Tea With a Suspect

She wound the carriage clock on the mantel and set it running. At 9:14 exactly, it chimed a note that no carriage clock should make, and a drawer in the bureau clicked open.

The key to the long-case clock was missing. So was, it transpired, the long-case clock.

Inspector Garrow had the manner of a man who believed tea was evidence and evidence was mostly tea. Adelaide liked him immediately and trusted him not at all.

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The ledger listed a repair for a Mrs. Hartwell, dated the morning of the death, and marked paid in full in a hand that was not her uncle’s.

In the Pump Room, the waters tasted of iron and gossip. Adelaide took both in small sips.

“Your uncle,” said Mrs. Hartwell, stirring her tea anticlockwise, “had an unfortunate habit of fixing things that other people preferred broken.”