A crash came from downstairs. Both of her brothers were at home. Since it was six o’clock, the servants’ dinner hour, neither the butler nor Alice was about the house to scold them. Grace sighed and checked the deck of playing cards again.
That morning, she had gone into town with Alice and bought two identical packs of cards. After removing the ace of spades from one and inserting it into the other, she had replaced the tampered version in its package and resealed it. It was a simple test, but having thought about it all Sunday afternoon, it seemed like the best way. Anything more complicated and Thaniel’s friend would know that something was going on. The results would be clear. If he took out the extra ace before they played, it would go a long way to proving Thaniel’s hypothesis. If he did not, it was safe to assume he was a fraud. He was a watchmaker, and Grace had never met a mechanically minded person who could leave a mistake in place. He would take the extra card out if he knew it was there. He had no reason not to.
Beside the mirror, the barometer clicked around to ‘rain’ as the mercury column shrank. She watched it for a few seconds, then looked back through the open door. The corridor was empty; Alice had only just gone down to the kitchen. They had agreed to leave in twenty minutes. Grace slid the tampered cards into the pocket of her summer coat and draped it over her arm. It would be interesting to see how the watchmaker reacted to an early and unchaperoned arrival.
She was at the bottom of the stairs when her brothers charged past. They were not much younger than she was, nineteen and twenty-one, but whenever they were on leave, they regressed to childhood.
‘Out of the way, out of the way!’ shouted James. He was carrying a rugby ball.
Grace flattened herself against the wall. ‘You are not playing rugby in the house.’
‘No, we haven’t got enough men. Do you want to play?’ William asked, beaming. He was the youngest, and Grace suspected that it was he who had acquired the rugby ball. The game had been unheard of when Grace was small, but William had played it at Eton when it first became popular, and now he spoke of it in a reverent tone he normally saved only for women and rifles. Since she had once been with him to see the Harlequins play at Hampstead, she had tried to convince them both to take up cricket instead. Cricket had rules: one was not allowed to stamp on the head of another player and pass it off as enthusiasm.
‘No,’ she said. She peered past them into the drawing room. ‘Did you break that vase?’
‘Oh, probably. James! Here!’
It was, she decided, nothing to do with her. She was busy.
Outside, the heat was as viscous and sticky as honey. It rippled along the marble fronts of the townhouses. As she walked, summer coat still over her arm, the deck of cards was a sharp shape in one pocket. Her skin prickled, and she rubbed her wrists to brush away the thunder flies. They were everywhere today – she could see them in the air, like grain on a photograph.
The storm clouds were ahead as she turned out of Belgravia. Good.
By the time she reached Filigree Street, the rain was sheeting and she looked as though she had fallen in the Thames. She had expected to shiver on the porch and squeak to be let in, but in fact the door of number twenty-seven opened just as she was coming up the steps. Inside, Thaniel smiled.
‘I’m so sorry, the rain … ’ She watched as the water skittered into a row of empty bottles on the bottom step. She had seen the servants at home put them out too, but no one had mentioned what they might be for. The bottle necks were too narrow to be an efficient way of catching rain water.
‘I know, we saw the clouds coming from the workshop. Mori’s making tea. Come in, it’s warm, we’ve got the fire going now … ’ He trailed off and his gaze eased over her shoulder. ‘Is there no one with you?’
‘No,’ she said. Mori. The name sounded familiar, but she could not remember why. ‘I’m sorry. I was supposed to have, but my brothers were playing rugby in the house and I decided I’d had enough, so I left without my chaperone.’
‘Rugby? Why?’
‘God knows,’ she said. He stepped aside to let her in. Taking the pack of cards from the pocket, she hung her wet coat up on the hooks in the hallway. ‘They’re soldiers; when they’re not charging at Africans they want to charge at each other.’
He showed her into a neat parlour. It was small but warm, with a piano in one corner and a low Chinese table by the fire. An armchair had been relegated to the window. He saw her note the odd arrangement.
‘I hope you don’t mind sitting on the floor … ’
‘No, that’s quite all right, it’s Bohemian. Anyway, I’m freezing.’ She dropped down on the rug with her back to the fire and he knelt opposite, straight, like a pianist. She had thought he might be, despite his protestations at the ball.
‘Shall I fetch you a blanket?’ he asked.
Grace coughed. ‘No, no need.’
‘You’ve gone blue.’
‘I’ll warm up in a minute.’ Her eye caught on a grey jumper folded over the arm of the chair. It was the kind that sailors and workmen wore. ‘Actually, would you mind if I borrowed that?’
‘Oh … it’s not mine, but I’m sure Mori wouldn’t mind.’ He fetched it for her. When she took it, she found that it was exactly the right size for her. She pulled it on. It smelled of lemons, and the wool was expensive and soft.
