The Watchmaker Of Filigree Street Part 8

Thaniel said nothing. Spindle took off his gla.s.ses again and looked toward the bomb with his lips pressed together hard. He had seemed nearly happy before, taking it apart, but he was frightened now.

'Mori,' he said, as if he were having to look at the idea from different angles. Thaniel thought he would say something else, but he took a deeper breath then and shook his head slightly. 'You know you're carrying this around awfully casually for something made with about two hundred pounds' worth of diamonds.'

'Two hundred pounds?'

The watchmaker nodded. 'There are about ten times more jewel bearings in here than even the best chronometers need. Something like this is ... well, it would be only a method of hiding jewels, not using them.'

'Hiding them.'

'Yes.' He pulled his fingers down his long nose and touched his already-perfect cravat. Having peered into the watch again, he twitched aside the cover he had placed over the remains of the bomb, and lifted out a blackened metal coil with a pair of tweezers. 'Bimetallic mainsprings,' he murmured.

'Pardon?' said Thaniel.

'One of the problems of clockwork is lost time. A solution is to use a mainspring made of two different metals. They expand and contract at different rates in heat and cold, which evens out the time loss caused by using just one. It is a signature of Mr Mori's to use steel and gold, so that you can see the colour difference. Like you can here.'

He held up the watch. Thaniel leaned close. The mainspring gleamed silver on the outside and gold inside. Without speaking again, Spindle lifted the tweezers to present the bomb's mainspring. Although it was charred, the colour difference was still clear.

'Don't springs come from factories?'

'Raw parts, yes, but the man who mentioned bimetallism to factories would be lynched. We do that ourselves. Every watchmaker makes his clockwork differently. This is not a business of patents. If factories got hold of our secrets, we would be finished.'

Thaniel took a breath to say he understood, but Spindle went on over him.

'There is no such thing even as a standard cog; they arrive rough-cut and we all file them down ourselves. Each watch has unique cogs, each maker has his own methods, and his own inventions. This is one of Mori's, for certain. But, of course, anyone could have taken it from one of his watches knowing it was the best, and put it in here. Which is why I would not go so far as to suggest the provenance of this quite yet.' He touched the bomb and Thaniel clenched his hands. 'However, this is his watch, and it is full of diamonds, and whatever the purpose of these extra mechanisms, they were measuring where the bearer was at half past nine yesterday. May I ask who was carrying it?'

'I was.'

There was a pause. 'Do you know Mori, then?'

'No. That watch was left in my flat months ago. I think it must have been meant for a different Steepleton.'

'Indeed.' He looked worried.

'You know, Williamson is going to some pains to keep you a secret and you're here telling everyone you've got the Yard bomb. Are you sure you should be?'

Worry turned to indignation. 'How I do business is rather my own affair, don't you think?'

'All right,' said Thaniel.

Having been charged a punis.h.i.+ng fee for the inspection probably revenge for owning something of Mori's he left the shop slowly and stopped in the sun. If he had been an organiser for Clan na Gael charged with the execution of a bombing, he knew what he would have done. He would have found a very good clockwork maker to put together the bomb, a long while before the fact so that there would be no demonstrable contact between the maker and the group in the months running up to the explosion. He would have had it planted, though, only a few minutes before it went off, or certainly after nine o'clock, because the chances of the police finding it in their own headquarters during their extensive searches was otherwise too great. He would have given the man who planted the bomb a watch made with identical clockwork and an alarm set to go off just before the explosion, so that he would know exactly when to get undercover as he left the Yard. And he would have put the bombmaker's payment in that watch, so that he would only receive it if the alarm worked and the bearer was not blown up before he could return it.

Of course it all went wrong if the watch was delivered to the wrong man. He watched a pair of white horses sail by and could not think how it had been delivered to the wrong man. It had been his name and his room. Williamson was probably checking census records now to see if there were other Steepletons in Pimlico.

There was a post office a short way from Spindle's shop, so he ducked in and wrote out a short telegram for Williamson, outlining what Spindle had said about the clockwork and the diamonds. When he took it to the desk, the woman glanced at the message, which he had written ready in code, and smiled at him.

'Telegraphist?'

He nodded and touched the call code he had pencilled in automatically in place of an address. 'I know half the wires are down in Whitehall. Is it still possible to get this to the police headquarters?'

'Everything for Whitehall is going through the Foreign Office, actually. Theirs are the only working lines. I'd think there's quite a delay by now,' she said, looking at the service box he had ticked. 'There's probably no use sending it expedited. You may as well send it as a day letter.'

