Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder

by T. A. Willberg

  “It all makes sense now. Swindlehurst enters the lock room at around 11:50. He wouldn’t have needed longer, under the disguise of the Gray Eagle. The camera doesn’t pick him up, even though he probably didn’t know it was there. He gets to work removing the safe from the wall but must wait until exactly midnight before he unlocks it, or the contents will be destroyed.

  “White leaves for the lock room around the same time. Frank sees her run past the library bar. The camera above the gate records White entering the lock room at 11:55. Swindlehurst is there, perhaps the safe had been removed from the wall already but he couldn’t have opened it yet. White sees it, she’s intrigued, or frightened. She knows Swindlehurst must be there but she wouldn’t have seen much of him under his disguise. Maybe White tries to open the safe and Swindlehurst has to stop her, or else whatever’s inside will be destroyed. Or maybe White knew it was Swindlehurst, even if she couldn’t see him. She confronts him. It’s the last thing she does. Swindlehurst and White’s confrontation takes them past midnight. He can no longer open the safe without a lot of noise, so he places it back in the wall. By this time his disguise is wearing off and he knows he has to make a run for it—he has to escape past the camera immediately or it’ll show him leaving. He manages to escape just before Frank enters. White has already been stabbed in the throat and has bled to death. There’s apparently no one else around.”

  Professor Bal returned, even paler than before. Perhaps he’d overheard.

  “I guess the only remaining questions are,” Kenny said, “what was in the safe that Swindlehurst was desperate to keep a secret, enough to kill for? And how did White know about it?”

  It was this that brought the memory back to life.

  April 11, 1958—the date Marion had seen entered into the register, the last entry Michelle White had made.

  “What is it?” Kenny asked, he and the professor now staring at her with interest.

  “The letter White received the night of her murder. I saw her signature in the register file. I can’t remember the exact time recorded but it was definitely around eleven.”

  “You think it was a tip-off?” Kenny asked uncertainly.

  “How else would White have known the exact time the safe was to be opened?”

  Professor Bal said nothing. Solemnly, he got to his feet and staggered out of the Workshop through a door in the back wall. He returned shortly after.

  “There is only one other person in the world who should have known,” he said, turning a piece of paper over in his hand. “When you buy a clockwork safe, you cannot set the timer yourself, it’s too complicated. At the very least, you’d need some experience in working with clocks. But even then...the maker would have set this one, I’m almost sure. She would have seen what went inside.” He handed Marion the piece of paper, upon which he’d written a name and address.

  Helena Jansen

  Twelve Holly Grove

  Peckham

  “As I said, she is the only person in England who can make a clockwork safe. She is a Safe Keeper, as they like to call themselves. If someone told Michelle about the safe, it had to be Helena. But if she did, she’d have broken the Safe Keepers’ oath. I can only imagine she had very good cause to do so.”

  The professor’s words hung in the air, a thunderous cloud threatening to burst. Marion slipped the note Bal had given her into her pocket. It would be risky, tracking down Helena Jansen with Swindlehurst on the loose—if he’d been willing to murder a colleague to protect his secret, he’d surely have no trouble doing the same to a woman who’d betrayed him. That was, of course, if he hadn’t already.

  Kenny flipped open the compass. “Nothing,” he said before Marion could ask. “I’ll keep an eye on it. And try to get hold of Nancy again, in the meantime.”

  Marion nodded, but didn’t speak. Once Kenny had left and she was certain Professor Bal was otherwise occupied in his office, she made her way across the Workshop to the storage cabinet, extracted two small black buttons, wires and batteries attached, and slipped them into her purse.

  * * *

  Following her trip to the Workshop, Marion visited the infirmary. She settled on the edge of Bill’s bed. He was still asleep, or sedated. But his eyes flickered; he knew she was there. Though Fitzpatrick insisted he would make a full recovery, Marion was stricken by the sight of his fragile state and she felt a pulsating regret that their investigation, her investigation, had come to this.

  She stayed with Bill until he came to. Though groggy and only mildly aware of his surroundings, his face sallow and gray, his memory seemed intact. And through a series of disconnected sentences he described the events of the night before: how he’d dragged himself from the ballroom after realizing Marion was no longer sitting beside him. How at some point along his journey from the ballroom to the bathroom (where he planned to douse himself in water) he’d caught sight of Marion and Kenny disappearing down the corridor that led to the library.

  “I knew something was wrong,” he recalled. “I suppose that was obvious enough, from the state of things in the ballroom. But as you know, I wasn’t convinced I trusted Kenny. I wanted to see where he was taking you. So I followed you to the library and waited in the reading corner. It was a bit of a blur after that. I didn’t know where you were for a while, then I heard Kenny calling for help and followed his voice to the lock room.” He paused to breathe. “I saw him, Mari. Swindlehurst. He was visible, but only just. I tried to apprehend him as he left the lock room but he got me in the ribs. Apparently one fractured, nothing serious, though. I told Fitzpatrick my injuries were from an explosion in the lock room. Don’t know if she believed it.”

  “God, I’m so sorry.”

