The Girl in the Face of the Clock

by Charles Mathes

  “Well, then, I am pleased to enlighten you,” said Willie. “It is not a medal, and it certainly is not a cross. It is a key. A clock key.”

  “A clock key?” exclaimed Jane. “How can it be a clock key? For what clock?”

  “Why, your clock, of course,” said Willie. “The small end sets the time, the large end winds the clock.”

  “But my clock is just a glazed piece of ceramic!”

  “I’m not talking about the ceramic clock,” said Willie with a chuckle. “I’m talking about the real clock. The clock inside the clock.”

  “Inside?”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said Willie excitedly, “that’s the whole point. Izzie’s grandfather had created a ceramic shell to conceal a very valuable, very wonderful clock, so your family could smuggle it out of Belgium. That was the crazy story Izzie had told me in Switzerland in 1943. He said he had seen the real piece in his grandfather’s workshop before it was encased. That was why I thought he was lying back then. What he described to me could only have been a portico mystery clock. What kind of fool did he take me for?”

  “Portico mystery clock?” Jane repeated, staring blankly at him.

  “You are not a clock person, are you?”

  “I can barely tell time at this point,” said Jane, dazed from the unsettling events of the day, not the least of which was what she was hearing now.

  “Valentine,” said Willie, looking over at Valentine, who was sitting on the couch looking very relaxed. “Why are you being so quiet? Tell your lovely cousin, Jane, about Cartier mystery clocks. Show her how brilliant you are, as well as good-looking.”

  “Cartier, of course, is the famous Paris jeweler,” said Valentine, not missing a beat. “Its golden age was between the world wars, when under the direction of Louis Cartier, grandson of the founder, the house created some of the most spectacular and beautiful objects of the twentieth century. Among the most remarkable of these were their famous mystery clocks.”

  “What’s the mystery?” asked Jane, wondering what wasn’t a mystery at this point.

  “The central dial of a mystery clock is transparent, made of quartz or rock crystal,” said Valentine. “In this crystal, the clock’s hands hover, seemingly unattached to anything, yet they keep time.”

  “But each hand is actually attached to an equally transparent crystal disk inside the crystal dial,” said Willie, unable to contain himself. “That’s the trick. The works are in the base of the clock and are connected to the disks by gears in the frame, so the mechanism that makes the hands turn is invisible.”

  “The first mystery clock,” Valentine continued, “the Model A, was sold to J. P. Morgan in 1913. Cartier made about one mystery clock a year until 1930. Queen Mary and King Farouk each owned one. Hermann Goering, the swine, bought his in 1940. In 1945, Charles de Gaulle presented Stalin with a lapis lazuli mystery clock. After World War Two, they were produced again until the late 1970s.”

  “The later ones are not nearly as desirable,” added Willie.

  Numb, Jane took a sip of champagne and tried the whitefish. Not a bad way to have dinner.

  “The largest, the most spectacular, and the rarest of the early clocks,” Valentine went on, “were the so-called portico mystery clocks, made between 1923 and 1925. These were crafted from black onyx and rock crystal, with a splash of jade and coral for color. Each had two tall pillars with a crosspiece at the top. From this crosspiece hung suspended either a twelve-sided or a hexagonal rock crystal dial, in which open diamondwork hands kept time without visible explanation. The works for these clocks were in the crosspieces at the top, which were crowned with a Buddha or Chinese lion carved from rock crystal. In form, the whole affair resembles a freestanding Oriental archway, hence the term ‘portico.’”

  “Cartier made only six portico mystery clocks, or so everyone has thought,” interrupted Willie again. “Izzie, however, somehow got hold of a letter from Maurice Coüet, the maker of the mystery clocks, to Charles Jacqueau, Cartier’s most brilliant designer during the Art Deco period, talking about a seventh portico mystery clock. Apparently, this clock had been made for Louis Cartier himself as a prototype, but he had gifted it to a Belgian doctor who had saved his life when he had taken ill on a trip to Antwerp.”

  “My great-grandfather?” asked Jane.

