The Hourglass Factory

by Lucy Ribchester

  Reynolds was a pitiful sight, lying on his side, his spine curled against the cold wall, barely covered by two brown wool blankets. His high cheekbones and fine plump lips had faded to a mustard yellow, and under his eyes the skin was purple and shiny.

  Primrose coughed, feeling sudden embarrassment to be privy to the man’s indignity. Were it not for the circumstances, he may have passed the same man in a first-class train carriage, in the doorway of a club, stood aside for him in a restaurant, or called him ‘Sir’ when taking a statement about a pickpocket who had thieved his wallet. Reynolds stirred a lazy blue eye up to them, then took in a big breath of fetid air and let it out slowly.

  ‘Mr Reynolds?’

  ‘Yes.’ Even under the croakiness there was a clipped politeness.

  ‘I’m Inspector Primrose, I work with the suffragette division at Special Branch. Can I ask you some questions?’

  ‘Blimey, they have a whole division now, do they?’

  Primrose looked for somewhere to sit but there was nowhere except the bed. He stood awkwardly, shifting his weight from one leg to the next. Wilson paced gently along the wall with the window, inspecting things that caught his eye.

  ‘This is Sergeant Wilson. Would you care to sit up?’

  ‘Not particularly. I haven’t eaten for three days.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘Because you brutes put me in second division and that’s what suffragettes do when not given the privileges of political prisoners.’ He kept one sleepy eye on Primrose.

  ‘You consider yourself a suffragette?’

  ‘I’m a member of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage.’

  Primrose eyed the door. Voices were gathering there; he wondered if the warders were ready. ‘I’m not here to talk about politics.’ He nodded at the quote on the wall. ‘Did you know a woman called Ebony Diamond?’

  Reynolds raised an eyebrow at the inspector and stared. Primrose waited. Behind him he could detect a smile developing on Wilson’s face.

  ‘Do you know anyone who might want to harm any members of the suffragettes?’

  Reynolds snorted into his horsehair pillow. ‘There’s two of them standing outside the door right now. Have you tried the Houses of Parliament?’

  To Primrose’s faint horror Wilson dropped to his haunches. ‘Listen up, son, don’t get smart with us. You see what that doctor’s got in his hands out there? We can put a stop to that.’ He looked shiftily towards Primrose. ‘But you’d better give us some useful information first.’ He creaked back up and nodded to Primrose.

  Primrose swallowed, bristling with being shown up by the sergeant, but continued. ‘A woman thought to be Ebony Diamond was found murdered just off Tottenham Court Road three nights ago. You might be familiar with one of these?’ He fished in his pocket and pulled out a little paper bag, then dropped the portcullis pin into his palm and held it out.

  ‘Holloway degree,’ Reynolds said softly. ‘It means the girl’s been inside.’

  ‘That’s right. It was found on her body.’

  ‘Well, that narrows it down. There are about five hundred of those floating around London. Have you asked at Lincoln’s Inn?’ He was quick enough to see the look that passed between the two officers. ‘You haven’t been to Lincoln’s Inn, have you?’

  Primrose coughed again. Wilson’s shoes creaked as he rocked back and forth.

  Reynolds strained up onto his elbows. ‘You haven’t been to Lincoln’s Inn because you thought you could trust a man to rat on those old girls before you went after them yourselves? Oh dear.’ He rolled over to face the wall. ‘Oh dear,’ he repeated.

  ‘We know the woman is not Ebony Diamond,’ Primrose raised his voice, ‘But we want to know why she was dressed like her and more importantly who she was. You’ve heard of Ebony Diamond?’

  The man kept his sunken eyes pointed upwards. ‘Have you heard of the sinking of the Titanic?’

  Primrose held his slippery nerve. He didn’t like this man, his cut-glass vowels and his high morals. He took his hand out of his pocket and clenched it a couple of times, feeling the sensation calm him. ‘Miss Diamond was performing at the Coliseum last night. But she never finished her act. She’s gone missing now. We believe that this might be connected to the death of the unknown woman. You don’t know anyone who would be after Miss Diamond? Not just any suffragette but her particularly.’

