The Clockmaker's Daughter

by Kate Morton

  She ran her finger lightly around the edge of the frame, over the fine scratches. As she did so, Elodie noticed that the back of the frame, from which the stand protruded, was not completely flat. She held it up at eye level so that the horizontal plane was directly in front of her; yes, there was a very slim convex bend. Elodie pressed it lightly with her fingertips. Was she imagining that the backing felt ever so slightly padded?

  Heart beginning to beat faster, with the finely tuned instinct of a treasure hunter, and even as she knew it was absolutely against regulation to tamper with the archives, Elodie looked for a way to jimmy it loose without causing damage. She pulled at the old tape that had been used to seal the backing and it lifted, held not by adhesive any more but from habit. There, pressed flat and tucked beneath the frame, was a piece of paper that had been folded into quarters. Elodie opened it out and could tell at once that it was old – very old.

  It was a letter, written in a lively cursive hand, and it began, My dearest, one and only, J, what I have to tell you now is my deepest secret … Elodie’s breath caught, for here, at last, was the voice of her woman in white. Her attention skittered to the bottom of the page where the letter was signed with a pair of looped initials: Your most grateful and ever-loving, BB.

  PART TWO

  THE SPECIAL ONES

  V

  There was a long stretch, before this new visitor came, and before the Art Historians’ Association opened their museum, when there was no one living in this house. I had to content myself with occasional children on weekday afternoons, clambering through the ground-floor windows in order to impress their friends. Sometimes, when the mood was upon me, I obliged by slamming a door or shaking a window, making them squeal and trip over themselves trying to get free.

  But I have missed the companionship of a proper visitor. There have been some over the century, a precious few, whom I have loved. In their stead, I am forced now to endure the ignominy of a weekly deluge of busybodies and officials merrily dissecting my past. The tourists, for their part, talk a lot about Edward, although they call him ‘Radcliffe’ or ‘Edward Julius Radcliffe’, which makes him sound old and stuffy. People forget how young he was when he lived in this house. He had only just marked his twenty-second birthday when we decided to leave London. They talk in serious, respectful tones about Art, and they look through the windows and gesture towards the river and say things like, ‘This is the view that inspired the Upper Thames paintings.’

  There is a lot of interest, too, in Fanny. She has become a tragic heroine, impossible though that is for one who knew her in life to believe. People speculate as to where ‘it’ happened. The newspaper reports were never clear, each one contradicting the other; and although there was more than one person at the house that day, their accounts were uncertain and history has managed to bury the details. I didn’t see it happen myself – I wasn’t in the room – but through a quirk of history I have been able to read the police reports. One of my previous visitors, Leonard, obtained lovely clear copies and we spent many a quiet evening together poring over them. Works of utter fiction, of course, but that’s how things were done back then. Perhaps they still are.

  Edward’s portrait of Fanny, the one in which she wears the green velvet dress and a heart-shaped emerald on her pale décolletage, was brought in by the Association when they started opening for tourists. It hangs on the wall of the first-floor bedroom, facing the window that overlooks the orchard and the laneway that runs towards the churchyard in the village. I wonder sometimes what Fanny would think of that. She was easily excited and did not like the idea of a bedroom that looked onto gravestones. ‘It is just a different type of sleep,’ I can hear Edward saying, in an attempt to placate her, ‘nothing more than that. Just the long sleep of the dead.’

  People pause in front of Fanny’s portrait sometimes, comparing it with the smaller image printed in the tourist brochure; they comment on her pretty face, her privileged life, her tragic end; they speculate on the theories as to what happened that day. Mostly, they shake their heads and sigh in contented lamentation; reflection on someone else’s tragedy being one of the most delicious of pastimes, after all. They wonder about Fanny’s father and his money, her fiancé and his heartache, the letter she received from Thurston Holmes the week before she died. This I know: to be murdered is to become eternally interesting. (Unless, of course, you are a ten-year-old orphan living on Little White Lion Street, in which case to be murdered is simply to be dead.)

  The tourists also talk, of course, about the Radcliffe Blue. They wonder, with their wide eyes and their excited voices, where the pendant could have gone. ‘Things don’t just disappear,’ they say.

  Sometimes they even talk about me. Again, I have Leonard, my young soldier, to thank for that, for it was he who wrote the book which first presented me as Edward’s lover. Until that time I was simply one of his models. There are copies of the book for sale in the gift shop and every so often I glimpse Leonard’s face on the back cover and remember his time in the house, the cries of ‘Tommy’ in the dead of night.

  The tourists who walk about the house on Saturdays, with their arms behind their backs and studied expressions of self-conscious learning on their faces, refer to me as Lily Millington, which is understandable given how things worked out. Some of them even wonder where I came from, where I went to, who I really was. I am inclined to like those ones, in spite of their wrong-headed speculation. It is nice to be considered.

  No matter how many times I hear the name ‘Lily Millington’ spoken out loud by strangers, it is always a surprise. I have tried whispering my real name into the air around their ears, but only a couple have ever heard me, like my little friend with the curtain of fine hair above his eyes. Not surprising: children are more perceptive than adults, in all the ways that count.

