Bryant & May 03; Seventy-Seven Clocks b&m-3

by Christopher Fowler

  “That one would make a nice wristwatch,” observed May. “When did you last see any of the Whitstables?”

  “Wristwatches were not invented until the First World War, Mr May. There was a gala mayoral dinner in June. Members of the Whitstable family would have been in attendance. Perhaps you’d like to see the Court Rooms now.”

  “So you haven’t spoken with any of them,” pressed May. “What about their business dealings with the Company? Do they play an active role in your daily financial affairs?”

  “That sort of information is restricted to the Company’s managers and accountants. I should hardly think it’s of any interest to outsiders. It certainly has no bearing on their unfortunate deaths.”

  May had the distinct impression that he was being misdirected. Any further pressuring on the subject of the Whitstables would doubtless cause a closure of the ranks. Their Masonic ties had taught them the value of secrecy. He would have to tackle the problem from another angle.

  “What I’m trying to establish here, Mr Tomlins, is who profits and who loses by their deaths.”

  Tomlins came to a halt and turned to the detective. “If you’re trying to infer that a member of the Watchmakers is somehow responsible – ”

  “I didn’t say that. I need to understand every aspect of the Whitstables’ lives, and I’m afraid that doing so means going beyond the usual boundaries of privacy.”

  “But they were the victims of violence, not the culprits. Surely they deserve to be treated with decency. If you’re going to go prying into their affairs – ”

  “Mr Tomlins, I have to know where their money went, who they were involved with romantically and financially, what their hopes and fears were for themselves and for each other. You can make this an easier process for me by asking the other guild members to cooperate. Our inquiries are treated in the strictest confidence. We know that William and Peter had recently argued, and that Bella had virtually severed her ties with the family. Someone here must know why the Whitstables weren’t on speaking terms with one another. I need you to set up a meeting for me. There must be guild members who knew the brothers well. You wish to protect your members’ interests. Surely the Whitstables deserve to have your help.”

  “Very well,” said Tomlins finally, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  As May saw himself out, he turned to see Tomlins moving away from him at speed. Something seemed to have urgently summoned him back to his office.

  ♦

  The cellar door was sealed fast. Bryant’s eyes were trying to adapt to the dark, and he was finding it hard to draw his breath. His chest felt tight, and he was starting to hyperventilate. He was below ground level in a darkened, sealed house. Normally the darkness did not disturb him; his only psychological weakness was a tendency to suffer from vertigo, but the violence of his earlier encounter had left him feeling suffocated.

  Forcing the unease from his mind, he felt his way back to the top of the steps. He swung an experimental kick at the door, but it was made of heavy oak and fitted tightly into its jamb. He tried hard to remember where he had set down May’s walkie talkie. He recalled taking it out of his pocket. It was somewhere in the cellar, but the room was completely filled with junk, and he had no more matches left.

  He was considering the problem when the distant sound of an opening door reached his ears. Muffled conversation. Someone else was in the house. Bryant began to shout out. He kicked the base of the door until his foot was bruised. He no longer cared whether he would be confronted by friend or foe.

  “Is that you, Mr Bryant?” The voice was vaguely familiar.

  “Of course it’s me!”

  “Stand well back from the door.”

  An axe head appeared through the splitting wood and the centre panel of the door collapsed. One of their patrol officers stuck his head through the open space.

  “Blimey, Sir, this is no time for you to be creeping off for a nap,” said the constable, offering his hand.

  Bryant was so pleased to see a friendly face that his customary rudeness deserted him. Remembering his discovery, he returned for the painting and began to haul it up.

  “We have to take this,” he explained. “It’s evidence.” As if determined to remain hidden in the shadows, the painting pulled from his grip and fell back down the steps.

  ♦

  The last thing she wanted to do was talk in front of Nicholas, but here was Joseph Herrick striding across the hotel lobby to the desk, his mane bobbing beneath his cowboy hat. Jerry laid down her ballpoint, ready for a fight.

