THE AFFAIR OF THE
HOUSE OF CLOCKS
by Steve Lyons

“Oh, you poor dear! I came as soon as I heard!”
	Mrs Lucinda Batt barged her way into Number 8 Sea View Terrace, brandishing her copy of that evening’s Reporter. The house’s owner, Mr Joseph Teller, opened his mouth to protest, but she had already bustled past him.
	“Is this one of them?” she asked, admiring an austere old grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs. Mr Teller tried to speak again, but Mrs Batt had thrown open the nearest door. “Ooh, and I can see there are more in here,” she trilled. “What a delightful collection! I can see why you’re so proud of them.”
	Mr Teller’s small parlour was filled with clocks – dozens of them, in all shapes and sizes. There were six more grandfathers, standing in two rows like pillars; Mrs Batt had difficulty squeezing her ample form between them. There were cuckoo clocks on the walls, and carriage clocks and alarm clocks on shelves. Their ticks and tocks merged into a constant clickety-click sound.
	The only furniture in the room was a single chair.
	All the clocks showed the same time: five to eight. “Oh, Mr Teller dear,” said Mrs Batt, disappointed, “you’ve set them all right. You really shouldn’t have touched them until I’d examined the scene. Oh, well.”
	Joseph Teller had only just reached the doorway. A white-haired man in his eighties, his fingers were gnarled with arthritis and he limped along with a walking stick. He was wearing a dressing gown.
	He was staring at Mrs Batt’s golden Labrador. “Oh, you mustn’t worry about Mafeking,” Mrs Batt reassured him. “He’s perfectly house-trained. I just couldn’t leave him outside. The dark nights are closing in, and he gets awfully nervous.” She unfolded her newspaper. “Now, let me confirm what it says in here. You have – ooh – over a hundred clocks, is that right? And this morning, you woke to find every one of them running an hour fast.”
	Mr Teller got a word in edgeways at last. “Who are you?”
	Mrs Batt clucked impatiently. “Mrs Batt, dear. Remember? I was in the church choir with your brother, oh, it must have been ten years ago. I’ve also been making a name for myself lately as an amateur sleuth.” Mr Teller looked none the wiser. Still, Mrs Batt supposed he wouldn’t get much chance to catch up with the local gossip, being housebound.
	“I don’t need a sleuth,” said Joseph Teller. “I’m sure there’s a simple reason for—”
	“Oh, nonsense, dear!” Mrs Batt interrupted. “I’ve read enough detective stories to know that an intriguing puzzle like this one just has to be connected with a crime of some kind.”
	“Truth be told,” sighed Mr Teller, “I’m sorry I let that journalist write about my clocks at all. Now everyone will think I’m losing my mind as well as the use of my body!”
	“And you’re positive you aren’t?” said Mrs Batt, tactlessly. “I mean, the clocks were set to the right time when you retired last night?”
	“Of course I’m positive,” snapped Mr Teller. “I have my routine. I have a nap after lunch, until my nurse Wendy comes in at six. We listen to my radio programme – it’s a comedy, it’s very good – while she helps me to bathe. The programme finishes at seven, then Wendy cooks and does a few other small chores for me while I reset my bedroom clock by the pips. I take that clock round the house, set the other clocks by it, and wind them. By the time that’s done, I’m normally tired out. Wendy gives me my tablets at eight, and I eat my dinner and turn in for the night.”
	“And this routine never varies?” asked Mrs Batt.
	Teller frowned. “Not usually – but Wendy hasn’t shown up today. She was due almost two hours ago. I’m getting worried about her.”
	“Is she often this tardy?”
	“Only once, last Wednesday. I slept right through my programme – but even then, she wasn’t this late!”
	At that moment, they heard the sound of a key in the front door. Mr Teller smiled, relieved – but the smile faded as a plump, middle-aged woman in a nurse’s uniform appeared at the parlour door.
	“Oh, Mr Teller, you’re up!” she exclaimed. “I’m sorry I’m late, but with having to see Wendy’s patients as well as my own—”
	“Mary!” cried Teller. “What’s happened? Where’s Wendy?”
