Bryant & May 03; Seventy-Seven Clocks

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.

? Seventy-Seven Clocks ?

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 exposes 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