Seventy-Seven Clocks (21 page)

24 / Closing Ranks 

Bryant insisted on driving his battered yellow Mini Minor to their South London appointment. Although his skill in negotiating major intersections had marginally improved in the last few years (the only useful by-product of endless driving tests failed since the late 1950s), he considered a number of traffic signs to be superfluous, including those that involved changing lanes, giving way, or avoiding pedestrians. Weaving through the lunchtime traffic in Victoria proved to be a logistical challenge, but Bryant remained oblivious to the shouts and honks of dumbfounded fellow motorists. Even highway-hardened lorry drivers blanched and braked when faced with Bryant’s blithe disrespect for the road. 

‘Leo Marks has sent down masses of documents pertaining to the financial history of the Whitstable empire,’ said May. ‘Janice is going through them, but it’s a laborious job. There are literally hundreds of holding companies going back across the century. The family has been suffering from declining fortunes for years. Their philanthropy is well established and beyond reproach, although their business practices throughout the last century show plenty of nasty tarnishes. Lawsuits, maltreatment of workforce, exploitation of minors, racial discrimination, restrictive practices, stuff like that.’ 

‘The Victorians became less forgiving as they expanded their empire.’ Bryant peered through the windscreen for an all-clear, then stamped down on the accelerator. ‘They felt God was on their side. It’s always a mistake mixing religion and business. Look what happened when Christian soldiers moved into the East India Company. In its early days of trading, it prided itself on empathy for other tribes and creeds, but respect fell away as the desire to convert took hold. We need to find somebody who’s been harmed by the Whitstables in their financial dealings. We might hear a few home truths then.’ 

‘They’ve closed ranks against outsiders, Arthur, ever since we began conducting interviews. Their answers sound rehearsed.’ 

‘Then we’ll conquer by dividing them up.’ 

Bryant and his partner walked briskly along the river footpath at Vauxhall, a dismal part of the Embankment barely cheered by sunlight refracting from the leaden waters of the Thames. Daisy Whitstable had been missing for over thirty-six hours. There had been no new developments in the search for the bogus ice-cream van, and now the capital had begun emptying out for the Christmas holidays. 

May kicked out at a stone, sending it skittering. He had never felt so helpless in his search for a common enemy, and the strain of the past two weeks was beginning to show. ‘I think they’ve been told not to speak to us by a senior member of the family,’ he complained. 

‘I don’t know who. We’ve interviewed virtually all of them.’ 

‘No family is impregnable, Arthur. There must be a weak link. We can’t just wait until someone breaks from the party line.’ 

On the previous evening, the detectives had attempted to speak to Mina Whitstable, the bedridden mother of William, Peter, and Bella. For the last five years the old lady’s grip on reality had been tenuous, and the deaths of her children had provided the final push into mental aphasia. They were now pinning their hopes on Edith Eleanor Whitstable, a contemporary of Mina and something of an outsider, judging by the rest of the family’s comments about her. 

Edith was an irascible sixty-seven-year-old matriarch who owed little loyalty to those around her. Referring to her earlier interview with Sergeant Longbright, May saw that the woman had often been critical of the Whitstables’ business empire, in which she had once taken an active role. Three months earlier she had moved out of the district where she had spent most of her life, choosing to live instead on a small gated estate by the river. May was interested in finding out why. Bryant tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to a number of large redbrick buildings with arched windows. 

‘I must have written the address down wrong. This is the old Sarson’s vinegar factory.’ 

‘Not any more,’ said May. ‘Looks like it’s been converted into town houses.’ 

‘This sort of property is for single professionals, not dowagers. Why on earth would she want to move here?’ 

‘Perhaps her old house was too large for her to manage.’ 

The detectives found themselves in a mock- Elizabethan courtyard of pale herringbone brick. ‘How did she sound on the phone?’ asked May as they searched for the old lady’s apartment number. 

‘Nervous. Certainly not the dragon I was expecting. Here we are.’ 

Edith Whitstable resided in a ground-floor apartment on the far side of the estate. She had a small manicured garden with brass carriage lamps set in the front wall. The setting seemed out of character for a Whitstable. Bryant gave May a puzzled look as he rang the doorbell and loosened a voluminous purple scarf. 

The bird-boned woman who answered the door welcomed them with pleasing warmth. 

‘You found us,’ she said, taking their coats. ‘I’ve already made tea, or would you prefer something stronger on a raw day like this?’ 