	Mary’s face crumpled. “I’m so sorry, did nobody tell you? Wendy had an accident, Mr Teller. She was knocked down by a car last night. She’s in hospital.”
	Mrs Batt clapped her hands in triumph, oblivious to Joseph Teller’s horrified expression. “You see? There has been a crime! I was right!”
	As she spoke, every clock in the room struck eight. The air was filled with a cacophony of chimes and cuckoos. Mrs Batt threw her hands to her ears and let out a startled wail. It was worse for Mafeking, though. The poor dear quite lost all control of his bladder.

Mrs Batt’s next port of call was Clayborough-on-Sea’s small police station, where she was pleased to find Sergeant Harris working late. In return, he seemed less than happy to see her, but she supposed that was just his gruff manner.
	“Well, I must say, Sergeant,” she huffed, “I was hoping for a little more cooperation. I have helped you on more than one occasion!”
	“Twice, Mrs Batt,” said Harris through clenched teeth. “You’ve helped us twice, and I’m sure we’d have—”
	“Well, that’s more than once, so there you are!”
	The policeman sighed.  “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you, as we’ve just released the details to the Reporter anyway. Wendy Woodcock was found unconscious this morning in an alleyway off Richmond Street. A hit and run. We think she’d been lying there all night.”
	“Oh, the poor love!” gasped Mrs Batt. “She must have been frozen stiff! She was struck by a car, I hear?”
	“So the doctors say. Miss Woodcock herself is in a serious condition and can’t be interviewed.”
	“Infernal contraptions! It’s like my late husband always used to say: ‘Mrs Batt,’ he would say, ‘I shall never drive one of those things.’ Oh, but… the alleyway off Richmond Street, you say? There must be some mistake, Sergeant. I know that alleyway, and no car could possibly fit down it!”
	Harris shrugged. “Miss Woodcock may not have collapsed immediately after the accident. She may have wandered off in a daze. Unlucky for her. She would have been found earlier if she’d stayed on the road.”
	“Or perhaps she was hidden,” said Mrs Batt, “by someone who intended to leave her for dead. Gosh, this could be my first murder. I’ve always wanted to solve one. Not that I want anyone to die, of course, that would be horrid!”
	“Thank you, Mrs Batt,” growled Harris, “but just this once, I think our highly trained police force can cope without you. We’re questioning a suspect already.”
	“Oh,” said Mrs Batt brightly, “then you can tell me what happened to Mr Teller’s clocks? Because I just shan’t be able to sleep until I know.”
	The sergeant’s heavy brow creased into a frown. “You mean that story in the paper? How should I know? The old man probably got confused. Didn’t the clocks go back a few weeks ago? Perhaps he forgot to change them.”
	“I doubt it, dear. Mr Teller may be an invalid, but he strikes me as being very attentive, particularly where his clocks are concerned. No, those clocks have something to do with this mystery, I can feel it in my water.”
	Mrs Batt had never seen a smile touch Harris’s bulldog features before – but he smiled now as he got up from his seat. “In which case, I think we’ve found the perfect use for your talents. I would be delighted for you to investigate Mr Teller’s clocks, Mrs Batt. In the meantime, I’ll pursue the case from this end. Alone.”
	“How very kind of you, dear,” said Mrs Batt, glowing with pride.

The following morning, Mrs Batt called on Mr Mark Craven, catching him as he was leaving for work.
	He was a smartly-dressed young man – in his late twenties, she estimated – with a pale complexion. Like Mr Teller, though, he didn’t recognise her. She began to wonder if anyone read the papers these days.
	“I understand the police interviewed you last night about a terrible car accident,” she trilled. She had garnered the information from Malcolm, her nephew in the constabulary, who – after some persuasion – had been more forthcoming than Sergeant Harris had been.
	Mark Craven grimaced. “I told them, I don’t know what happened,” he insisted. “I wasn’t there! The police let me go!”
	“Yes, well,” said Mrs Batt, “Sergeant Harris has deputised me to investigate this perplexing case from another angle. Clocks, dear!”
	Mark Craven looked at her, blankly.
	“Have you ever seen Mr Joseph Teller’s clocks?”
