He nodded slowly, following her logic. ‘Horace.’
‘And your grandfather,’ Pippa added.
Theo leaned back on his hands, staring at her for a moment. ‘I know. I’ve been thinking about that. He’s never said a word to me about it. Wetherby has passed away, so whatever he knew is gone. Such a shame the relevant pages were missing out of that book.’ He let out a long, thoughtful breath.
Pippa looked around the cottage, then stood up holding her glass of wine. She walked to the door leading to the snug and stood by the desk. It was an old roll-top, its curved lid opened to reveal neatly stacked notepaper and a glass inkwell, still half full. A fountain pen lay beside it, waiting patiently, as if its owner had only stepped out for a moment.
‘Look at this, actual ink and paper.’
Theo was now standing in the doorway, sipping his wine. ‘That was Agatha’s desk. One thing my grandfather did tell me was that Agatha was a prolific writer. He stayed here for a while and each night he said she would sit in here and write letters to her cousin, and a diary. She was the one who wrote the clock manuals and instructions for every item they sold.’
‘Yes, I read that she was the one who documented and logged all the instructions for the brothers. She was the unsung hero of the Vale horological dynasty.’
‘Agatha was basically the spreadsheet queen of the twentieth century. I bet she had better handwriting, too.’
‘Do you think your grandfather would talk about it if you asked him now?’
‘I’ve thought about that. I know he’s a very loyal man, and according to Wetherby’s book they signed a contract, which he would undoubtedly take very seriously.’
Pippa glanced around the room. Clocks lined every wall. Grandfather clocks. Mantel clocks. Cuckoos. Skeleton clocks. All silent. All stopped.
She put her wine glass down on the coffee table. ‘What if… What if one of these clocks holds the secret?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe one of them has a hidden compartment.’
‘You’ve been watching too many crime documentaries.’
‘Let’s get them working.’
‘Pardon?’
Pippa repeated herself. ‘Let’s get them working. The convention is cancelled and the roads are flooded, so unless we find a canoe, we’re stuck here for a while.’
‘All fifty of them? That’s going to be hell of a tick-tocking!’
‘Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Pippa, if there was a clue in these clocks, don’t you think someone would’ve found it decades ago?’
‘They likely didn’t have a clock nerd with an encyclopaedic brain and a woman fuelled by a passion for restoring clocks,’ she said with a glint in her eye.
Theo looked at her, then laughed. ‘You really think there’s a clue here?’
She stood and began scanning the wall. ‘I think there are so many clocks and not one of them is ticking. Let Operation Clock Revival begin.’
‘I think I saw a box of tools under the sink.’ A moment later, Theo returned with tiny screwdrivers, spare keys, and oils, laying them out like surgical instruments on the table. ‘One clock at a time…’ he started, then he paused. ‘Actually, I really don’t think we should be touching the clocks. They’ve been here years, and I’m sure it was in the email that they weren’t to be touched.’
‘Who is going to know? All we’re doing is opening each one up and seeing if there’s anything unusual inside… and it will be good to hear what tick each type of clock has. You must still get excited when you hear the tick, surely?’
Theo smiled. He knew that level of excitement. A timepiece’s tick was like a person’s fingerprint: each one unique.
‘This is the horological ER,’ she said, handing him a soft cloth.
Finally, he acquiesced. ‘We have a timepiece in cardiac arrest! Emergency surgery is needed– stat!’
The first clock she tackled was a wall clock. Pippa gently opened the back. ‘There’s nothing in this one except a dead spider,’ she declared, inspecting it fully and blowing out a cobweb. She wound it carefully, and with a soft whir, the second hand began to tick.
