The shift in authority was clearly meant to be noted. Now that she was being accepted into the family business, she enjoyed the protection of Charles. Her father would meekly wait outside while she finished reading her book. The thought gave her little satisfaction. Poor Gwen and Jack. They had offered her up as a sacrifice to their ambition, only to find themselves excluded again.
Lunchtime with Charles and her father was punctuated throughout with awkward pauses. After the meal Jack was virtually dismissed and told to return to London. Charles would see to it that Jerry was returned safe and sound first thing on Monday morning.
For the rest of the day she and Charles worked side by side in the grand study, as he explained his long-term plans for the guild. She saw that the work was not as dull as it had first appeared. Indeed, she could envisage certain circumstances under which it would be a pleasure to remain beside him all day.
Their meal together that evening had the intimate quality of a candlelit dinner, even if it took place beneath electric light.
♦
John May sat at his desk and fought to keep the horror of Alison’s death from his mind.
But there would be time enough later for grief. The best thing to do was find a way to avenge her. May was a logical man. He sought patterns in chaos. Now he thought about the chart of deaths Arthur had logged to date. Could the attacks be following a sequence, even if they conformed to no easily identifiable pattern? More than one murderer. How could that be? The latest death had thrown him. It wasn’t taken into consideration on the chart, and it was a different modus operandi. Once again, the murderer had been seen but not apprehended.
If someone was working out a sequence for the murders, how would he choose his dates? Then there was the deadline: 28 December. There wasn’t much time left. He spread the details out before him, each death, each attack on a separate piece of paper.
No particular numerological significance. Could the dates have been chosen haphazardly? Suppose they were scientifically random, like a Turing code? Turing had successfully cracked cryptographic messages created on a typewriter attached to a print wheel, and had suggested that computers would be capable of human thought only if a random element, such as a roulette wheel, was introduced. But why would anyone go to the trouble of doing that?
There had to be a logic at work. The deaths were irregularly spaced, but there had to be a pattern. By what coordinates, though?
December the sixth to the twenty-eighth. Why not the first of the month to the last? That would be more logical. Why not a correspondence to the lunar cycle?
The new random element is easier to explain, he thought. Panic has set in, and that’s dangerous for everyone.
Across the desk, a weather chart in Bryant’s folded newspaper caught his eye.
Wettest December since the war.
May turned the paper around and studied the article more carefully. The murder dates corresponded with those when individual records had been broken for the most rainfall in a twenty-four-hour period.
He withdrew a chewed pencil stub from beneath his shirt and drew two lines on a sheet of paper. Along both lines he marked days six to twenty-eight. On the first line he added a mark whenever a death had occurred. On the second, he marked the record rainfall highs.
The spacing was the same. The rain highs were precisely ten hours before each of the deaths, except for the unpremediated attacks on Alison Hatfield and Pippa Whitstable.
What on earth was he supposed to do with information like this?
Whatever it was, he needed to start thinking fast; it had just begun to rain again.
∨ Seventy-Seven Clocks ∧
40
Automaton
“For God’s sake, Arthur, you’ve been missing all day. Can’t you come back in the morning?” May had returned home to find his partner standing on his doorstep, looking like a rain-battered scarecrow.
“Don’t ever complain about me not wearing my bleeper again, because I’ve been trying yours for the past four hours.” Only Bryant’s eyes and ears were poking out above his scarf. The top of his head was an odd shade of greyish blue. “A car pulled up a few minutes ago and some kindly Samaritan asked me if I needed a bed for the night. I had to see him off with a stick. Where on earth have you been?”
“I’ve been walking and thinking,” said May, finding his keys and opening the main door.
“Well done, you. Come up with anything?” He trudged wetly behind May up to his apartment, his shoes squelching on the stairs.
“The deaths are tied in with the monthly rainfall figures.”
“Excuse me, I’m going deaf,” said Bryant, unwinding his scarf and chafing his ears as he entered the room. “For a minute I thought you said the deaths were tied in with the rain. They always used to say the butler did it. Now you’re telling me it’s the weatherman?”
“I’ll explain after you tell me what you’re here for.” May was used to working through the night with his partner, but Arthur had never waited on the doorstep for him before.
“While we’re exchanging information, I know why James Makepeace Whitstable formed his alliance on the twenty-eighth of December. I know what he formed it for, and I know why people are dying. You’d better put the kettle on. This is going to take some time.”
While May made tea, Bryant turned up the centralheating thermostat, then located a bottle of brandy. “It’s funny how things just hit you. I was standing at the railings on the Embankment this morning – ”
“God, where have you been all day?”
“Working it out. You know how I am.”
“You must have been freezing,” said May, setting down a tray.
“Got my thermals on.” Bryant tapped his leg. “I needed the wind coming in off the river to clear my thoughts. It certainly shifted some phlegm, I can tell you. Anyway, it was dawn and suddenly the lights went out, all the way along the Embankment. That was it. I made the connection. It was Gilbert and Sullivan, you see.”
“No, I don’t see.”
