The second hand on my watch stutters through its arc. The longer I stare at it, the slower it moves. Twelve minutes. Holly is still on her phone.
My foot taps on the tiled floor. My phone pings – mortgage paid. I lock the screen, drumming my fingers on the phone, rehearsing my pitch for the Senior Curator role. Jess' rent deposit. The savings. Kath.
Holly’s door opens. She doesn't look up from her tablet. “Matthew. Come in.”
Her laptop sits at a precise angle to the desk edge, the stack of exhibition folders has been squared so that their corners align with the grain of the wood.
She sits in her chair, and doesn’t offer me a seat. I sit anyway, and she addresses her tablet.
“How is Q2 going?”
"Well, the Akhumet exhibition has been a significant success so far. We've had visits from thirteen local schools, and some very positive coverage in the local press." I pause to allow her time to comment. She does not. I press on.
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"Holly, I've been in the assistant curator role for several years now, and prior to that I ran numerous exhibitions at Lowell in Bristol. Which is why I would love to discuss my suitability for the Senior Curator role that's opened."
I clear my throat.
"I think, with my background and track record of attracting visitors and academic respect, I could bring a great deal of, er, knowledge and experience to the job."
She nods, but I don’t get the sense it’s an invitation to continue.
“I am glad you raised it,” she says. “I do appreciate your experience, and I'm glad the exhibition is going quite well. And I appreciate your interest in the role. I've already given this a lot of thought, and I've decided – I am going external.”
“Ah. I see." My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. "Well, if you'll allow me, I'd like the chance to change your mind. I've been instrumental in arranging the Evelyn endowment, which has been going very successfully. And the mid-century pop-up exhibition earlier in the year had over 30,000 visitors and was featured in The Curator. I think–”
“What we need is overseas tourism, Matthew," Holly fixes me with a serious gaze. "London buzz, articles in the mainstream press, influencers. School groups are lovely, but they do not pay for roof repairs.”
She straightens her phone so that it sits exactly parallel to the lamp’s base.
“I need someone with proven commercial reach.”
My eyebrows lift. “To be fair, I feel I’ve not had the chance to prove that side of things. If you give me the scope, I can deliver.”
She looks at me for a second. Her eyes are pale, clinical. “Matthew, I am not going to give you the scope," she pauses before moving on. "I do have something else I need you to take care of.”
She reaches behind her and lifts a slim cardboard folder from the stack. She holds it out. I try to formulate a final defence, to fight one last time. I have nothing. I take it from her, maybe a touch too quickly.
“This is an additional part of the Evelyn bequest,” she says. “Sixteenth-century horology. It arrived last month and has been sitting in the basement because we have no-one in the team with this specialism. You have the technical background to catalogue it. I need it done by Friday.”
I raise an eyebrow at that – Friday seems optimistic. Putting on my glasses, I open the folder. There is a single-page inventory in table form, listing items I am somewhat familiar with, most with materials and dates missing. The provenance line reads: “Evelyn Estate, Midhurst. Bequeathed. Unconditional.”
“I wouldn't consider myself an expert in horology,” I say, looking up.
“You know enough. And, you are available.” She smiles, picks up her fountain pen and clicks the cap on and off twice. “I'm sure you'll do a great job of it. They had a specialist who was documenting that collection. He retired early. Health reasons, apparently.”
She opens her door before I can ask what that means.
I walk back through the upper corridor. The Victorian station clock outside the trustees’ room has been stopped at ten to three, has been for years, but I only really notice it today. The pendulum is visible behind dusty glass, held in an arrested swing. I hurry past.
The back stairs are marble, worn into shallow troughs by two centuries of curators and visitors. My footsteps echo as I slow, now a safe distance from the clock, from Holly. The air grows cooler and damper as I descend. I grip the bannister to steady myself and head down.
The basement corridor is lined with green-painted steel doors, each marked with a department code. The workroom is right at the far end. The humidity control unit above the doorframe hums.
Inside, the room is long and low, lit by fluorescent tubes that buzz at the edge of hearing. I sit down heavily in a chair and lower my face in my hands, replaying the meeting. The humidifier clangs somewhere in the wall. There was nothing more I could have done, but my mind returns to the mortgage, the deposit. How I am going to explain it to Kath. I slap my knees and stand.
Seven reinforced cardboard crates sit on the central bench, each stamped with the Evelyn crest. Someone has already sliced through the packing tape on the largest box, but the lid has not been lifted. Packing materials bulge from the top.
I set Holly’s folder on the bench. The inventory lists forty-seven items. Most are familiar: astrolabes, nocturnals, a verge escapement, incomplete mechanisms, and several rare 16th-century German clocks. Sparse details accompany the entries – no dates, no maker's marks, no acquisition notes. I calculate the additional research this will cause me.
The straw packing smells of mildew and the sharp, metallic tang of polish. I gently shift the packing aside and find the edges of a smooth, buffed wooden case.
The oak container is about the length of a shoebox, but deeper, and unexpectedly heavy. Dark iron hasps hold the lid shut. A disc of crimson wax seals the join, the wax unbroken.
I fetch a scalpel from the conservation tray and work the blade under the seal, careful not to score the oak beneath. I lift the hasps. The hinges groan.
Inside is a small table clock, resting in a bed of purple silk greying with age. The crystal housing is crazed and fractured, the gilt worn to a warm dullness. But the steel and gold clockwork is remarkably well preserved, the fusee still intact. At the base, three pewter feet stand out, oddly human-like. The clock narrows to an alarm at the top, capped in gold vine-leaf. I can’t take my eyes from it.
I lift it from the silk. The brass is cold and heavier than its size suggests. I upend it to examine the base plate. There, engraved, is a single line of text. I tilt it toward the fluorescent light, adjusting my glasses.
I’m expecting Latin or Greek, or possibly German. It's English, hand-wrought calligraphy circling the base:
The missing wheel is not lost, but is the engine. Fathom the ledger.
Excerpt from Chapter 4
It is then, as I play with the bell cap on the clock, I notice something strange. I twist the cap, and suddenly the room becomes still. Holly appears to be mid-blink, and I can see Hanif opening his mouth, in what was likely to be a poorly judged defence. But it is as though they are in slow motion. I look around the room to check if anyone else can see what I am seeing, but the rest of the team seem equally paused, one of the senior researchers flipping a pen around her finger impossibly slowly.
As I continue to look around the room, panic rising, I notice out the window, the trees in the park adjoining the museum waving in the wind. The movement is perfectly ordinary, not slowed like the room has become. I stare down the gallery window overlooking the main hall of the museum. There, visitors file in and out of the main doors, moving swiftly until arrested by the view of the bust of King Akhumet, lifting their phones to capture the ancient king’s likeness. All completely normal. All at regular speed.
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