The Clockmaker's Daughter

by Kate Morton

  ‘I’m going by train. I’m due at the station in about four hours.’

  ‘You’ll be wanting to see inside, then.’ He cocked his head towards the gate. ‘Come on in. I’ll open up the house.’

  Jack was supposed to be packing to leave, but after letting Elodie into the house he’d decided to work through Rosalind Wheeler’s paperwork one last time. Just in case he found something he’d previously missed. Rosalind Wheeler was not a particularly pleasant person and the search seemed hopeless, but she’d hired him to do a job and Jack didn’t like letting people down.

  It was one of the things that Sarah used to say to him towards the end: ‘You have to stop trying to be everybody’s hero, Jack. It’s not going to bring Ben back.’ He’d hated it when she said that sort of thing, but he saw now that she’d been right. His entire career, his entire adult life he’d spent chasing something he could do that would erase the photos that had turned up in all the papers after the flood: the big one of Jack, his eyes wide and frightened, a heated blanket around his shoulders, being loaded into a waiting ambulance. And the smaller school photo of Ben that Dad had insisted on having taken earlier that year, Ben’s hair combed carefully from one side, neater than it ever looked in real life. Their roles had been assigned by those newspaper articles and set as hard as a concrete slab: Jack, the boy who was saved. And Ben, the boy hero who’d said to his rescuer, ‘Take my little brother first,’ before being washed away.

  Jack glanced back towards the door. It had been half an hour since he’d let Elodie into the house, and he was distracted. She’d stood to one side as he switched off the alarm and loosened the lock, and when he pushed the door open, she’d thanked him and been about to step across the threshold, when she hesitated and said, ‘You don’t work for the museum, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you a student?’

  ‘I’m a detective.’

  ‘With the police?’

  ‘Used to be. Not any more.’

  He hadn’t offered anything further – it didn’t seem necessary to volunteer that the change of vocation was in response to a marriage breakdown – and she hadn’t asked. After a moment of silence, she’d nodded thoughtfully and then disappeared inside Birchwood Manor.

  The whole time that she had been in there, Jack had been fighting an almost irresistible urge to follow her. No matter how many times he returned to the first page of the notes, he found his thoughts wandering, speculating as to what she was doing, where she was right at that minute, which room she was exploring. At one point he’d even stood up and gone to the door of the house before he realised what he was doing.

  Jack decided to make a cup of tea, just to have a task to see through to its end, and was dunking the teabag violently when he sensed her behind him.

  He guessed she was about to say goodbye and so, before she could, he said, ‘Cuppa? I’ve just boiled the kettle.’

  ‘Why not?’ She sounded surprised, whether by the invitation or her acceptance of it, he couldn’t tell. ‘A little bit of milk, please, and no sugar.’

  Jack took out a second mug, careful to find a nice one that didn’t have tannin stains around the base. When the two mugs of tea were ready, he carried them over to where she was standing now, on the stone-paved path that ran around the house.

  She thanked him and said, ‘There’s not much that smells better than a storm brewing.’

  Jack agreed and they sat together on the edge of the path.

  ‘So,’ she said, after she’d taken a first sip, ‘what’s a detective doing picking locks at a museum?’

  ‘I was hired by someone to look for something.’

  ‘Like a treasure hunter? With a map and everything? X marks the spot?’

  ‘Something like that. But without the X. That’s what’s making it all a bit tedious.’

  ‘And what is it you’re looking for?’

  He hesitated, thinking of the nondisclosure contract Rosalind Wheeler had made him sign. Jack didn’t mind breaking rules, but he didn’t like breaking promises. He did like Elodie, though, and he had the strongest sense that he should tell her. ‘You realise,’ he said, ‘that the woman who hired me could kill me for telling you.’

  ‘I’m intrigued.’

  ‘And yet, not worried for my life, I see.’

  ‘What if I promise not to tell a soul? I never break a promise.’

