The Clockmaker's Secret

Chapter 4

4

‘So, who are you, really, Mr. Hardy?’ Mrs. Greyson said, holding back his breakfast plate as though its delivery were reliant on his answer. ‘I mean, you stay here at my guesthouse in the middle of nowhere for weeks on end, and all you do every day is walk on the moors or wander about the village. Are you here for any particular reason?’

Slim shrugged. ‘I’m a recovering alcoholic.’

‘Yet you dine in the Crown every night?’

‘Call it penance,’ Slim said. ‘I’m confronting my personal demons. Plus, I always sit in the family room, out of sight of the booze.’

‘But why here? Why Penleven? If I hadn’t noticed your inability to remember basic functions like to take your front door key when you go out, I might imagine you to be a spy in hiding.’

Slim shrugged. ‘I couldn’t afford to go abroad. And I’ve always been attracted to Cornwall, particularly the cold, dark, featureless parts most people avoid.’

‘Well, there’s nowhere more like that than Penleven,’ Mrs. Greyson said with an air of slight disappointment, as though she had once had an opportunity to leave but missed her chance. ‘There are only a couple of hundred people in the village, but at least we’re not a winter ghost town like many of the coastal villages.’

‘Ghost town?’

‘Boscastle, Port Isaac, Padstow … they’re all holiday homes. Thriving in summer, deserted in winter. We might not be a bustling community, but at least there’s always a friendly face in the shop or the pub.’

On the occasions he had ventured into the Crown’s bar to order his meal, Slim had seen few friendly faces but lots of downtrodden ones, slumped over their pints, staring into space. Perhaps it was the winter—at night the wind howled, rattling his window hard enough, he feared sometimes, to rip it out of the wall, and it was proper dark on the road up to the guesthouse, not the city-dark Slim was accustomed to. Or perhaps it was that there was little to talk about in these parts. Slim got no reception on his phone unless he walked a mile uphill towards the A39, but for someone with more to forget than look forward to, it was an ideal situation.

As though giving up the hunt for the snippet of gossip that might briefly elevate her profile among the tongue-wagging older members of the community, Mrs. Greyson set Slim’s breakfast down and stood back, folding her arms, standing watch for a few moments before abruptly turning on her heels and marching back into the kitchen. Slim was left alone in the guesthouse’s cramped dining area: three tables pushed so tight against the walls they had marked the wallpaper, and one floating in the middle as though forgotten. Mrs. Greyson, in some act of defiance against his nerve at burdening her with his business, laid up the least desirable spot of all for Slim each morning, on a table tucked behind a door into the hall. The menu, with three of the four options crossed off, consisted only of a boiled cabbage fry up with an occasional side helping of baked beans. Slim had so much wind he had to leave his bedroom window open at night.

At least the toast was consistently pleasant, and the coffee, while lacking the extra something Slim might once have added, was strong and tasted like it was brewed yesterday, the way Slim liked it.

He finished up quickly, shouted thanks to Mrs. Greyson then headed out before she could corner him again. He was greeted by a damp wind whistling off Bodmin Moor a couple of miles to the east that challenged his jacket to keep him both dry and warm. Even when the moors were dry, Penleven was shrouded in the same mist-rain, as though owner of its own microcosmic weather system.

The bus was an acceptable ten minutes late, and took him on a seemingly endless meander through forested valleys along narrow, snaking lanes until finally emerging in the valley of the pretty town of Tavistock. Laid out along a stretch of the River Tavy, it was a pleasant collection of historic streets lined by surprisingly cosmopolitan shops. Enjoying the rare comfort of people, Slim took the opportunity to upgrade the old soap in Mrs. Greyson’s bathroom, buy himself a t-shirt from H&M, and then took lunch in a Wetherspoons pub. Returning to his purpose after a big screen rugby game had finished, he located the indoor market near the river and asked around for an antiques dealer. Three people recommended Geoff Bunce, the owner of a bric-a-brac store tucked into the northeastern corner beside a bustling café.

‘I need a clock valued,’ Slim told the white-bearded Bunce, whose girth and facial hair gave him the appearance of an out-of-season Father Christmas, a look accentuated by the suspenders that stretched over his protruding belly.

‘Let me take a look.’

Bunce turned the clock over several times, humming under his breath with contented appreciation, every so often glancing up at Slim with a suspicious narrowing of his eyes.

‘You mind if I open up the back?’

‘Sure.’

As Bunce got to work with a screwdriver, Slim took a seat beside his desk and let his eyes drift over the shelves and boxes loaded with bric-a-brac. Not so much antiques as dusty junk from pasts long forgotten.

‘You a friend of old Birch?’ Bunce said abruptly.

‘What?’

Bunce held out a water-damaged envelope.

‘Old Birch. Amos.’

Slim frowned, wondering if Bunce had slipped into a Cornish dialect. Then, with a hint of frustration, the man repeated, ‘Amos Birch. The man who made this clock. Lived over in Trelee, near Bodmin Moor. Owned a farm. In his early days, used to sell his clocks right here in Tavistock market, before he got well-known. He was a friend of yours?’

‘Yeah, a friend.’

‘Then I’ll guess this belongs to you.’ The man shook the envelope as though to remind Slim of its existence.

Slim took it, immediately feeling the aged delicacy of the paper coupled with damp. If he tried to open it, the envelope would fall apart in his hands, and any message contained within would be lost.

‘Ah, that’s where that got to,’ he said, giving the storekeeper an unconvincing grin. ‘I was looking for that.’

‘Sure you were, Mr.—?’

‘Hardy. John Hardy, but people call me Slim.’

‘I won’t ask why.’

‘Don’t. It’s not a story worth telling.’

Bunce sighed again. He turned the clock one more time. ‘It’s unfinished,’ he said, confirming what Slim had already surmised. ‘I’m guessing your friend Birch gave this to you as a gift? He couldn’t have sold it in this condition, a man of his reputation.’

‘It sounds like you knew him well.’

‘School friends. Amos was two years older but there weren’t a lot of kids around. Everyone knew everyone else.’

‘I guess that’s small communities for you.’

‘You’re not from round here, are you, Mr. Hardy?’

Slim had always felt he spoke with a neutral accent, but that by itself made him an outsider where strong Westcountry accents were expected.

‘Lancashire,’ he said. ‘But I spent a lot of time overseas.’

‘Armed Forces?’

‘How did you know?’

‘Your eyes,’ Bunce said. ‘I see ghosts in them.’

Slim took a step back. A reel of unwanted memories began to flicker, which he shook off, shutting it down.

‘You were in the Armed Forces too?’

‘Falklands. Less said about that, the better.’

Slim nodded. At least they had some common ground. ‘Well, I guess I’ve taken up too much of your time already—’

‘You’d get a few hundred for it,’ Bunce said, abruptly holding out the clock. ‘Maybe a little more if you put it to auction. There are collectors out there for Amos Birch clocks, rare as they are. It’s unfinished, and it’s got some cosmetic damage, but it’s still an Amos Birch original. They used to be sought after. Amos was a cottage industry before cottage industries were a thing.’

‘Used to be?’

Bunce frowned, and Slim felt the man’s eyes dissecting every thread of his lie.

‘Interest in Amos Birch waned after he disappeared.’

‘After he…?’

‘You are aware, aren’t you, Mr. Hardy, that your friend has been missing for over twenty years?’