“Good morning,” said Whitstable testily, removing his jacket. “What’s happened to Maurice?” He removed the Victorian watch he kept in his waistcoat and tapped it irritably.
“Believe there’s a bit of a bug going around, Sir,” said the barber. “I’m Eric.” He didn’t look like an Eric. To be honest, he looked like an Indian, and a very sickly one at that. The Major decided to let it pass.
“Well, Eric, I suppose we’ll have to start from scratch.”
He studied his watery eyes in the beveled wall mirror. “Not at all, Sir,” said Eric genially. “I had the pleasure of shaving you once long ago, and Mr Maurice informs me that nothing has changed in the way of your personal ablutions. Please take a seat.”
As the barber leaned close he became aware of an odd smell, a forgotten scent. It was vaguely familiar, like lime chutney. Something the fellow had been eating? Indian smell, Indian accent. He frowned.
Eric flapped out a white apron with a crack of fresh linen that sounded like a gunshot, and swirled it over Whitstable’s head like a matador preparing to antagonize a bull. The Major closed his eyes and listened to the sounds he had heard all his life. Fresh shaving foam slapping in a ceramic bowl, the rhythmic stropping of an open blade. He felt the stiff bristle of the badger flowering foam across his cheeks, and the years melted away. “Where did you shave me before? Not here, surely?”
“No, Sir. In India.”
The lights above the mirror dazzled and flared through his half-shut eyes as he felt the first sharp prick of the blade upon his throat. Even in the desert, in Rommel’s darkest days, he had never shaved himself, and nor had William. Such times were gone for ever. “Won’t take long now, Major,” said Eric soothingly. The searing steel cut a swathe of bristles from below his jawline to the base of his ear lobe. The blade was rinsed clean, and returned to his face hotter than ever. “Whereabouts in India?”
“Calcutta, Sir, about fifteen years ago. 1958, I believe it was.”
“That’s right, I was stationed in Calcutta then.”
“And so was I, Sir.”
“Well, I never.”
The blade ran lightly across his chin and bit into the bristles at the top of his trachea – a little too deeply, he thought.
“I say, steady on.”
The edge of the razor lifted, caressing his throat with its edge, then suddenly pushed forward, a streak of flame crossing his throat. He was sure he’d been nicked. It was unforgivable!
“Look here – ” he began.
With a sudden application of pressure, the honed steel blade popped the skin like a bayonet and smoothly parted it in one wide sweep. The Major raised his arms as a torrent of blood burst forth over the white-hot wound, flowing around his chin and down his neck. He tried to call out but the blade was sawing back and forth, deeper and deeper, severing his vocal chords as the enraged barber whose name was not Eric worked on, his wild eyes glittering in a livid white face.
¦
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Nicholas, grabbing her sleeve. “You were supposed to be on duty over an hour ago.”
“Couldn’t you cover for me?” Jerry pleaded. “This is really important.”
“Why should I? This isn’t the first time you’ve been late when we’ve had a rush on.”
Jerry looked desperately towards the doors of the barber shop. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.” Nicholas released his grip. “I’ll be back in just a minute.” She ran off up the stairs, leaving her protesting colleague behind.
The doors were locked. She looked at her watch. Ten-fifteen a.m. The shop should have opened at nine- thirty. Besides, Maurice never kept the entrance locked. She could see no movement through the frosted glass. The room seemed to be empty.
She knelt down and peered under the crack of the door. There was a large figure slumped in one of the shaving chairs. One arm hung down towards the floor. The white sheet covering the body was splashed with cerise.
Then she was on her feet, hurling herself at the door until the wood splintered and the old glass panels cracked from top to bottom. She shoved aside the shattered door and stepped into the salon. The figure lay back in the chair with its throat untidily slashed into a second grimacing mouth. Its face bore a look of disbelief, the eyes protruding in stark surprise. The mother-of-pearl handle of an open razor jutted up from between the victim’s teeth. Only the polished army shoes which poked out beneath the encompassing cape reminded Jerry that she was looking at the brutalized remains of Major Peter Whitstable.
? Seventy-Seven Clocks ?
11
Ancestry
The heavy wooden lid slammed back in a cloud of fibrous dust.
John May raised his head above the lintel and shone the torch inside. The attic ran the entire length of the house. The rafters were clean and cobweb free, and a new wooden floor had been laid across the boarding joists, turning the area into a work-space.
Hauling himself up, May ran his beam over the walls and located a light switch. The single mercury vapour lamp was bright enough to illuminate the centre of the room. He wiped the dirt from his palms and sat back against a packing crate. There were at least twenty sealed tea chests here, unsteady stacks of books, dustsheeted pieces of furniture, carpentry equipment, an old litho press, plaster statues, an upright harpsichord. The Whitstable brothers had hidden away a large part of their past, and all of it would have to be searched.
He rolled back the dustsheet from an open-topped crate and shone his torch inside. A soot-blackened Victorian dinner service, complete by the look of it, and a number of Staffordshire figurines lying unwrapped and unprotected. He raised a pair and studied them. A soldier mounted upon his steed, his helmet beneath his arm, another beside the barrel of a mobile cannon, probably characters from the Crimean War. Bryant would know who they were. A set of horse paintings that looked to be by Stubbs, a bust of Walpole, numerous leather-bound first editions. He tried to imagine how much the contents of the attic were worth. By the look of it, the brothers had been sitting on a fortune. He wondered who stood to benefit most.
It was the theatricality of the investigation that bothered him more than anything else. The esoteric upperclass murder belonged to the world of Edwardian fiction. Such deaths simply did not occur in the modern world. A busy week in the West End could yield half a dozen killings of official interest, but they all fell into the standard categories. A young Chinese man attacked with a sword in Chinatown in broad daylight, possibly a triad connection, bad gambling debts. A punter leaving a club on Saturday night, found dead in an alley, seen flashing cash by a group of shark-eyed kids who waited for him to leave. An altercation outside a bar that left one dead and one in critical condition, knives and drink and a row over nothing much at all. Bryant was right – the common run of city crime was vicious and pointless, usually fueled by alcohol. From the business end, it was rarely worthy of attention.
In the 1970s, most murders still took place at home. Women were more likely to die there than men, nearly half of them suffering at the hands of a husband or lover. Men were slaughtered by acquaintances and strangers, simply because they got out of the house more often than their partners. Ethnic gang violence was unimaginable. Drug-related crimes were unheard of. East Enders still mentioned the Kray brothers in shocked reverence, but nobody really thought they were gentlemen.
May knew that the statistics of death were inaccurate: doctors were pulling more victims through, more crimes were reported, technological breakthroughs were being made, lawyers were disputing terminology, the boundary lines were shifting. They could be certain of just two facts. Murder was more likely to be committed within the family. And each passing year brought rising figures.
But as for this…
He looked around at the accretions of more than a century, relics of the past, overflowing from every corner. There was a touch of Robert Louis Stevenson here, the sense of a long-standing family feud reaching a flashpoint.
