The Clocks by Agatha Christie Page A

That’s Wilbraham Crescent. I was going to have a walk along Wilbraham Crescent and see what I thought of Number 61 before asking you if you’d got any dope that could help me. That’s what I was doing this afternoon—but I couldn’t find Number 61.”

    â€œAs I told you, 61 is occupied by a local builder.”
    â€œAnd that’s not what I’m after. Have they got a foreign help of any kind?”
    â€œCould be. A good many people do nowadays. If so, she’ll be registered. I’ll look it up for you by tomorrow.”
    â€œThanks, Dick.”
    â€œI’ll be making routine inquiries tomorrow at the two houses on either side of 19. Whether they saw anyone come to the house,etcetera. I might include the houses directly behind 19, the ones whose gardens adjoin it. I rather think that 61 is almost directly behind 19. I could take you along with me if you liked.”
    I closed with the offer greedily.
    â€œI’ll be your Sergeant Lamb and take shorthand notes.”
    We agreed that I should come to the police station at nine thirty the following morning.
    II
    I arrived the next morning promptly at the agreed hour and found my friend literally fuming with rage.
    When he had dismissed an unhappy subordinate, I inquired delicately what had happened.
    For a moment Hardcastle seemed unable to speak. Then he spluttered out: “Those damned clocks!”
    â€œThe clocks again? What’s happened now?”
    â€œOne of them is missing.”
    â€œMissing? Which one?”
    â€œThe leather travelling clock. The one with ‘Rosemary’ across the corner.”
    I whistled.
    â€œThat seems very extraordinary. How did it come about?”
    â€œThe damned fools—I’m one of them really, I suppose—” (Dick was a very honest man) “—One’s got to remember to cross every t and dot every i or things go wrong. Well, the clocks were there all right yesterday in the sitting room. I got Miss Pebmarsh to feel them all to see if they felt familiar. She couldn’t help. Then they came to remove the body.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œI went out to the gate to supervise, then I came back to the house, spoke to Miss Pebmarsh who was in the kitchen, and said I must take the clocks away and would give her a receipt for them.”
    â€œI remember. I heard you.”
    â€œThen I told the girl I’d send her home in one of our cars, and I asked you to see her into it.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI gave Miss Pebmarsh the receipt though she said it wasn’t necessary since the clocks weren’t hers. Then I joined you. I told Edwards I wanted the clocks in the sitting room packed up carefully and brought here. All of them except the cuckoo clock and, of course, the grandfather. And that’s where I went wrong. I should have said, quite definitely, four clocks. Edwards says he went in at once and did as I told him. He insists there were only three clocks other than the two fixtures.”
    â€œThat doesn’t give much time,” I said. “It means—”
    â€œThe Pebmarsh woman could have done it. She could have picked up the clock after I left the room and gone straight to the kitchen with it.”
    â€œTrue enough. But why?”
    â€œWe’ve got a lot to learn. Is there anybody else? Could the girl have done it?”
    I reflected. “I don’t think so. I—” I stopped, remembering something.
    â€œSo she did,” said Hardcastle. “Go on. When was it?”
    â€œWe were just going out to the police car,” I said unhappily. “She’d left her gloves behind. I said, ‘I’ll get them for you’ and shesaid, ‘Oh, I know just where I must have dropped them. I don’t mind going into that room now that the body’s gone’ and she ran back into the house. But she was only gone a minute—”
    â€œDid she have her gloves on, or in her hand when she