Seventy-Seven Clocks

∨ Seventy-Seven Clocks ∧

38

Illumination

Beneath the white traverse arches of the greenhouse were orchidaceous clusters of crimson and scarlet flowers: bougainvillea and beloperone, callistemon and strelitzea, surrounded by fan and sago palms, some of them over eight feet tall.

“This was my great-grandfather James Makepeace Whitstable’s house, and these are the plants that he himself tended. Until recently they were like our family, deeply rooted, tough, surviving. Now they might outlive us all.”

Charles had brought her here after dinner, the perfect place to sprawl in armchairs beneath the glass roof. During the course of the afternoon there had been endless questions about her upbringing and complex explanations of how the guild ran its businesses. He was a decisive man, a Mason, a figure of restless intensity, and had inexplicably chosen to admit her into his world. He had spoken about the supervision of Anglo-Indian exports, and it sounded incredibly, unbearably dull.

Beyond the greenhouse a lurid sunset flooded the sky in a vermilion wash, mirrored in shimmering fields of frost. Charles had humanized himself by changing into blue jeans and a heavy green cotton sweater. During the course of the afternoon he had not smiled once. A number of times he had started at noises in the endless dark woods beyond the house. He appeared to be under a great amount of strain. Now, as he sat warming a brandy in his hands, he seemed on the verge of imparting a confidence.

“I imagine it’s been pretty dull for you today,” he began, studying his glass. “Christmas and all that, you’d probably rather be with your friends, someone of your own age. I’m not used to having young people around. Our family was always old and big and inescapable.”

“I just thought there would be others here.”

“Normally there would be, but this year my visit is under extraordinary circumstances. My childhood memories are filled with decrepit relatives tottering about these rooms. As a kid I was always being scolded for disturbing my sleeping elders.” He leaned back against the headrest, recalling his upbringing in the vast dusty house above them. “Our family – a blessing and a curse. Until recently we were only fighting to stay alive in business. Now look at us. What a sorry state we’re in. I suppose you’ve been following it all in the papers.”

He looked across at her, his grey eyes eerily luminescent in the setting sun. He tasted his brandy and set it down. “You have a very strong-willed mother, Geraldine. I assume you’re aware of her ambitions.”

“What makes you say that?”

Charles studied his glass. “It’s Gwen who wants you to work for us.”

“She had nothing to do with me coming here.”

“I wondered if you had her ambitions.” He gave a rare smile. “But no, you’re different. I can sense a certain antipathy toward your parents. I know you’re acting under your own volition. You must understand something about us, Geraldine.” He gave a thin smile, no lips, no teeth. “The only way to effect an entry into the Whitstable family is to operate in its interests. The family always protects itself. Even if it means curtailing its own freedom.”

He drained his glass. “It’s hard to explain one’s behaviour under threat. Mr Heath will continue to hold out against the unions, and that will be just the beginning. The world is waiting to move into London to pick its riches. There are dark times ahead, and only the strong will survive. Once we were the giants, the whip-wielders. Now we’re nothing compared to the mighty modern conglomerates. They are the new imperialists, not us. British Associated Tobacco is opening markets in the Far East. Coca-Cola is buying real estate.” He pulled open a drawer in the small oak chest at his side and withdrew an engraved gold pocket watch, passing it over for inspection.

“This is the sort of thing our guild used to make. Who wants it now? Who can afford it? Once, craftsmanship was as necessary as breathing. Now it’s a curiosity, quaint and redundant. In order to stay alive, we’ve been forced to diversify.” He poured fresh brandies for both of them as she studied the watch. “It was James Makepeace Whitstable who put the family and the guild back on the right track.”

“How did he do that?” asked Jerry, carefully sipping her liqueur. She wanted to remember everything clearly.

“James was a gifted businessman, a man of great charity and honesty, a practising Christian. When he rose to assume his position at the head of the family, he knew it would take more than mere financial expertise to clear our debts and spread our business. Nearly a century ago, on twenty-eight December 1881, he gathered together the most trusted men in his guild. That night, they formed an alliance to protect their craftsmen.

James wanted to devise a formula that would keep the company in the right hands, not just then but for generations to come. The future held great promise. The empire was at its zenith. The chances for expansion were limitless. James was a visionary. He saw that, just as quickly as it had grown, the British empire could wane. The Americans were establishing trade routes at an extraordinary pace. The Japanese had begun to conduct commerce with outsiders. Consumerism had begun. Gilbert and Sullivan wrote The Mikado to cash in on the fact that London had a fancy for anything from Japan. Liberty’s in Regent Street was decorated like a Japanese pagoda. Ethnic purchasing fads were already in place. People were looking for the next big thing. What hope was there for an ancient London guild with so many keen rivals on the horizon? Rivals who didn’t care about craftsmanship or tradition.

After that night at the Savoy, our business continued to prosper. And just as our rivals grew strong enough to challenge us, they always disappeared. Their trade figures would get this close to ours,” he held his thumb and forefinger half an inch apart, “and they’d go out of business.”

“Didn’t James tell anyone else in the family what his alliance was doing or how it worked? Didn’t people wonder?”

“Nobody minded so long as the company grew. The Watchmakers’ Company was happy to let the Alliance of Eternal Light take care of the problem. James Whitstable swore his partners to secrecy.”

“What happened to the alliance when the original members died?”

“It died with them. Eventually everyone forgot about it. By the time I took over, the guild’s administration was a shambles. The old skills had been lost. I was forced to start the administration afresh. I fired many of the old overseas staff and formed new business strategies for each territory. In England, the Whitstables still own all of the controlling stock. You’d be surprised how many staff members are direct descendants of the seven original alliance members.”

Jerry wondered if they were the same people who had eventually become victims. She knew so much more about the Whitstables now, but still the answer remained elusive. She needed to know how one man’s recipe for economic recovery could result in a massacre nearly a century later.