  William Reynolds tilted his head round and gave Primrose a good hard stare. He raised a weak hand from the blanket and scratched his temple. ‘There is one man; his name is on the tip of my tongue. You might know of him. Asquith? Do you want a list of Cabinet Members? My memory goes a little sketchy when I get past Home Secretary. Although he would be a good place to start.’

  Wilson stopped pacing. ‘Do you think the doctor might trigger your memory?’

  At that moment the Senior Medical Officer poked his head into the room. The door scraped back and Primrose glimpsed the small army that had gathered outside: four warders, the officer who had shown them through the hall and a freckled female nurse, whose cold eyes matched her grey uniform. ‘Ready?’ the doctor asked.

  Primrose stood back. He wished to turn aside but a compelling terror congealed with professional pride and morbid curiosity made him press his back against the chalky wall and keep his eyes on Reynolds. The nurse went over first, her sleeves rolled up, coaxing him to sit up. He flashed her a game smile and Primrose despised him a little bit more.

  ‘Come on,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘I am, sunshine.’

  ‘You are. You are like sunshine. Your hair’s a very pretty shade of red.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve heard it all before. Soldiers in the Boer, every line and trick in the book. Sit up, let me take the covers off.’

  ‘I refuse passively.’

  Primrose watched the doctor who watched the nurse. The warders had brought up a chair and were hovering with it in the doorway.

  ‘Have you got false teeth?’ She tried to poke a finger into his mouth but he craned his neck out of her reach. ‘If you do, you should take them out now because it’s going to hurt.’

  The doctor stepped a little further into the room and held out the instruments in his hand as if he were offering the gentleman a selection of quality neckties. He drew the prisoner’s attention to the glistening pipe. ‘This is a stomach tube. If you don’t comply, I’ll feed you through the nose.’

  Primrose watched Reynolds’s expression calcify; horror concealed beneath the crisp shell.

  The doctor looped the tube over his arm and gestured to his other hand. He held braced between his fingers a small carved block of wood and a larger metal block that chimed against the signet ring on his pinky. ‘I have a wooden gag or a steel one. I should warn you that the steel one will hurt more, so I would advise you to choose the wooden one. Please do not force me to use the steel gag. I must warn you that women have had their teeth cracked by forcing medical officers in Holloway to use it and our dental facilities here are limited.’ He waited for a minute or two then when Reynolds said nothing, stepped back to let the warders pass inside. As they hauled the man’s fragile body, heavy with hunger, from his hard bed, the doctor conversed quietly with the nurse who nodded and kept pressing her sleeves back. Once in the chair, she took the sheet from his bed and wrapped it around his throat and shoulders, taking his slim neck in her hands and easing his head back.

  ‘I shall cease to resist this,’ he said, fluttering a brittle smile, ‘when the country’s legislators have enfranchised women.’ He flashed a glance loaded with betrayal at the nurse. She did something to him that made him flinch. Seeing one of the warders leave the room and return with the brandied egg mixture, he looked sobered; his smile faded. But the nurse had not yet recovered from the look and gazed down at him with her own chilly smile. ‘I can look after myself, but thank you for your concern.’

  The doctor glared at her as if to say that the discussion had g
one far enough, and she raised her gaze and looked straight ahead, keeping his head in her hands like a stone she was about to throw.

  Two warders took his legs and two his arms. The doctor moved between his knees, leaning in to pinch his nose, trying to prise open his lips. ‘I really would advise you to take out any false teeth. This will press into your gums in the most horrible way.’ He grunted as he worked. Primrose looked down to see that his own knuckles were white and he suddenly wished he had drunk more of that ale. It was embarrassing to have his nerves so flagrantly on display in front of the brawny warders, the efficient doctor and the red-haired nurse. He chanced a glance at Wilson who seemed engrossed but not affected.

  ‘All right,’ the doctor said, tossing the wooden gag onto the bed. ‘But I did warn you.’ He cried out as Reynolds’s tooth caught his finger, then slapped him in retaliation.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t mean . . .’ Reynolds started to say, but the doctor was fast and knew every trick, and used the opening of the prisoner’s mouth to wedge his fingers in, followed by the steel gag. It knocked his teeth with a horrible crunch. Reynolds began to make the impotent strains of dry retching, continuing as the doctor unwound the glycerine-slick tube from his arm and began to feed it down his throat, inch by careful inch. The red-headed nurse took the pulse in his neck and nodded.