They both twisted around when a clink of china came from the door.
He had not told her what Mori looked like, and she had imagined a grave, traditionally dressed man of an age with Matsumoto’s father. He was not. His clothes were Western and his hair was short and dyed, and he looked very young. When he leaned down to set the tea things on the table, he gave her a polite smile. The smile drew lines around his eyes that gave away his real age, but they disappeared when the smile faded. She smiled back, feeling shabby.
‘Mr Mori, I’m delighted to make your acquaintance,’ she said. She held out her hand across the table. ‘Grace Carrow. I’m sorry to have stolen your jumper. And I’m sorry I’m so early.’ She watched him carefully.
‘Never mind.’ He shook her hand with a grip too strong for his thin fingers, and knelt down beside Thaniel. He seemed not to mind her being early, but that was as much an oriental trait as a clairvoyant one. ‘Where’s your chaperone?’ He had exactly Thaniel’s accent. He must have learned his English from him.
‘I had to go without her, I’m afraid.’
He looked at her as though he could read her motives listed on the back of her skull. ‘Are you certain you should be here alone?’
‘She’s already inside now,’ Thaniel pointed out. Mori hadn’t taken his eyes from her. She shifted and straightened up.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said at last, then held out a plate of beautiful, multi-coloured cakes to her. She didn’t recognise them, but she took one anyway, curious. It was sponge and cream inside, and easily the most wonderful thing she had eaten for months.
‘My God – where did you find these? They’re delicious.’
‘He bakes,’ Thaniel said.
Grace expressed her admiration and took one more, then stopped. She could have eaten half a dozen, but she was bulky next to Mori, and it was making her increasingly uncomfortable. ‘So, why London, if you don’t mind my asking?’ she said.
‘The best clockwork in the world is here.’ The more he spoke, the stranger his voice was. It was too low for his frame, and although even Matsumoto had a trace of his native sibilance sometimes through all the Oxford elocution lessons, Mori didn’t.
‘Oh, of course.’ She stopped, then pulled out her swallow watch. ‘Hold on. Clockwork. This is one of yours, isn’t it?’
He angled it down with one fingertip. ‘Yes. I sold this one to a William Carrow. Your brother?’
‘It was a present. It’s excellent,’ she added, opening the back to show Thaniel the interior bird. ‘I knew your name was familiar. For some reason I imagined that you were Italian. Oh, I’ve brought some cards,’ she added, itchily aware that he could have nothing to say against an accusation of being Italian. She hadn’t imagined that speaking to him would be difficult, but it was. For all he was more fluent, he was far more foreign than Matsumoto. The way he sat had a schooled look to it, and so did the care he was taking over the tea. He had turned her cup so that the blue Chinese design on it faced her, and Thaniel’s. He had done it while they talked and she didn’t think he meant either of them to notice it was ritual. But it was. The china deserved it, too. She recognised the designs. The Belgravia house was full of examples of her mother’s old auction house habits. It was Jingdezhen china, more than three hundred years old and still uncracked. Matsumoto had said once or twice that there was something of a generation gap at home, but she hadn’t known it was so wide.
‘What are we playing?’ said Thaniel.
‘Poker?’ said Grace. ‘Do you know that?’
‘I’ll lose, but yes.’ He looked at Mori. ‘Heard from the British Legation in Tokyo that you’ve got a bit of a reputation at cards.’
‘What are you doing talking about me in dispatches?’
‘Finding out whether or not we should be playing with real money. Have you got any matches?’
‘It wasn’t that bad,’ Mori said, but he took a box of matches from his waistcoat pocket and flicked them to him.
‘Really. I heard it was a house in Osaka.’
‘Nobody wants a house in Osaka,’ he said, and it was strange to hear him switch suddenly to foreign pronunciation in the middle of his English. ‘It would mean you had to live in Osaka.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘It’s like … Birmingham.’
‘We’re still playing with matches,’ Thaniel said. Grace smiled. Mori saw her and smiled too, apologetically. He had the natural quiet of a man who did not entertain often. She slid the deck across the table to him. She had taken care to put the jokers at the top and the extra ace a few cards up from the bottom. He wouldn’t find it by accident.
‘Will you do the honours?’ she said.
‘Mm.’ He picked it up and untied the string on the paper packet. He unwrapped the paper fold by fold and then folded it up again once it was off the box. That, at least, she had seen Matsumoto do, though she had no idea why either of them bothered. The pedantry was faintly grating, but it made her more certain he would take out the ace if he knew it was there.
‘Ten each to start with?’ Thaniel said, counting matchsticks.
Mori set the first joker on to the table, then set the second precisely over it.
‘Stingy,’ said Grace, trying to disguise how she was watching Mori.
