The Clockmaker's Daughter

The artists enjoy their getaway, singing, dancing, and reciting poetry. Edward sketches the house, which he adores because he says it is “truthful.” He chooses for his studio the Mulberry Room, which has an engraving above the door which says “Truth, Beauty, Light” (394). Lucy enjoys the library and the conversation among the Magenta Brotherhood, all of whom are working on new pieces. They debate about photography, which Thurston calls a gimmick. Felix disagrees, saying that photographs can be art, and Lily calls them a tangible memory. Lucy is curious about and a little jealous of Edward’s attachment to Lily.

In the library Lucy finds a book that holds blueprints for the house, which reveals two secret chambers. She is fascinated that “Edward’s ‘truthful’ house has a secret” (402). She walks to the post office with Lily, whom she finds intelligent and well-read. Lucy suspects Edward will not tire of this model.

Lucy investigates the hidden chambers. One is beneath the stairs and can only be opened from the outside. When she goes inside, Lucy quickly feels short of breath. The other is a compartment in the wall in the hallway, from which she overhears Lily and Edward addressing each other as husband and wife.

That evening, Clare and Adele discuss ghosts while they wait for dinner. Edward tells them the story of the Eldritch Children and the Fairy Queen. Edward’s next picture is the Fairy Queen and Lily is his model. Felix proposes that they take a photograph of the Fairy Queen and her children. As a storm approaches, Fanny shows up at the door.

Lily leaves to make sandwiches for dinner since their cook has disappeared. Lucy joins her. Lily tells Lucy that her father was a clockmaker and that she got to look through the Royal Observatory telescope at Neptune, newly discovered at the time.

Edward shows Fanny to a bedroom, then confronts Thurston, who told Fanny where to find them. Thurston taunts Edward by saying that he should marry Fanny after all and Thurston will take care of Clare and Lily. Edward punches him.

Lucy cannot sleep, so she sneaks to Edward’s studio to see if he is painting. On the easel she sees his picture of Lily as the Fairy Queen, “stunning, regal, otherworldly” (421). She sees Edward and Lily making love and creeps back upstairs, embarrassed and hurt to think that she has lost her brother.

Lucy wakes to the noise of Thurston shooting at the birds with his rifle. The girls go to the attic and don their costumes for the photograph. Once they are gathered at the river, Fanny appears, insisting that she wants to be in the photograph as the Fairy Queen. Lucy, upset, runs inside the house and goes to Edward’s studio.

She opens the satchel and finds two tickets to America and the Radcliffe Blue. Lily finds her. Then a strange man enters the room, and Lily is upset to see him. She says that she asked for a month and he says that she should have it by now. He picks up the tickets. As the man pulls Lily out of the room, Lily tells Lucy to leave. Lucy spots Thurston’s rifle, picks it up, and strikes the stranger on the head. As he stumbles, Lucy pulls Lily away, opens the trapdoor beneath the stairs, and hides Lily inside, saying that she will find her own place to hide. Lucy tells Lily not to come out until Edward fetches her. Then Lucy runs to the cabinet in the hallway and hides there.

Birdie thinks that she can still hear Martin saying that her father wasn’t in America after all; he was trampled by a horse the day they were supposed to sail, and Jeremiah has been collecting money from Mrs. Mack all this time. Martin wants Lily to take the Radcliffe Blue and then come to America with him. Lily had only gotten away from Mrs. Mack to go with Edward by saying she would steal the Radcliffe Blue from him, and she asked for a month. In the dark little chamber, Birdie/Lily thinks of the photograph that she has sent to Pale Joe. She thinks of her father and mother.

She hears footsteps on the stairs and Martin calling for her. A door slams and Martin runs. She hears “[r]aised voices, a scream. And then a gunshot” (436). She hears Edward call out. She realizes that she cannot open the door and Edward cannot hear her. She hears more footsteps from the hall upstairs, then a thump. She imagines that she is on a boat, watching light circle overhead.

Spring 1882. Lucy returns to Birchwood, having inherited the house after Edward died. He included a letter in his will asking that she turn it into a school for girls. As she walks through the house, she sees Lily’s clock in the room that was Edward’s studio. She has been waiting for 20 years to discover the truth, and she knows that Edward never gave up on finding Lily.

