The Clockmaker's Daughter

by Kate Morton

  The house was quiet, but it did not feel still. Lucy was reminded of a story Edward used to read to her from a book by Charles Perrault, ‘La Belle au bois dormant’, about a princess cursed to sleep within her castle for a hundred years, the inspiration for his Sleeping Beauty painting. Lucy was not a romantic person, but she could almost imagine, as she stood by the kitchen window, that the house knew she was back.

  That it had been waiting.

  Indeed, Lucy had a most disconcerting sense that she was not alone in the room.

  She reminded herself, however – even as the hairs on her forearm tensed – that she was not of a suggestible disposition, and that to begin to fall prey to superstition here and now would be a deeply regrettable slip. Her mind was playing tricks on her; the reason was clear.

  Steeling herself to her purpose, she crossed the hallway and started up the central staircase.

  The bentwood chair was exactly where she’d last seen it, on the corner of the landing where the stairs made their turn. The chair was angled towards the large glass window overlooking the back garden and beyond it the meadow. Sunlight spilled through the glass and countless motes of dust drifted in unseen currents.

  The chair was warm when Lucy sat gently on its edge. The landing itself, too. She remembered now that it had always been so. The last time she had sat here, the house had been filled with laughter and passion; the air had thrummed with creativity.

  But not today. It was just Lucy and the house. Her house.

  She let the air of the old place settle around her.

  Somewhere out there in the great green beyond, a dog was barking.

  Closer by, in the Mulberry Room downstairs, the wall clock was keeping count. Lily Millington’s clock, still ticking. Lucy supposed that the lawyer, Mr Matthews, had made sure that it was wound. She still remembered when Edward had bought it: ‘Lily’s father was a clockmaker,’ he’d announced, whisking the package into the hall in Hampstead. ‘I saw this on the wall of a fellow in Mayfair and exchanged it for a commission. I’m going to surprise her.’

  Edward had always been a giver of gifts. He thrilled in the gratification of selecting well. Books for Lucy, a clock for Lily Millington – it was he who had given Thurston the rifle: ‘A genuine Baker, carried by a member of the 5th Battalion of the 60th Regiment during the Napoleonic Wars!’

  Impossible to believe that she was sitting here now because Edward was dead. That she would never see him again. Somehow she had always supposed that one day he would come home.

  They had not seen much of one another after the summer at Birchwood Manor, but Lucy had known that he was out there. Every so often a note would arrive, scratched on the back of a piece of card, usually begging a few pounds to pay a debt that he’d gathered in his travels. Or else word would be passed along the grapevine that someone had seen him in Rome, Vienna, Paris. He was always on the move. He travelled in order to escape his grief, Lucy knew, but she wondered sometimes whether he also believed that by moving fast enough, often enough, he might find Lily Millington again.

  For he had never given up hope. No matter the evidence to the contrary, he never could accept that she had been involved in a deception – that she had not loved him with every bit as much devotion as that with which he had loved her.

  When they met that last time in Paris, he had said, ‘She’s out there somewhere, Lucy. I know it. I can feel it. Can’t you?’

  Lucy, who had not felt anything of the sort, had merely taken her brother’s hand and held it tight.

  After climbing into the hallway hideaway, the next thing Lucy had remembered was opening her eyes in a bright room that she did not recognise. She was in a bed, not her own. She was in pain.

  Lucy blinked, taking in the yellow-striped wallpaper, the leadlight window, the pale curtains hanging either side. The room smelled faintly of something sweet – honeysuckle, perhaps, and gorse, too. Her throat was parched.

  She must have made a sound, for Edward was suddenly beside her, pouring water from a small crystal jug into a glass. He looked terrible, more dishevelled than usual, with a drawn face and anxious features. His loose cotton shirt was hanging limply from his shoulders, giving the appearance of clothing that had not been removed in days.

  But where was she and how long had she been here?

  Lucy was not aware that she had spoken, but as Edward helped her up to drink, he told her that they’d taken rooms for a few days in the public house in the village.

  ‘Which village?’