“James Whitstable had called his men to town to discuss an idea he’d had. Think of his position. These were trusted friends, guildsmen born and bred, people he’d known all his life. He wanted to justify their loyalty, to protect and strengthen the Watchmakers. He thought he could do it by providing the guild with a group of like-minded individuals dedicated to keeping the bright light of private enterprise burning, no matter what. He would see that British craftsmanship remained unchallenged by foreign rivals as it went out into the world. The Victorians were building for immortality. James Whitstable wanted to ensure that the Watchmakers lasted for ever.”
“Arthur, I fail to see where this is leading – ”
“The aims of the alliance are stated in the signatory contract. We know that James Whitstable summoned his men and booked them into the Savoy at noon on the twenty-eighth of December 1881. The group took a light lunch in the hotel restaurant, and Whitstable arranged another reservation at ten-thirty that evening. This is also clearly documented. What had Whitstable planned for the rest of the day? Well, we know they spent the main part of the evening in his suite, drawing up the charter and signing it. But what of the afternoon? There were plenty of red-blooded pursuits to take their fancy. Remember, this was a time of great licentiousness in the West End.”
“Whitstable ran reform charities. Surely he would have frowned on anything too risqué?”
“The Victorians weren’t quite so naive as we like to think. Prostitution was rampant, despite various efforts to clean up the streets. During the day, society whores promenaded through Rotten Row. At night, Leicester Square was host to all kinds of delights. Three years after the alliance was formed, the Empire Variety Theatre was built there and became such a traffic-stopping spot for prostitutes that a plasterboard barrier was erected to shield them from the non-paying public.
No, on this occasion James Whitstable had something else in mind. I was sure I knew what it was, and my theory was bac
ked up when I re-examined the documents Alison Hatfield obtained for you. There, among all those loose bits of paper, was part of a ticket.”
He raised an oblong section of green paper in his hand. “This was James Whitstable’s ticket for a trip next door to the Savoy Theatre, which had just been completed. Whitstable was a keen patron of the arts, remember. Gilbert and Sullivan were presenting their production of Patience there. It had been running at the Opera Comique since the twenty-third of April and transferred to the Savoy on – let me see – ” He flicked through his dog-eared black notebook. “October the tenth. The Prince of Wales attended, and Oscar Wilde. Of course, it would have been hard to keep Wilde away. Patience parodied him and the whole of the Aesthetic Movement, as well as the Pre-Raphaelites.”
“And this was where James Whitstable took his partners.” May shrugged. “So what?”
“Don’t you think it strange? This particular opera was a topical joke. Its references weren’t entirely understood by cosmopolitan audiences even then. We know from the Savoy records that most of Whitstable’s colleagues had journeyed up from the country. Such esoteric entertainment would hardly have suited their tastes. No, James didn’t want them to attend just so they could enjoy the show.”
“This had better have some point to it, Arthur.”
Bryant savoured his brandy-tea and smiled. “There are moments in history that change our way of looking at the world, don’t you think?” He always enjoyed knowing more about a case than his partner. He paused for another sip, relishing the moment. “Some are obvious events that we all agree on. Kings fall, battles are lost or won. Sarajevo, twenty-eight June 1914. London, three September 1939. Dallas, twenty-two November 1963. Other changes are of a subtler degree, and some go quite unnoticed.
On the night of twenty-eight December 1881, James Whitstable and his partners witnessed an extraordinary symbolic moment. For the first time ever, a public building was completely lit with the new electric light. Darkness was thrown from the corners of the night. In this case, by over twelve hundred electric lamps. They’d tried to do it once before, on the tenth of October the same year. On that occasion, the entire company of the Savoy Theatre came on stage and sang three choruses of ‘God Save the Queen’ in a dramatic new arrangement by Sullivan, but then – fiasco. The steam engine driving the generator in a vacant lot near the theatre couldn’t provide enough electricity, and the stage remained gas lit.
But at the matinee on December the twenty-eighth, they finally got it right. Richard D’Oyly Carte, ever the grand showman, walked onto the stage and ordered the gas lighting to be turned off. He followed with a lecture on the safety of electricity. This was news to the audience; many of them had thought electricity was fatal. Then he took a piece of muslin and wrapped it around a lit lamp, which he proceeded to smash with a hammer. When he held up the unburnt muslin, proving that there was no danger to the public, the audience went wild.
Gas light was unclear, yellowish, smelly, and hot. The new electric illumination was here to stay. Imagine, John! To these men – businessmen, craftsmen – it must have seemed that the myths and mysteries of the shadowy past had truly been swept away by the cold, bright light of scientific reason. There couldn’t have been a more appropriate symbol for them to adopt.”
“You think it was coincidence, or did James Whitstable know about this?”
“Oh, he knew all right. He used the performance as a display to show them they were doing the right thing by signing with him. What an extraordinary start for a grand new era! No wonder James had spoken of the winter solstice, the championing of light over darkness. Why, Victoria herself became queen on Midsummer’s Day! It was the beginning of a bright new Britain. The end of myth and magic, the end of superstitions that could only survive in a nation of shadows. We know the alliance flourished. The original members passed away and their fortunes were handed down to their eldest sons. The money and the power stayed within the inner circle of the family. I’m not sure what happened after that.”