‘Good idea, it’s cold enough to freeze the—’ said Bryant before a look from May stopped him. ‘Tea will be fine.’ 

The apartment had the sparse decoration of a newlyweds’ home. If Edith Whitstable had brought any of her old furniture with her, it wasn’t in evidence. A number of iron crucifixes lined the hallway, and there were several more austere religious icons in the lounge. 

‘I understand you wish to ask me more questions,’ she said, setting down a tea tray and starting to lay out the cups. Her hands sported pale indentations from wearing rings that had now been removed. Her dress was floral, cheap, off the peg. Around her neck was a large silver cross. Bryant supposed that she must have fallen upon hard times. Yet, when they had met at Mornington Crescent, he remembered that she had been wearing a pearl brooch and a mink coat. 

‘It shouldn’t take long.’ May checked his notes. ‘Your husband Samuel died two years ago, is that right?’ 

‘Yes. Cancer of the spine. He was in pain for a long time. The children were a great help.’ 

‘You have two boys, don’t you? Jack and Harry?’ 

‘Hardly boys, Mr May. They’re in their early fifties.’ 

‘What relation were you to William, Peter, and Bella Whitstable?’ 

‘They were my cousins. We can all be traced back to James and Rosamunde in the middle of the last century. I suppose you know all about them?’ 

‘No, our investigations don’t go back quite that far.’ 

‘Oh, but they should! James was a fascinating man— kind, charming, a devout Christian. He carried out so many wonderful works, as did his children. Alfred, his oldest son, founded several charitable missions in the East End, you know.’ 

‘What about Daisy Whitstable?’ 

‘A terrible business,’ said Edith without hesitation. ‘Her grandparents are also my cousins. Her paternal grandfather was shot down in the Second World War.’ 

A clang of metal sounded in the next room, followed by a grunt. Edith chose to ignore it. 

‘I understand you recently moved house,’ said Bryant. ‘You must miss the old place, seeing as you grew up there. The recession can’t have been favourable to family fortunes.’ 

‘Selling up has had its good and bad sides, Mr Bryant,’ Edith said, nervously brushing the fingers of her right hand over her cross. ‘It has brought our family closer together. And it has helped me to rediscover my devotion to Our Saviour.’ 

‘I should imagine the money helped, too,’ added Bryant. 

‘It’s no secret that we’ve had financial difficulties since Samuel died. With the house sold I’m solvent once more.’ 

‘Couldn’t you have borrowed from someone else in the family?’ 

‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be, Mr May. Besides, none of us are as wealthy as we used to be, so we can’t lean on each other for financial support.’ 

Another clang and grunt sounded from the next room. 

‘You say you’ve been brought closer together as a family, Mrs Whitstable. Some cynics have suggested that’s because of the recent assaults. Perhaps you all want to keep an eye on each other.’ 

‘You’re not suggesting that one of us killed them?’ 

‘You tell me,’ said Bryant irritably. He hated having to fight his way through the family’s layers of obfuscation and misdirection. 

‘It’s quite impossible,’ said Edith, affronted, her hand now clasping the cross at her throat. ‘We may be larger and a little more eccentric than the average English family, but at heart we get on very well together. We are not demonstrative in our loyalties and affections. Nor do we believe in hysterics or histrionics. We go about our duties as honest English folk who have worked hard for their homeland and their children. In that respect we’re really quite normal.’ 

Bryant looked doubtful. A clang and a shouted oath boomed through the wall. Edith smiled peacefully. May threw his partner a look. ‘Is there somebody in the next room, Mrs Whitstable?’ he asked. 

‘You must forgive the boys,’ she explained. ‘I’m living with my grandchildren, my Harry’s sons. They’re doing their exercises.’ She turned in her chair and called out. ‘Steven, Jeffrey, would you come here please?’

Two musclebound young men entered the lounge. They were identical: both blond, both broad, both narrow-eyed and feral-featured. They had been lifting weights, and were out of breath. Both had silver crosses fastened around broad necks. 

One of them lowered a vast arm to his grandmother’s shoulder. ‘Is everything all right, Edith?’ he asked, looking sourly at the detectives. His crystal-cutter accent suggested public schooling. 

‘Fine, boys. My friends were just leaving,’ she said with a nervous smile. The detectives rose awkwardly and were ushered from the lounge. Bryant tried to see into the other rooms as they were being returned to the hall, but one of the twins threw his arm across the corridor, barring the way. ‘We’ll see them out for you if you like,’ he offered. 