  Forget Rosalind Wheeler: the urge was going to kill him first. ‘I’m looking for a stone. A blue diamond.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Not the Radcliffe Blue?’

  ‘The what?’

  She opened her backpack and pulled out an old book with yellowing pages.

  ‘Edward Radcliffe: His Life and Loves.’ Jack read the cover aloud. ‘I’ve seen his name in the churchyard.’

  ‘This used to be his house and the Radcliffe Blue, as the name suggests, belonged to his family.’

  ‘I’ve never heard it called that. My client said the diamond belonged to her grandmother, a woman called Ada Lovegrove.’

  Elodie shook her head, the name evidently unfamiliar. ‘Edward Radcliffe took the Blue from his family’s safe in 1862 so his model, Lily Millington, could wear it in a painting. The story goes that she stole it and ran away to America, breaking Radcliffe’s heart in the process.’ Elodie turned carefully through the pages until she reached a colour plate near the centre. She pointed to a painting called La Belle and said, ‘That’s her – that’s Lily Millington. Edward Radcliffe’s model and the woman he loved.’

  Looking at the painting, Jack felt an enormous pull of familiarity, and then he realised that, of course, he’d seen the painting many times before, for it was printed on at least half of the bags that he’d seen tourists carrying with them when they left the museum gift shop on Saturdays.

  Elodie handed him another photograph, taken reverently from her bag. This was the same subject as in the painting, but here, perhaps because it was a photograph, she looked like a woman instead of a goddess. She was beautiful, but beyond that there was something attractive in the directness with which she stared at the photographer. Jack felt a strange stirring, almost as if he were looking at a picture of someone he knew. Someone he cared for deeply. ‘Where did you get this?’

  The urgency of his tone had clearly surprised her and a slight frown of interest tugged at her eyebrows. ‘At work. It was in a picture frame that belonged to James Stratton, the man whose archives I keep.’

  James Stratton was no one to Jack, and yet the question had formed and was out of his mouth before he even knew that he was going to ask it. ‘Tell me about him. What did he do? How did he come to have archives worth keeping?’

  She considered a moment. ‘No one ever asks me about James Stratton.’

  ‘I’m interested.’ And he was, although he couldn’t have said quite why, keenly interested.

  She remained quizzical, but pleased. ‘He was a businessman, very successful – he came from a family of huge wealth and importance – but he was also a social reformer.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He fronted a number of those Victorian committees aimed at improving the lives of the poor and he actually managed to make a difference. He was well connected, articulate, patient and determined. He was kind and giving. He was instrumental in getting the Poor Laws repealed, providing housing and protecting abandoned children. He worked at every level – lobbying members of Parliament, rallying wealthy businessmen to make donations, even working on the streets, handing out food to those who couldn’t afford it. He dedicated his life to helping others.’

  ‘He sounds heroic.’

  ‘He was.’

  Jack felt the pinch of another question. ‘What would make someone from a life of privilege take up the cause in such a dedicated way?’

  ‘He formed an unlikely friendship in his childhood with a little girl who lived in unsavoury circumstances.’

  ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘For a long time, no one
knew. He doesn’t mention any of the details in his diaries. We only knew there was a friendship at all because of a couple of speeches he gave in later life where he alluded to the relationship.’

  ‘And now?’

  Elodie was clearly excited by whatever she was going to tell him next and Jack couldn’t help notice how her eyes brightened when she smiled. ‘I found something the other day. You’re the first person I’ve told. I didn’t know what it was initially, but as I read it, I realised.’ She reached again into her backpack and slid a clear plastic file out of a folder. Inside was a letter written on fine paper, clearly old, creases revealing that it had spent much of its lifetime folded and pressed.

  Jack began to read:

  My dearest, one and only, J,

  What I have to tell you now is my deepest secret. I am going away for a time to America and I do not know how long I will be gone. I have told no one else, for reasons that will be evident to you. But I approach the journey with great excitement and hope.