'No, I'll try this all the same. The clerk at the other end might take it downstairs before lunch rather than after.'

'I shan't charge you,' she said. 'You've done all the work for me.'

'Oh, thank you.'

'Which office are you?'

She meant which post office, and a second later he saw he should have lied, but his attention was not wholly there and so the truth came by default. 'The Home Office.'

'Oh,' she said, and her expression closed into something tangled around pity and wariness. 'Well, good meeting you.'

When he left, he walked toward the train station, but slowed before he reached it. It was a watch full of diamonds. Williamson would scream if he found out he had gone home and left Mori un.o.bserved. He crossed the road and started for Knightsbridge.

In the warm day, Filigree Street had come alive. He pa.s.sed a stationery shop selling gla.s.s pens tied on ribbons to a great pair of antlers, and a bakery where a model Ferris wheel spun tiny fancy cakes slowly around and around in the window. When he found Mori's workshop door open and Katsu sunbathing on the step, the clockwork octopus did not seem out of place, and certainly n.o.body else seemed to think so. The people looking into the shop windows were nicely dressed, and some of the women were carrying packages tied with Harrods blue ribbons. Feeling shabby, he stepped over the octopus.

'Afternoon,' said Mori from his desk. 'Did the fainting go down well at work?'

'I didn't try, I bled all over the place instead.' He had to take another breath, although there ought to have been plenty left over after such a short sentence. 'I'd like to take the rent on that room, if it's still free.'

'Really?'

'Yes, mine's depressive.'

Mori opened his shoulders. He was only straightening out of his more usual bad posture, but it made him seem smaller, like a boy told to recite a poem. 'Why is it?'

'It ... Well, I had cleared most of it out, before yesterday.'

Mori did not ask why again. Instead, with his left hand, he took a kettle from where it had been resting on its stand and poured out the water into two waiting cups. It turned green with the powdered tea. He leaned over the desk to give one to Thaniel, who took it and was surprised to find the cup almost too hot to touch, the water having only just boiled.

'You've got a knack for this. Oh, here.' He held out the steam toy. 'It helped. Thank you.'

'I think it's that I drink too much tea,' Mori said as he took the gold ball. The heat from the kettle was making some of the moons in the floating solar system above him turn a fraction quicker on their axes. Saturn's rings had s.h.i.+fted upward. Now that he looked, there were too many planets; on the outer edge were two extra, spinning around each other as well as the sun. He wasn't surprised. Only reading the newspaper on the night s.h.i.+ft was a good way to miss major astronomical discoveries.

'Can Six try?' said somebody else, and Thaniel jumped. There was a tiny girl beside Mori. She had been leaning forward and sitting still, and though she was in plain view, he hadn't seen her before. She was a mouse of a thing. Her hair was cropped short and her dress made of lumpy black stuff hardly finer than hessian. Mori gave her his own cup and she tried the tea solemnly before making a face and giving it back.

'Is she yours?' he said, confused.

'No. This is Six; she's making some fusee chain for Mr Fanshaw. The workhouse is the only place that produces it these days, but they throw it away; apparently the children make it only to stave off idleness.' He let his voice drop lower as he quoted the workhouse slogan. 'So I had to rent her for the day. Six, Mr Steepleton.'

'Six?' echoed Thaniel.

'They're numbered at the workhouse. Give them back,' he aimed at her.

The girl aimed owl eyes at him. 'Six hasn't got anything.'

'Left pocket. And I think you're old enough to speak in the first person.'

Looking annoyed, she pulled out a pair of multi-lensed gla.s.ses of the kind he had just seen Spindle use. Thaniel stared hard at them. He knew the name, but he couldn't think. His tired brain gave him wolves. No; loupes.

'Thank you.' Mori took them back. 'There are still scones in the kitchen if you like,' he added to Thaniel. 'Make yourself at home.'

'Can I have another one?' Six said.

'Yes.'

Six slid down from her high chair and bobbed through the workshop's back door. She clunked her boots were too big for her. Thaniel followed her slowly, and carefully, because like Mori she was more fragile than the usual model of human.

She couldn't reach the table, and so he had to pa.s.s her the scone. 'It's a fine day out, isn't it?' he said, for something to say.

Mori must have made her scrub her hands, because they were brilliantly clean against the rest of her grubby and rumpled self. Under it all, she couldn't have been older than four or five, and if Mori had been allowed to take her away from the workhouse, she was an orphan. He could excuse her stealing.

