The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

by Natasha Pulley

  Thaniel was quiet for four long ticks of the workshop’s locust clock. Mori couldn’t look at him for so long. ‘In your book – the diary. You wrote about today, but it was wrong.’

  ‘It isn’t a diary. It’s for … ’ He struggled. ‘Of everything that might happen, only one thing does, but I start out knowing all of them. Sometimes what’s unlikely is much better or more interesting than what’s likely. So I write it down so that there’s a record of it, when I forget. The book is for dead memories. Today was a nearer miss than usual. I wrote it ten years ago when I never thought I would leave Japan.’

  Thaniel let his teeth close. He wanted to say that it was nonsense, but what had been written had almost been right. If the dice at the roulette table had rolled differently, Grace wouldn’t have walked into him, and Fanshaw wouldn’t have come for him just as he was about to buy the music. He would have had time to buy it, and then to remember reading in the Foreign Office file that today, the fourteenth, was Mori’s birthday; he would have come back in time to bring the sugar-swan cake and some cheap red wine. They would have gone out into the garden in the warm night. It was so clear that it was a shadow memory, as clear as dying in the Rising Sun.

  ‘I know there’s no test for what might have happened. But tomorrow,’ Mori said, and nodded slightly when Thaniel’s attention sharpened more. ‘At the hotel your waiter will drop the tea tray. He’s developing palsy in his left hand but thinks it will go away if he ignores it. Miss Carrow will wear green, and there will be tulips on the table. You don’t like tulips. It will probably rain at half past ten. There will be a man there with a wolfhound that likes jam, unless there is a traffic accident involving two carriages by Charing Cross.’

  Thaniel took his hand back and stepped sideways to let him by. ‘I suppose we’ll know tomorrow afternoon, then.’

  Once Mori had his back to his bedroom door, he was very still. ‘You can lock me in if you like,’ he said quietly.

  Thaniel blinked. He had been gearing himself to make the long walk back to Pimlico, late though it was. ‘Yes.’

  Mori gave him the key obediently. It had been in his pocket all the while. ‘Just … I know I’d leave a house if I thought the landlord had followed me for whatever reason, but – why did you want to run away just then? What did you think would happen? I’m not really of a size to do anything to you.’

  Thaniel watched him for a heartbeat or so. It was either a real question, or it had all been a mad story by a sleepy bombmaker caught off his guard, and who now wanted to know if he had been wholly or partially found out. ‘People who follow civil servants aren’t usually alone,’ he said at last. ‘All kinds of things have crossed the wires recently. I’ve signed nearly as many secrecy oaths as I’ve coded documents. You know that; you were civil service too.’

  ‘Yes.’ He drew his teeth over his lower lip. ‘Anyway, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  Mori nodded fractionally and then stepped back. ‘You have to push it a bit,’ he said as he closed the door.

  Thaniel turned the key. The lock ground quietly into place, and from the other side of the door, there was a soft thunk at about shoulder height that he thought was Mori bumping his head against the panel.

  Taking the key, he went back to his own room, where he sat down on the bed to take off his cufflinks and borrowed tie. He couldn’t think any more. His mind would go no further than to report that his collar was hurting his neck.

  FIFTEEN

  It was only when the daylight arrived that he saw he had a new dresser frame into which the original drawers had been transposed, with everything in them, including Katsu. The octopus must have approved, because he had brought back the stolen socks, along with a collection of brightly coloured beads and spare watch parts. Thaniel eased out a collar and was putting it on when the drawer closed by itself. Katsu whirred grumblingly from inside.

  Once he had dressed, he went to Mori’s door to unlock it, but then stopped on the landing. Through the slim balusters, which were made of varying shades of oak in varying stages of newness and oldness, he could see that the workshop door was ajar. He put the key back into his pocket and went down.

  The electric lights hummed on as soon as he crossed the threshold. The sound made him pause, because it was easy to hear through the floor upstairs. Some long seconds of quiet went by before he stepped inside.