“This is where I can help,” said May, pleased that he could finally contribute something. “Whoever obstructed the expansion of the guild always ended up withdrawing their objections, or vanishing altogether. One by one all their rivals disappeared. I’d say they were most likely beaten or killed for getting in the way of progress. It’s in the company’s overseas records, if you know what to look for. Not so many cases in this country, where investigation might have led back to the alliance, but a lot of skulduggery overseas. Whitstable and his gang took, and they didn’t give much back. And they made sure that they retained control beyond their own deaths. Their fortune was passed down to each generation on one condition: that at some future time, the heirs might be asked to secure the continuing good fortune of the company by performing a simple, unspecified task, something they would be notified about when the time arose.”
“You mean the fathers made their sons killers?”
“Oh, nobody high-ranking got blood on their hands, but yes, I think the winning formula – a formula that was way ahead of its time, I might add – was granted with a burden of responsibility.”
“It’s a strong motive.”
“Death by proxy. A series of murders that would ensure the continued survival of the guild’s financial empire, carried out by the descendants of the alliance’s staff. I just spoke to Longbright. An hour ago she received a telex from the Bombay police confirming something about the window-cleaner, David Denjhi. His father and grandfather had both worked for a company owned by the Whitstable family. Specifically, they were in the employ of Charles Whitstable.”
“But how would the alliance know when someone was dangerous enough to require removal? And if they’re still picking victims, why are they killing members of their own family?”
“The Watchmakers were craftsmen. I think Whitstable got his inner circle to come up with some kind of system for automatically fingering their enemies. But somewhere along the line the system screwed up. And now, nearly a century later, nobody knows how to stop it.”
“Raymond Land is never going to believe this.”
“At least it beats your supernatural explanations.”
“That depends who you find more objectionable, capitalists or satanists. Where do we go from here?”
“To James Whitstable’s most direct descendant,” said May. “We overlooked Charles Whitstable because of his position; how easily we still protect those in power. Berta Whitstable is a very unconvincing liar. The more she insisted her son knew nothing, the more I wondered if he could help us. If anyone knows about the alliance’s device, Charles will.”
“Suppose he was at the guild when Alison called me about the diary? He could have arranged for someone to reach the basement before her. It’s only a short distance from Goldsmiths’ Hall to St Paul’s Cathedral.” Bryant’s brow furrowed. “You mentioned the alliance’s device. I presume you mean that they came up with some kind of formula for removing rivals that they’ve stuck to ever since.”
“No, Arthur, I mean a device. They were craftsmen, remember? I think we’re looking for some kind of automaton.”
∨ Seventy-Seven Clocks ∧
41
Tiger, Tiger
At five twenty-seven the following morning, the elegant Chiswick home of Christian and Deborah Whitstable lay in darkness, and would remain so until an alarm rang in one hour and three minutes. Only a small porch light, operating on a time switch, stayed alight. The two officers May had insisted on appointing to secure the house were about to come off duty, and waited together in the front garden for the day shift to replace them.
Christian Whitstable had been badly disturbed by his sister Isobel’s trauma. Little Daisy had remained mute since her rescue. Her mother’s health had declined so alarmingly that she had been admitted to a private hospital in Fulham. And he’d heard that Pippa’s mother was not doing much better, either.
Despite the danger, Christian had opted out of the police-protection sch
eme, preferring to spend Christmas at home. There had been too much reliance on the authorities, and what had they done but consistently let them down?
He and Deborah had argued bitterly over the decision. Having seen what had happened to her niece’s child, Deborah was keen to place her own children in the safekeeping of the police, but her husband had refused to join the rest of the clan huddled together in William Whitstable’s gloomy house. He believed in being the master of his fate, and extended that philosophy to his children, even if they were not yet old enough to appreciate the concept.
Deborah had complained that her husband’s misplaced sense of machismo was putting their children in harm’s way.
“Nonsense,” Christian had retorted over their cold turkey supper the previous evening. “We have the police guarding us day and night. There are always two of them outside, in plain view where the children can see them. And even if, God forbid, someone managed to slip inside the house, we’d be able to summon help before anything untoward happened. There’s only one door at the front and one at the back. They’d never be able to escape without capture.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Deborah had sighed, knowing that she could never win an argument with a Whitstable. She had taken to sleeping with a carving knife beneath the bed. If she had little faith in her husband, she certainly had none in their guards. One of the night officers, PC Graham Watson, looked around seventeen years old, and was as thin as a stick. He spent his time sitting on the porch disconsolately picking his nose and reading Ian Fleming novels until the shift was over.
Now he was standing by the garden gate, looking up into the black sky, adjusting the strap of his helmet and hoping that the shift change would arrive before the rain began again. He looked around for his partner, who had gone to carry out a final check at the rear of the house, and had not yet returned.
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