sometimes saw them.”
“How would you describe Daisy?”
Michelle composed herself and sat up, thinking for a moment. “Very quiet, not an outgoing child. Like her cousins, rather pale, a bit small for her age. Inclined to be moody. She’s a direct descendant from the original Whitstables. She shares the same temperament.”
“I’m a little confused. Did Isobel retain the family name upon marriage?”
“It’s something most of the Whitstable ladies are allowed to do. So long as they stay in the family business.”
“I suppose it has its advantages.” Bryant checked the statement in his hand. “It says here that Daisy was wearing a light summer frock. It was very cold yesterday. Why do you think she’d have gone outside dressed like that?”
“I don’t know,” said Michelle. “It was warm in the house. That’s how Mrs Whitstable likes it.”
“The doors and windows, were any of them kept open, just to help cool the rooms down?”
“No, Sir. And Daisy isn’t allowed to go out of the front door by herself.”
“But you found it open when you went into the hall.”
“That’s right. Someone had put the latch up.”
“You didn’t hear her go out?”
“No, Sir.”
“Think back carefully, Michelle. I want to cover everything that happened from the moment you last spoke to Daisy, whether it has any relevance to her disappearance or not.”
Michelle nodded sadly.
“Let’s start with the last time you were aware of Daisy’s presence in the house. You were standing in the kitchen, making tea…”
It took them an hour to cover the events of the previous afternoon. Michelle cried at several points in her account. In the minutes after she had found the front door open and searched the street, Daisy’s parents had arrived home, and an argument had ensued. Later, Mrs Whitstable had angrily accused her of incompetence and negligence in her duties. Then she had fired her. Michelle explained tearfully that it was more than just a job – that she really loved her charges, even the difficult ones, that she was more worried for Daisy’s safety than for her own future.
Bryant tapped her former statement with the end of his pencil. “There’s a point here I don’t understand,” he said. “You boiled the kettle. You turned down the radio. Then you say you heard Daisy run across the floor upstairs. It says here…” he squinted at the sheet, readjusting his spectacles,“ ‘
“No, I turned it down very low.”
“Then how could you have heard music?”
Michelle thought hard. “There was a song playing.”
“Somewhere else in the house?”
“No, not in the house.”
“Coming from next door? Or in the street? What kind of music?”
“Tinkly. I don’t really remember.”
“What, a car radio?”
“No, more like an ice-cream van. Only they don’t come round at this time of year, do they?”
“Does Daisy like ice cream?”
“Very much, but she’s forbidden to eat between meals.”
“Did she have money in her room?”
“Yes, a little bear bank. You don’t suppose – ”
“You don’t happen to know how much money she had in her room exactly?”
“Not right now, but Daisy kept a written note of it. She’s a very practical girl.”
Bryant placed a call to Luke Whitstable, then made an internal call to have someone check the area’s icecream companies and van registrations.
Within the hour he received two return calls. The first from Daisy’s father, confirming that his daughter’s tally showed a discrepancy of fifty pence from her bear bank. And the second from an officer reporting that the ice-cream van allocated to the road where Luke and Isobel Whitstable lived was not due to return until next April.
With a sinking heart, Bryant was forced to acknowledge that the Whitstable family might well have lost another member, and this time, surely, a blameless one.
? Seventy-Seven Clocks ?
21
Connectivity
It was time for Joseph to start looking for another job. He had decided to stay on in London for a while longer, until the money ran out. To return home now would be to admit defeat. Jerry needed help, although he wasn’t sure what kind, or how he could be of use to her. She was already seeing some kind of shrink. She suffered from an overactive imagination, and her insistence on turning everything into a mystery bugged him. The girl seemed drawn to the morbidity of the police investigation. He couldn’t figure her out. When she spoke of her parents, or the conspiracy she imagined surrounding them, it was as if she meant something else entirely; as if her true intentions lay just beneath the surface, and he had yet to bring them into the light.
He was about to leave the room, when the telephone rang.
“It’s my turn to apologize. About last night.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I wanted to…but…”
“Listen, I think we both have some issues to work out first. Are you at work?”
“Yes. Something just came up on my daily schedule. There’s a meeting arranged for this morning in one of the conference rooms. Savoy Theatre Shareholders. Have you ever been a waiter?”
“Yeah, when I was at college.”
“Is it easy? I mean, could I do it? All I have to do is stand beside the coffee pot and serve them when they take their break, right?”
“Jerry, what are you talking about?”
“The refreshment area is just outside the main room. Hopefully I’ll be able to hear every word they say.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Joseph protested. “You’re going to pretend to be a waitress just so you can – ”
“It’s all aboveboard. Why not? I can arrange to switch shifts for the day, although Nicholas is being a real creep. I even get paid. I already checked it out.”
“But what’s the point?”
“People are being murdered and blackmailed and you ask me about the point? Things like this go on all the time and nobody stops them.”
“That’s conspiracy-theory crap.”
“Watergate isn’t crap, it’s real. Men in power abuse their positions. It’s not until individuals take matters into their own hands – ”
“All right,” he interrupted, “do it, but promise me something. If you don’t hear or see anything suspicious, let the police handle it their way.”
“It’s a deal.”
As Joseph replaced the receiver, he had to admit he was intrigued. If he had really lost his job because Miyagawa had been set up, he had a strong case for wrongful dismissal.
¦
PC Charlie Bimsley was at the very end of the Metropolitan Police chain of command. When orders filtered down from the top, when reprimands were issued and disagreeable duties were passed on, they were usually dumped in Charlie’s ample lap. If restaurant dustbins had to be searched for a discarded weapon, if a decomposed body stuck in a drain had to be dislodged, people in power would turn to each other and say, “Let’s get Bimsley to