  Bill raised a hand. “I’m fine, really.” He smiled. “I’m just glad I managed to reach the lock room gate and get you out before Nicholas saw you were inside there.”

  “How did you open it?”

  He grinned proudly. “Got the keys from Swindlehurst’s pocket during our little exchange.”

  “Thought pickpocketing was more Maud’s style?”

  Bill tried to laugh, but winced instead. “What happened in there, anyway?”

  Marion looked at him, his eyelids flickering with exhaustion. His head lolled to the side. “I’ll tell you all that later,” she said, pressing his fingers into her palm. She kissed his cheek and left.

  Back at her room in the residence quarters, she placed the note from Professor Bal on her side table and fell into bed fully clothed. She closed her eyes to the play of strange shadows as the gas lamp’s flame danced in the darkness. She knew without even thinking it over that Nancy would not approve of Professor Bal’s handover of Helena’s address, or of anything Marion was planning to do with it. But she didn’t care. Nancy had disappeared when Frank and the agency needed her most.

  20

  THE SAFE KEEPER’S TALE

  Without intending to, Marion slept straight through the afternoon. In fact, had someone not set off a series of fireworks in the Grand Corridor (presumably stolen leftovers from the Friday night Circus Ball), which echoed through the residence quarters, rattling the doors, she might have slept all through the night, too.

  She sat on the edge of her bed and examined the array of newly blossomed bruises formed on her limbs. Her head throbbed with exquisite ferocity, as did the rest of her body. She stumbled to the washbasin and doused her face and neck in icy water while examining the gaunt reflection staring back at her. Her eyes were dull; gray circles like pits of ash encircled them. Her lips were dried and cracked and stung with dehydration, and her skin was etched with streaks of leaked mascara, or perhaps they were bruises, too. She’d never looked so destitute or weak, or felt more agitated. She feared she’d slept too long. She had to hurry.

  She pulled on a change of clothes, then removed the two small black buttons she’d pilfered from the Gadgetry Department. She checke
d their wiring and connections, then placed one in the most obvious position she could think of—just below her blouse collar. She threaded its wire down her front and attached it to a minuscule battery on her skirt belt. With the second device, however, she was more creative. She fit the microphone button to the underside of her bra and attached it—via a short line of wiring—to a separate battery beneath her arm. She checked each bug’s placement in the mirror and, once satisfied, pulled on a coat and made her way down to the cafeteria.

  Though she wasn’t hungry, she forced an egg sandwich down her throat followed by a cup of coffee. Neither did anything but make her nauseous, awakening the lurching dread that had been lingering in the pit of her stomach. She left the cafeteria, just as a group of Inquirers appeared for dinner service. She didn’t have time for greetings. She slipped into the passageway outside and followed it until it met the Grand Corridor, made her way up the lift, through the bookshop and into the street.

  * * *

  It was a warm evening, though the sun had already sunk behind a blanket of cloud and smog. Marion had an idea of where Holly Grove was, having visited Peckham on numerous occasions while on expeditions to find particular shades of cotton yarn for Dolores’s never-ending knitting projects. The memory felt heavy on her chest, an old and familiar pressure neither pleasant nor uncomfortable, and for a fleeting moment she thought of Dolores and of Number Sixteen Willow Street. Had her grandmother made it to America by now? Did she ever think about what she’d left behind, about the house, about Marion?

  She kept a brisk pace as she marched down the narrow, quiet streets that surrounded the bookshop until she found a taxi. She hopped inside and handed over the clockmaker’s address.

  After a half-hour drive and ten-minute walk, she found herself in a particularly run-down neighborhood. While most of the buildings here were nondescript redbrick blocks in disrepair, Number Twelve Holly Grove seemed out of place. The shop was small and square with a low wooden door and two stained-glass windows on either side, through which a stream of light filtered—a kaleidoscope of color that glowed like a jewel amid its otherwise grim, battered surroundings.

  Marion knocked on the highly polished wooden door. It opened immediately, though apparently by no one.

  “We’re closed,” said a woman’s voice from the shadows.

  Marion made her way to the counter. All around her, antique clocks hung precariously on the walls, rested dismantled on workbenches or sat proudly in glass display cabinets. The air hummed with their unsynchronized ticking and somewhere deep within the back of the shop, a boiling kettle whistled incessantly.

  In perfect unison, the kettle lid began to rattle and a woman shuffled into view. She was short with a fossil-like face—crusted in dirt and older than Marion had expected. Her eyes were dark gray, her hair, too, which fell to her shoulders in oily wisps.

  “Hello, ma’am,” Marion said above the rattling kettle. “I’m not here to buy anything,” she added quickly. “I’m looking for Helena.”

  The woman, far plumper than Marion had pictured, a large belly protruding from under her dirty apron, rested her hands on her hips. “That’s me. What d’you want?”

  Marion extended a hand in greeting but removed it when the woman did not reciprocate. “I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

  The woman’s left eye twitched. “Who are you?”

  Marion thought it best not to lie; there’d be no point if she hoped to extract what she needed from Helena. “Marion Lane. I’m an apprentice at Miss Brickett’s and a friend of Professor Uday Bal.”