  “I should apologize about last night,” said Joseph. “You have to admit, it was a pretty weird evening.”

  Jerry was left defenseless. No man had ever apologized to her before. She was used to arguing with people.

  “Want to get something to eat? Goodwill gesture?” He handed his room key to Nicholas with a smile.

  “You can’t leave yet,” said Nicholas. “You’re on late duty tonight, and there’s still half an hour to go.”

  Without saying a word, Jerry swung her bag on to her shoulder.

  “If you walk out now,” hissed Nicholas, a vein throbbing furiously at his temple, “I’ll see that this is reported. You’ll be out of a job when you get back. I won’t stand for it any more.”

  His words were wasted. Moments later she had passed through the revolving door with Joseph and was out on the street.

  The Arizona Bar and Grill had steel-topped tables covered with crescent-shaped dents from a thousand slammed tequilas. A harassed waitress led them to a table in the corner of the room.

  “Are you hungry?” Joseph asked.

  “I’m always hungry. I maintain a level of hypertension that can burn off a four-course meal in twenty minutes.” Glancing at the menu, they ordered enough food for three.

  “Is there any chance that you’re going to tell me something about yourself this time?” he asked.

  “What do you want to know about me for?” She brought her chair in closer. “You already have a girlfriend.”

  “Things aren’t that black and white, Jerry. We can be interested in each other without having to jump into bed.”

  “How caring and seventies. Doesn’t sound like a good arrangement to me.” She thought for a moment. “You want family history or what?”

  “That’ll do for a start.”

  “Okay, personal CV: my parents aren’t older than their money. We don’t have a great home life. Gwen goes to so many committee meetings I’ve been wondering if she’s having an affair. She lives in the hope of rare animals becoming threatened with extinction so that she can chair committees to save them. Jack still thinks it’s 1944. Maybe he was happy then. My mother prefers to throw parties rather than cook and I grew up thinking that a meal with the family meant finger food for fifty. We get along fine so long as we don’t talk about my future, which is all they ever want to talk about.”

  “How come?”

  “I wanted to go to art school and they wanted me to enter the family business. But war had been declared between us long before then.”

  Joseph dug into a plate of nachos, licking melted cheese from the tips of his fingers. “What kind of business are they in?”

  “Import-export, gold and silver. Shuffling paper, arranging shipments. I don’t know the details and I’m really not interested.”

  “Why not? Sounds like there’s a lot of money to be made.”

  “I’ve seen the kind of people Gwen and Jack mix with. I never wanted to be part of the old-school network.”

  “So their attempts to civilize you have failed?”

  “I think they’ve had the opposite effect. And when I was fourteen, I had problems…” The memory of that time was still fresh in her mind. To talk about it was to lower her guard, but perhaps the past wasn’t meant to be bottled away, to ferment in the dark.

  He was quick to sense her discomfort. “We can talk about something else if you’d rather.”

  She took a swig o
f her beer. “Basically, I screwed up my parents’ long-term plans by getting expelled from school. Gwen went berserk. Told me I’d let her down. How could she face her friends, all that kind of stuff, so I smashed the house up and accused her of some pretty terrible things. I didn’t know what I was saying. It was kind of a breakdown.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I got sick. They put me in therapy, and the doctor tried to blame my behaviour on all kinds of revolting stuff, so I hit him. The blow ruptured a blood vessel in his nose. Jack had to settle out of court. Gwen had me sent away to a special-care centre. I wouldn’t stay there, kept running away. Eventually we reached a truce, Gwen and Jack and me. If I learned to control my behaviour, they’d allow me to follow my own course. There’s money held in trust, which I’m supposed to get when I’m twenty-one. I had to agree to be the model daughter. At that point I even promised to go into the family business.”

  “So how did you end up as a receptionist?”

  “I guess I broke the promise.”

