Seventy-Seven Clocks

∨ Seventy-Seven Clocks ∧

39

The Rain Gauge

Jerry’s tongue felt thick and dry from last night’s brandy. It was the first time in years that she had slept without a night-light. Slowly she raised her head and examined the room. She saw dark walls of densely woven brocade, a ceramic washstand and jug, a mahogany dressing table and wardrobe. She rose from the high brass bed and drew back the curtains.

Grey sheets of rain obscured the fields below. A flock of miserable sheep stood huddled beneath a line of dripping beeches. Her watch read nine fifteen. She wondered if her host had risen yet.

Why had Charles chosen to unburden himself to her? Did he find her attractive? He had refused to elaborate on his closing remark about James Makepeace Whitstable. Perhaps he had no intention of confiding in his new apprentice.

After she had washed and dressed, she explored the house. The sound of rain could be heard throughout the upper floors. She smelled old wood burnished with lavender polish, damp and time and emptiness. The rooms were kept in such immaculate condition that they reminded her of Joseph Herrick’s stage sets. They needed a boisterous family to bring them to life.

A broad central staircase led downstairs to the breakfast room where Charles Whitstable, casually attired in a sweater and cords, was already seated with a newspaper. The look on his face when he rose to greet his guest suggested further bad news.

“Please,” said Charles, gesturing at the heated tureens on the table, “help yourself to breakfast. My mother told me there was another attack on the family.”

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“Pippa Whitstable is in hospital. She’s only a little older than you.”

“I’m sorry,” Jerry said, not sure what to make of his reaction. “Are you closely related?”

“Distant cousins. We’ve met once or twice. I thought we were all supposed to be under police surveillance. They’re not saying who attacked her.”

“Have you tried calling the police for information?”

“The line is permanently engaged. I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do to help. The family resents my interference. They think my great-grandfather caused this. They know I administrate the alliance’s business system. But I want to find a way to help them.”

“Do you think you’ll have to return to England permanently?” she asked, seating herself before eggs and coffee.

“Perhaps. Whether they like it or not, the family needs me. And I need to think about taking a wife. With so many of us dying, it’s time we produced a few heirs. Taking over the family’s affairs took up all my time. Everyone had been relying on the alliance to bail them out whenever there was a crisis, but now the system has turned against them. I cleared away their outdated ideas, but all I’ve succeeded in doing is earning their enmity. They think I’m cheating them. They can’t see that the Whitstable ‘empire’ is no more. The land they owned is being auctioned off. Soon there won’t be anything left but the houses they live in. I’m streamlining the group, investing in technology they can’t understand, and this way we may just survive. But to listen to them, you’d think I was diverting their dwindling capital into a drugrunning operation.” He drained the cup and checked his watch. “That’s why it’s important to bring in people with new ideas. I called your father and asked him to join us for lunch. Can you stay on until tomorrow? There’s more I’d like to discuss. Besides, you’re charming company, and you brighten this old house no end.”

She sat back and studied him carefully. She had never met anyone like him before. Charles was mature and urbane. He treated her like a woman and seemed prepared to give her responsibilities. Her mission of subversion had taken on an interesting new aspect.

“Do you think the police will ever catch anyone?”

“The deaths will end as suddenly as they began, and no one will ever be able to say why.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because the same thing has been happening to our overseas rivals throughout the century. Of course, the attacks were never this densely concentrated before, and they took place on another continent, so investigations were never concluded. British justice doesn’t concern itself with the deaths of a few Indian businessmen. But now that the tables are turned on the British, there’s hell to pay.”

“What’s India like?” she asked, watching as he finished his breakfast.

“Vibrant. Shocking. A sinkpit and a paradise.” His eyes maintained their serene quiescence. “In India, the cycle of life is fast and full of fury. The rites of birth and death are closer together. We English seal away our emotions. Our grief, and much of our joy, remains private. Their feelings are more exposed, and it makes them strong. I admire their survival in the midst of so much damage and confusion. My relatives could learn a thing or two from them.”

If she performed well in her new career, he would probably take her with him. But wasn’t her request for a job just a ploy? She had to remember that she had no real intention of taking him up on the offer, even if it represented an escape from the house in Chelsea. The thought of returning there depressed her. She was alarmed to discover how much she liked Charles.

“I have to make a lot of long-distance calls this morning,” he said, rising. “Why don’t you take a look around the estate? We’ll reconvene just before lunch.”

