‘Yes. However, a more recent development awakened my suspicions that she still had some. In the week of her death she badgered us at the Conclave to consider a new strategy for maximising energy extraction. She provided many notes detailing her experiments with atroposium. I find it hard to believe she was buying it at the cornershop. Presumably she was drawing on old stockpiles, originally purloined from our research team.’
This was close enough to the truth to make Ruby uneasy. Bee’s Candybox still appeared to be running several weeks after her death. Every day Ruby had woken to the smell of ozone. She didn’t understand how the Candybox could still be running on just the one stolen briquette. Bee must have had more fuel hidden away.
‘I don’t know where Bee would get atroposium,’ Ruby said. ‘If we find any, we’ll let you know.’
She turned to go.
‘How are you holding up?’ Margaret asked.
The question surprised Ruby, given the mercenary slant of their preceding conversation.
‘It’s a difficult day to get through,’ Ruby said. ‘As you’d expect.’
‘I suppose it’s easier, when someone’s so old.’
Ruby gasped at the lack of tact. She saw Margaret’s eyes gleam and thought, No, not lack of tact; she’s deliberately getting a rise out of me. Margaret smiled her slow smile and blinked her slow blink again.
‘Is that why you’re really here?’ Ruby asked coolly.
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘To witness my grief. To poke it with a stick.’ Ruby recalled what Grace had said of time travellers. They were all so weird about death. ‘You want to feed on my feelings. You’re a vampire.’
‘Really, Ruby,’ Margaret said. ‘You do have an imagination. Just remember, return anything to the Conclave that’s rightfully ours, won’t you?’
Margaret walked away then, following the coast southward. Ruby watched until Margaret’s path curved round the rocks, and Ruby could see her no longer.
*
Ruby failed to catch up with the mourners on the street. They were already in Bee’s house when she entered the kitchen by the back door. The table was covered with trays of egg and cress sandwiches. Dinah and Mrs Cusack were mid row.
‘Your eulogy,’ Dinah hissed. ‘I told you not to mention them.’
‘Who?’ Mrs Cusack said, baffled.
‘Time travellers.’
‘But, Dinah, you can’t pretend that part of her never existed.’
‘It’s true, Mum,’ Ruby added quietly. She pushed the door shut behind her.
‘How dare you refuse my request?’ Dinah said.
‘All right,’ Mrs Cusack said hastily. ‘I apologise. We’re all upset.’
‘The Conclave were bad people,’ Dinah said. Ruby noticed her reversion to a child’s lexicon. ‘They weren’t her friends. Do you see any of them here?’
‘One of them sent flowers – with a handwritten card!’ Mrs Cusack said.
‘What?’ Ruby worried that this was another example of Margaret’s intimidation. ‘Who sent a card?’
‘I don’t want anything of theirs in the house,’ Dinah said. ‘Where is it?’
‘The flowers are still at the crematorium,’ Mrs Cusack said. ‘The card’s with the others – on the hall table.’
‘Who was the card from?’ Ruby asked.
‘Oh – her name’s on the tip of my tongue. The one who sold the broken pencil for a lot of money.’
‘Grace,’ Ruby said, and she enjoyed saying her name, out loud, when it had been in her head all month long. If Grace had sent flowers, she wasn’t cutting Ruby off.
‘I don’t want anything of hers in the house,’ Dinah repeated. She left the kitchen. Ruby followed her.
The unmarked envelope was on the shelf beneath the mirror. Dinah seized it and tore it in two. She cast the pieces on the floor and covered her eyes, her words a jumble of English and the Konkani she’d learnt from her father, spitting invective about a woman called Fay who was an Angel of Death. Ruby wrapped her arms round her.
‘Shhh,’ Ruby said, over and over. ‘I’m here. Shhh.’
The guests were taking their leave at the noise. Mrs Cusack emerged from the kitchen, and ushered Dinah back with her, to give her sweet tea.
Ruby picked up the triangles of card and flattened them on the hall table. She pushed each piece into place until she could read the clear, sloping script. Grace had written: I will be grateful all my life for knowing Barbara, and for everything she made. G.
The clock in the hall read half past one. If Ruby left now she could make it to London by evening. Whether or not Dinah expected her to stay, Ruby could think only of escaping. The house was too full of sadness. She needed to feel something – anything – but grief. So Ruby donned her cycling jacket and boots. She rode her motorbike to London, then walked through the Conclave parks where they were burning leaves, and arrived at Grace’s flat with the smell of bonfires in her hair. ‘Make me forget,’ she implored Grace.
‘Forget what?’ Grace asked.
Ruby undid the pearls of her blouse and let it fall. ‘Death,’ she said.
47
OCTOBER 2018
Odette
Odette’s first day at the Conclave was dedicated to training. Until she’d been appropriately briefed by her superiors, she wouldn’t have full privileges. Her movement round the building was restricted. She told herself to be patient. If she couldn’t confirm the identity of the corpse just yet, she could still observe and listen to her new colleagues. She might pick up important details on Margaret’s whereabouts.
Although Odette was polite to other employees, she was also wary. During the introductory tour she was startled to see that the Conclave bar was open and busy, despite the early hour. The atmosphere there was coarse. Too much swearing, and too many sick jokes about death and sex. The drinkers didn’t make any concessions for a wench’s nervousness. She felt badly situated, for a spy. Not only did she know nothing about her colleagues, they might know things about her future she didn’t. The imbalance troubled her.
And yet there were glimpses of a life that she could love. She took another trip in a time machine, to report for a training session with Lucille Waters. It was attended by all investigators at least once, before commencing duty. The topic was handling sensitive information, which Lucille addressed from her position as Head of Knowledge. Odette tingled at the prospect of the secrets she might access.
They assembled in the marble hall where Odette had taken her recruitment exams. Lucille stood on the platform above them. She wore an olive linen suit and smoked a cheroot which she periodically tapped in the ashtray on her lectern. The cigar’s sweet, dirty scent filled the room.
‘Your job as investigators,’ Lucille said, ‘is to gather evidence. Time travel gives us many valuable opportunities to collect, and revisit, evidence in the past. But knowing the future can impede proper investigative processes. You must not, therefore, check the outcome of an investigation in advance. Who knows how the Conclave enforces this?’
Hands waved, reed-like, across the hall. Lucille gestured with her cigar at a wench on the front row.
The wench stood up. ‘All investigations are conducted in secret. They may only be discussed with Conclave employees who are directly involved in the case. It’s forbidden to discuss a case with your green selves. Breaking these rules constitutes treason.’
‘Exactly,’ Lucille said. ‘Note that this secrecy extends to the trial. The verdict, and sentence, are embargoed in perpetuity. And an embargo breach is punishable by death.’
There was a pause in the scratch scratch of the recruits’ notetaking. Odette recollected the anonymous source who sent privileged information to Zach Callaghan. Was that person in this hall? Had they endangered their life by contacting the press? Who were they? Odette needed to know – the leak could be a valuable witness.
Lucille extinguished her cigar.
‘Enough threats. You are welcome to the Conclave, where you will find not only death, but the million quotidian experiences that make us love humanity. I hope you will cherish our work – in all its rich mystery – just as much as I do.’
She beamed. Hesitantly, the recruits commenced their applause.