  Beginning furthest from the front door, he made a search of the cabinets and the desk drawers. In the cabinets were watches in boxes, some labelled with the names of the customers who had ordered them. He checked everything, but there was nothing more interesting than a set of marine chronometers already paid for by the navy. The drawers were mainly full of clockwork parts – raw cogs and springs, tiny diamond bearings, different sizes of chain and wire – and when he did find one of papers, it was only receipts and an accounts ledger, kept in neat Japanese numbers. On top was a bill from a goldsmith for watch cases.

  Behind the papers was a plain box, with a square cut from the lid as if it were planning an inlay. He opened it briefly and closed it when he saw nothing inside but clockwork, but opened it again when it pinged musically. With the lid open wholly, a quiet song played. The turning music tumbler was still exposed because the base of the box hadn’t been put in yet. A tiny silver girl began to spin, and her parasol opened little by little. He watched it for longer than he meant to. Annabel had had a music box when they were children, but since they quickly became boring for anyone over the age of four, he hadn’t seen one for a long time. The silver girl slowed under her parasol as the springs ran down. He could see them loosening. Before she stopped, he closed the box and put it back.

  The last drawer clinked as he opened it. He had disturbed a wide rack of glass test tubes. He glanced toward the empty doorway and then back at them. They were all stopped with identical corks and unlabelled. At first he thought that there was nothing in them, but when he held one to the light, its shadow showed that gas had settled in the base. If he held it very close, he could make out the tiny particles swimming inside. One of them snapped blue and a hairline spark flickered out to the glass.

  A clockwork bird fluttered down on to the desk then with a rush of the same chemical smell he had noticed before. He had to set the vial down to catch it. As soon as he closed his hand around it, it fell still. He found the catch that opened it and exposed its workings, then slowly sat down on the high chair by the microscope to look.

  There was a square space in the centre of the clockwork. It was filled with a tightly bound paper block that smelled sharply of salt and chemicals, and in a neat, red Japanese stamp, it was marked inflammable.

  He jerked his hands away from it, too quickly. His elbow nicked the vial he had put down, and he couldn’t catch it before it spun off the edge of the desk and cracked on the floor. It was only small, so the smash of the glass was hardly more than a sad plink, but it crashed in the silence. He snapped the bird’s casing closed and threw it into the air, where it flew off again to the window, fluffing its silver feathers.

  On the floor, grey not-quite-dust rose from the glass shards. Almost straightaway his eyes felt dry and a strange sigh came from an old cup of yesterday’s tea. The liquid level was retreating, leaving a green stain behind it where the tealeaves were stranded around the sides. He stood up and stepped back, but the dust had already formed a patch of dark mist just above the desk. The air tasted of tin. He retreated to the door and was about fetch Mori when there was a snap and the fog patch began to rain. The water pattered down on the floor, just catching the edge of the desk and the half-emptied teacup.

  It stopped only when the little cloud was exhausted, and left everything nearby looking as though he had spectacularly dropped a cup of water. He stood for what felt like a long time, waiting to see if it would do anything else. Eventually he touched his fingertip to the nearest wet patch. Once he was sure it was only water, he cleaned it up as well as he could and hung the wet tea towels t
o dry on the back of the kitchen chairs. Gunpowder and nameless chemicals to make emergency rain. He went back upstairs to be sure that Mori was still there. The key was stiff in the lock and left a dent in his middle finger when he pushed it. He eased the door open, almost expecting an empty room, but Mori was still asleep, his head on his arm and the sun on the back of his neck. Someone might have dropped him there.

  On Sundays, only a skeleton staff worked at the temporary police headquarters in the Home Office cellars, and Dolly Williamson was not among them. Thaniel left a note on his desk, with thick underlinings, before going to find the hotel where he had arranged to meet Grace. It began to rain.

