


  ‘You want to know what I really think?’ Bryant asked, looking down at the straggling figures who had just entered through the private gate of the churchyard. ‘In 1881 James Makepeace Whitstable set up the Alliance of Eternal Light. On the surface, the society was seen to carry out good works—building hostels, helping the poor, funding charities, restoring buildings. Privately, it was dedicated to something else, some secret cartel for the betterment of the Whitstable family—their fortunes certainly prospered in the years following its foundation. With that betterment came a price, which the family is now paying.’ His eyes hardened. ‘Until we understand the machinery that was set in motion, I don’t see how we can stop it.’

  The service was brief and gloomy, more of a wake than a well-wishing. The detectives were leaving the cemetery when they were accosted by Isobel Whitstable. Throughout the service Daisy’s mother had held herself with quiet dignity, supported by her husband and her son. As she threw back the veil of her hat, Bryant could see the debilitating effect of the last few days in her eyes. For a moment, he thought she was going to lash out at them with her fists.

  ‘You two,’ she spat furiously, ‘I hold the pair of you responsible for this.’ She gestured at the gathering behind her. ‘My daughter is traumatized, and you did nothing at all to prevent it. Ever since this whole nightmare began you’ve done nothing. How many of us have to die?’ Tears spilled from her bulging eyes. ‘What do we have to do to get protection from this—this—’

  ‘Mrs Whitstable, every person here today has a police detail,’ intervened May. ‘Your houses are being watched around the clock. Until we find the information we need to make an arrest, there’s nothing more we can do.’

  ‘Well, there’s something I can damned well do,’ she hissed, thrusting her livid face forward. ‘I’m going to make sure your little experimental unit is closed down and this investigation is turned over to someone with an ounce of competence. You’ll wish you’d taken the police pension, because believe me, both of you, this was your very last case.’