Chapter 3 - The Clock and the Stone
The great hall was still dark when I returned, holding Emma securely against my side with my left arm, the crowbar tucked into the deep pocket of my overcoat.
The grandfather clock stood against the dark walnut paneling near the library, its tall, glass-fronted case glowing faintly in the dim light of the wall sconces.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The brass pendulum swung back and forth behind the bevelled glass—a four-foot arc of polished metal that had marked every hour of my life in this house since I was a boy.
I set Emma down behind the heavy leather armchair in the corner of the hall. “Stay in the shadow, Emma. If you hear footsteps on the stairs, do not look up. Just shrink down.”
She nodded, crouching behind the dark burgundy leather, her small hands clutching her knees.
I stepped up to the grandfather clock.
The glass door was unlocked. I opened it slowly, the tiny brass hinges giving off a microscopic squeak that was instantly swallowed by the sound of the rain outside.
Inside the case, two massive cylindrical brass weights hung from braided steel cables, driving the heavy gear train that drove the hands on the hand-painted enamel face above.
I reached my right hand into the narrow wooden cabinet, reaching past the slowly swinging pendulum toward the dark space behind the left weight—the weight that controlled the striking mechanism for the hours.
My fingers brushed against something hard and cold taped to the back of the walnut frame.
A heavy, old-fashioned steel skeleton key, taped to the wood with a strip of black electrical tape.
I peeled the tape away carefully.
The key was four inches long, its bit notched with complex, irregular teeth that corresponded to the hand-forged tumbler locks my great-grandfather had installed in the lower sub-basements in 1930.
This was the key to Vault 4.
Vault 4 was not part of the standard wine cellar. It was a reinforced storage room built beneath the bedrock foundation, originally designed to store gold reserves and bearer bonds during the Great Depression. It had no windows, no secondary ventilation shafts, and its walls were three feet of reinforced poured concrete lined with lead plates.
If someone was locked inside Vault 4 with the air valves closed, the oxygen supply would last less than...
I stopped thinking.
Calculation was useless now. Only movement mattered.
I turned away from the clock, the heavy key clamped tight in my fist, and walked toward the discreet service door tucked behind the grand staircase—the door that led down into the basement levels.
Before I reached the latch, a voice drifted down from the second-floor balcony above.
“Julian?”
The voice was sweet, slightly raspy from sleep, with that effortless, aristocratic cadence that had taken four generations of Swiss finishing schools to perfect.
Vivien.
She was standing at the gilded iron railing forty feet above me, wearing a long, sweeping gown of ivory silk. Her blonde hair fell over her shoulders in loose, beautiful waves. In her right hand, she held a thin, crystal glass of water.
She looked like a bride waiting for her wedding day.
She looked like a killer.
“Julian, darling,” she said, her heels making a soft click-clack against the marble of the upper gallery as she walked toward the top of the stairs. “I thought I heard something down here. You’re back early from Newark.”
I stood at the base of the stairs, keeping my body turned slightly so the crowbar in my coat pocket was hidden in the shadows.
“The negotiations wrapped up ahead of schedule,” I said, my voice smooth, completely level, devoid of any edge. “The union representatives agreed to our terms.”
Vivien descended three steps, her ivory silk gown trailing behind her like a shroud. Her eyes—bright blue, intelligent, completely devoid of empathy—scanned the dark hall.
They hovered for a fraction of a second over the opened door of the grandfather clock.
Then they moved to me.
“That’s wonderful news, darling,” she said, her smile widening just enough to show her perfect white teeth. “Marco said you were going to be stuck until Thursday. He’s sleeping in the guest house tonight. Should I call him up to celebrate?”
“No,” I said instantly. “Let him sleep. He’s had a busy week.”
Vivien took two more steps down. She was thirty feet away now.
“You look tired, Julian,” she murmured, her voice dropping into that soft, intimate register she used whenever she wanted something signed or approved. “Your coat is wet. Let me have the kitchen bring you some tea. Or perhaps a glass of the ’82 Margaux from the vault?”
The vault.
She was testing me. She was watching my eyes to see if the word triggered a response.
“I was just on my way down to get a bottle myself,” I said smoothly, reaching into my coat pocket and resting my thumb against the cool edge of the crowbar. “The house feels... cold tonight, Vivien.”
Her smile flickered for a microsecond—a tiny, almost imperceptible tightening around the corners of her mouth.
“Is it?” she asked, taking another step down. “I hadn't noticed. The heating in the east wing has been perfectly fine.”
Then, from behind the heavy burgundy leather armchair in the corner of the hall, came a tiny, uncontrollable sound.
A sneeze.
Small, muffled, but unmistakable in the vast, echoing silence of the room.
Vivien stopped dead on the sixth step.
Her eyes slowly shifted from my face down toward the dark shadow behind the leather chair.
May you like
The air in the room died.
“Julian,” Vivien said, her voice dropping all its warmth, instantly becoming as cold and sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. “Why is the housekeeper’s child out of her bed?”