  I cannot say more now, but you are not to worry – I will write again when it is safe to do so.

  Oh, but I will miss you, my dearest friend! How grateful I am for the day that I climbed through your window, the policeman on my tail, and you gave me the thaumatrope. Which of us could have imagined then what lay ahead?

  My dearest Joe, I have enclosed a photograph – something for you to remember me by. I will miss you more than anything I can imagine missing, and, as you know, I would not say such a thing lightly.

  Until we meet again, then, I remain,

  Your most grateful and ever-loving, BB

  He looked up. ‘She calls him Joe. Not James.’

  ‘A lot of people did. He never used his real name, except for official purposes.’

  ‘And what about the BB? What does that stand for?’

  Elodie shook her head. ‘That I don’t know. But whatever it stands for, I think the woman who wrote that letter, James Stratton’s childhood friend, grew up to be the woman in the photograph, Edward Radcliffe’s model.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘For one thing, I found the letter sealed within the back of the frame that held the photo. For another, Leonard Gilbert revealed that Lily Millington wasn’t the model’s real name. And for a third—’

  ‘I like this theory. It’s tight.’

  ‘I had this other problem. I’d discovered recently that Edward Radcliffe came to see James Stratton in 1867. Not only that, he left his precious satchel and sketchbook in Stratton’s care for safekeeping. The two men weren’t connected in any way that I knew of, and at the time I had no idea what the tie between them could be.’

  ‘But now you think it’s her.’

  ‘I know it’s her. I’ve never been so certain of anything. I feel it. Do you know?’

  Jack nodded. He did know.

  ‘Whoever she is. She’s the key.’

  Jack was looking at the photograph. ‘I don’t reckon she did it. Steal the diamond, I mean. In fact, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Based on what? A photo?’

  Jack wondered how to explain the sudden certainty that had overcome him as he stared at the photograph, the woman meeting his gaze. He was almost sick with it. Thankfully, he was spared having to answer as Elodie continued, ‘I don’t think she did, either. And neither did Leonard Gilbert, as it turns out. I had a feeling when I was reading his book that his heart wasn’t in it, and then I found a second article that he published in 1938 where he said that he’d asked his source outright whether she believed that Lily Millington had participated in the robbery and she told him she knew for a fact that she hadn’t.’

  ‘So it’s possible that the diamond really is still here, like my client’s grandmother told her?’

  ‘Well, anything’s possible, I guess, although it’s been a very long time. What exactly did she tell you?’

  ‘She said that her grandmother had lost something precious and there was good reason to believe that it was on an estate in England.’

  ‘Her grandmother told her this?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. She suffered a stroke, and when she started to recover, her words came back to her all in a rush and she started talking about her life, her childhood, her past, with a great sense of urgency. She spoke about a diamond that was precious to her, that she’d left at the house where she went to school. It was all a bit piecemeal, I gather, but after her grandmother died, my client came across a number of items in her effects that she’s convinced were her grandmother’s way of telling her where to look for it.’

  ‘Why hadn’t the grandmother come to retrieve the diamond herself? It sounds a bit dubious to me.’

  Jack agreed. ‘And I haven’t turned up any treasure yet. Her grandmother definitely had a connection to this place, though. When she died, she left a significant legacy to the group who run the museum: it enabled them to set it up. That’s why my client was able to organise permission for me to stay here.’

  ‘What did she tell them?’

  ‘That I’m a photojournalist, here for a fortnight working on an assignment.’

  ‘So she doesn’t mind bending the truth.’

  Jack smiled, thinking back to Rosalind Wheeler’s terrier manner. ‘I have no doubt that she believes every word of what she told me. And to be fair, there was one piece of evidence that seemed to support the theory.’ He reached into his pocket and produced his copy of the letter Rosalind Wheeler had emailed the other day. ‘It’s from Lucy Radcliffe, who must have been—’

  ‘Edward’s sister—’

  ‘Right. Written to my client’s grandmother in 1939.’

