“So that was the last you saw of him?”
The manservant nodded.
“Didn’t you think it curious that you hadn’t heard from Officer Warlock since then?”
The manservant looked embarrassed. “Well, to tell you the truth, Mr Hawkwood, we did wonder.”
“But you didn’t do anything?”
“We didn’t think it was our place.”
Hawkwood swore inwardly. But their reservations, he knew, were understandable. As servants, it was not the Hobbs’ responsibility to question police procedure. It was their function to go about their duties, unburdened by conscience or responsibility. Convention dictated that domestic staff were a breed that was seen, not heard.
Hawkwood gnawed his inner lip. The trail was growing colder by the minute. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was almost half past four. He remembered he still had to meet Lomax at the Four Swans.
Clerkenwell and Red Lion Street, however, were not far. It was just possible that he could kill two birds with one stone.
Hawkwood wondered how old Isadore Knibbs was. The old man had a face like parchment and yet, despite his age, his eyes were as bright as a jackdaw’s. He was also very small. His hands were like the hands of a child, tiny and delicately formed. Only the web of veins visible under the semi-translucent skin betrayed their age. They also appeared remarkably supple for a person of his advancing years. Apart from failing eyesight, arthritis for a clockmaker, Hawkwood mused, must be the worst kind of infirmity.
Josiah Woodburn employed five journeymen, Isadore Knibbs being the most senior. He also employed two apprentices, the maximum allowed under the articles of the Company. There were ways to bend the rules, Mr Knibbs whispered, as he led Hawkwood through the workshop, a five-roomed gallery overlooking a courtyard at the corner of Red Lion Street and George Court, but Josiah Woodburn, a master clockmaker of impeccable repute, was, in that regard, totally beyond reproach.
“Forty years I’ve worked for Master Woodburn,” the journeyman volunteered proudly, “and a finer man I’ve yet to meet. Why, he even lets me sign my own work, and there’s not many would allow that.”
A rare honour indeed. Journeymen were generally not permitted to trade in their own right. Nor were they allowed to put their signatures on any kind of work, clocks or otherwise, even if their employer had never laid a hand on the finished instrument. Everything produced in a workshop was the property of the master. Which indicated Josiah Woodburn as an exceptional employer, albeit an absent one; a state of affairs for which Mr Knibbs could offer no rational explanation. The journeyman was as much in the dark as the Hobbs, and just as concerned. He confirmed that Master Woodburn had left the workshop at the usual time. No one had seen him since. But Mr Knibbs was perfectly willing for Hawkwood to look around the premises and talk to the other workers.
The premises were divided into separate workshops according to task, Mr Knibbs explained as he led Hawkwood through the cluttered carpentry shop. He gestured towards a row of hollow clock cases which lay against one wall like a line of upended coffins. Only the very best wood was used: pine and Honduran mahogany for the casing, oak for doors and bases, English walnut for the veneer. A solitary worker was bent over a saw-horse, ankle-deep in sawdust and wood shavings. The air was heavy with the smell of glue and freshly planed timber.
They walked through an archway and entered an adjoining work space containing several benches, each one strewn with clock innards, as if something mechanical had died and been disembowelled. The walls were hung with a bewildering array of charts and drawings showing cogs, wheels, rings, ratchets and pendulums in anatomical detail.
Not all the working parts were manufactured on the premises, Mr Knibbs confided. Some items were supplied ready-made. Springs, for example, along with spandrels, wheels and clock-plates. Although they possessed the knowledge, Mr Knibbs told Hawkwood, very few clockmakers cast their own brass. It was more convenient to obtain supplies from a brass founder. It was also possible, the journeyman muttered scornfully, to buy in ready-made movements but, thankfully, Master Woodburn belonged to the old school. Generally, he preferred the working parts to be assembled in his own workshops. This made it easier to control the quality of the finished product.
With the exception of the carpenter, the rest of the workforce laboured in silence, heads bowed, lips pursed in studious concentration. A couple of men looked up briefly at Hawkwood’s entrance before returning to their work. The two apprentices were easy to identify by their age, probably no more than thirteen or fourteen and no more than a few months into their term of indenture.
In the far corner of the gallery a pimply-faced youth was sweeping metal filings into a wooden tray. The boy was painfully thin, with a tar-coloured bonnet of hair that looked as if it had been attacked by a pair of blunt pruning shears. Hawkwood noticed that the boy dragged his left foot as he walked. The boy looked up, as if conscious that he was being observed. He gazed vacantly in Hawkwood’s direction before bowing his head to continue sweeping. Hawkwood saw that the lower part of the boy’s face was lopsided, as if the jaw had been dislocated and incorrectly reset. Hawkwood presumed this was the nephew, Quigley.
A thought occurred to Hawkwood as he surveyed the row of hunched shoulders and he asked Isadore Knibbs if anyone had been dismissed recently. There was always the possibility that Woodburn’s disappearance had to do with a disgruntled employee seeking revenge, but Isadore Knibbs discounted that idea without a second’s thought. Every worker, with the exception of the apprentices, had been with the Woodburn firm for at least ten years. Their loyalty was beyond question.
As was their total inability to account for their employer’s whereabouts.
Hawkwood asked Mr Knibbs if there had been anything in Master Woodburn’s mood that might have explained his disappearance. The journeyman greeted the question with something approaching horror.
“Surely you’re not suggesting the master might have … done away with himself?”
“I’m not suggesting anything, Mr Knibbs. I’m merely exploring every avenue.”
The journeyman blinked and Hawkwood sighed. “Mr Knibbs, it’s been my experience that people disappear for a variety of reasons: of their own free will, by misadventure, or foul play. As far as Master Woodburn is concerned, from what I’ve learned from the servants and yourself, I’m inclined to eliminate the first alternative. Nothing I’ve heard so far suggests that your master has disappeared voluntarily. On that basis, I doubt we’ll find him dead by his own hand. No, don’t look so shocked, Mr Knibbs, it’s been known to happen. There’s many a fine gentleman who’s hung himself over a ten-pound debt or a two-guinea whore.”
Isadore Knibbs looked like a man who’d just swallowed a gourd of sour milk.
“Which leaves us, Mr Knibbs, with a rather unpleasant prospect.”
“But someone must have seen something!” the journeyman blurted. “The master can’t have vanished into thin air!”
Hawkwood was on the verge of telling Isadore Knibbs that people vanished all the time, usually to reappear with a knife in the back in some dark alley or bludgeoned to death, face down in the mud on the river bank, but a nervous, stuttering voice at his shoulder gave him no chance.
“I s-seen the master.”
Hawkwood and Isadore Knibbs turned together. The journeyman gave a sigh of exasperation. “Now then, Jacob, this is nothing that concerns you. Officer Hawkwood and I have business to discuss.” The old man smiled apologetically. “He’s my sister’s boy. He means no harm.” Mr Knibbs clapped his hands. “Come on now, lad, off with you! There’s work to be done.”
Hawkwood’s guess had been proved correct. Up close, Quigley, with his angular body, unruly hair, misshapen face and deformed foot, resembled a stick insect. His bottom teeth were the reason for his uneven jawline. They protruded from his gums like crooked, yellowing tombstones.