  Mrs Mack used to say that those who seek to know gossip will hear ill about themselves. Mrs Mack said a lot of things, but in this she was correct. I am remembered as a thief. An imposter. A girl who rose above her station, who was not chaste.

  And I was all of those things at different times, and more. But there is one thing they accuse me of which is not just. I was not a murderer. I did not fire the gun that day that killed poor Fanny Brown.

  My current visitor has been here for a week and a half. A Saturday passed, which saw him scamper away from the house as early as he could – would that I were able to do the same – and another few days after that in which he continued with the same routines as last week. I had begun to despair of ever learning what it is he’s up to, for he is not communicative like some of the others have been: he never leaves papers lying around, from which I might glean answers, nor does he reward me by carrying out long, informative conversations.

  But then, tonight, at last, a phone call. The upshot of which is that I now know why he is here. I also know his name. It is Jack – Jack Rolands.

  He had spent the whole day out of the house, as is his habit, having set off in the morning with his shovel and camera bag. When he returned, though, I could see at once that he was changed. For a start, he took that shovel of his down to the tap on the side of the old outhouse and washed it clean. Evidently, there was to be no more digging.

  There was something different in his attitude, too. A looseness to his joints; an air of resolution. He came inside and cooked a piece of fish for dinner, which was quite unlike him, having thus far proven himself more of a tinned soup sort of man.

  The hint of ceremony put me further en garde. He has finished whatever it is that he came here to do, I thought. And then, as if to prove me right, there came the call.

  Jack had apparently been expecting it. He had glanced at his phone a couple of times while he ate his dinner, as if to check the time, and when he finally picked it up he knew already who it was at the other end.

  I was worried at first it would be Sarah, telephoning to cancel their lunch appointment tomorrow, but it wasn’t; it was, instead, a woman called
Rosalind Wheeler, telephoning from Sydney, and the conversation had nothing at all to do with those two little girls in Jack’s photograph.

  I listened from where I was sitting on the kitchen bench, and that is how I came to hear him speak a name that I know well.

  The conversation to that point had been a brief and somewhat stilted exchange of pleasantries, and then Jack, who doesn’t strike me as one to mince words, said, ‘Look, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’ve spent ten days checking the places on your list. The stone isn’t there.’

  There is only one stone that people mention with respect to Edward and his family, and thus I knew at once what he’d been seeking. I confess to being slightly disappointed. It is all so predictable. But then, human beings are, for the most part. They cannot help it. And I am hardly one to judge a treasure hunter.

  I was interested, though, that Jack should think to seek the Radcliffe Blue here at Birchwood. I knew already, from listening to the museum’s day-trippers, that the diamond has not faded from thought – indeed, that a legend has grown around its whereabouts – but Jack is the only person ever to come looking for it here. Since the very first newspaper reports were printed, the general wisdom has been that the pendant made its way to America in 1862, where it promptly disappeared underground. Leonard nudged the idea even further, proposing that it was I who took the diamond from this house. He was wrong in that, of course, and deep down I am sure he knew it. It was the police reports that swayed him – the curious, wrong-headed interviews conducted in the days after Fanny’s death. Still. I had thought we had an understanding, he and I.

  That Jack had come to Birchwood – sent by this woman, this Mrs Wheeler – to seek the Radcliffe Blue intrigued me, and I was pondering the fact when he said, ‘It sounds as if you’re asking me to break into the house,’ and my other thoughts fell away.

  ‘I know how much this means to you,’ he went on, ‘but I’m not going to break in. The people who run this place made it very clear that my accommodation is conditional.’

  In my eagerness, I had moved too close without realising it. Jack shivered abruptly and left the phone on the table as he went to shut the window; he must have pressed a button on the device, because suddenly I could hear the other half of the conversation, too. A woman’s voice, not young, with an American accent: ‘Mr Rolands, I paid you to do a job.’

  ‘And I’ve checked all of the places on your list: the woods, the river bend, the hill in the clearing – all the sites mentioned in Ada Lovegrove’s letters to her parents.’

  Ada Lovegrove.

  Such a long time since I’d heard her name; I confess to a wave of deep emotion. Who was this woman on the other end of the phone? This American woman telephoning from Sydney. And what was she doing with Ada Lovegrove’s long-ago letters?

  Jack continued, ‘The stone wasn’t there. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I told you when we met, Mr Rolands, that if the list of sites didn’t yield results then I’d advise you of plan B.’

  ‘You didn’t say anything about breaking into a museum.’

  ‘This is a matter of great urgency to me. As you know, I’d have gone myself if my condition didn’t prevent my flying.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, but—’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that I only pay the second half of your fee if you deliver.’

  ‘All the same …’

  ‘I will be emailing you with further instructions.’

  ‘And I’ll go in on Saturday, when the place is open, and have a look around. Not before.’

  She did not end the call happily, but Jack was unmoved. He is an unflappable sort of person. Which is a fine quality, yet one that makes me inexplicably eager to cause him to flap. Just a little. I have developed a rather perverse streak, I fear; no doubt a consequence of boredom and its miserable twin, frustration. A consequence of knowing Edward, too, for whom ebullience was beauty, and whose ethos was so passionately defended that it was impossible not to be moved.