  Reynolds choked and twitched. His chest and shoulders shook. The doctor attached the funnel to the top end of the tube and poured the liquid in. The prisoner tried to double over. The warders prised him back in the chair. Vomit spurted from his nose in a fine mist. A spray of yellow landed on the doctor’s coat, another dripped down onto the nurse’s fingers.

  The doctor took William Reynolds’s stubbly chin in one hand and waited until he had his gaze. ‘You do that again and I will feed you twice.’

  Primrose felt cold sweat congeal on his back, gluing him to the wall. His heart was beating irregularly. He felt, underneath the horror, a deep well of depression, the same depression that always returned to him, a depression for everything on earth that was wrong. Underneath the stained bedsheet, with his back turned and his eyes closed, the man could have been anyone, he could have been any number of women, he could have been Clara.

  The doctor wiped his hands on a rag and the warders let Reynolds go. Finally he was free to bend over, panting.

  ‘We’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, I’d clean yourself up.’ He pointed at the gutta-percha jug, then made eye contact with Primrose and bowed politely. Primrose worked to keep his face neutral and thought he had succeeded, but once the doctor had left the room he saw that the red-haired nurse was regarding him curiously.

  She peeled the sheet off Reynolds, then in a moment of pity or regret suddenly took up the rag the doctor had left behind on the bed and wiped his mouth clean. ‘I’m afraid I can’t get you a change until tomorrow,’ she said gently. ‘It’s not laundry day for this wing.’ Reynolds coughed into his fist and nodded. He looked around for a place to wipe his hand but there was nowhere. She folded the sheet loosely and placed it back on his bed. The warders hung about for a few moments then dispersed slowly back to their duties.

  ‘Lucky you didn’t get any on the floor,’ the nurse said. Then she stopped and her head turned as if she had only just noticed Primrose and Wilson still standing there. ‘Do you have more questions?’

  Primrose looked briefly to Wilson then cleared his throat. ‘Still know nothing about Ebony Diamond?’ he tried hard to keep his voice steady.

  William Reynolds looked down at his vomit-covered breast and coldly back up. ‘If I did, do you think I would kowtow to torture?’

  ‘Withholding information is a criminal offence.’

  ‘And this isn’t?’

  Primrose held his gaze. He could feel Wilson’s weight shift behind him.

  ‘Inspector,’ Reynolds continued, ‘it’s possible I could tell you things that would turn that shocked complexion of yours even whiter. But until you come back here with an order to stop force-feeding in His Majesty’s Prisons, not just me, but all suffrage prisoners, it’s possible you’ll never know.’

  ‘Be careful. We could have your sentence extended,’ Wilson said.

  Reynolds looked at his feet then coughed up a scrap of yellow mixture and spat it onto the floor.

  Primrose breathed out, adjusted his coat. He gestured to the nurse. ‘It’s probably best if your patient . . . prisoner can rest.’

  William Reynolds looked back up, his gold-crusted mouth breaking into a fragile smile again. ‘Yes, I am a very patient prisoner,’ he said. ‘I have all the time in the world.’

  Primrose didn’t smile back.

  Out in the icy air again, Primrose felt the blood return to his cheeks. Wilson lit a cigarette and offered him one, which he took gratefully. To their left, prison vans were just beginning to arrive with the day’s cargo. They watched a procession of boys, who could only have been fifteen or less, led in handcuffs across the courtyard, their breath puffing out as much steam as the horses that led the wagons.

  Wilson sucked his cigarette like a humbug. ‘Wonder what the old dutch makes of it all.’

  Primrose looked at him strangely. He still sometimes felt like all the London-born peelers talked in a foreign tongue.

  ‘Duchess of Fife – wife.’ Wilson did a little sing-song dance. But Primrose wasn’t paying attention any more. He was racking his brains back to something he had read in the man’s file. There was a wife in there somewhere. He thumbed his briefcase for the manila folder, his cigarette dangling from his lips and dropping ash everywhere. Wilson watched him, a smile tickling his mouth.