  “Willie sent me over to Rosengolts et fils for a copy of this letter last week,” said Valentine, nodding. “That’s why you saw me there.”

  “The letter clinched it for me,” said Willie. “That’s why I bought the key from Izzie. The key is mentioned in Coüet’s letter. The dragonfly clock key, the only one of its kind Cartier ever made.”

  “Are you all right?” asked Valentine.

  “I’m fine,” said Jane, putting down her glass. “Just incredibly stupid. It’s been there all along, right in front of me. I should have smashed the clock open a week ago.”

  “No, no, no,” exclaimed Willie in horror. “I don’t know how Izzie Rosengolts’s grandfather was able to case the clock in ceramic, but it has to be removed with incredible care. No one but a professional should attempt it.”

  Jane just shook her head.

  “So what do you think of my little story, dear distant Cousin Jane?” asked Willie. “Does it answer all your questions?”

  Jane stared back at him. The mystery of the dragonfly cross was now cleared up. Willie’s explanation had also left no doubt why Isidore Rosengolts sent his granddaughter to steal the clock and what Valentine’s interest had been. But her questions were far from answered.

  “I don’t understand Leila Peach’s part in all of this,” she said.

  “Yes, neither do I,” said Valentine. “You used that name on me in London. Who’s Leila Peach?”

  “I believe that there was a Robert Peach who was Bishop of Coventry in the twelfth century,” said Willie helpfully.

  “Leila Peach is the model who posed with my grandmother’s clock in the painting that was reproduced in the Times.”

  Valentine and Willie Bogen stared blankly back at Jane.

  “She’s dead,” Jane added.

  Still no reaction.

  “Perry Mannerback owns the painting of Leila and the clock.”

  Willie’s eyes crinkled up and his mouth dropped open. His cheeks got rosy. Jane was frightened he was having a stroke.

  “No,” he finally whispered in a hoarse voice.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Did you hear, Valentine?” said Willie, his voice coming back to its normal pitch, then rising in excitement. “Perry Mannerback owns the painting. It means he will want the clock even more when he finds out about it. It will drive him crazy unless he can buy it. He’ll go insane. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Quite,” agreed Valentine.

  “Mr. Bogen,” said Jane. “Willie …”

  “He hasn’t made you an offer, has he?” said Willie, his voice turning urgent. “Please tell me you haven’t done anything foolish like selling your clock to that ridiculous man, have you?”

  “I haven’t sold it to anyone. It’s not for sale.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because … Because …”

  “The clock is worth a lot of money, Jane,” said Willie.

  “How much?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  Jane rolled her eyes.

  “You don’t believe me?” asked Willie in mock indignation. “You think maybe I’ve got a price list for one-of-a-kind portico mystery clocks in my pocket? You think values for these things are printed in the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal? No, my darling. No one can say what such a miracle and wonderment is worth any more than they can name a price for the Eiffel Tower, which is why you must put it up for auction.”

  “The Eiffel Tower?”

  “Your portico mystery clock,” said Willie. “That’s why I wanted to speak with you tonight. I have thought this through very carefully. I will not see mispocheh taken advant
age of, no. Auction is the only way to establish the clock’s true value.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Jane. “You want to bid against Perry Mannerback?”

  “More than anything.”

  “But why? He’s got all the money in the world.”

  “No, not all of it,” said Willie, rubbing his hands together. “I have quite a bit myself, and Isidore Rosengolts still has his grandfather’s first centime, he is such a cheapskate. He would buy the clock just to be able to sell it to me for a profit. Who knows who else may surface? There are other collectors. Museums. Kings. Bidding will be very spirited indeed.”

  I’m not a business person,” said Jane, “but I thought the object was to pay as little as possible for what you want.”

  “Sometimes it is,” said Willie Bogen, his eyes like dancing little robin’s eggs. “Sometimes it isn’t. Do you know about my museum? We’ve taken a town house in Mayfair. The Bogen Collection will be opening to the public at the beginning of next year. What could be better publicity for the museum than for me to establish a record price for a mystery clock? And in the unlikely event that the price goes too high even for me, I will have the satisfaction of costing Mannerback the Moron a fortune. A museum can get away with paying any price for a treasure. Greedy Mannerback will just make himself more of a laughingstock than he already is.”