	Craven frowned. “Wendy said something about that once. Mr Teller’s collection… but no, I’ve never seen them.”
	“Yes, yes, of course,” said Mrs Batt, remembering what else Malcolm had told her. “You and Miss Woodcock courted, didn’t you?”
	“A long time ago,” said Mark Craven. “It’s been over a year – but since I broke it off, Wendy can’t seem to let go. She keeps calling round, begging me to take her back. I’m certain she’s been following me. And it’s been worse these last few weeks, since I starting dating somebody else.”
	“Oh dear,” said Mrs Batt. “It does sound awfully like you’d benefit from getting Miss Woodcock out of the way, doesn’t it?”
	“I don’t even have a car!” protested Craven.
	“But you were at Miss Woodcock’s house on the night of the accident.”
	Mark Craven sighed and nodded.
	“The neighbours heard you hammering on her door and shouting – in a dreadful state, by all accounts – at about seven-thirty. You said, and I quote, ‘I know you’re in there. I won’t let you do this!’”
	“I’d just got home,” said Craven, “I work late on a Wednesday – and I found a note on my doormat. It wasn’t signed, but it had to be from Wendy. It was crazy! It was made up of letters cut out from newspapers. It said ‘I can’t live without you. Goodbye forever.’ Well, of course I went straight round to her house. I was afraid she’d done something stupid. When she didn’t answer the door, I forced it open. Wendy wasn’t home, though.”
	“No,” said Mrs Batt thoughtfully. “At seven-thirty, Miss Woodcock would still have been at Mr Teller’s.”
	“Sergeant Harris has the note,” said Craven. “Ask him if you don’t believe me. The police caught me in Wendy’s house. I spent all night in a cell, until they found her yesterday morning – then I spent all day answering questions. But I didn’t knock her over. I don’t know what she was doing in that alleyway; it isn’t on her way home. And I don’t know why she was carrying a walking stick!”
	“A walking stick, you say?” said Mrs Batt, her eyes lighting up. “How frightfully interesting…”

The rest of the day, Mrs Batt spent attending to her residents at the guesthouse, and thinking. It was just before six when she returned to Sea View Terrace. It took Joseph Teller almost five minutes to answer his door, but she kept knocking until he did. He was in his dressing gown again, and looking bleary-eyed.
	Mrs Batt invited herself into his parlour for a second time, and began to inspect a grandfather clock closely. “Yes,” Teller confirmed when she asked him, “as a matter of fact I do have a walking stick missing.” He eyed Mafeking suspiciously. “Now, you are going to be out of here by six o’clock, aren’t you?”
	“I just don’t know what could have made all your clocks go wrong at once,” sighed Mrs Batt. “You haven’t had any giant magnets in this room, I suppose? No, of course you haven’t.”
	Mr Teller lowered himself painfully into the room’s single chair. “I’d rather know what Wendy was doing with my stick. And the note you mentioned – you don’t think she jumped out in front of that car on purpose?”
	“Hmm,” said Mrs Batt. “I must say, it doesn’t seem too likely. Mr Craven received the note before Miss Woodcock left here. That means she must have written it, then calmly come into work. Does that sound like the act of a desperate woman? And then there’s the note itself. Why go to the trouble of cutting letters out of newspapers? You’d only do that if you wished to remain anonymous – and surely the whole point of a suicide note is quite the opposite.”
	A key turned in the front door again, and Mrs Batt heard footsteps in the hallway.
	“The note was a fake,” said Joseph Teller definitely. “I know Wendy well enough to know she wouldn’t try to kill herself. She just wouldn’t!”
	Nurse Mary appeared in the doorway in time to overhear that. “Oh, haven’t you heard, Mr Teller?” she said. “The case has been solved.”
	“Oh no,” cried Mrs Batt. Then she realised she was being a tad selfish.
	“The driver of the car came forward,” said Mary. “He claims that a woman ran out into the road in front of him. He doesn’t think it was deliberate, though; she just wasn’t paying attention. And apparently, she picked herself up and ran away into that alleyway before he could talk to her. He never even saw her properly. He didn’t know she’d collapsed until he read about it in today’s Reporter.”