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Edith firmly. ‘Everything’s fine.’ 

The boy caught his brother’s eye and held it, smiling. ‘Praise the Lord,’ he said. 

‘Just like any normal family,’ snorted Bryant as they marched back along the Embankment path. 

‘Well, she doesn’t look as if she’s been abducted,’ replied May. ‘She’s not being held there against her will.’ 

‘Maybe not, but she was minding her words. I’m willing to bet that her grandsons have been installed to keep watch over her.’ 

‘I don’t know, Arthur. We have to be able to trust
somebody
. She sounded perfectly innocent.’ 

‘When it comes to the Whitstables,’ said Bryant, ‘innocent is not a word that readily springs to mind.’ Talking to Edith about James Makepeace Whitstable had confirmed his suspicions. Although the family’s allies and enemies had been created in the distant past, their influence reached through to the present. Connections were maintained. Duty was done. That was the common link—the all-pervading Victorian sense of duty. 

He was sure that even now the trail was far from cold and the danger far from over. God forbid she was dead, for there would be a public outcry of such proportions that it would threaten the entire investigation. They were expected to produce a culprit, and fast. 

Bryant had a hunch that they were seeking no modern-day murderer. The answer might lie buried in the convoluted lineage of the Whitstable family, but he felt sure it was simple—and still waiting to be unearthed.

25 / Sevens 

‘I’m still hungry.’ 

Daisy Whitstable wiped the chocolate from her mouth. Her dress was filthy and crawling with lice, and even though the tunnel door was shut she was shivering in the bitter winter air. She had eaten nothing but ice cream since her capture. The wet brick arches had taken on a more sinister appearance since the van’s dying battery had faded its headlights. A neon tube had been plugged into the wall, and threw just enough light across the floor to keep vermin at bay. 

Daisy was resilient, but her confidence was fading. She could no longer tell if it was day or night. Her ankles were loosely tied with a piece of nylon cord, and she was sick of scraping her knees on the rough concrete floor. She had given up crying. Tears only made her captor more upset. 

‘Can’t I have something that isn’t ice cream?’ She was glad she could not see him. He was there, though. He was always there among the oil cans and coils of rope, crouching in the darkest corner with his head resting on his knees. Whenever he came closer she tried to move away, even though he had shown no desire to hurt her. She had stopped trying to understand why her mother and father had not come to take her home. Perhaps she was being punished. Suppose she never saw them, or her brother, ever again? Against her will, she began to whimper. 

In the corner, her captor stirred and rose slowly to his feet. She tried to stifle her tears but it was too late. He was shuffling toward her now, and would push her back into the corner of the bench, as he had done before. 

Or so she thought, until she saw that this time he was carrying a hooked knife in one hand. 

Maggie Armitage’s face had been created specifically for smiling. She beamed reassuringly at her clients, her eyes waning to happy crescents, and massaged their hands consolingly as she provided conviction enough for both of them. This was an important part of her function, for as the Grand Leader of the Camden Town Coven, Maggie was often the harbinger of distressing news. 

Every Monday night, she and the six remaining members of her sect met in the gloomy flat above the World’s End public house opposite Camden Town Tube station, and attempted to provide some psychic balm for the city’s wounds. Evil could not be stopped, merely held at bay, but at least its victims could be aided and, if possible, forewarned. 

John will be furious if he finds out I’ve agreed to this meeting
, thought Bryant. May held no belief in the Hereafter, but his partner kept an open mind. In the past, information provided by the cheery white witch had proved to be correct, and had helped to close a number of longstanding police files. This good work went unacknowledged by the Met, who regarded fringe operators with the same distrust doctors reserve for practitioners of alternative medicine. The
News of the World
ran too many exposés on bogus covens. In years to come they would replace them with features on celebrity sex romps, but for now they were content to run photographs of naked women prancing around bonfires. 

Bryant surveyed the ground-floor hall of the Victoria and Albert Museum, wondering why Maggie had specifically asked to meet him here, in this shadowy edifice of marble and stone. He turned to find her striding briskly between the glass cases, her spectacles swinging on an amber chain at her bosom. In keeping with the festive season, she had enough dangling plastic ornaments about her person to decorate a small Norwegian pine. 