  “Why do you hate him so much?”

  “Hate him?” said Willie, amused. “No, my dear. Maybe years ago I hated Perry Mannerback, but those days are long gone. I positively adore the fellow now. Driving him crazy is not merely a pleasure for me, it is a privilege.”

  “But why? Did he do something to you?”

  “To him, it was nothing,” said Willie, picking a piece of lint off his shirtsleeve. “Less than nothing. He merely destroyed my business and bankrupted me, that’s all. But this was a long time ago. I’m sure you’re not interested.”

  “Come on, Willie,” said Jane, wise to this little routine. “Are you going to tell me or not?”

  Willie shrugged.

  “After the war I made my way to London, a penniless refugee who spoke no English,” he said, his eyes far away. “I took a job with a watchmaker in the East End. For ten years I slaved away, unable to save a shilling. Then one day I received a package of chocolates from a fellow I had known from the detention camp and who had stayed in Switzerland. Chocolates were a great luxury in England after the war, and rather than eat them myself, I decided to sell them. Fifteen years later, I was the most successful chocolate importer in Great Britain.

  “Then in the summer of 1971 I made a huge deal to provide chocolates for the tennis championships at Wimbledon and related events. These are held in late June, early July, and I had made arrangements to lease a refrigerated warehouse to store the chocolates I was bringing in from the Continent. There was a terrible heat wave in London that year, and to make a long story short, all of my chocolates melted because I was thrown out of the warehouse and nothing else was available at short notice. I was thrown out because the warehouse had been purchased by one Peregrine Mannerback, a young man from America who decided that he wanted to have a summer snowball fight with some of his chums and needed the warehouse’s refrigeration equipment.

  “Nothing that I or my lawyers said could make any difference. I was ruined; my wife left me; my employees were out on the street. Mannerback had his little snowball fight. Later, I read that he turned around and sold the warehouse to a desperate dairy company for twice what he had paid for it, such a business genius he was.”

  “I’m sure Perry didn’t mean to hurt you,” said Jane. “He’s not a bad person. Just oblivious.”

  “Let me tell you something, my darling,” said Willie in a kindly voice. “All of our actions in life have consequences. Whether we choose to take responsibility for those consequences is a matter of our own decision. I had my choice, too. Yes, I was very angry at Perry Mannerback at first, and I could have dwelt on what had happened to me forever, spent the rest of my life being bitter, feeling sorry for myself. I’ve seen people do this, let themselves be eaten alive by resentment and hatred or be twisted into something vile. Something bad happens to them, but rather than leave it in the past, they become obsessed with it. They carry it with them until it becomes their whole reason for being, their future, their identity. Not for me. I forgave Perry Mannerback and blessed him and went on with my life.”

  “Philosophy is one of Willie’s hobbies, too,” said Valentine.

  “And so is money,” said Willie with a smile. “Life is a funny old thing, is it not? I turned to the financial markets and began buying and selling shares. I am now far better off than I ever would have been if I had remained an importer of chocolate. Ten years ago, my fortune secure, I became interested in clocks again and began to collect them. To my astonishment, who turns out to be my major competition for every good piece? None other than the very same fellow who had indirectly been the cause of my present good fortune—Perry Mannerback. So why shouldn’t I return the favor? For his entire life, this poor fool has been able to buy anything he’s ever wanted. Every time I snatch a clock from under his nose and make him crazy, I see it as a mitzvah, a good deed, something that all the Mannerback millions cannot buy for him—the opportunity to learn a little wisdom.”

  Jane shook her head and laughed.

  “So,” said Willie. “I think I have answered all the questions and cleared up all the mysteries, yes?”

  “Not quite,” said Valentine from his position on the couch. Both Willie and Jane turned to look at him. “There’s one more thing that I need to find out, and I shall be most unhappy until I do.”