  His eyes studied hers. ‘Why, the village of Birchwood. Can you really not remember?’

  The word was vaguely familiar.

  Edward tried to reassure her with an unconvincing smile. ‘Let me call for the doctor,’ he said. ‘He’ll want to know that you’re awake.’

  He opened the door and spoke quietly to someone on the other side, but he did not leave the room. He came back to sit on the mattress beside Lucy, encasing her hand in one of his, stroking her forehead lightly with the other.

  ‘Lucy,’ he said, a look of pain in his eyes, ‘I have to ask you, I have to ask about Lily. Did you see her? She went back to the house to fetch you, but no one’s seen her since.’

  Lucy’s thoughts were swimming. Which house? Why was he asking her about Lily? Did he mean Lily Millington? She was his model, Lucy remembered, the one with the long white dress. ‘My head,’ she said, realising that it ached on one side.

  ‘You poor love. You fell, you’ve been out cold, and here I am asking you questions. I’m sorry, I just –’ He raked a hand through his hair. ‘She’s gone. I can’t find her, Lucy, and I’m terribly worried. She wouldn’t just leave.’

  Lucy had a flash of memory then, a gunshot in the dark. It had been loud and there’d been a scream. She’d run and then—Lucy gasped.

  ‘What is it? Did you see something?’

  ‘Fanny!’

  Edward’s expression darkened. ‘It was terrible, a terrible thing. Poor Fanny. A man, an intruder – I don’t know who he was … Fanny ran off and I went after her. I heard the shot when I was near the chestnut tree, and I ran inside, Lucy, but I was too late. Fanny was already … and then I saw the back of the man, running from the front door towards the lane.’

  ‘Lily Millington knew him.’

  ‘What?’

  Lucy wasn’t sure exactly what she meant, only that she was sure that she was right. There had been a man and Lucy had been frightened, and Lily Millington had been there.

  ‘He came to the house. I saw him. I went back to the house, and the man came, and he and Lily Millington talked.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  Lucy’s thoughts were swimming. Memories, imaginings, dreams were all as one. Edward had asked her a question and Lucy always liked to give the right answer. And so she closed her eyes and reached into the pot of swirling noise and colour. ‘They spoke about America,’ she said. ‘A boat. And something about a Blue.’

  ‘Well, well, well …’

  When Lucy opened her eyes, she discovered that she was no longer alone in the room with Edward. Two other men had come in while she was concentrating on her brother’s question. One of the men was wearing a grey suit; he had ginger sideburns and a moustache that curled at the ends, and he was carrying a black bowler hat in his hands. The other was dressed in a deep navy coat with brass buttons down the front and a black belt strapped to his round middle; his hat was on his head and had a silver badge on its front. It was a uniform, and he a policeman, Lucy realised.

  As it transpired, they were both policemen. The shorter man in the blue uniform belonged to the Berkshire Constabulary and had been contacted because Birchwood Manor fell within his jurisdiction. The grey-suited fellow was an inspector with the Metropolitan Police in London, and had been brought in to render assistance with the investigation at the request of Mr Brown, Fanny’s father, who was wealthy and important.

  It was Inspector Wesley of the Metropolitan Police who had spoken, and when Lu
cy’s eyes met his across the room, he said again: ‘Well, well, well … ,’ adding, this time: ‘Just as I suspected.’

  What he suspected, as he was to tell her over the coming days – after a thorough search had been carried out and it was discovered that, just as Lucy had suggested, the Radcliffe Blue diamond was missing – was that Lily Millington had been in on the whole thing.

  ‘A mighty deception,’ he announced through his moustache, his thumbs tucked into the lapels on either side of his coat. ‘A most scandalous and brazen scheme. The pair of them hatched it well in advance, you see. The first step was for one Miss Lily Millington to win a place as your brother’s model, whereby gaining access to the Radcliffe Blue. The second step, once your brother’s trust was won, was for the two of them to make off with the prize. And there it might have ended had Miss Brown not caught them in the act and paid the price with her blameless young life.’