‘Dear thing, how well you look!’ she cried, causing several members of the public to turn disapprovingly. ‘I hope you didn’t mind coming here, but I’m with Maureen and daren’t let her out of my sight. She’s sitting her British Pagan Rites exam next week and I said I’d help with the research, but she’s a bit of a klepto and tends to heave open the cases when I’m not looking. She’s liable to have Aleister Crowley’s soup spoons up her jumper before you know it.’ 

‘So you’re in here uncovering forgotten symbolic rituals, eh?’ Bryant asked, beaming jovially. 

‘Actually I was in the gift shop admiring their casserole covers, but I’m on a diet so let’s not dwell. Maureen’s doing her Fellowship of Isis and Dion Fortune—it always sounds like a fifties singer, don’t you think?—and lately she’s developed the habit of dropping into trances, so she needs some looking after, especially when we’re on her scooter. I think you’ve met her.’ 

‘I remember meeting a very pretty Jamaican girl a couple of years ago.’ 

‘Oh, Katherine’s still with us, but she’s called Freya now and won’t talk to anyone who doesn’t acknowledge her god, Odin. Her husband’s not pleased because he’s on night work and keeps forgetting.’ Maggie paused for a breath and donned her spectacles. Her eyes swam at him from sparkling plastic frames. ‘I wanted to talk to you rather urgently, as it happens. The coven has a resident numerologist named Nigel. He’s very good at Chaos Theory, which is just as well because his math is terrible, and at the moment he keeps coming up with sevens. Sevens, sevens everywhere, and it all seems connected with you. Or rather, with your investigation. You’d better follow me.’ 

She led the way back between glass cases of Victorian fans, canes, calling cards, and snuff boxes, as high above them the late-afternoon rain pattered steadily on angled skylights. 

‘Very few people bother with this part of the museum.’ She turned into a corridor that had been partitioned off from the main floor. ‘There’s something I want you to see.’ 

Here the overhead lamps were spaced further apart, and the occultist’s multicoloured sweater sparkled like the scales of a tropical fish as she moved between pools of light. ‘We’ve been following the case in the papers, of course, and you know how one makes these connections. It was Nigel who remembered reading a Victorian text about the powers of light and darkness.’ 

At the end of the corridor, a red velvet rope separated them from a dark flight of stairs. Maggie slipped the hook and beckoned Bryant through. She flicked a switch at her side and a dim radiance shone from below. ‘The documents kept here are extremely sensitive to light,’ she explained as they descended. ‘As a special-interest group we’re allowed access to them, although I’m not allowed to bring vegetable soup with me, after an unfortunate incident with a Necromicon. Nigel was checking some numerological data when he got to thinking about the sevens. Do you know anything about the power of numbers?’ They reached the foot of the stairs and she looked across at him, her eyes lost in shadow, less comical now. 

She paused to sign the visitor’s book which lay open on an unmanned reception desk, then walked between dimly illuminated cases, checking their contents. ‘Seven is a very special number. It traverses history like a latitude, always appearing at times of great upheaval. It’s a schizophrenic number, Janus-faced, often representing both good and evil, a grouping together and a tearing apart. There are many bloodstained sevens in history: Robert E. Lee’s Seven Days’ Battles in the American Civil War, for example; the destruction of the Red River settlement in the Seven Oaks Massacre; and the battle of Seven Pines. There’s the Seven Weeks War—that’s the Austro-Prussian war of 1866—and of course the Seven Years War which involved just about the whole of Europe in 1756. 

‘There are everyday sevens, like the seven-note scale, the Seven Hills of Rome, the days of the week, the sevenyear itch. Then there are lots of legendary sevens: the seven Greek champions who were killed fighting against Thebes after the fall of Oedipus, the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, the Seven Holy Founders, the Seven Gods of Luck, the Seven Wonders of the World, the Seven Golden Cities of Cibola, the Seven Wise Masters of ancient Arab myth, and the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, soldiers who were resurrected from the dead—’ 

‘I think I get the idea,’ interrupted Bryant. ‘What have all these sevens to do with the Whitstable murders?’ 

‘Well, they don’t directly—but this does.’ Maggie stopped before the end case and wiped dust from the glass with her sleeve. Bryant peered down. Pinned open in the case were several pages from a Victorian guild booklet that had been damaged by fire. The sheets were edged with gold leaf, a tribute to the Goldsmiths to whom they owed their origin. The watercolour illustrations had faded badly. Still, the central photograph was clear enough. 

