It always happens at the most unfortunate times. I am not one of the muscularly gifted ones and despite my lock picking skills I can easily drop the most expensive vase, or your grandfather's clock. One such unfortunate event occurred when I was assisting Mrs. Rackham with her ancient mantle clock we had just repaired. The old hag appears to fancy me and keeps bringing random pieces from her mansion in for repair. As I was handing over the marble and metal monstrosity to Mrs. Rackham’s valet, Helen walked into the store and nearly ran me over, all the while beaming as if she had just found out she is the new heir to the Russian throne. For a brief moment the clock hovered in mid air but then quickly tried to seek refuge on the ground, which received it warmly and scattered it all over the ground. Completely ignoring the customer and the mess, she immediately goes into a stream of consciousness directed at my poor ears. “That French floozy has had it!” she yelled. “Off to jail, off to the gallows!” “Helen, could you please wait until I’m done with her ladyship please? I will come see you upstairs in a while”, I said, trying out what Hubbard would have said. Mrs. Rackham gave Helen a rather insolent cold stare. Not that this made any difference. Helen briskly walked up the stairs and started singing some old Russian hymn, or at least it sounded like a hymn, but then again anything sung in Russian sounds religious to me.

Mrs. Rackham took the incident rather well and happily announced she would bring in its twin for repair. “My dear boy, it is only an object”, she said, patting me on the back. Hubbard had heard the crash and came running (his version of this) out of his workshop. “What in heaven’s name happened?” he asked. After he noticed the mess on the floor he did not say much other than that my pay would be reduced considerably for a while and that the valet should have handled the clock. The watchmaker attempted to console Her Ladyship but to his astonishment found the old broad in good spirits. “Forgive me”, he said, “the young lad has not been with me for very long and has not been properly trained yet in the handling of these delicate instruments.” “But dear old man, I have more of these than I know what to do with. I will be along tomorrow with the twin to this clock”, she said gleefully pointing at the debris on the floor. Not knowing how to respond to this he smiled politely and promised that there would be no charge for the repair of the soon to be brought in clock. Additionally he assured her that we (read: me) would try to find a matching copy, again free of charge. Making use of the situation, Mrs. Rackham suggested I came round to pick up the second timepiece myself instead, so that I could show I am indeed capable of moving objects around. Also, this way I could ascertain if there were any other clocks or watches that could use repair. You can imagine that this made me very uncomfortable, but under the circumstances had to agree.

Without incident I managed to escort Mrs. nee, Lady Rackham out of the shop and into her waiting carriage. Hubbard had disappeared again into his workshop and when I entered the sales area again he shouted that I better be careful in the future. As you can imagine it took some time to clean up the mess. Whatever material the clock was made of it broke apart into dust and fine debris. I saved what was left of the mechanics and decided to take it to my room. Sometimes we have small pieces of inner clock workings left and those are saved for my training. I must admit I happily do this and the profession of watch making is rather growing on me. Not one second after I had quietly tried to enter my room I heard Helen behind me. “Come and have a cup of tea with me Jeremy, I have some good news”, she said. There was no escaping. With the store empty and with Helen always finding reasons why I should listen to her I was compelled by guild to abide by her wishes. In other words, it was safer to listen to her for a bit, then having to hear why I was so insensitive to her feelings. “Remember the Hammond murder a couple of days back?” she asked. “Sure, happened very close to here. Nice man, very quiet. He was a carpenter right?” “Yes yes, I’m sure”, Helen said hastily as if the victim was the least important part of the tragedy. “Remember how they suspected George Harley? Well I did see him around these parts and you never guess where!” Helen was almost ecstatic now. With the reference to the French maid I could guess somewhat but decided to give Helen her moment. “I seen her with that French maid, the one Welder employs. You know, the arrogant one with her Boeuf Bourguignon. Stew is what we call that where I come from”, Helen sputtered. “So anyway, there I was right, just chatting to Rosie. You know her of course; she’s helping out with Mrs. Vandermeer now that she’s pregnant. All of a sudden this guy comes bolting around the corner and disappears into Welder’s store. ‘That’s a bludger if I ever saw one’ I said to Rosie. Better call the peelers she says to me, I’m sure Welder doesn’t know. Welder didn’t know but he found soon enough when he found a rather dirty man in his cellar. Almost got his head cracked he did. This Michelle girl, his cook and maid comes running in and gets the man out through the back. Welder barely got out of the way and immediately started screaming for the rozzers. Luckily they were around and they nabbed him as he and the French one tried to get away. T’was George alright, had been hiding right in Welder’s house in Michelle’s room. Poor Welder, I hope this does not affect his reputation. But that should teach me hiring some French woman. I told him I did, that he should get a respectable Russian cook, but did he listen?”

During dinner we had to listen to another retelling of the day’s events, this time with added mysteries and conjectures. Perhaps the French maid was part of a gang of international criminals? Maybe Arthur’s murder was to silence him? There were many more such elaborations but I will spare you those. “Good man Arthur was, in fact he made the chairs we’re sitting on and good work he did on them. I will have to invite Welder over for some Port to settle him a bit”, Hubbard mumbled and I’m sure the Port was just as much for the watchmaker’s own nerves after the clock incident as it was for the wine seller’s.