“I’ll be just as happy sitting in the library. Do you have any documentation on the companies that I can read?”

“Now that’s the kind of initiative I like,” he said, smiling for the first time that morning. “I’ll see what I can find for you.” As he passed, he squeezed her shoulder affectionately, and she found herself sharing his pleasure.

♦

To be left alone in the library was a mark of how far she had gained his trust. The room couldn’t have exuded more masculinity if it had been lined with dead stags. There were so many pipe racks and gun-racks and lewd Indian carvings that it reminded her of Peggy Harmsworth’s house in Highgate. She was happy to leave huntsmanship to the gentry. Still, the library’s stock was surprisingly varied, and contained many first editions. For the rest of the morning she read everything she could find about the Whitstables, but judging from the curious gaps in the bookshelves, any incriminating material had been carefully removed.

It wasn’t until she had worked out how to operate the rolling stepladder that she discovered a top shelf filled with obscure Victorian volumes. While several editions proved individually interesting, they provided her with no collective insight to the mysteries of James Makepeace Whitstable and his Stewards of Heaven. Seating herself in one of the deep leather armchairs within a bay window overlooking the frozen fields, she began to read.

Just before one, a bell sounded in the hall. “No doubt that will be your father,” said Charles, who had come to look in on her. “Don’t get up – finish what you’re reading. I’ll have him wait in the parlour until you’re ready.”

The shift in authority was clearly meant to be noted. Now that she was being accepted into the family business, she enjoyed the protection of Charles. Her father would meekly wait outside while she finished reading her book. The thought gave her little satisfaction. Poor Gwen and Jack. They had offered her up as a sacrifice to their ambition, only to find themselves excluded again.

Lunchtime with Charles and her father was punctuated throughout with awkward pauses. After the meal Jack was virtually dismissed and told to return to London. Charles would see to it that Jerry was returned safe and sound first thing on Monday morning.

For the rest of the day she and Charles worked side by side in the grand study, as he explained his long-term plans for the guild. She saw that the work was not as dull as it had first appeared. Indeed, she could envisage certain circumstances under which it would be a pleasure to remain beside him all day.

Their meal together that evening had the intimate quality of a candlelit dinner, even if it took place beneath electric light.

♦

John May sat at his desk and fought to keep the horror of Alison’s death from his mind.

But there would be time enough later for grief. The best thing to do was find a way to avenge her. May was a logical man. He sought patterns in chaos. Now he thought about the chart of deaths Arthur had logged to date. Could the attacks be following a sequence, even if they conformed to no easily identifiable pattern? More than one murderer. How could that be? The latest death had thrown him. It wasn’t taken into consideration on the chart, and it was a different modus operandi. Once again, the murderer had been seen but not apprehended.

If someone was working out a sequence for the murders, how would he choose his dates? Then there was the deadline: 28 December. There wasn’t much time left. He spread the details out before him, each death, each attack on a separate piece of paper.

No particular numerological significance. Could the dates have been chosen haphazardly? Suppose they were scientifically random, like a Turing code? Turing had successfully cracked cryptographic messages created on a typewriter attached to a print wheel, and had suggested that computers would be capable of human thought only if a random element, such as a roulette wheel, was introduced. But why would anyone go to the trouble of doing that?

There had to be a logic at work. The deaths were irregularly spaced, but there had to be a pattern. By what coordinates, though?

December the sixth to the twenty-eighth. Why not the first of the month to the last? That would be more logical. Why not a correspondence to the lunar cycle?

The new random element is easier to explain, he thought. Panic has set in, and that’s dangerous for everyone.

Across the desk, a weather chart in Bryant’s folded newspaper caught his eye.

Wettest December since the war.

May turned the paper around and studied the article more carefully. The murder dates corresponded with those when individual records had been broken for the most rainfall in a twenty-four-hour period.

He withdrew a chewed pencil stub from beneath his shirt and drew two lines on a sheet of paper. Along both lines he marked days six to twenty-eight. On the first line he added a mark whenever a death had occurred. On the second, he marked the record rainfall highs.

The spacing was the same. The rain highs were precisely ten hours before each of the deaths, except for the unpremediated attacks on Alison Hatfield and Pippa Whitstable.

What on earth was he supposed to do with information like this?

Whatever it was, he needed to start thinking fast; it had just begun to rain again.