It showed a sour-faced man with bright, menacing eyes, muttonchop whiskers, and bushy eyebrows, standing in the centre of an ornately carpeted room. On either side of this commanding presence sat three men. Each man had a handwritten phrase marked beneath his person. 

A chill draught blew at Bryant’s ankles as he read, from left to right:
Arathron, Bethor, Phaleg, Hagith, Ophiel, Phul
. The nomenclature beneath the sinister central figure was
Och
. 

‘The names pertain to the Seven Stewards of Heaven,’ said Maggie, tapping the glass with a painted nail. ‘God governs the world through them. They’re also known as the Olympian Spirits, and can be invoked by black magicians. Each has a certain day associated with him, as well as a particular planet in our solar system. This central figure here, the tall man, is the Master of the Sun, Bringer of Light, and he governs Sundays. I wondered if you’d come across him yet in your investigation.’ 

‘Oh, Maggie,’ said Bryant, wiping his glasses. ‘I most certainly have. I saw his picture only yesterday. What is he doing here?’ 

‘I’d say these finely dressed Victorians belonged to some kind of society, wouldn’t you?’ The occultist smiled darkly. ‘Look at the arcane instruments on the table beside them. There’s no date to the picture but I’d say it was around 1870, perhaps a little later. There’s no way of identifying who six of the fine gentlemen are, but we know the identity of the seventh.’ Her finger moved over the central figure of Och, then to the panel of text below. The name in the box was that of James Makepeace Whitstable. 

‘The Victorians were up to their ears in strange sects and movements,’ she explained, ‘but the Stewards of Heaven had an ancient and extremely powerful belief system connected to the secret powers of darkness and light. Night and day, good and evil, held in perfect balance.’ 

‘Presumably this particular sect is no longer in existence?’ 

‘It hasn’t been for centuries, but it looks as if your victims’ ancestor was trying to revive it. As the Seven Stewards are hardly a familiar topic nowadays, I assume he failed to draw a large number of converts.’ 

‘It may not have completely vanished,’ murmured Bryant. ‘It could simply have remained dormant until now.’ 

‘That’s what I wondered,’ said Maggie, turning from the display case. ‘As alternative belief systems go, this one operates on a pretty grand scale. Such societies have a habit of reviving themselves when conditions are right. Their growth and decline occurs in a regular cycle.’ 

‘How long would each cycle last?’ 

‘It could be any timespan of up to one hundred years. In fact, century cycles are rather common.’ 

The image of the Waterhouse painting had sprung into Bryant’s mind.
The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius
depicted seven men. 

He took another look inside the glass case, mentally superimposing the painting over the watercolour illustration. Seven acolytes in both. Cold draughts now filled the room, and he gave an involuntary shudder. ‘One hundred years,’ he said. ‘That brings James Whitstable right back into the 1970s.’ 

‘This is a very powerful occult force,’ said Maggie. ‘It looks as if your troubles are only just beginning.’ 

PC Burridge’s lanky body was numb with cold, and the freezing rain was starting to leak through his sou’wester. His late-night beat was dark, dismal, and depressing. It had never felt less like Christmas. 

Be observant
, they had always told him.
Be ever vigilant
. But there was nothing to observe beneath the arches of the Embankment except the occasional forlorn tramp, and vigilance was a matter of course with so many antiwar demonstrators around. No wonder they call us Plods, he mused, plodding heavily through the tunnel to emerge in a deserted alley at the side of the Mermaid Theatre. His beat was about to get worse: the prime minister was losing his battle with the electrical unions, and the constable would shortly be walking the streets in darkness. 

A thin, echoing wail forced him to break from his thoughts. The cry came from the tunnel at his back. Perhaps there was something trapped in one of the recesses of the dripping wall. 

The constable stopped and listened. Suddenly the crying began anew, rising in pitch. He screwed up his eyes and stared into the gloom. He could just make out a bedraggled cat, sitting beside a bundle of coloured rags. 

As he walked further into the tunnel the cat ran off, and he saw that the bundle was a small body. 

PC Burridge placed his arms around the child to pick her up, wondering if his pleas for recognition had been perversely heard and from now on he would be known as the policeman who discovered Daisy Whitstable. He pressed his ear against the child’s thin chest and heard a faint heartbeat within. Wrapping her inside his jacket, he radioed for an ambulance, praying it would arrive in time.