  “And what is that, dear boy?” asked Willie.

  “Does Cousin Jane plan to eat a more balanced dinner tomorrow night, and if so, will she consent to have it with me?”

  The two men’s eyes turned back to Jane.

  “Yes,” predicted Jane, popping a final canapé into her mouth. “She will.”

  Eighteen

  Jane took the Seventy-ninth Street crosstown bus back to the West Side, thankful that she still had a Metrocard with some money on it. She had taken yet another cab across the park to her meeting at the Carlyle, and her cash was nearly gone. Tomorrow morning, she’d have to start some serious economizing while she looked for a job.

  The last stop was at West End Avenue. Jane could have transferred to the M5 going up Broadway on the same fare, but instead she chose to walk the remaining distance to her apartment. It was only eleven blocks. Like many New Yorkers, the thought of waiting for a bus to go anything less than a mile always seemed crazy to her.

  West End was lined with funky prewar apartments that now sold for six and seven figures. As Jane walked up the wide street, she found that the mad tangle of speculation, worry, and fear that had tied her brain into knots over the past few weeks had nearly sorted itself out. Willie Bogen had shown her the solution to the mystery of Grandmother Sylvie’s clock. Perry Mannerback had explained why Aaron Sailor had been calling out his name from his coma. Valentine Treves wasn’t a villain after all, thank goodness.

  Jane still didn’t know what had really led to her father’s fall down the stairs eight years ago or who had caused his recent death. Nor did she know who had killed Leila Peach and why. Somehow, however, these things didn’t seem to matter so much any more. Folly had been right—justice wasn’t her job. The police would find out what had happened to her father and to Leila. Or they wouldn’t. Ultimately, the killer would have to answer to God.

  Willie Bogen was right, too: Why latch on to the most horrible negative things that happen to you and make them your identity? Jane didn’t want to become one of those poor souls who populated daytime television, professional victims bemoaning all the things that had happened to ruin their lives. Yes, what had happened to her father was horrible, but it had happened. Nothing that Jane could do now was going to bring him back. What she did with her life from this point forward was her own choice. Sh
e saw that it was time to move on.

  It was nearing seven-thirty. The street was alive with people. Businessmen and women getting home from work. Teenagers on their way out. In front of the building at the corner of Eighty-ninth Street a gray-uniformed doorman was playing catch with a cute little kid bedecked in the standard West Side uniform for little boys and girls: baseball cap, jeans, and T-shirt from the Gap.

  As Jane turned onto her block, she found herself humming “My Funny Valentine.” It was a beautiful melody by Richard Rodgers, a great lyric by Lorenz Hart. Was that why Valentine Treves preferred Rodgers’s music with Hammerstein? Had he once had a hard time with other little boys who didn’t appreciate someone who was comic and sweet, with laughable, unphotographable looks? Weren’t men dopes?

  Smiling, Jane entered her brownstone, climbed the four flights, and opened her battle-scarred front door. While waiting for the locksmith that afternoon, she had straightened up the mess from her fight with Melissa Rosengolts. Except for some little dents in the walls and one big dent in the refrigerator, the little apartment looked almost cozy again.

  Jane took off her jacket and began to remove her blouse. Her head was fuzzy with champagne and old melodies. She’d been awake for nearly twenty hours, been beaten up, and learned the secrets of people on two continents. In the basement was a clock that was her legacy from a family she had never known—a family that could be traced back all the way to Adam, according to Willie Bogen.

  If Willie and Perry Mannerback both had been willing to pay a hundred twenty-five thousand dollars for the lighthouse clock in Seattle, how much, Jane wondered, would a portico mystery clock bring at auction? Two hundred thousand? Three? What would it be like to have real money without strings attached?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the telephone ringing. Dreamily, she picked up the receiver and said hello.

  “Hello, Jane, it’s Barbara Fripp,” said the familiar British voice. “Sorry to bother you at home, but a policeman, a detective lieutenant named Folly, called the office several times at the end of the day looking for you. Apparently, your machine isn’t working.”