The Custodian of Marvels (26 page)

“Jeremiah Cavendish,” crackled a voice in the doorway.

I turned to see a grey-bearded man, wearing a Lincoln green smoking jacket and cap. He stood bent to the left, resting his weight on a walking cane.

“Grand Master,” said Jeremiah, bowing unsteadily.

“What a pleasant surprise,” the man said.

I coughed to attract his attention.

“And who might this be?” he asked, with a look and a smile that I didn’t find comfortable.

I answered, though the question had been addressed to Jeremiah. “My name’s Elizabeth. Mr Cavendish is my uncle.”

“Ah? How charming.”

“It’s me persuaded him to come.”

“That was thoughtful of you,” said the Grand Master, his eyes still directed away from me. “We’ve missed you, Jeremiah. Not in a good way, you understand.”

Jeremiah was looking at the floor. “I’m… sorry.”

“We should adjourn to another room. Your niece can remain here. There are things we need to discuss. In private.”

He was turning as if to leave when I said, “I can’t let you do that.”

“What did you say?”

“My uncle’s ill. I can’t let you take him from my side.”

“He can walk, can’t he?”

“Yes.”

“He isn’t knocking on death’s door?”

“No.”

“Then, young lady, take a seat and wait for the return of your elders and betters.”

“His illness isn’t of the body.” This I said in a whisper.

The Grand Master stepped laboriously towards Jeremiah, the metal tip of his cane clacking against the ancient floorboards. Such was the height difference between the two men that when he came close he had to crane his neck to peer up into the other man’s eyes. He sniffed to the left and right of Jeremiah’s jacket.

“Have you been using opium?”

“It’s the only thing that keeps him calm, sir,” I said.

“I didn’t ask you, girl!”

“Yet I must be the one to answer.”

The Grand Master wheeled and scuttled towards me, his speed driven by anger.

“You’ve been drugging him? No wonder he forgets his duties.”

“Without it, he raves.”

“You insolent girl! I’d have you whipped, but I see I’d not be the first!” He prodded a finger against my swollen lower lip.

I recoiled, from shock rather than pain, for his hand was a prosthesis of metal.

“Now leave us. Go home!”

“I will not,” I said.

“
Will
not?”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“You’ve drugged him to this piteous state. That makes you responsible for the trouble in which he finds himself!”

“His beloved wife died,” I said. “At first he showed a stoic face to the world. But he was crumbling from within. You don’t know how he ranted! He was driven mad from grief. If you’d seen, you’d not blame me for giving him this little comfort. I would’ve kept him away from all gazes, but then I heard that he’d been missed. So I came here. To you. Did I do wrong?”

The Grand Master half-turned and seemed to be examining Jeremiah. My face had flushed during our exchange. If he’d been able to hear my heartbeat, as I could, thumping in my ears, he’d have known my words for lies.

He ran the tip of his tongue over his thin upper lip, calculating, I thought. “Perhaps I’ve misjudged you,” he said. “And I’ve been remiss in not offering refreshment. Would you sit while I have something brought?”

“There’s no need.”

“For you, maybe. But I’m an old man, dry in the throat. And to share a pot of tea might soothe your uncle’s ill humour. I fancy it’s just what he needs. Make him as comfortable as he may be. And you yourself as well, my dear.” Then he tapped his way from the room, saying, “I’ll need to raise a servant.”

Like Jeremiah, the Grand Master was not a proficient liar. His abrupt conversion to our wellbeing was transparently false. We’d come to soothe the suspicions of the guild. But it seemed things had already slipped too far for that. Our appearance at his door, indeed everything I’d said and done, had made matters worse.

I listened until I could no longer hear his walking stick. Then I took Jeremiah’s hand. It felt clammy.

“Come,” I whispered.

He stumbled after me. “Where to?”

“I think he’s telling the Patent Office you’re here. He may have sent for them already – when we first arrived. We must go. Now.”

I retraced our path, along the crooked passage to the front door, which I found unlocked. Jeremiah dragged his feet as he walked, his boots making a scuffing sound against the bricks of the courtyard. It had grown dark whilst we’d been inside.