  “And they’re upset with you for doing so?”

  “That’s putting it mildly. Now tell me about you.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Talking about it is depressing. Tell me something.”

  “This is my first job after getting my degree. I’ve been given a chance to put my design ideas into practice. I’ve already begun the preliminary work on the Tasaka Corporation’s next production. They’re paying my hotel bills plus a retainer, but I’ll rent a place as soon as my first real salary cheque comes through. Believe it or not, I hadn’t expected to meet someone involved in a murder case. Have you heard anything more from the police?”

  “Well, I’m involved, but it’s not as if I’m related to the deceased or anything.”

  “Then why are you so interested?”

  She faltered. It was not a question she wished to ask herself. “I think it has to do with the things that scare me.”

  “I guess it’s a good way of coming to terms with your fears.”

  She studied his face as he ate. Joseph was just the kind of person she wanted to be, self-assured and purposeful. “I’d like to see your designs,” she said.

  “The most detailed plans are with the construction team, but I can show you the rough sketches.” He smiled. “Come and visit; I’m only on the second floor.”

  “I don’t know, I may be busy. Nobody’s been murdered in the hotel for a few days. The management probably want me to be around in case something violent and disgusting happens.” She stopped chewing. “I thought you were on the fourth floor?” She remembered seeing his room number on the reservation card.

  “I was supposed to be, but there was a mix-up with the rooms. I’m in two sixteen.”

  “Two sixteen?” The number inscribed on the bookmark in Jacob’s Bible, an odd coincidence.

  They arrived at the Savoy reception desk after dinner to find Nicholas in a state of panic. The upgraded security arrangements meant that queues of complaining guests were filling the lobby.

  “You can help out now,” Nicholas told Jerry, “but it’s no use begging me to keep quiet about your timekeeping. I’ll still have to report you.”

  “Why did you change Joseph’s room, Nick?”

  Nicholas looked over his shoulder at the leather-clad designer. “You can’t complain about that because it wasn’t my fault.” He waved his hands ineffectually, as if the idea was stuck to his fingertips. “It was the telephone booking that threw everything out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The lawyer, you know – Max Jacob.” Nicholas lowered his voice. “He made a telephone booking two days before he arrived in London, asking specifically for room two sixteen.”

  “Then why didn’t you give him the room?” she asked.

  Nicholas looked shifty. “I made a mistake when I typed in the request. I had a lot on my mind, and the security guards for the delegates were swarming all over the place. I told Jacob that his room had been allocated to someone else. I promised to have a word with the new occupant and switch the rooms back, but he didn’t want to change. What more could I do? Then Jacob died.”

  I searched the wrong room, thought Jerry.

  “Do you often give guests incorrect reservations?” asked Joseph.

  “He has a point,” she agreed. “A dissatisfied guest. I’m going to have to report you.”

  “All right, Jerry, that’s enough,” snapped Nicholas. “I’ll forget it this time, but this is your absolute final warning.”

  “Let’s go to your room,” she told Joseph, heading for the stairs.

  “I don’t understand what you expected to find in here.” Joseph unlocked the door and switched on the lights.

  “I don’t know, either. Why would Jacob have insisted on this particular suite?” Jerry looked around. “It’s no better or worse than his other one. They’re virtually identical.”

  “Perhaps it had some sentimental significance for him.”

  “He was a lawyer, Joseph.” She walked into the bathroom and checked under the sink. “Suppose it was some kind of drop point?”

  For the next ten minutes she pulled the bedroom apart while Joseph looked on. By the time he had decided to stop her, she had finished. If Max Jacob had come to London to collect something from room 216, it had to still be in the suite. “No one else has come into the room except you.”

  “What about the maids? The staff have passkeys. Anyone could have – What is it?”

  She was on her knees, feeling the white tiles at the rear of the washbasin pedestal, when one came away in her hands. “It’s an access point for the sink trap,” she explained. Beyond it was a square hole six inches across.