After she hid in the hallway compartment, Lucy woke up in a room at the Swan, her head aching. Edward asked if she knew where Lily was. Lucy asked about Fanny, and Edward said that he heard a shot, saw a man running off, and when he reached the house, Fanny was dead and Lily was gone. Lucy said that Lily knew the man, and he spoke about leaving for America with the diamond.

She realizes that two policemen are in the room and have heard this. One of the men identifies Martin and suggests that he was the one who stole Edward’s wallet the night he met Lily. He says that the two must have had a plot all along. It has been four days since Lily was hidden away, and Lucy feels confused. Surely Lily would have called out from beneath the stairway. Lucy wonders if Lily did indeed leave with Martin. The police report is built from testimony from Fanny’s rich father and Thurston, and when the inspectors discover that the real Lily Millington was killed in Covent Garden in 1851, it appears that Edward’s model was a criminal after all. Lucy avoids the stairs where she hid Lily. Edward is distraught and they all leave Birchwood.

Edward grieves, Clare marries, and Lucy grows. When she is 16, she finds the suitcase that she took with her to Birchwood. In it is the gown that she donned for the Fairy Queen photograph, and in the pocket of the gown is the Radcliffe Blue. Lucy realizes that the story that Lily was a thief cannot be true, but she says nothing. Now, back at Birchwood in 1882, she goes to the stairs and opens the trapdoor.

Lucy had known what she would find in the hidden compartment, and now she deals with it. She feels guilty for Edward’s suffering, which she might have prevented if she’d said something. Lucy throws the Radcliffe Blue into the river. She orders a lead-lined coffin under the name L. Millington, puts Lily’s remains in it, and buries her in the front garden. She plans to plant a Japanese maple above it, as the leaves are the color of Lily’s hair. As Lucy speaks her real name, Albertine Bell, a light glows briefly in the attic window.

Birdie does not know how she became a ghost, and she is aghast when she learns the story being told of her. She trails Edward, but he cannot see or sense her. Then everyone leaves and she is alone for 20 years, until her first visitor arrives. Birdie thinks of herself as captured light.

Summer 2017. Jack awakens in a room at Birchwood, the one with the engraving that says “Truth, Beauty, Light” (467). Elodie is with him. They hid from the storm and spent all night talking. He told her about his brother, Ben, and she spoke of her mother. Elodie doesn’t think that Alastair loves her. The storm knocked over the Japanese maple in the front yard, and they see something in the ground beneath.

Summer 1992. Tip is in his studio. He’s just heard the news that Lauren was killed in a crash. He remembers how Lauren had asked for the address of Birchwood. She said she felt connected because of the story that he told her, and she has something important to do and wants to do it in the right place. She had sat on the same stool six years ago, before her wedding, and confessed that she was pregnant; the violinist was married, and Winston had offered to marry her. She said at the time that it was impossible that her feelings about the violinist would ever change, but Tip told her that time has a way of changing things.

Tip goes to his shelf and looks over the things that he’s collected. One is a blue stone that Ada Lovegrove gave him. She told him that she saw a woman in the river when she sank, then she saw the stone, and she knew that she would be all right. She gives the stone to Tip. Tip decides to make Lauren’s daughter a charm box, and he will add the blue stone to the decoration.

Summer 1962. Juliet parks the car before Birchwood. She reflects that it has been 22 years since Alan died. She visits the cemetery, then the Swan, and sees a painting of a striking young woman above the sofa. The proprietress says that it came from her grandfather, who had been a policeman. The painting is unfinished, but Juliet thinks that the young woman reminds her of something.

Juliet walks toward Birchwood Manor. She and Leonard have been exchanging letters for almost 20 years, ever since she contacted him for a column. This is the first time that they will meet in person, and she has a thruppence to give him.

Jack and Elodie have gone for a walk, and Birdie waits for them in the warm spot at the turn of the stairs. She thinks of the story of the Eldritch Children and how “[p]eople value shiny stones and lucky charms, but they forget that the most powerful talismans of all are the stories that we tell to ourselves and to others” (481). Birdie does not wish to be free. She has become the house, the light in the window, the stars in the dark.