The Clockmaker's Secret

Chapter 3

3

Up in his neat, surprisingly large room for a house that was outwardly rather small, Slim took the bundled clock out of his rucksack and unwrapped it from the plastic bag.

He knew nothing about clocks. His last flat had contained a single cheap plastic one the previous occupant had left behind, and to tell the time he invariably used his old Nokia or a succession of bargain bin wristwatches until they were scratched beyond readability.

The clock was a wooden rectangle designed like a winter lodge, with a pointed, overhanging roof and a hole in the bottom for an absent pendulum. The clock face, with its metal roman numerals that were slightly tainted, was surrounded by swirls and carvings: animal and tree designs, symbols that perhaps represented the sun and moon or seasons. In a semi-circle beneath the clock face was a thin strip resembling a moon tilted upwards, or perhaps an unfinished horseshoe. A few illegible scratches had been made in its surface. The whole clock had been coated with a thick varnish primer coat, one to be sanded and smoothed away as the design was finalized and refined.

Slim gave a bemused shake of his head. He had never encountered a handmade clock before. If someone had taken the time to create something so complex, why wrap it up in a bag and bury it on the moor?

Interestingly, despite the lack of a pendulum it was still ticking, even though the hands were a couple of hours off correct time—it was now showing nearly eleven—and the bottom was badly water-damaged where the bag had ripped open. Slim tried to take the back off to look inside, but it was screwed tight, and with no tools of his own he didn’t want to bother Mrs. Greyson again before morning. The wood, though, had the burned dirt smell of peat, as well as an aged mustiness. Slim could easily believe the clock was older than his own forty-six years.

Slim fetched a damp cloth from the corner washbasin and gave the clock a wipe down. The varnish quickly reached an imperious shine as grit and dust came away. Details in the carvings became more apparent: mice, foxes, badgers and other staples of British wildlife hiding among the filed curves and arcs of trees. With the firm click of the clock mechanism suggesting a mechanical knowhow equal to the artistic, whoever had built this clock had done it with great pride and an exceptional level of skill.

Slim set the clock up on the dresser beside his bed then fetched his coat. It was time for his nightly trek out to the local pub, hopefully in time to catch the last food orders. He didn’t feel like a Chicken & Mushroom Pot Noodle for the third night in a row. It wasn’t that he hated Pot Noodles, it was that the village’s little shop only stocked the one flavour. On the one night he had leveled up and bought a tin of beans and sausages, he had found it to be three months out of date.

As he headed out into the light drizzle that was a mainstay of Bodmin Moor and its surrounds after nightfall, he couldn’t stop thinking about the clock.

Had he found a bag of gold, it couldn’t have been more mysterious.