The Clock | A classic ghost story…or is it? | by W. F. Harvey | Audiobook

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:12]The clock by W. F. Harvey.

[00:00:16]Read by Miss Worm.

[00:00:19]I liked your description of the people at the boarding house.

[00:00:23]I can just picture that rather sinister Miss Cornelius with her toupee and clinking bangles.

[00:00:32]I don't wonder you felt frightened that night when you found her sleepwalking in the corridor.

[00:00:37]But after all, why shouldn't she sleepwalk?

[00:00:41]As to the movements of the furniture in the lounge on the Sunday, you are, I suppose, in an earthquake zone.

[00:00:49]Though an earthquake seems too big an explanation for the ringing of that little handbell on the mantelpiece.

[00:00:57]It's rather as if our parlor maid, another new one, were to call a stray elephant to account for the teapot we found broken yesterday.

[00:01:07]Well, you have at least escaped the eternal problem of maids in Italy.

[00:01:13]Yes, my dear, I most certainly believe you.

[00:01:17]I have never had experiences quite like yours.

[00:01:21]But your mention of Miss Cornelius has reminded me of something rather similar that happened nearly 20 years ago soon after I left school.

[00:01:32]I was staying with my aunt in Hampstead.

[00:01:35]You remember her, I expect, or if not, her poodle, Monsieur, that she used to make perform such pathetic tricks.

[00:01:45]There was another guest whom I had never met before, a Mrs. Caleb.

[00:01:51]She lived in Lewes and had been staying with my aunt for about a fortnight, recuperating after a series of domestic upheavals which had culminated in her two servants leaving her at an hour's notice without any reason, according to Mrs. Caleb.

[00:02:09]But I wondered.

[00:02:10]I had never seen the maids.

[00:02:13]Now I had seen Mrs. Caleb and frankly, I disliked her.

[00:02:18]She left the same sort of impression on me as I gather your Miss Cornelius leaves on you.

[00:02:25]Something queer and secretive.

[00:02:28]Underground, if you can use that expression, rather than underhand.

[00:02:36]And I could feel in my body that she did not like me.

[00:02:42]It was summer.

[00:02:44]Joan Dinton, you remember her, her husband was killed in Gallipoli, had suggested that I should go down to spend the day with her.

[00:02:54]Her people had rented a little cottage some 3 miles out of Lewis.

[00:02:59]So we arranged a day.

[00:03:01]It was gloriously fine for a wonder, and I'd planned to leave that stuffy old Hampstead house before the old ladies were astir.

[00:03:11]But Mrs. Caleb waylaid me in the hall just as I was going out.

[00:03:17]"I wonder," she said, "I wonder if you could do me a small favor.

[00:03:23]If you do have any time to spare in Lewis, only if you do, would you be so kind as to call at my house?

[00:03:33]I left a little traveling clock there in the hurry of parting.

[00:03:39]If it's not in the drawing-room, it will be in my bedroom or in one of the maids' bedrooms.

[00:03:45]I know I lent it to the cook who was a poor riser, but I cannot remember if she returned it.

[00:03:53]Would it be too much to ask?

[00:03:56]The house has been locked up for 12 days, but everything is in order.

[00:04:02]I have the keys here.

[00:04:04]The large one is for the garden gate, and the small one for the front door.

[00:04:11]I could only accept, and she proceeded to tell me how I could find Ashgrove house.

[00:04:18]You will feel quite like a burglar, she said, but mind, it's only if you have time to spare.

[00:04:29]As a matter of fact, I found myself glad of any excuse to kill time.

[00:04:35]Poor old Joan had been taken suddenly ill in the night, and they feared appendicitis.

[00:04:41]And though her people were very kind and asked me to stay to lunch, I could see that I should only be in the way, and made Mrs. Caleb's commission an excuse for an early departure.

[00:04:54]I found Ashgrove without difficulty.

[00:04:58]It was a medium-sized red brick house, standing by itself in a high-walled garden that bounded a narrow lane.

[00:05:07]A flagged path led from the gate to the front door, in front of which grew not an ash, but a monkey puzzle that must have made the rooms unnecessarily gloomy.

[00:05:20]The side door, as I expected, was locked.

[00:05:24]The dining room and drawing room lay on either side of the hall, and as the windows of both were shuttered, I left the hall door open, and in the dim light looked round hurriedly for the clock, which from what Mrs. Caleb had said, I hardly expected to find in either of the downstairs rooms.

[00:05:46]It was neither on table nor mantelpiece.

[00:05:50]The rest of the furniture was covered carefully over with white dust sheets.

[00:05:56]Then I went upstairs.

[00:05:59]But before doing so, I closed the front door.