  Lucy listened to this scenario, trying to take it all in. It was true what she had said to Edward: she had heard Lily Millington and the man talking about America and the Blue, and she could remember now seeing a pair of boat tickets. She had seen the pendant, too, of course – a beautiful blue diamond, her family’s heirloom jewel. Lily Millington had been wearing it. Lucy had a clear picture in her mind of Lily Millington in a white dress, the pendant fixed in place within the hollow of her neck. And now Lily and the diamond and the tickets were gone. It made sense that they were together somewhere. There was just one problem. ‘My brother met Lily Millington at the theatre. She didn’t seek him out to become his model. He rescued her when she was being robbed.’

  The inspector’s top lip quivered with pleasure at the opportunity to bend a pair of innocent ears with tales of the seamier side of life. ‘Another ploy, Miss Radcliffe,’ he said, lifting a slow, solitary finger, ‘as devious as it was effective. Another deceitful double act, the two of them in it together. We’ve seen how the likes of them operate, and if there’s one thing certain to gain the attention of a respectable gentleman like your brother, it’s the sight of a beautiful woman in need of assistance. He was helpless but to respond – any gentleman would have been. And while he was busy restoring the woman to rights, distracted by the rendering of care and concern, the fellow – her partner in crime – returned, accused your brother of being the thief who’d just made off with his sister’s bracelet, and in all the ensuing confusion’ – he flung his arms out to great dramatic and triumphant effect – ‘slipped his fingers into your brother’s waistcoat and pocketed his valuables.’

  Lucy remembered Edward’s account of the night that he met Lily Millington. She and Clare and Mother – even their maid, Jenny, who was listening from where she was pouring the pot of breakfast tea – had exchanged fond, knowing glances when he told them that he’d had to walk the whole way home because he had been so transfixed by the young woman’s face, so excited at the prospects that it presented, that he’d managed somehow to lose his wallet. Forgetfulness in the face of inspiration was so in keeping with Edward’s nature that none of them had thought to question it – not to mention, his wallet had been as empty as it ever was, so recovering it was of no great consideration. But according to Inspector Wesley, the wallet had not been lost at all; it had been taken – stolen from Edward by that man, Martin, at the very moment that Edward had believed himself to have been coming to Lily Millington’s rescue.

  ‘You mark my words,’ the inspector said, ‘because I’ll eat my hat if I’m wrong. A man doesn’t spend thirty years wading through the rot and the filth of London’s streets without learning a thing or two about the despicable elements of human nature.’

  And yet, Lucy had witnessed the way Lily Millington looked at Edward, the way they were together. She couldn’t believe that it was all a ploy.

  ‘Thieves, actresses and illusionists,’ the inspector said with a tap to the side of his nose when Lucy said as much. ‘Cut from the same cloth, they are. Great pretenders, tricksters all.’

  Viewed through the prism of Inspector Wesley’s theory, Lucy could see how Lily Millington’s actions might not have been exactly as they had seemed. And Lucy had observed Lily with the man. Martin. That’s what she had called him. ‘What are you doing here?’ she’d said, and, ‘You must go, Martin. I said a month.’ And the man, Martin, had replied, ‘You did, but you’re a fast worker, one of the best,’ and he’d held up a pair of tickets and said, ‘America … the land of new beginnings.’

  But Lily hadn’t left the house with Martin. Lucy knew that she hadn’t, for Lucy had locked Lily Millington in the hideaway. She was sure she could remember feeling proud when she revealed the hidden chamber.

  Lucy tried to say as much, but Inspector Wesley only said, ‘I know all about the priest hole. That’s where you were hidden, Miss Radcliffe, not Miss Millington,’ and he reminded her of the bump on her head and told her that she should rest, calling for the doctor: ‘The child is confused again, Doctor. I fear I’ve worn her out with my questions.’

  And Lucy was confused. Because it was impossible that Lily Millington could have remained in the stairwell hiding place all of this time. It had been four days now since Martin had come to Birchwood. Lucy could remember how it felt within the tiny cavity, how difficult it was to breathe, how quickly the air had staled, how desperate she’d been to escape. Lily Millington would have called out for release long ago. No one could have stayed in there this long.