‘I haven’t played in years,’ Thaniel grumbled in his good-natured way. ‘Last time I lost to my sister.’
‘Oh, yes, what was her name again?’
‘Annabel. She lives in Scotland.’
Mori picked up three-quarters of the pack, exposing an ace of spades, took it out and set it down on top of the jokers. He put all three on the floor, out of the way, and dealt the cards.
If it was a trick, she could not see how it was done. She spent the first game thinking about it, to no avail. In the meantime, he played like a professional, without looking at his cards. When he won, he turned them over to show a handful of middle numbers. He made a matchstick house out of the winnings, with too much concentration. He was bored, more than bored, although he had been politely careful enough not to let it show in his face. She saw Thaniel watching him too and their eyes met past his shoulder. She nodded slightly and Thaniel looked as though he might break soon. She couldn’t tell what it was, because he was sitting and chatting naturally, but something about him was being held together with willpower and drawing pins, and it made her suspect that there was more to it than being followed and generally worried.
‘You’re good,’ she said to Mori.
‘I had too much spare time and too many brothers when I was young.’ The matchstick house had a chimney. He had very steady hands.
‘I’ll make some more tea,’ Thaniel said.
Mori surfaced. ‘Would it be all right if we were to play something else? With dice?’
‘I’ve got backgammon upstairs.’
‘Why? You’ve done well,’ said Grace.
‘It’s not fair on the two of you.’
‘Oh, bold words.’
He sighed. ‘Factual ones, really. Sorry.’
As Thaniel went out, he turned sideways as if he was avoiding something. The something soon appeared, in the shape of a life-sized but very clearly clockwork octopus. It shuffled into Mori’s lap, seemed to survey the table, and then set about dismantling his matchstick house.
‘Oh, what is that ?’ she said, impressed.
‘This is Katsu.’ He held it up a little and it coiled around his hands.
‘Ka … ’
‘Katsu. It means Victor. For the Queen actually.’
‘Christ, that’s amazing. May I see?’
‘Yes. Careful, he’s heavy. You can see inside if you like.’ He picked the octopus up and passed it over the table to her. When she took it, it was weighted in the way a living thing would have been, toward the centre, but as he had said, much heavier. ‘The clip at the back there.’
Katsu sat still while she opened the panel at the back of its head. The interior gleamed with strata of clockwork, bolted together with miniature diamond bearings. She knew enough about mechanics to follow the cogs until she found the gears. They were tiny, and there were hundreds. It made her feel like a giant looking down into a mine. ‘Good God. Are these random gears? How did you make them?’
‘Spinning magnets,’ he said. He didn’t seem surprised to be asked. ‘Hence that insulation, otherwise he goes wrong whenever he goes near the workshop generator.’
‘That’s … I’ve never seen machinery like this. This is years ahead of ordinary calculating engines.’ She looked up. ‘Decades.’
‘No, no. Clockwork is much further along than most people think. Nobody patents anything. Factories would put watchmakers out of business.’
‘I suppose.’ She clipped Katsu back together and the octopus waved three arms at her as she lifted it by its middle to see how it moved. Perfectly. She tickled it and it curled up. Whatever the unseen advances of clockwork, they were not this advanced. A calculating engine could just about do its twelve times table: there was nothing in the world that could mimic life. She watched Mori closely and decided that at some point in the next minute or so, she would drop the octopus. He gave her an odd look.
‘Careful,’ he said.
She set it gently back on to the floor, where it edged under the table again, back to Mori and the matchsticks. His expression cleared. ‘Fantastic,’ she said.
‘Thank you. Have another cake, they don’t last.’
The sun had come out again at last, and in the warm, late light, the hard icing gleamed different shades of blue and green and red, bright enough to be a pile of sea anemones. She took one and was halfway through it before she saw that he hadn’t joined her.
‘Aren’t you having any?’ Grace said. She felt freshly clumsy. If they had stood together, she was reasonably sure they would be about the same size, but he had a knack of taking up less space.
‘I don’t much like them, actually. I made them for Mr Steepleton. He sees colours in music. He says that if you play these colours in this order on the piano, you come out with “Greensleeves”,’ he said, nodding to the careful arrangement.
Grace studied the cakes, and doubted that it was a real thing so much as a common metaphor used by the musically minded for those who were not. She had heard one of Matsumoto’s choir friends talk the same way. He had been an odd person. ‘Whatever the tune, you should make these more often. They’re very appealing.’
He lifted his head and there was fathoms-deep dislike in his eyes, but then they were only mirrors again and Thaniel was coming back with the tea. He pushed the door gently shut with his elbow, his hands occupied with the tray and the backgammon case under his arm. She watched him and liked his quietness, then stopped when she realised that Mori was watching her.