'Six saw a caterpillar.'

'What kind?'

'Green, with purple and white zigzags.'

'I see,' Thaniel said slowly. Liking children did not keep him from being perplexed by them. He was recently too old to remember his own childhood with any clarity. 'I imagine that was exciting?'

She glanced up at him warily. 'No. It was just a caterpillar.'

'Do you know what caterpillars turn into?' he tried again.

'Yes. Babies know that.' She bit into her scone, quickly, as if she thought he might take it from her. 'How does it decide if it's going to be a b.u.t.terfly or a moth?'

'I ... don't know.'

'They're different species,' Mori said from the workshop. 'It's the way you decided not to be a monkey before you were born.'

Six considered. 'Matron says I'm a monkey,' she countered.

'Matron will find she is anatomically incorrect.'

Nodding to herself, Six clunked back into the workshop with the remaining half of her scone. Thaniel followed, wanting to see what she was doing and why Mori wasn't doing it himself. Once she had stopped eating, she picked up a pair of pliers in one hand, and lifted something invisible in the other. The light glinted on it and he thought he saw a strand, only a fraction thicker than hair.

'Give back Mr Steepleton's watch,' he said.

'You've got a stupid girl's name,' she mumbled, but she held out the watch to Thaniel. He took it, embarra.s.sed. He was no good at making himself at home and he could see he was drifting pointlessly. Something about the way Six was holding herself was proprietorial: she had taken the watch to offend him and make him go away. She wanted Mori to herself.

'No. That would be Keiko. I'm Keita. Your idea of gender markers is nationally subjective.'

'What does that mean?' she snapped.

'Stupid,' he said. 'Do your work.'

She snorted at him but did as she was told. 'What is this for ?' she asked.

Mori had put on his gla.s.ses, and now he moved them down again. 'You know when you wind up a spring and let it uncoil, it moves fast at first but then slowly?' he said.

She nodded. Thaniel looked too.

'Springs regulate the movement of clocks. You can't have a clock starting too fast and becoming too slow. So, if you wind that chain around the spring, and wind the other end around a cone shape the mainspring barrel the clock will keep even time. Modern clocks work differently, so almost n.o.body makes the chain any more. Hardly anyone could make it, even if they wanted to. The links are too tiny. I managed four in an hour.'

She smiled, pleased with that. 'Six can do a hundred and fifty.'

He adjusted his gla.s.ses again. 'Keita is impressed.' He lifted his eyes at Thaniel and widened them to ask why he was still standing up and wearing his hat.

'Sorry, I was watching.'

'How are you with machinery?'

'I fix telegraphs sometimes.'

'Sit down,' he said, and when Thaniel sat, he set in front of him a framework mechanism, a spring, and six or seven cogs. He separated them gently and showed him how to fit them on to their spindles, and how they linked, and how to file them down. Because he had to lean close, Thaniel could smell the lemon soap from his skin and his clothes. The colour of his voice and the warm air from the open door made the workshop feel far from London. When Thaniel looked up next, it was counterintuitive to see the medieval street beyond the window and the black cab pulling up outside.

'Oh, that's Fanshaw,' he said.

Six looked interested and Mori prodded her. 'No,' he said.

'I haven't done anything!'

'Go and play in the garden, if you don't want to be arrested and sent to Australia.'

'There's nothing in the garden,' she grumbled.

'Well, there's a cat, and some fairies, and a watering can. You're five, you'll make do.'

She looked up. 'Fairies?'

'Hm?'

She was gone before Fanshaw reached the door.

'Won't she be disappointed when there aren't fairies?' Thaniel said.

'There are, I made some.'

'What? Why?'

Mori nodded toward the Haverlys' house. 'Those little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds from next door have stopped coming in here and breaking everything since there have been magic things to chase in the stream.'

'Afternoon!' Fanshaw called from outside. He paused to take off his hat and coat. 'It's turned rather hot, hasn't it? Good G.o.d. Right, now I come without much hope, I have to say, because this seems to be a sticky job.' He folded his coat over his arm and then stopped dead just before the doorstep. 'What is that?'

'An octopus,' said Mori, making no move to rescue him.

Thaniel ducked in front of him and picked the thing up. The clockwork was so well- jointed that it was upsettingly like the real thing. He put it down quickly on the worktop, from where it flopped into Mori's lap and wrapped itself around his arm. He stroked it absently.