The Clockmaker's Missing Thirteenth Hour

How it begins

The stationmaster asked Edith to remove an hour.

He said it as though requesting a loose screw.

"Which hour?" she asked.

"The one in the porter's statement."

Edith set down her tool case.

Beyond the office window, steam drifted across the platform. The large clock beneath the canopy showed twenty minutes past eight. The brass clock on the stationmaster's desk showed seventeen.

She had come to correct that difference.

Now she wondered whether anyone intended her to.

"Clocks can be adjusted," she said. "Statements cannot."

The stationmaster closed the office door.

"Mr. Cole claims to have seen the deceased after the departure of the eastern train. That is impossible."

"Because?"

"Because the train had already left."

Edith waited.

Men sometimes mistook repetition for explanation when speaking to her about clocks.

At last he opened a ledger.

A ruled line crossed the page between two entries. Above it, an old departure time had been struck through. Below it, the replacement appeared in a different hand.

"Who received the correction?" she asked.

"Everyone concerned."

"Was Mr. Cole concerned?"

The stationmaster's expression sharpened.

"He's a porter."

On the platform, Samuel Cole stood beside a constable. His cap was in his hands. A woman with a carpetbag asked him a question, and he instinctively turned to help before remembering why he could not move.

Edith looked back at the ledger.

Someone had written a time that belonged to neither clock.

An extra hour had appeared in the records, not in the day.

She opened her case and took out her notebook.

"I'll need to inspect all the station clocks."

"That isn't necessary."

"Then you should have employed someone less interested in time."

The constable watched from the platform. Edith made sure he could see the time she wrote.

For the first time, the stationmaster looked at her tools instead of her hat.