I left him standing in the shadow of the barrels and went to check the road. At first glance all seemed safe. But then I caught the scent of tobacco smoke on the air and saw the profile of a man standing in the recess of a doorway some yards up the street. He was thickset and wore a coat so long it almost reached his ankles. I watched as he raised a pipe to his mouth.

Back in the courtyard, I found Jeremiah sitting on the edge of one of the barrels.

“I want to sleep,” he said.

“Could you run if pressed?”

He stared blankly at me.

“Then could you open a lock for us so we could hide?”

He held out his fat hands and examined them, front and back, as if they were unfamiliar objects. “Maybe,” he said.

I grabbed his arm and guided him to the door of the workshop. A model of a key hung from a bracket projecting above our heads. I’d seen the same arrangement at Jeremiah’s house.

“Open this one for me,” I said.

I expected him to extract a set of lockpicks from his pocket. Instead he put his hand on the door and pushed. It swung inwards.

“Don’t you people ever lock your own homes?”

“No,” he said.

We were inside now. I closed the door behind us, shutting out what little light there had been.

“You’re locksmiths,” I hissed. “Why not lock up?”

“A locked door gets broken down. Setting traps is better.”

“There were traps in your workshop?”

“It’s alright,” he mumbled. “You didn’t try to steal.”

I put that thought to the side and said, “We need light.”

There was a whisper of cloth, then a distinctive rattle and a strike. Light flared from a lucifer to my right. Jeremiah angled it down to let the flame grow, then held it above his head. My eyes darted around the walls, locating windows. All were shuttered from within. Then I began to take in the room itself. It was of similar size to Jeremiah’s workshop. Indeed, the only differences I could see were in the arrangement of the working space and the tool racks. Jeremiah’s benches and tables had been set around the edge of the room. The Grand Master had gathered his together to form a single large surface in the centre.

The match died. When, after a pause, nothing had happened, I reached out and gave Jeremiah a prod in the ribs.

“What?” he mumbled.

“More light!”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Another flame spluttered to life, revealing his face. His pupils were like black saucers. This time I found an oil lantern, hanging on a hook near the door. A third match had it lit, though I kept the wick turned low. It wouldn’t do to have cracks of light showing in the courtyard.

“Are you awake?” I asked, prodding him again.

He jerked upright and opened his eyes. “Wide awake.”

“We need to get away from here. One of those windows should let us out at the side of the house,” I pointed.

“Mmm.”

“Might it have traps?”

“Maybe.”

“What will the traps look like?”

He shuffled towards the tables in the middle of the room. I followed, holding the lantern high. He stopped half a pace short and wobbled slightly. There were rectangles of brass on a sheet of paper on the bench nearest us. They reminded me of pieces of cloth laid out on a dress pattern. Jeremiah took the lantern from me and moved it left to right.

“There,” he said, pointing to nothing that I could see.

“What?”

“A wire.”

He shifted the lantern again and this time I caught a glint as fine as a thread of spider’s silk stretched across the air in front of me.

“What does it do?”

“Dunno. But don’t snag it.”

He sidestepped, maintaining his distance from the edge of the bench. Near the corner, he stopped and got down on his knees. I crouched to see what he was seeing, bringing my eyes level with the surface.

“There,” he said, and yawned.

In front of us were what appeared to be the innards of a clock. I moved my head across closer to his and then back, but could see no wires in the air.

“Down there,” he said, pointing to the base, which sat a fraction higher from the bench at one corner.

“Spring trigger,” he said.

I straightened myself, choosing not to ask what might have happened if we’d moved it. Jeremiah remained on his knees, staring at the clockwork. I was about to prod him once more, but the rigidity of his posture made me hold back. He lowered the lamp towards the bench and inched it forwards, rotating it slightly so that more light fell on the cogs. His lips moved, but no words came out. The bizarre thought came to me that he might be praying. But then I caught a word and realized he was counting under his breath.

When he was easing back from the mechanism, I asked, “What did you see?”

