The Clocks

‘Well, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. We’re roughly members of the same profession.’

The waitress brought our order at this point. The coffee was as pale as the latest fashionable shade of mink.

‘I didn’t know you had anything to do with the police,’ Sheila said, slowly stirring her coffee round and round.

‘It’s not exactly the police. It’s an entirely different branch. But what I was getting at was, that if Dickdoesn’t tell me things he knows about you, it’s for a special reason. It’s because he thinks I’m interested in you. Well, I am interested in you. I’m more than that. I’mfor you, Sheila, whatever you’ve done. You came out of that house that day scared to death. You were really scared. You weren’t pretending. You couldn’t have acted a part the way you did.’

‘Of course I was scared. I was terrified.’

‘Was it only finding the dead body that scared you? Or was there something else?’

‘What else should there be?’

I braced myself.

‘Why did you pinch that clock with Rosemary written across it?’

‘What do you mean? Why should I pinch it?’

‘I’m asking youwhy you did.’

‘I never touched it.’

‘You went back into that room because you’d left your gloves there, you said. You weren’t wearing any gloves that day. A fine September day. I’ve never seen you wear gloves. All right then, you went back into that room and you picked up that clock. Don’t lie to me about that. That’s what you did, isn’t it?’

She was silent for a moment or two, crumbling up the scones on her plate.

‘All right,’ she said in a voice that was almost a whisper. ‘All right. I did. I picked up the clock and I shoved it into my bag and I came out again.’

‘But why did you do it?’ 

‘Because of the name-Rosemary. It’s my name.’

‘Your name is Rosemary, not Sheila?’

‘It’s both. Rosemary Sheila.’

‘And that was enough, just that? The fact that you’d the same name as was written on one of those clocks?’

She heard my disbelief, but she stuck to it.

‘I was scared, I tell you.’

I looked at her. Sheila wasmy girl-the girl I wanted-and wanted for keeps. But it wasn’t any use having illusions about her. Sheila was a liar and probably always would be a liar. It was her way of fighting for survival-the quick easy glib denial. It was a child’s weapon-and she’d probably never got out of using it. If I wanted Sheila I must accept her as she was-be at hand to prop up the weak places. We’ve all got our weak places. Mine were different from Sheila’s but they were there.

I made up my mind and attacked. It was the only way.

‘It wasyour clock, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘It belonged to you?’

She gasped.

‘How did you know?’

‘Tell me about it.’

The story tumbled out then in a helter-skelter of words. She’d had the clock nearly all her life. Until she was about six years old she’d always gone by the name of Rosemary-but she hated it and had insisted on being called Sheila. Lately the clock had been giving trouble. She’d taken it with her to leave at a clock-repairing shop not far from the Bureau. But she’d left it somewhere-in the bus, perhaps, or in the milk bar where she went for a sandwich at lunch time.

‘How long was this before the murder at 19, Wilbraham Crescent?’

About a week, she thought. She hadn’t bothered much, because the clock was old and always going wrong and it would really be better to get a new one.

And then:

‘I didn’t notice it at first,’ she said. ‘Not when I went into the room. And then I-found the dead man. I was paralysed. I straightened up after touching him and I just stood there staring and my clock was facing me on a table by the fire-myclock-and there was blood on my hand-and then she came in and I forgot everything because she was going to tread on him. And-and so-I bolted. To get away-that’s all I wanted.’

I nodded.

‘And later?’

‘I began to think. She saidshe hadn’t telephoned for me-then who had-who’d got me there and putmy clock there? I-I said that about leaving gloves and-and stuffed it into my bag. I suppose it was-stupid of me.’ 

‘You couldn’t have done anything sillier,’ I told her. ‘In some ways, Sheila, you’ve got no sense at all.’

‘But someone is trying to involve me. That postcard. It must have been sent by someone who knows I took that clock. And the postcard itself-the Old Bailey. If my father was a criminal-’

‘What do you know about your father and mother?’

‘My father and mother died in an accident when I was a baby. That’s what my aunt told me, what I’ve always been told. But she never speaks about them, she never tells me anythingabout them. Sometimes, once or twice when I asked, she’s told me things about them that aren’t the same as what she’s told me before. So I’ve always known, you see, that there’s somethingwrong.’

‘Go on.’

‘So I think that perhaps my father was some kind of criminal-perhaps even, a murderer. Or perhaps it was my mother. People don’t say your parents are dead and can’t or won’t tell you anything about those parents, unless the real reason is something-something that they think would be too awful for you to know.’