rain began to fall.
“We’re keeping a twenty-four-hour guard on the house,” said May as they turned into Mayberry Grove. “If you’re planning to go out, you’d better let me have an itinerary.”
“I have to attend a meeting of my society tomorrow night,” said Bella, alighting from the car. “I know that William and Peter would have wanted me to keep the appointment. I suppose someone will have to come with me.”
“Who is the meeting with?” asked Bryant.
“The Savoyard Society,” said Bella, closing the door. “Gilbert and Sullivan. I’m the president. Don’t worry, I can see myself in.”
“Well,” said May as he and Bryant drove back to Mornington Crescent, “what did you make of her?”
“She seems to have an extremely calm attitude to all of this. Either she’s genuinely undisturbed by what’s going on, or she’s lying about how much she knows.” Bryant looked out at the rainswept night. “I hope she can tell us something.”
“I’m not too sure she wants to,” said May. “If there’s anything the Whitstable family members share in common, it’s that none of them knows how to behave like a normal human being. How can we ever expect to establish a motive?”
“More to the point,” said Bryant, “how can we hope to keep the remaining members alive?”
? Seventy-Seven Clocks ?
12
Savoyards
She was startled to find blood on the pillow.
She had bitten her lower lip in her sleep. The dream had returned again. Now that she was awake, her face turned to the growing stripe of daylight bisecting the ceiling of her room, she felt the dread of those endless alleys dissolving within her.
In the past week Jerry had seen stranger things, and they had not been dreams. For the first time, reality had proved more disturbing than her imagination. She thought of the swathed body in the barber shop and shuddered. She had succeeded in stepping beyond the comfort zone provided by her parents, and into an area of unpredictability. The thought excited her. Dr Wayland had ended their session with a warning about the harm of allowing what he termed ‘negative aspects’ of her nature to the fore. His main concern was to keep Gwen’s monthly cheques rolling in.
She checked the alarm clock and rolled out of bed. At eight o’clock the house was still silent. Neither Jack nor Gwen would be awake for another half hour. Wait until the papers arrived, she thought, they’d be able to read about the latest gruesome discovery at their only child’s place of employment. Gwen would probably find a way of implying that she was somehow to blame.
Her parents’ friends were all offshoots from the same cultivated tree. The men were higher-echelon professionals; their partners were wives before they were women. In the uppermost branches were the families fortified by generations of old money, trust funds, and minor titles. Below were the rising tendrils of the nouveaux riches. Jack and Gwen were locked into a precise level of British life, sparkling ammonites in their strata of London society. They lived in town, which was becoming too
Further complicating the family’s position was the fact that Jerry’s difficult personality had encouraged her parents to enrol her at a small private school in Chelsea which enjoyed a fine reputation as a clearinghouse for the problem children of the comfortable classes.
Jerry had never had to tidy her own bedroom; that job was reserved for the Swedish au pair. She was not allowed to put posters on the walls because of the pin marks they left. If she told Gwen how she had talked to the police, her mother would probably faint from sheer embarrassment. Jerry had a sneaking suspicion her parents lived in fear of children developing strong imaginations. In their eyes it encouraged creativity, which prevented young people from becoming productive. It was important to them that she did something useful. As she bathed and dressed, she wondered if they would ever allow her to choose her own course in life. So much could happen in the space of a single week. She had glimpsed death and conspiracy, had spoken to the working-class men and women who dealt with it as part of their daily routine, and now she wanted to know more. She still had the Bible in her possession. She needed to consider her next move very carefully.
As she wiped condensation from the mirror and combed back her wet hair, she thought about Joseph Herrick. He had been busy working on his designs for the theatre, but the next time he came past the reception desk, she decided, she would ask him out on a date.
For the first time, it seemed that anything and everything was possible, so long as she kept her own counsel.
NEW LINK IN WHITSTABLE DEATHS ‘DENIED BY POLICE’
According to a source close to the police team working in London’s most controversial murder investigation division, vital evidence linking three bizarre deaths in the past week is being deliberately ignored.
From its inception, the Peculiar Crimes Unit has drawn charges of elitism, and faces criticism for its working methods, which encourage experimentation over traditional investigative procedure. Now it is being suggested that a vital clue common to all three deaths has been discounted in favour of obscure ‘alternative’ theories.
William and Peter Whitstable, together with their lawyer Maximillian Jacob, were supposedly murdered in circumstances bearing no links, but the
The sign of the sacred flame is popularly used by members of the Whitstable family and their business associates. But during the Second World War this very symbol had a more sinister meaning. It was a code used by German assassins to mark predetermined British targets.
Between 1941 and 1944 no fewer than thirty-seven English men and women who were perceived to be a threat to the German invasion were coded with the sacred-flame symbol. All were subsequently eliminated in a variety of bizarre scenarios. The sacred flame has a mythological origin connected to German Olympian ideals.
Few now remember the terror that this sign once inspired. The re-emergence of the flame’s use, timed at the start of a conference which is of great importance to Britain’s entry into the Common Market, suggests the return of powerful right-wing German interests.
Experts say that the Whitstable family have exploited profitable export connections with German delegates who are attending the conference. Recently their Hamburg office suffered extensive damage and two members of staff were injured after a firebomb was hurled through a ground-floor window.
Confronted with this fresh evidence, a police spokesperson denied any link with recent German banking offences, suggesting that the connection of the sacred flame was ‘spurious at best’.
On the morning of 14 December, Bryant and May began the second week of their investigation by facing up to two major problems in their search for information.
The first was a lack of available manpower. Theirs was the only division ranking above the existing Area Major Investigation Pools in Britain. These pools were divided by areas, and handled the majority of homicide inquiries. Typically, they were overworked and understaffed. In theory, the new unit was supposed to receive help from the pools’ senior investigating officers, but in practice it was not possible to free them from their essential