Whatever knack he had for cards didn’t carry over to dice. They were all more or less equally lucky and unlucky, and though there was much less skill in it and much more chance, he seemed to like it better.
Sunset had come and gone by the time Thaniel took her to find a cab. In the dark, the crooked street was warm, even though she had returned Mori’s jumper, and the drying pavements smelled of rain. Lines of washing hung between the leaning gables. There was almost no noise except the hissing gas lamps and the singing of unseen crickets. They walked in silence for a while.
‘He is certainly a genius,’ she said at last. ‘That octopus is far beyond anything the rest of the world can produce. I put in that extra ace, and he took it out, which means that either somebody from my household told him about it, or you’re right about him.’ She looked up at him. ‘That said, why would he bother? I know that mad geniuses have their pastimes, but fooling a Foreign Office clerk for the sake of it is … odd.’
He was quiet for too long. She saw his chest rise before he spoke. ‘Six months ago, a watch was left in my flat in Pimlico. It let off an alarm a few seconds before the Yard bomb exploded. Saved my life. I had it analysed. The alarm was set for that time and on that day, and no other day. I’m living here because the police told me to. It’s possible that he’s the bombmaker. He could have told me all this to explain away the watch, which otherwise must have been meant for someone else. A big lie for a big mistake.’
‘A bombmaker. That adds a certain urgency.’ She thought about it. ‘All right. Well, if it’s a fraud, then he has someone in my house. It’s the only way he could have known about that extra card. And what I would wear yesterday. I think I’d better speak to my maid before I come to any conclusions. I’ll send a telegram as soon as I know.’
‘Send it fast, if you can. The police are coming tomorrow.’
‘Of course.’ She took his arm. At first he almost pulled away, but then he leaned against her fractionally and she squeezed his hand. ‘You seem to trust me an awful lot,’ she said quietly.
‘You’re a scientist.’
‘Not any more.’
‘You never explained about that.’
‘Well, I’ve left university.’
‘But you were talking about a house of your aunt’s, or—’
‘Oh. It’s … yes,’ she said, surprised that he remembered. ‘She left me a house, but as part of a dowry, held in trust to be handed to my future husband because the women of the family are traditionally stupid and my father won’t put it in my name. If I want it, and its very spacious and laboratory-sized cellar, I need to marry. There’s money too, which is also not in my name. Very simple really.’ She thought of stopping there, but his was an open, inviting quiet. ‘But not likely. The main candidate was Francis Fanshaw, which you know, but he’s a widower. His boy is five. Sensibly enough he doesn’t want the child running about after a stepmother whose cellar is full of noxious chemicals.’
‘So go and rob a bank and do your work in secret in an attic somewhere,’ he said, with unusual force.
Grace had the impression of having come to some thin ice. ‘You sound as if you know what you’re talking about.’
‘I don’t know any science.’
‘You know something.’
He looked as if he wouldn’t say, but then, ‘I used to play the piano. But then my sister’s husband died and so I had to start sending her money, and music isn’t lucrative. But I mean it,’ he continued, without giving her space to be sorry for him. ‘However you do it, doing it is better than giving it up. You can publish under my name if you like. I can send your post on and no one would know.’
She looked up. ‘Would you really?’
‘You didn’t have to come here today. If I could set you up in a laboratory, I would.’
They were both quiet for a few paces.
‘Well, you could, actually,’ Grace said at last. ‘All that’s needed is a warm body. I want my laboratory. Do you want a house in Kensington?’
He laughed, not much. She felt it through his ribs. ‘Your family would have a thing or two to say about that.’
‘No, no. Unsuitable matches are very easy to make if one just walks around Hyde Park until midnight. Immediate disgrace and a certain urgency ensues. One of the Satterthwaite girls did it a few years ago so that she could marry a Catholic Frenchman. When a sign says don’t walk on the grass, one hops.’
He was looking ahead, up the long road and its dots of street lamps to the dark gates of Hyde Park. ‘No, I can’t do that.’
‘It was only a thought,’ she mumbled. ‘I didn’t mean to sound serious.’
‘No, I mean the park isn’t safe. There’s a pub here.’
She looked up. ‘What?’
He let his breath out. ‘My sister has two boys. She gets by on an army pension and what I send, which isn’t much, even now. They go to school at church on Sundays and that’s all, I think. If I could … ’
‘They could go to Harrow,’ she said, and he looked away as if it were a dangerous imagining that he didn’t want to touch or examine too well. She watched it make him wary, but couldn’t think what to say to reassure him. Money didn’t matter when there would always be more of it, but she didn’t want to put it like that. It was such a commonly spoken thing that it was hard to see the real meaning. ‘Why don’t I explain exactly what it would entail, and then you can decide?’ she said eventually.
He nodded and held the pub door open for her. Pipe smoke and men’s laughter washed out to meet them.