  The woman’s face went from static discontent to liquid fury. Her eyes narrowed, her lips quivered, her forehead furrowed.

  Marion took an automatic step backward.

  “That man!” she spat. “Any friend of his is an enemy of mine! Get out! Out!”

  Marion brought her hands in front of her in defense. “Sorry, I just—” She stumbled backward, crashing into the glass display cabinet.

  The old woman picked up a rag attached to her apron and flung it about in the air as if swatting away a pesky fly. “Out!” she repeated, shooing Marion toward the door.

  Marion placed her hand on the doorknob but paused. “Someone came here to buy a clockwork safe seven years ago,” she said in a nervous hurry. “I know you sold it to him—Edgar Swindlehurst.”

  The woman paused midswat and lowered the rag to her side. Though her face still looked as if it were able to melt steel, her body language gave Marion the impression that whatever she despised about Professor Bal (a person Marion couldn’t believe anyone could truly hate) she had to put aside for this more important matter. “Seven years ago, you say?”

  “April 11, 1951. You set it to open April 11 of this year.”

  The woman secured her rag back under her apron. “And what of it?”

  “Well, it’s just that someone other than Mr. Swindlehurst found out when the safe was going to be opened, and I can only presume you were the one who told them.”

  Helena sank her hands into her apron pockets. Her face, again, had changed. Now awash with anguish.

  “I’d really like to know why you did that,” Marion went on when Helena said nothing. “And I need to know what was inside the safe.”

  Helena’s chest began to heave and a bulbous vein on her forehead to pulsate. For a long moment she appeared to hover between two decisions: to whack Marion over the head with her rag or to give in to a mess of confessions.

  Fortunately, she chose the latter.

  “Do you know how the professor and I knew each other? Did he tell you?” she began on an unrelated note. Though the professor had made it plain he and Helena did not get along, he’d been vague on why. The history between them would’ve interested Marion at another time, but right now she felt it would only delay her.

  “No,” she said impatiently. “But I’m afraid I don’t have time—”

  Helena cut in. “You want to know about Edgar or not?”

  Marion breathed. “Go on, please.”

  Helena nodded. “Like I was saying, Bal and I used to work together. You’ve heard of the Factory, I’m sure. I’m sure you’ve heard how clever all the things the professor designed there are? Yes, but did he tell you they were my idea? All of them.” She smirked. “Didn’t think so. The professor and I worked there together during the war, you see. We made and sold all types of brilliant things. Bugs, wire taps, spy cameras. You wouldn’t believe how much business we got in those days. Not just from the British, either.” She raised an eyebrow. “I’ll leave it to your imagination as to who else was in need of them types of devices in those days.

  “Anyway, Bal was good with the making and fixing of the things, I’ll give him that. But I was better at the designing, the ideas. And clockwork safes? My idea, of course.” She spat the words out, a vicious show of dislike, distrust.

  “The Factory closed down after the war. Not to say there was no business—there were plenty of spies around then, maybe even more than during the war. It was just that London had been brought to its knees, no one had any money, rent was more expensive than ever and Bal and I just couldn’t afford to run the place no more.” She sighed, her hard face creased with the memory. “So we had to close down and that’s why we were without a job when that Nancy woman came sniffing around. She said she’d like to reopen the Factory, that she could pay the rent and give us back our jobs. She said there was just one change she’d like to make. One change. What a joke...” She trailed off, muttering to herself.

  And again, Marion felt agitated, impatient. She decided not to show it this time, however, as Helena did not seem like the sort of person who took kindly to interruptions.

  “Anyway,” the old woman went on, “when I heard what this change was, what Nancy wanted to do, I wasn’t impressed at all. She wanted to move the whole production underground, away from intr
usion and restrictions. Away from the law, too. The professor jumped at the opportunity, ’course he did,” she added with a sneer. “But not me. I didn’t like the sound of it one bit. Living down there in a dark hole, never seeing the light of day, hidden from everyone. I smelled a rat, I did.” She paused to lumber over to a Morris chair. A wooden clock stood next to it, carved into the shape of a rather aggressive-looking female face. The clock had only a second hand, which rotated around its center in an anticlockwise direction and at least three times faster than it should.

  “Eventually I realized I didn’t have the luxury of turning down the opportunity and I decided to work for the agency on a contract basis. It was a strange situation, now I think of it. Me sitting up here, the only person on the outside who knew so much about the agency, about what they did down there and how they did it.” She looked up at Marion, disgust evident on her face.

  “In the beginning I kept my distance, just did what I was told and carried on. It was easy, really. All I did was design parts for the gadgets. Not just the stuff sold through the Factory, but the stranger stuff, too. The stuff you only use down there.” She stamped the ground with her shoe. “Vagor Compasses, Distracters, the lot. But things changed when Nancy hired the first apprentices. She used to send them up here to spend the afternoon with me. I’d show them how to fix the gadgets, how to clean them. I, well, I s’pose I liked it.” She looked up at Marion, her eyes now softer. “Never had children of my own, you see. And that was the problem, really, because I became attached to them, involved with them. And I think they realized I was the only one on the outside they could talk to about their problems.”