  Elodie skimmed it and then read a paragraph aloud. ‘“I was most disturbed by your letter. I don’t care what you saw in the newspaper or how it made you feel. I insist that you don’t do as you say. Come and visit me, by all means, but you’re not to bring it with you. I don’t want it. I never want to see it again. It caused great upset for my family and for me. It is yours. It came to you, remember, against all odds, and I wanted you to have it. Think of it as a gift, if you must.”’ She looked up. ‘This doesn’t actually mention a diamond.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They could have been talking about anything.’

  He agreed.

  ‘Do you know what she saw in the paper?’

  ‘Something to do with the Blue, perhaps?’

  ‘Perhaps, and we could probably find out, but for now we’re only guessing. Did you mean it when you said you had a map?’

  Jack, noting and liking her use of the word ‘we’, told her that he’d be back in a minute and went to fetch the map from the end of his bed inside the malt house. He brought it out to the path and handed it to her. ‘My client put this together based on Ada Lovegrove’s effects and the things she said after her stroke.’

  Elodie opened it out and frowned with concentration; moments later, she smiled and gave a soft laugh. ‘Oh, Jack,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but this isn’t a treasure map. It’s the map from a children’s story.’

  ‘Which story?’

  ‘Remember the one I mentioned to you yesterday? The story that my great-uncle heard when he was here as a boy in the war, that he told to my mum, who then told it to me?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The places on this map – the clearing in the woods, the fairy mound, the Crofter’s river bend – they’re all from the story.’ Elodie smiled gently and handed the folded map back to him. ‘Your client’s grandmother had a stroke; maybe it was all just a case of her childhood rushing back upon her?’ She lifted her shoulders apologetically. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have anything more helpful to offer. It is fascinating, though, to think that your client’s grandmother knows my family’s story.’

  ‘Somehow I don’t think my client is going to be as happy with the coincidence as she was hoping to be when I brought her back a diamond.’

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘Not your fault. I’m
sure you didn’t mean to shatter an old lady’s dreams.’

  She smiled. ‘On that note …’ And she started reloading her backpack.

  ‘You’ve still got a couple of hours before your train leaves.’

  ‘Yes, but I should get going. I’ve already taken up enough of your time. You’re busy.’

  ‘You’re right. After I master this map, I thought I’d look for the doorway to Narnia in the back of that wardrobe upstairs.’

  She laughed and Jack felt it like a personal victory.

  ‘You know,’ he said, pushing his luck, ‘I was thinking about you last night.’

  She blushed again. ‘Really?’

  ‘Do you still have that photograph on you, the one of your mum, from yesterday?’

  Elodie was suddenly serious. ‘Do you think you might know where it was taken?’

  ‘It’s worth another look. I’ve spent a fair bit of time combing through the garden on my hunt for the door to fairyland, you know.’

  She passed him the photograph and one side of her mouth tightened slightly – an endearing sign that despite all odds she still hoped that he may actually be able to help her.

  And Jack wanted to be able to help her. (You have to stop trying to be everybody’s hero, Jack.)

  He had been stalling when he asked to see the photo – he’d hoped to stop her from leaving so soon – but as he looked at it, as he took in the ivy and the hint of a structure and the way the light fell, the answer came to him as clearly as if he’d just been told.

  ‘Jack?’ she said. ‘What is it?’

  He smiled and gave the photo back. ‘Up for a little walk?’

  Elodie walked beside him through the churchyard and stopped when they reached the far corner. He glanced at her, gave a little smile of encouragement, and then wandered away slowly, pretending interest in the other graves.

  She let out a held breath, for he had been right. It was the scene from the photograph. Elodie could tell at once that this was where the picture had been taken. It had changed very little despite twenty-five years having passed.

  Elodie had expected to feel sad. Even a little bit resentful.

  But she didn’t. This was a beautiful, peaceful place, and she was glad to think that a young woman whose life was cut suddenly short had spent her last hours in it.