  There it was. Wife, Louisa Reynolds, not a known member of the WSPU. No suffragette affiliations, no suffragette-associated offences, no offences whatsoever.

  ‘So why would he . . .’ he murmured aloud.

  ‘Are you all right there, Inspector? You need to stay off the booze first thing in the morning?’ Wilson wheezed at his own joke, but Primrose didn’t hear him. He was too busy puzzling over the mystery of a man who would sacrifice himself for a woman’s cause in a way his own wife would not.

  Twenty-Four

  Frankie rose with backache and a bleary head. It took a few seconds for her to register where she was. She blinked and picked the crust from her eyelashes, taking in the heaped fabrics, the devoré, the birdcage with two speckled budgerigars pecking at each other inside. A lump of cloth on the sofa moaned, and she remembered everything from the night before.

  ‘Milly?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  The bells from a nearby church were striking on the wind.

  ‘Don’t know. Late already. It’s Sunday, mind.’

  ‘Oh, the old girl plied me with the gin last night. I’ve got a thrashing head on.’ She sat up and Frankie couldn’t help but let loose a snort of laughter at her golden hair tangled round her head in a Medusa nest. The kohl had smudged her eyes to hollows.

  ‘I’d get the fright of my life if I bumped into you in a churchyard.’

  ‘Don’t.’ Milly fiddled with the covers. Her face grew grave. ‘I’m still thinking about that stone.’ They both jumped as the door handle turned.

  The maid, Alice, brought in tea and toast and clucked her tongue quietly as she set the tray down, catching sight of the state of them. Doubtless, thought Frankie, she was used to a more civilised madam. Twinkle’s rose-petal jam was so sweet it made her teeth sting but Milly didn’t seem to mind, bolting it down as though she had never seen food before.

  When they had washed and dressed they stood by the front door. Twinkle had still not stirred from her bed. In her schoolteacher costume, pinned and bunched in to fit, Milly looked eerily like the lay mistress at Frankie’s convent school, the one who kept the birch pickling in water to keep it smart.

  ‘Are you comfortable in that get-up?’ Frankie cast her eye over it, trying not to think of where and why its last airing might have taken place.

  ‘Do I have much choice?�
�� Milly’s face had a glimmer of stubbornness. ‘She offered me a leather strap too. I declined.’ She pinched down her collar and her eyes grew serious. ‘If they wouldn’t tell Mrs B-E. about the arson plans, what makes you think they will tell me?’

  ‘Because you’ll make them trust you.’

  ‘Will I?’ The amusement picked back up in her face. She looked tired from the night before but there was a gloss in her pupils. ‘Might need that strap after all.’ She did a final twirl.

  Frankie looked at her, spinning in the woollen contraption, an ankle length skirt exposing the top of sturdy boots and a matching jacket, with cream blouse poking out at the collar and cuffs. She looked so like the stereotype, the Mrs Ought-to-be-spanked-first who appeared on seaside postcards and propaganda, that she couldn’t help smile. Guiltily she thought of her cartoon. ‘Go on, you’ll fit right in.’

  The air outside was damp but bright, the fog washed away by the rising sun and Frankie felt her head begin to clear. The streets were empty, except for the odd family scrambling along, late for church. It had crossed their minds that there would be no one at suffragette headquarters on a Sunday, but Milly knew from the rhythms of Ebony’s disappearances over the past months that Sundays were one of their busiest days. The working women could come along, fathers were free to take care of children and houses quiet enough to justify sneaking out for a few hours. Besides, the growing numbers of Darwinists had left the churches emptier now than when Frankie was a child.

  They chatted idly as they walked. A burning curiosity itched at Frankie about Milly’s family, but she didn’t dare ask. As they reached the corner onto Kingsway a few doors down from Lincoln’s Inn, something occurred to her.

  ‘How many people knew she did that tiger trick before?’

  Milly thought for a second. ‘It was well known in circus circles. She didn’t do it at Jojo’s because she didn’t have the space to keep a cat. But everyone who knew her even vaguely knew she kept an eye on the tigers at the zoo whenever she could, watching the way they moved, keeping up her practice.’