  Maybe Lucy had got it wrong, after all? Maybe she hadn’t locked Lily Millington away? Or, if she had, maybe Martin had released her and they’d run off together, just as the inspector said. Hadn’t Lily told Lucy that she’d spent her childhood in Covent Garden; that she’d learned the coin trick from a French illusionist? Hadn’t she called herself a pickpocket? Lucy had presumed at the time that she’d been joking, but what if Lily Millington had been working with that man, Martin, all along? What else could she have meant when she said that she’d told him she needed one month? Maybe that’s why she had been so eager for Lucy to run back to the woods, to leave them to it …

  Lucy’s head hurt. She screwed her eyes tight. The bump must have jumbled her memories, as the inspector said. She had always placed the utmost value on being accurate, disdaining those who abbreviated or approximated and did not seem to realise that it made a difference; and so she made a solemn decision not to say anything further until she was 100 per cent certain that what she remembered was true and correct.

  Edward, naturally enough, refused to accept the inspector’s theory. ‘She would never have stolen from me and she would never have left me. We were going to be married,’ he told the inspector. ‘I’d asked her and she’d accepted. I’d broken off the engagement with Miss Brown a week before we came to Birchwood.’

  It was Fanny’s father’s turn to wade in then. ‘The lad’s in shock,’ Mr Brown said. ‘He’s not thinking straight. My daughter was looking forward to her wedding and was discussing plans for the occasion with my wife on the very morning that she left for Birchwood. She would most certainly have told me if her engagement had been cancelled. She said nothing to that effect. Had she done so, I’d have had my lawyers involved, I can assure you. My daughter had a spotless reputation. There were gentlemen with far more to offer than Mr Radcliffe lining up to ask for her hand in marriage, but she wanted to marry him. There’s no way I’d have allowed a broken engagement to spoil my daughter’s good name.’ And then the big man broke down, sobbing, ‘My Frances was a respectable woman, Inspector Wesley. She told me that she wished to spend the weekend in the country where her fiancé was hosting a group at his new house. I was pleased to lend her my coachman. I would never have allowed her to attend the weekend if not for her engagement and she would not have asked.’

  This reasoning was good enough for Inspector Wesley and his Berkshire counterpart, particularly when it was further cemented by Thurston, who took the inspector aside to inform him that he was Edward’s closest confidant and that his friend had never breathed a
word about breaking off his engagement to Fanny Brown, let alone entering a second engagement with his model, Miss Millington. ‘I’d have talked him out of it if he had,’ said Thurston. ‘Fanny was a wonderful young lady and a sobering influence. It’s no secret that Edward has always had his head in the clouds; she managed to bring his feet back firmly onto the ground.’

  ‘It was your weapon that was used in the murder, was it not, Mr Holmes?’ the inspector had asked.

  ‘Regrettably, yes. A decorative piece only. A gift from Mr Radcliffe, as it happens. I’m as shocked as anyone that it was loaded and used in such a way.’

  Lucy’s grandfather, having learned about the missing Radcliffe Blue, had decamped by then from the Beechworth estate, and was only too happy to round out the description of Edward. ‘Even as a child,’ the old man told the inspector, ‘he was filled with wild ideas and wilder inclinations. There were many times when he was growing from a boy to a man that I despaired. I couldn’t have been happier or more relieved when he announced his engagement to Miss Brown. He seemed at last to have set himself on the right track. He and Miss Brown were to have been married, and any suggestion from Edward otherwise signals nothing more than a sad loss of his senses. Natural enough in the face of such terrible events, especially for one with his artistic temperament.’

  Mr Brown and Lord Radcliffe were right, Thurston said soberly; Edward was in shock. Not only had he loved and lost his fiancée, Miss Brown, he was forced to accept that he was responsible for the horrific events, having brought Lily Millington and her associates into his group of friends. ‘It wasn’t as if he didn’t have fair warning,’ Thurston added. ‘I told him myself some months ago that I’d noticed certain items of value missing from my studio after he and his model had come to visit. He left me with quite the black eye for even daring to suggest such a thing.’