  The hotel was closer than he had imagined. He had walked past the wedge-shaped building a dozen times thinking that it was owned by the government; it was opposite Westminster Abbey and nearly as big. Coming in from the rain, the guests left their umbrellas in a mahogany rack by the door, where a steward took them away one by one to dry. The vaulted ceiling glittered with broad chandeliers. He watched their rainbows instead of the other diners, who wore clothes from Savile Row and laughed over tortes piled with marzipan fruit, and into crystal glasses. Beside him, the clatter of the rain on the window pane sharpened. He shifted. He felt as though somebody were about to tell him to get out, although nobody had shown any sign of it.

  Grace appeared from behind a waiter, her hair wet. He only had time to half stand up before she bumped into her chair. ‘Miss Carrow.’

  ‘Miss Carrow? I thought we’d settled on Grace,’ she said, rearranging the tulips between them so that she could see him past them. They shed a few of their over-fragile petals, and as her fingernails brushed the rim, the little crystal vase sang. She was wearing green again.

  ‘How are you? Have you ordered?’ she said.

  ‘Not yet. The waiter thinks I’m a tramp.’

  ‘Pish.’ She lifted her hand and a waiter glided over at once. After ordering tea and scones, she leaned back in her chair and studied him. ‘You didn’t say how you were,’ she said.

  ‘I know, sorry. I’m still thinking.’

  She laughed. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Any progress with Fanshaw after I left?’

  ‘No. I think I might be doomed to live in the room under my mother’s until I stab myself with a pair of compasses. Or her.’

  He smiled. ‘That bad?’

  She opened her eyes wide at him. ‘Do you not have a mother?’

  ‘No, I never knew her.’

  ‘Oh, God, sorry.’

  ‘No; as I say, I never knew her. She might have been dreadful. Dad was … mainly he didn’t talk, he only twitched his fishing flies in a telling way.’

  Her ease came back again. She slouched forward to put her forearms on the table. ‘Just you?’

  ‘No, I’ve a sister.’ That made him pause, because he had thought of Annabel less than he should have lately. He was a week late with the money he usually sent. ‘She lives in Edinburgh with two boys.’

  ‘Oh, right? What’s the husband do? I’m trying to find a relative you don’t like so you understand my mother.’

  ‘Hah. No, he was a soldier. Afghanistan. I only met him twice. He seemed like a bastard actually, but I might have misunderstood. He was from Glasgow. Everything past “good morning” was a bit of a blur.’

  ‘I see. Everyone you know seems to be dead. You’ll have to take my word for it that mothers become unbearable after you’re about nineteen.’

  ‘I believe you, I believe you. Is it not quite a big house, though?’

  She ducked her head once. ‘It is. The Sahara wouldn’t be big enough.’

  ‘Oh. Suddenly I feel lucky.’

  ‘You damn well should. The luck of orphans is greatly understated by the press.’ She paused. ‘But then you must be supporting the sister?’

  ‘It’s no trouble.’

  ‘That is almost certainly a lie.’

  ‘It … is,’ he admitted, and had to laugh with her. When they stopped laughing, there was a strange pause in which she only watched him, her lips pressed together as though she were keeping herself from saying something else. He cast around for something to say himself, but was saved by the waiter arriving with the tea and scones. Across from them, a wolfhound puppy looked up and cocked its ears hopefully. It was tethered to the chair of a big man in tweed. While the waiter fussed over the arrangement of the tea and the cream, the dog clambered into the man’s lap and put its nose in his bowl of jam. Thaniel bit the tip of his tongue. Because he was watching for it, he was quick enough to hear the clinking of shaking crockery and to catch the edge of the tray when it dropped.

  ‘Oh – I’m sorry,’ the waiter mumbled.

  Thaniel gave back the tray and looked him in the eye, but it was impossible to see if he was only embarrassed, or frightened to be asked if an oriental man had paid him to do it. ‘You should go to a doctor about your hand.’

  ‘I … yes. Yes, I’ve been meaning to.’ Pink to his ears, the waiter left again.

  Grace lifted her eyebrows. ‘You’re quick,’ she said admiringly. ‘You know, paperwork and telegraphy are usually what Special Branch men say to put one off the scent. No?’

