The Clockmaker’s Missing Hour
The harvest supper at Cressington village hall was, by universal agreement, the finest social occasion of the year. Long tables groaned under dishes of roasted vegetables, golden pies, and enormous bowls of apple crumble. The bunting had been freshly laundered. The brass band from Lower Cressington had been persuaded to attend again despite last year’s disagreement over parking.
Agnes Plum sat near the end of the third table with her customary glass of elderflower cordial and her customary expression of mild, benevolent attention. At seventy-one, Agnes had taught two generations of Cressington’s children, and there was very little that happened in the village that she did not quietly notice.
It was shortly after nine o’clock when young Constable Ferrers came through the side door looking flustered. He made straight for the village hall’s committee chairman, Derek Osgood, and whispered something that caused Derek’s eyebrows to climb considerably. The news spread from table to table in the way that news always does in small communities — with remarkable speed and considerable embellishment.
Edgar Whittle, the clockmaker whose small shop occupied the corner of Market Lane, had been found sitting in his back storeroom looking dazed, with a bruised temple and a very empty safe. Someone had struck him from behind while he’d slipped home during the supper to fetch a forgotten cardigan. His entire stock of antique pocket watches — meticulously collected over forty years — was gone.
Agnes set down her cordial and listened carefully as Constable Ferrers took witness statements from those who’d been near the door. Three people, it emerged, had stepped out during the supper for various reasons. There was Marilyn Hatch, who ran the post office; Geoffrey Armold, a retired surveyor who complained that the hall was too warm; and young Callum Prewitt, who helped in Whittle’s shop on Saturdays.
Ferrers worked methodically through his notebook. Marilyn said she’d stepped out for fresh air from half past eight until quarter to nine, and Mrs. Dodd had seen her return. Geoffrey said he’d been on the bench outside from twenty past eight until nearly nine, and he could be vouched for by Tom Lester, who’d shared the bench with him for most of that time. Callum Prewitt said he hadn’t left the hall at all — he’d been at the far end of the first table all evening and could name half a dozen people who’d seen him there.
Agnes considered this carefully.
She excused herself from her table and wandered, with the unhurried air of someone simply stretching her legs, toward the long trestle near the entrance where the evening’s programme cards had been left in a neat pile. She picked one up and studied it. Then she looked at the large clock mounted on the wall above the stage.
After that she walked back through the hall, pausing briefly at the table where Callum Prewitt sat nursing a glass of ginger beer. He was a lean young man of perhaps twenty-three, with quick eyes and restless hands. His supper plate was mostly untouched.
“Have you eaten, Callum?” Agnes asked pleasantly.
“Not very hungry this evening, Miss Plum.”
“It’s a shame. The pork and apple pie is particularly good.” She paused, as if something had just occurred to her. “You’ve been at Mr. Whittle’s for — what is it now — almost two years?”
“Eighteen months.” He looked at her steadily. “Terrible thing, what’s happened.”
“Dreadful,” Agnes agreed. “He must be so distressed. Those watches were everything to him.” She smiled warmly and moved on.
She found Constable Ferrers near the door, still writing, and touched his elbow gently.
“I wonder,” she said quietly, “whether you might ask Callum Prewitt what time he arrived this evening.”
Ferrers looked up. “He said he was here all evening, Miss Plum. Half a dozen witnesses—”
“Yes, quite. But you see, the programme card states that the brass band opened the supper at seven o’clock sharp with a medley. The large clock on the wall over the stage runs six minutes fast — it always has, I taught here for twenty-six years and it was never corrected. Everyone here will have heard the band begin and assumed it was seven o’clock.” She paused. “Now, Callum told you he was here all evening. But the woman at the door — Mrs. Palfrey, she takes the entry money every year — she told Derek Osgood that she didn’t collect from Callum until he arrived just as the band struck up. So by real time, that was six minutes before seven. By clock time on the hall clock, it looked like seven exactly.”
Ferrers frowned. “I’m not certain I follow, Miss Plum.”
“Edgar Whittle’s shop is five minutes’ walk from here. If Callum left the hall at, say, half past eight by his phone or watch — real time — and returned before the hall clock showed nine, he would have had a comfortable window. Everyone watching the hall clock would place him here until nine. But a phone set to real time and a fast hall clock produce a gap of six minutes that no one else would think to question.” She folded the programme card neatly. “I’d also look at Callum’s jacket pocket. He works in that shop every Saturday. He would know the combination of the safe perfectly well. And he would know which nights Edgar carried something worth collecting.”
Constable Ferrers closed his notebook slowly and opened it again on a fresh page.
It was just after ten when Callum Prewitt, confronted quietly and kindly by Ferrers in the car park, produced a phone showing no gap at all in his alibi — and then a second, older phone from his inside pocket showing a quite different series of messages and a map route that passed directly along Market Lane. The watches were recovered from a bag in his car boot before midnight.
Agnes was back at her table when Ferrers came to find her, finishing the last of her apple crumble.
“However did you notice the clock?” he asked.
“I taught arithmetic to nine-year-olds for thirty years, Constable,” she said pleasantly. “One becomes rather attentive to numbers that don’t quite add up.”
She accepted a second helping of crumble and remarked that the band, despite everything, had played very nicely.
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