	“And to think,” sighed Mr Teller, “Wendy was so cheerful when she left here.”
	“When did this accident occur, exactly?” asked Mrs Batt.
	“At seven-fifteen, I believe the policeman said.”
	“But that’s impossible!” Mr Teller protested.
	“No it isn’t, Mr Teller,” Mrs Batt cried – and suddenly she was feeling quite giddy. “I know what happened! I know why your clocks told the wrong time, why Wendy took that walking stick, who wrote the suicide note… Yes, it all fits together now – and it’s about time!”

Wendy Woodcock was pronounced fit to receive visitors two days later.
	Mrs Batt arrived at her hospital room with Mafeking, to find Mark Craven already there. He was remonstrating with the young nurse, urging her to admit that the suicide note was hers. Wendy was sitting up in bed, black hair splayed across her propped-up pillows, denying the charge tearfully. Craven lowered his voice and calmed down once he saw that Mrs Batt was watching him.
	Joseph Teller turned up next, in a wheelchair pushed by Nurse Mary. Then Sergeant Harris arrived to take a statement, his face darkening as he saw Mrs Batt.
	“Oh good,” Mrs Batt trilled, “everyone’s here. Then I can begin!”
	“What in thunderation are you talking about?” barked Harris.
	“I’m talking about a murder attempt gone wrong!” Mrs Batt proclaimed.
	“We’ve been through this,” Harris growled. “There was no murder attempt. Unless you have something to say, Miss Woodcock?”
	The nurse shook her head. “It was all my own fault, Sergeant. I just didn’t see the car coming.”
	“I think you misunderstand me,” said Mrs Batt. “Wendy Woodcock wasn’t the victim of this murder attempt – she was the would-be killer!” And she felt a great swell of pride as everyone looked at her agape.
	“You see, Miss Woodcock was obsessed with Mr Craven – but he was courting somebody else. She decided that, if she couldn’t have him, nobody could. She planned to kill him – but she needed an alibi.
	“She pushed her suicide note through Mr Craven’s door on Wednesday afternoon. She knew he worked late on Wednesdays and wouldn’t see it until after seven – and the note was anonymous so she could deny knowledge of it later. Then she went to Mr Teller’s house early, while he was asleep, and set about turning each of his clocks an hour forward. Miss Woodcock woke Mr Teller at five o’clock, but he was convinced it was six – because after all, he had a hundred clocks to tell him so.”
	“It was six o’clock!” Mr Teller insisted. “I listened to my programme!”
	“A recording, I’m afraid,” said Mrs Batt. “Remember how, a week earlier, Miss Woodcock let you oversleep and you missed it? Well, that was deliberate too. She’d recorded that episode, and the pips that followed it – and that was what she played back to you on Wednesday. Then she packed you off to bed – with sleeping tablets crushed into your food, I shouldn’t wonder – and took a walking stick from your hall. That’s how she was able to leave your house at eight, or so you thought, and yet still be on Richmond Street by seven-fifteen.
	“Miss Woodcock knew that, when Mr Craven saw her note, he’d rush to her house. She planned to lay in wait along his route. She took the back alleyways because she couldn’t afford to be seen – but she was in such an emotional state that she quite forgot to look before she crossed the road.
	“Had Miss Woodcock succeeded in killing Mr Craven, she would have gone back to your house, Mr Teller, put your clocks right and returned your stick – the murder weapon. You would have woken on Thursday with no idea that anything was amiss – and you would have sworn to the police that Miss Woodcock was with you at the time of the murder.”
	“You can’t prove anything!” mumbled Wendy Woodcock, sullenly.
	“No,” said Sergeant Harris, “we can’t. And fortunately for you, Miss Woodcock, there’s no case to answer. No crime has been committed – unless Mr Teller wishes to lay charges over the theft of his walking stick. But I’ll be keeping a close eye on you, you can count on it.”
	And with that, he turned on his heel and left the room.
	“No charges?” cried Mrs Batt. “But… but I don’t understand!”
	And she bustled out after the policeman, wailing, “Does that mean I’ve officially solved a murder case, or haven’t I?”