“A pendulum spring.” He pointed one of his sausage-like fingers. “And there’s an escapement. Then a train of cogs. It’s a timer.”

“But what were you counting?”

“The teeth on the cogs.”

“We need to be gone,” I said, taking his hand.

“Divide if it’s gearing down. Multiply if it’s gearing up.” His words were still slurred, but there’d been more focus about him since we entered the workshop.

I led him around towards windows that would face the side of the building, making sure I held myself back from the benches, as he had done.

“Focus on the shutters,” I said. “Tell me if there are wires or springs or anything like that.”

He held up the lantern in front of a window and moved it around. He angled his head to look into the cracks between the shutters and the frame. “There’s just that wire,” he said at last, drawing a line in the air.

I could see nothing.

He prodded at the blackness with his finger.

“It’s slack,” he said.

“Meaning?”

“We can just unhook it.”

He reached to the left of the window and made some small manipulation. Only when he held the thing over his palm could I see that there was indeed a wire with a neat loop at the end.

“Douse the light,” I said, then, holding my breath, I swung the shutter inwards.

No bell chimed and no gun fired. I breathed again and opened the other shutter.

Jeremiah was growing sharper by the minute. His examination of the sash window was quicker. On his nod, I hefted it up. It slid smoothly on its counterweights. I climbed out and found myself in the alley to the side of the Grand Master’s residence. There being no watchers that I could see, I beckoned Jeremiah, who clambered out to join me. Then he reached back in and reset the wire. I watched as he pulled the inside shutters back into place.

“It was a fine clock,” he whispered.

Having lowered the window, I took his hand and started leading him towards the rear of the building. Keeping to the backstreets would be safest at first. But once we’d put some distance between ourselves and the Grand Master, we’d be less conspicuous mingling with other evening walkers on the main thoroughfares.

“A fine clock,” Jeremiah said again, his voice sharper.

“Good,” I said.

“It belongs in a timer lock.”

We had turned the corner of the building. Light streamed from a row of windows on the other side of the alley. I led Jeremiah along next to the wall.

“I counted the teeth on the cogs,” he said.

“I saw you do it.”

“So I know how long the timer runs for.”

We crossed the street, entering another alleyway. Every step now took us further from the Patent Office agents that I feared had been summoned.

“The escapement allows one click for a second.”

“That’s interesting,” I said, though I had no sense of what he was really trying to tell me.

“I counted the teeth on the cogs, so I know the number of seconds. It’ll run for six hundred and twenty-one of them.”

We turned another corner and came under the glow of a line of streetlamps. I began to open my stride.

“So, you’re telling me that he’s building a lock that stays shut for exactly that time?”

“Yes.”

“And how much time does that make?”

“It makes ten minutes and twenty-one seconds,” he said. “I just thought you should know.”

CHAPTER 23

October 10th

To solve a mystery you must ask the right question. To keep a mystery you must have them ask the wrong one.

The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

We didn’t go back directly to the tenement. Our first stop was the Crown and Dolphin on Cable Street. I sat Jeremiah in a private booth and ordered wine for myself and strong coffee for him. Then, once my heartbeat had slowed and his had speeded, I set off back to the rookery.

Tinker was playing by the yellow light spilling from a doorway, kicking a bladder with some other boys. On seeing me, he ran to my side, whereupon I gave him a message to carry, then headed back to the public house. Fabulo must have sprinted all the way after me, because I was scarcely back in the booth with Jeremiah before he burst into the saloon bar.

He clambered up onto the bench, out of breath and with a smell of fresh sweat on him. “Is it done?”

“It’s done,” said Jeremiah.

“But it’s not good,” I said. “There was too much suspicion for anything I could have said to make things right. We can never go back there. The Grand Master wanted to hand us over to the Patent Office. He didn’t say it, but I’m certain. And the fact that we ran away will put him doubly on guard.”

“Then stay away we shall!” said Fabulo. “In a few days we’ll have quit London forever.” He looked first at Jeremiah, then at me. “But there’s more bad news in your eyes. Damn it all to Hell! Tell it to me straight.”