  He had to look at the swirl of the cream rather than at her. ‘No. My landlord told me about it yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, he comes here often?’

  He teetered before coming down on the far side. She would be able to tell him if it was possible, at least, or she would know of another scientist who could. ‘No. I can’t decide whether it’s real or not, but he just knows things. He knew about you, he knew your name, he knew you’d invited me here. He knew about that dog over there, and the waiter’s hand. The rain. What you would wear.’

  She had begun to sit further forward halfway through the list. ‘Why, in what context? General showing off?’

  ‘No. I thought he’d been following me and I was an inch off pushing him down the stairs.’

  ‘And it’s all correct?’

  ‘Yes. But I’ve heard of channelling ghosts. I haven’t heard of predicting jam-loving wolfhounds. Is that possible, even?’

  She pushed the tip of her tongue into her teeth. ‘Of course it’s largely fraud, but the reason there are so many successful frauds is that it is extremely possible. It’s easily tested, mind.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Of course. You just need a blind test of some kind. Like, laying out seven cards face down. If you’re not a fraud, you can predict all of them.’

  ‘Might need to be a bit cleverer than that,’ he said, watching the rain against the window in the surface of his tea. He was so used to green now that brown tasted odd. ‘I think it must be fraud. But he had thought about it carefully. He’ll know some card tricks.’

  ‘You look as though this has been upsetting you.’

  He lifted his eyes. ‘If he’s lying, he’s been following me. Often. Which would be less unsettling if I didn’t work where I work.’

  ‘Well – why don’t you let me test him, then?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Oh, good evening, I’m Thaniel’s friend, I’ve brought cards. Play poker? Excellent.’ She inclined her head. ‘I know what to look for, it’s no trouble. It’s actually to do with what I was working on before I left university.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Tomorrow evening at seven, will that be too early?’

  ‘No, that’s good; I’ll be at home by six,’ he said, and then caught his tongue between his back teeth. He couldn’t remember when he had started to think of Filigree Street as home.

  She nodded once. ‘Good. Tomorrow at seven it is. Address?’

  He had to borrow a pen and a piece of paper from a waiter. ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly.

  ‘No, no. Glad to be of service; it will make up for my useless damselling last night.’ She poured him some more tea, the tendons standing in her wrist under the weight of the pot, and talked about the weather and Newton. She left after an hour, after paying for both of
them. He watched her go past the window, fast in the rain and peculiar in her green dress. Her short hair made her look like a workhouse girl.

  Mori was not in the workshop when he arrived back at Filigree Street. Katsu waved three or four tentacles at him from the desk, where he was prowling after the clockwork birds. They flew away to the window display in a cross fluster as Thaniel passed by, and the little octopus dived down the table leg to follow them, his metal joints sighing sea-coloured as he crossed the floor. Hoping that Mori was out, Thaniel went upstairs to take off his cufflinks, and to think of how to explain tomorrow’s visit. When he reached the landing, however, he heard a rush of water. Turning a very sharp corner past his own bedroom was another, tiny stairway. He had thought when he first arrived that it led to the attic, but the room at the top was a plumbed-in bathroom. Although the top of the house seemed like an odd place for it, he had realised as he got to grips with the geography of the old building that it was directly above the boiler. The water came out of the silver taps scalding, with the fearsomely clean smell of hotel steam presses.

  ‘The kettle’s just boiled downstairs,’ Mori said through the door, which was open on its latch.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Yes?’

  Thaniel opened the door, then shut it again. ‘You’re in the bath.’

  ‘What did you think I was doing?’

  ‘Cleaning.’

  ‘I’m not talking to you through the door. Come on. I’m not a girl.’

  He sat down on the floor with his back to the door, where he could see Mori only from his shoulders upward. With his hair wet, he was sharper than usual, and the water shone along the bones in his spine. Although he often went about with his sleeves folded back, his skin was the same colour across his arms and his chest. He wasn’t dark, but not pale either; where a white man’s veins would have shown through blue, there was nothing. It made him look more finished.