Charles Whitstable raised his glass. “You’re entering an extraordinary family, Jerry,” he said. “It’ll take great bravery to be one of us.”

“Why do you say that?”

In the indigo gloom, only his eyes retained the light. “Because James Makepeace Whitstable’s plan for salvation is fast destroying us,” he said, almost amused by the paradox.

“Can I ask you something?” she ventured. “You don’t have to answer.”

“It’s done me good to talk tonight. I owe you an honest answer.”

“Do you know how James Whitstable’s system worked?”

It was only now that she realized how oppressively dark it had become. “I am a direct descendant,” came the reply. “Of course I know.”

♦

“But you saw him. You even spoke to him,” said Bryant, exasperated. “You must have some idea of what he looked like.”

The young warden grimaced apologetically. His head was bandaged where his nose had been broken, and his nostrils were packed with cotton wool, so that it was hard to understand what he was saying. He looked from the detective to the female sergeant walking at his side, hoping to find some sympathy. Dawn was approaching, and the nave of St Paul’s was bitterly cold. Because of the murder, today’s services had been suspended for the first time since the war.

“As you can see, this part of the cathedral’s entrance hall is poorly illuminated,” the battered warden explained. “Most of the main overhead lights were shut down last night. They’re normally lowered after the money box has been emptied.”

“What money box?” asked Bryant.

“We like visitors to leave a donation.”

“So we have to pay to get into heaven now?” Bryant was feeling blasphemous, bad-tempered, and cold, and furious with the warden for failing to help prevent Alison Hatfield’s miserable death. The thought of having to tell John what had happened appalled him.

“The man was standing beneath an arch. I thought he was wearing a bandage. It fell off when he hit me, and I saw it was a turban. His face was in shadow. Obviously, we don’t get many Indians in here. I thought she was having an argument with her boyfriend. Couples often sit in the courtyard.”

“In the dead of winter? On Boxing Day? She didn’t have a boyfriend. Did this man speak to her at all?”

“It all happened so quickly. I told them they couldn’t come in, and he ran at me.”

Bryant rubbed his hands on his trousers, trying to improve his circulation. “Is there any detail at all you remember about him?”

“All I can think of is his callousness. He must have followed her in here knowing that he was going to kill her. As if he was just doing his job.”

“If everyone had been doing that, Alison Hatfield might still be alive,” said Bryant. “She came here expecting to find sanctuary.” He turned on his heel and strode angrily from the cathedral.

♦

He leaned on the Embankment railing, his scarf pulled tightly about his neck and shoulders, watching the low mist eddying across the whorled, shining surface of the Thames. A police launch chugged past, struggling against the ebb tide. That’s what we’re doing, he thought, fighting the flow. Trying to hold off a caul of darkness that grows thicker by the minute.

Now no one was safe. Alison Hatfield had died for a specific, identifiable reason. According to May, she’d been searching for a diary, unaware that perhaps someone else was also looking for it. Her death had come as the cruellest blow of all. She had wanted to help them, and they had encouraged her to venture into the dark alone. He would never rest until he had found her killer. He owed her that much.

Right now, a hastily assembled forensic crew was removing every one of the boxes from the storeroom below Goldsmiths’ Hall. Bryant was sure they would find no diary. Somebody had beaten Alison to the discovery. Could a colleague have overheard her on the telephone? The building had been closed for the holiday season. She had made a special trip to open it up, so it was unlikely that anyone else would have been there. Tomlins probably had his own set of keys, but he didn’t fit the description of her killer.

Seagulls circled above, dropping sharply from the still-dark sky like snapped-shut parasols. Bryant slipped his hands into his overcoat sleeves and waited, and watched, and thought hard.

Death in a cathedral. Murder most foul within a holy shrine. What did he know about the place? He tried to remember what he had read.

In the eighteenth century, St Paul’s had been unpopular and unfashionable. Whores had paraded in its grounds, using the nave as a shortcut. Many had thought the place as pagan as it was Christian. And how the hell did the songwriter Ivor Novello ever get a memorial plaque in the crypt along with Lord Nelson? This was no good; just when he needed it most his mind was cluttered with nonsense, pieces of quiz-show trivia.

The chill air was biting hard at his bones. As slivers of light grew between the clouds, he forced himself to clear his mind of ephemeral detail and think clearly.

So many ideas had been put forward, and all of them wrong. So many dead ends. The Common Market conference. The Nazi symbol. The sacred flame. Cut through them. Look beyond.

Was it revenge or simple monetary gain? Why were all their suspects Indian? May’s theory: a number of assassins involved, each murder logged and computed from the start. Could it be that John was right after all, and that Alison’s death was a panicky mistake?

There was something else that bothered him. The business with the dates. The winter solstice had passed on December twenty-second. The document forming the Alliance of Eternal Light had been signed at the Savoy on the twenty-eighth. If James Makepeace Whitstable was genuinely concerned with the symbolic act of bringing light to the world, he would have gathered his men a full week earlier.

Dawn broke across the City of London.

Suddenly the Embankment lights began to flick off. Pearls of luminescence, familiar and friendly, looped in hazy necklaces along the riverline, were disappearing, one string after another.

Bryant watched as row after row vanished into the night, all the way down the South Bank promenade, past Coin Street and Gabriel’s Wharf, past the Oxo Building and the Anchor pub, past Spice Wharf and St Katharine’s Dock and Tower Bridge, to the distant lights of Greenwich.

“Oh, my God.”

His mouth slowly opened as he realized the answer. “How incredibly, irredeemably stupid of me,” he said aloud. “How could I ever have been so blind?”

He jumped back from the railing, tucked his scarf across his midriff, and set off as quickly as his frozen limbs would allow.