Bryant & May 03; Seventy-Seven Clocks

the Savoy barber in order to kill the Major took careful planning. And getting close enough to William Whitstable to slip him the bomb took great skill. If their deaths hadn’t been filled with such baroque flourishes we may never have come to pin the blame on James Makepeace Whitstable.”

“You think James Whitstable planned the details of his rivals’ deaths?”

“Certainly,” said Bryant, stamping experimentally on his accelerator. “That’s why no modern methods of execution were employed. The murders were designed to strike fear into competitors.”

“It makes you wonder how James Whitstable’s conscience could have allowed him to set this up.” May looked through the windscreen and blanched. “Mind that bus, Arthur.”

“I suppose he thought he was more Christian than the rest,” replied his partner. “Think of the times in which he lived. He honestly believed that his family was more worthy of preservation than others.”

“Er, do you want me to drive?”

The little car swerved across into the next lane to avoid a pair of cyclists riding abreast, then accelerated through amber lights.

“He behaved no differently from our missionaries,” continued Bryant, “smashing up the religious artefacts of one civilization to replace them with our own idols. I’m sure half of England still thinks that their religion is better than anyone else’s.”

“I hate to ask,” said May, “but can’t you go any faster?”

“We’re doing over sixty and running the reds, which isn’t bad for Gray’s Inn Road in the pouring rain, considering I’ve only got one windscreen wiper and bald tyres and I can’t see out of the rearview mirror.”

The little Mini cut across the five-way intersection at King’s Cross, causing a truck to slew sideways across the road, shedding its load as it ploughed into the safety barrier.

They had just reached Chalk Farm Tube station when they noticed the rain-haloed streetlights flickering further up Haverstock Hill. A moment later the lights went out, and the entire roadway ahead was plunged into darkness.

“We were warned this would happen,” said May. “The Electricity Board is conserving energy because of the strikes. They’ve started pulling the plugs on whole areas of London.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” snapped Bryant. “We’ve gone full circle. They’ve got the night on their side at last.”

? Seventy-Seven Clocks ?

48

Bringing Back the Day

“You bitch, you knew all along.”

“Geraldine, whatever else you may think, I am still your mother, and you have no right – no right at all – to talk to me that way.”

They were facing each other across the parlour like a pair of evenly matched actresses in a stage melodrama. Gwen was even poised with a whisky in one hand. God only knew where Jack was, presumably sulking in his study, still smarting from his daughter’s success with Charles Whitstable.

Jerry was operating on pure adrenaline. With the past suddenly clear to her, it seemed that her life had been building to this moment. “You always knew,” she seethed.

“This is quite uncalled for.” Gwen threw back the Scotch and reached for the decanter with an unsteady hand. “I don’t know why you’re behaving like this.”

“I was convinced I was ill, abnormal, incurable, and all the time it wasn’t me at all.” Jerry took a step forward. She feared she might rush at her mother if she moved any closer. “He said he wanted a daughter. You farmed me out to him. I remember it all now, so you don’t have to pretend any more. I used to arrive with you at his apartment. It was you who took me, not Jack. You left me there. That’s when he started the hypnotherapy, gently putting me to sleep. Did he ever tell you what he did?”

“Geraldine, you have to believe me, I was horrified when I found out – ”

“I remember his hands crawling all over me. He used a blindfold, did he tell you that part? He said it was a game.” She was hysterical now, shouting at the top of her voice.

“He never – had intercourse – with you.”

“He would have if you hadn’t found out when you did.”

“I arrived early one afternoon to collect you. The door was open, so I walked in. Charles had – his hands were inside your skirt. You were asleep, you couldn’t possibly have known what was going on. I think he’d given you Valium, just a little pill. I started hitting him, screaming at him. He admitted he’d done it several times before. He blindfolded you because he was ashamed of his actions. He couldn’t look at you, but he couldn’t stop himself. He promised you wouldn’t remember anything.”

“All I remember was being touched in the dark. All the bullshit you fed me about my nyctophobia! It wasn’t fear of darkness.” No wonder she had barricaded herself from Nicholas, and fled from Joseph’s room. No wonder she had frozen at Charles’s touch.

“I just wanted what was best for you,” said her mother. “We had your welfare to consider. If I had gone to the police, the scandal would have made all our lives hell.”

“So you helped him to cover it up. Then you let me go back there, even though you knew the truth. How could you do that? Knowing what he’d wanted to do?”

“You have no idea what he was like.” The tremor in Gwen’s voice was a declaration of damage. “No idea. He knew my position with Jack and he used it.” She refilled her glass with unsteady hands. “He’s a very forceful man. I threatened to go to the police, but he persuaded me not to. He said he would help your father’s business. I refused to let him see you again. He said he couldn’t help himself. What could I do? He was highly thought of; he knew royalty. He would have lost everything if the scandal had come out. I felt so ashamed.”

She wiped her eye with the back of her hand, pacing back to the drinks cabinet. “When your father and I met, Jack was a different man. Full of energy, exciting to be with. Then he lost interest in me. He lost his drive, his ambition.”

“You knocked it out of him.”

“He said he no longer saw the point of wanting to improve our social standing. He was offered a directorship with one of the finest guild companies in Britain and he turned it down! I turned to Charles for help, and then his foolish, weak mistake cost us everything. After finding him with you, I thought I had the upper hand. I didn’t, of course. He just carried on, talking his way around me. I found myself doing anything I could just to keep him quiet, to keep him from harming us.”

“Jack must really despise you,” Jerry said viciously. “No wonder he keeps your letters in his desk drawer.”

“What letters?” Gwen threw her glass back on the cabinet counter with a crack. Whisky splashed on the floor. “The notes you and Charles sent each other. When he couldn’t call the house. Jack found them, and he saved them. It’s his proof, you see. It’s how he keeps his hatred of you alive.”

Gwen was crying now, smearing her lipstick with the heel of her hand. “I just wanted the best for us all. I should have made you my priority. But it was my life, too.”

“And now you have nothing.”

Jerry turned from the room and closed the door as her mother sank into the corner chair with her face in her hands.

¦

The Royal Free Hospital was one of the few buildings in North London with any electricity that night, and shone like a fog-smeared beacon as they approached it. The hospital’s emergency generators had taken over, and the patients and nurses could be seen at the windows moving through a sickly half light.

Two squad cars had already arrived in the visitor’s car park before them. Both were empty. May slipped into the Mini’s driving seat.

“If everything’s all right here,” Bryant called, walking backwards towards the main entrance to the hospital, “I’ll join you up at the house.”