  Joseph crept forward. “What’s in there?”

  She carefully pulled out a beige envelope, noted the jagged tear along the top. “Looks like we’re too late to find out,” she said. She shook the top section of the envelope, and a slim torn segment of Xeroxed photograph fell out.

  “Whoever took this stuff was in a hurry to check the contents. I bet it was narcotics. I bet the lawyer was a drug mule.” She checked the envelope for residue, but found none. Instead, when she examined the photograph, she found herself looking at two pairs of bare legs, a bottom, a breast, and part of an unappealing erection.

  “Pornography?” she said, confounded.

  ∨ Seventy-Seven Clocks ∧

  17

  Art Appreciation

  “How are you feeling?” May seated himself on a section of the Moroccan bedspread that wasn’t covered in the Saturday-morning newspapers. His partner’s eyes were red and swollen, his face the colour of a supermarket chicken.

  “Oh, wonderful. That’s all I needed right now, on top of everything else, a cold.” Bryant fixed him with a beady, suspicious eye. “Have you eaten all the grapes?”

  May looked around guiltily. It seemed that he had. For someone who wasn’t feeling very well, his partner didn’t miss much. “There were only a couple left,” he said. “You had a nice rest yesterday. You’ll be back on your feet by Monday.”

  It had disturbed him to find his friend in such a frail state. He wondered if Bryant’s cold had appeared as a psychosomatic result of being shut in the cellar. Friday had been a wasted day of paperwork and procedures, without any discernible progress. He needed his partner back in full health.

  The rescued Waterhouse painting had been placed against the far wall. His bedroom was a reflection of Bryant’s mind, its untidy shelves filled with games and puzzles stacked in ancient boxes, statues and mementoes competing for space with books on every subject imaginable, from Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology to Illustrated British Ballads and A History of Indian Philosophy.

  “What are you reading at the moment?” asked May.

  “Batman,” said Bryant. “The drawings are terribly good.”

  “Your landlady said you weren’t to be disturbed, you know.”

  �
�Alma’s always looking for an excuse to get me alone. She brings me bowls of foul-smelling broth on the hour and perches on the bed like some overweight Florence Nightingale, prodding at my orifices with a thermometer. No wonder her husband died. You realize how close we came to never finding the painting at all?” Bryant sank into the blankets. “It’s the key to this whole business, I’m sure of it. I wanted you here because Summerfield’s on his way over to check its authenticity. My trousers got torn. My suit is ruined.”

  “I realize the thought of buying new clothes fills you with horror, Arthur, but you should be glad you’re still in one piece.” May drained his teacup and set it down. “Are you thinking of getting up at all? It is only a cold, after all. You’ll be pleased to hear that Janice and I have put calls out to every surviving member of the Whitstable family in the country. We’re bringing them all together for a meeting tomorrow afternoon.”

  “On a Sunday? We won’t have enough staff to take care of them.”

  “I’ve agreed to let the girl from the Savoy give us a hand. The Sunday idea is to stop them from using the excuse that they have to be in their offices. I need you there, if you’re feeling up to it.”

  “I’m not malingering, you know,” said Bryant indignantly. “Not like you, and that so-called heart attack of yours that turned out to be angina.”

  May knew that his partner was thankful for being rescued, but didn’t suppose he would ever say so. Finding Bryant’s walkie-talkie down the back of his passenger seat, he had radioed a request for one of the patrol officers to keep a discreet check on the house. If the boy hadn’t looked in when he did, May wondered if Arthur would have been found at all.

  Peregrine Summerfield entered, his bulk filling the narrow door-frame. He waved a bottle of cognac in a meaty fist. Red and yellow gouache still speckled his beard, as if he’d been using his chin to paint with. Perhaps he kept the pigments there as a way of presenting his credentials.

  “Where is the old malingerer?” he asked, studying May. “You must be John. I’ve heard a lot about you.”