  I was overcome with great agitation after the phone call. As Jack took out his camera and began transferring images onto his computer, I retreated, alone, to the warm corner where the staircase makes its turn, to consider what it all means.

  In some ways the cause of my perturbation was clear. The mention of Ada Lovegrove after so long was startling. It brought with it a host of memories; also questions. There was a logic to Ada’s association with the Blue; the timing, however, was a mystery. Why now, more than one hundred years since she spent her brief time in this house?

  But there was another layer to my distress, too. Less apparent. More personal. Unrelated to Ada. It stemmed, I realised, from Jack’s refusal to do as Rosalind Wheeler had asked of him. Not for Mrs Wheeler’s sake; my turbulence was caused by the recognition that as far as Jack is concerned, he has finished the task that he was sent here to perform. It is unrelated to the two little girls in the photograph, with whom he has an ongoing interest, and so he intends to leave.

  I do not want him to leave.

  On the contrary, I want very much for him to stay; to come inside my house. Not on Saturday with all of the others, but by himself, alone.

  It is my house, after all, not theirs. More than that, it is my home. I let them use it, grudgingly, because their purpose is a tribute to Edward, who deserved so much better than what he got. But it is mine and I will have my visitors if I wish.

  It has been a long time since I’ve had one of my own.

  And so I have come back downstairs and into the old caretaker’s accommodation where Jack and I are sitting together now – he in quiet contemplation of his photographs, I in unquiet contemplation of him.

  He looks from one image to the next and I watch the minute changes in his features. All is quiet; all is still. I can hear my clock ticking from inside the house, the clock that Edward gave me just before we came here that summer. ‘I will love you for all time,’ he promised, on the evening we decided where to hang it.

  There is a door on the wall behind Jack that leads into the kitchen of the house. Within the kitchen is the narrow entrance to the smaller set of stairs that winds up to the first floor. There is a window ledge midway up, just wide enough for a woman to rest. I remember a day in July, the scented air that brushed through the panes to caress my bare neck; Edward’s sleeves pushed halfway up his forearms; the back of his hand grazing my cheek—

  Jack has stopped typing. He is sitting very still, as if trying to hear a distant melody. After a moment he returns his attention to his screen.

  I remember the way Edward’s eyes searched mine; the way my heart beat fast beneath my breast; the words he whispered in my ear, his warm breath on my skin—

  Jack stops again and glances at the door on the wall behind him.

  Suddenly, I understand. I move closer.

  Come inside, I whisper.

  He is frowning slightly now; his elbow is on the table, his chin on his fist. He is staring at the door.

  Come inside my house.

  He goes to stand right by the door now, resting the palm of one hand flat upon its surface. His expression is perplexed, in the manner of one trying to understand an arithmetical problem that has delivered an unexpected solution.

  I am immediately beside him.

  Open the door …

  But he doesn’t. He is going. He is leaving the room.

  I follow, willing him to return, but instead he goes to the old suitcase that holds his clothing, digging about until he produces a small black tool kit. He stands, looking down at the object, jostling it slightly as if to guess its weight. He is weighing up more than the kit, I realise, for finally, with a set of resolution to his jaw, he turns around.

  He is coming!

  There is an alarm on one side of the door, installed by the Association after it proved difficult to keep a caretaker, which is set like clockwork every Saturday afternoon when the museum closes for the week. I watch avidly as somehow, with a tool extracted from that kit
of his, he manages to circumvent it. He then proceeds to pick the lock of the door with so little fuss that I think at once of the Captain, who would have been most impressed. The door pushes open and before I know it, Jack has crossed the threshold.

  It is dark inside my house and he has not brought a torch; the only light is of the moon, spilling silver through the windows. He walks across the kitchen and into the hallway, where he stops. He makes a slow, considering turn. And then he starts up the stairs, climbing all the way to the top, the attic, where once again he stands still.

  And then he retraces his path and returns to the malt house.

  I would have liked for him to stay, to see more. But my mood is tempered by the thoughtful expression on his face as he leaves. I have a feeling, born of long experience, that he will return. People tend to, once I take an interest.

  And so, I let him go, and I remain alone in the dark of my house as he bolts the door again from the other side.

  I have always found much to admire in a man who knows how to pick a lock. And a woman, for that matter. Blame it on my upbringing: Mrs Mack, who knew a lot about life and even more about business, used to say that wherever one came across a lock, it was wise to assume that there was something on the other side one ought to see. I was never a picker of locks myself, though, not officially. Mrs Mack ran a far more complex enterprise than that and believed that diversification was key; or, as she preferred to put it, in words that might have been etched upon her headstone, there was more than one way to skin a cat.

  I was a good thief. As Mrs Mack had foreseen, it was the perfect sleight of hand: people expected dirty street urchins to steal and were on guard should such a child enter the frame. But clean little girls in pretty dresses, with copper ringlets sitting on their shoulders, were above suspicion. My arrival in her house allowed Mrs Mack’s enterprise to push beyond the bounds of Leicester Square, into Mayfair in the west and Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Bloomsbury in the north.