Greg ignored her scathing criticism and set the tall clock in the hall at the foot of the stairs, “all the better to hear its wonderfully slow ticking and its Westminster chimes.”

That first night all went well until the midnight hour was struck. Greg lay awake in bed waiting for the moment. Strangely in a houseful of old clocks, all usually ringing to a different tune, this night all others were silent, as though in awe of a supreme arrival. The rebuilt antique clock echoed its Westminster chimes amid an eerie silence. Greg rushed downstairs in his dressing gown to witness the event.

He switched on the light and the house was transformed. He gazed around fearfully lest his sanity had deserted him. He was not at home but transported back to the eighteenth century. There was his restored clock in the drawing room of a stately home. Two other adults were in the room, a man and a woman in evening dress. The clock was still chiming midnight and the man was standing behind the young woman as she played a Chopin nocturne at a grand piano. They were not aware of Greg as he took in the strange scene. The man raised his arm and the glint of a sharp knife took on another hue as it became covered in blood. He repeatedly struck the back of his companion in a frenzied attack. Greg wanted to scream out a warning but knew he had entered another place and another time. The clock stopped chiming and thankfully Greg was back in his own bed. The next day the police led him away in handcuffs as white clothed officials took his mother’s body away in a plain black van.

Police Inspector Blake sat Greg in the interview room at the station and patiently enquired why he had repeatedly stabbed his old mother to death, “We know you did it but why and at what time?”

All he could reply was: “When the hands of the old clock in the hall struck the midnight hour I was mesmerised and my own hands belonged to someone else from long ago?”

The Police Inspector was puzzled. “Forensics have been through your home with a fine tooth comb, yes there is an inordinate number of clocks in the house, but there is no clock in the hall!”

End