[00:06:03]I did, in fact, feel rather like a burglar.

[00:06:06]And I thought that if anyone did happen to see the front door open, I might have difficulty in explaining things.

[00:06:14]Happily, the upstairs were not shuttered.

[00:06:18]And I made a hurried search of the principal bedrooms.

[00:06:22]They had been left in apple pie order.

[00:06:25]Nothing out of place.

[00:06:27]But there was no sign of Mrs. Caleb's clock.

[00:06:31]The impression that the house [clears throat] gave me Well, you know, the sense of personality that a house conveys was neither pleasing nor displeasing.

[00:06:41]But it was stuffy.

[00:06:43]Stuffy from the absence of fresh air.

[00:06:46]With an additional stuffiness added that seemed to come out from the hangings and quilts and antimacassars.

[00:06:54]The corridor onto which the bedrooms I had examined opened communicated with a smaller wing. An older part of the house, I imagined.

[00:07:05]Which contained a box room and the maid's sleeping quarters.

[00:07:10]The last door that I unlocked I should say that the doors of all the rooms were locked and re-locked by me after I'd glanced inside them contained the object of my search.

[00:07:23]Mrs. Caleb's traveling clock was on the mantelpiece.

[00:07:27]Ticking away merrily.

[00:07:30]Well, that was how I thought of it at first.

[00:07:33]And then for the first time I realized that there was something wrong.

[00:07:41]The clock had no business to be ticking.

[00:07:45]The house had been shut up for 12 days.

[00:07:49]No one had come in to air it or to light fires.

[00:07:53]And I remembered how Mrs. Caleb had told my aunt that if she left the keys with a neighbor, she was never sure who might get hold of them.

[00:08:04]And yet, the clock was going.

[00:08:09]I wondered if some vibration had set the mechanism in motion and pulled out my watch to see the time.

[00:08:17]It was 5 minutes to 1.

[00:08:20]The clock on the mantelpiece said 4 minutes to the hour.

[00:08:26]Then, without quite knowing why, I shut the door onto the landing, locked myself in, and again looked round the room.

[00:08:39]Nothing was out of place.

[00:08:41]The only thing that might have called for remark was that there appeared to be a slight indentation on [clears throat] the pillow and the bed.

[00:08:53]But the mattress was a feather mattress, and you know how difficult it is to make them perfectly smooth.

[00:08:59]You won't need to be told that I gave a hurried glance under the bed.

[00:09:05]Do you remember your supposed burglar in number six at St. Ursula's?

[00:09:10]And then, much more reluctantly, opened the doors of two horribly capacious cupboards, both happily empty, except for a framed text with its face to the wall.

[00:09:26]By this time, I really was frightened.

[00:09:30]The clock went ticking on, and I had a horrible feeling that an alarm might go off at any moment.

[00:09:39]And the thought of being in that empty house was almost too much for me.

[00:09:45]However, I made an attempt to pull myself together.

[00:09:51]It might, after all, be a 14-day clock.

[00:09:55]If it were, then it would be almost run down.

[00:09:59]I could roughly find out how long the clock had been going by winding it up.

[00:10:05]I hesitated to put the matter to the test, but the uncertainty was too much for me.

[00:10:13]I took it out of its case and began to wind.

[00:10:17]I had scarcely turned the winding screw twice when it stopped.

[00:10:23]The clock, clearly, was not running down.

[00:10:28]The hands had been set in motion probably only an hour or two before.

[00:10:35]I felt cold and faint.

[00:10:38]And going to the window, threw up the sash, letting in the sweet, live air of the garden.

[00:10:46]I knew now that the house was queer, horribly queer.

[00:10:53]Could someone be living in the house?

[00:10:58]Was someone in the house now?

[00:11:02]I thought that I had been in all the rooms, but had I?

[00:11:10]I had only just opened the bathroom door, and I had certainly not opened any cupboards except those in the room in which I was.

[00:11:21]Then, as I stood by the open window, wondering what I should do next, and feeling that I just couldn't go down that corridor into the darkened hall to fumble at the latch of the front door with I don't know what behind me.

[00:11:39]I heard a noise.

[00:11:42]It was very faint at first and seemed to be coming from the stairs.

[00:11:50]It was a curious noise.

[00:11:53]Not the noise of anyone climbing up the stairs but you [clears throat] will laugh if this letter reaches you by a morning post but of something hopping up the stairs like a very big bird would hop.

[00:12:12]I heard it on the landing.

[00:12:15]It stopped.

[00:12:18]Then there was a curious scratching noise against one of the bedroom doors.

[00:12:25]The sort of noise you can make with the nail of your little finger scratching polished wood.

[00:12:32]Whatever it was was coming slowly down the corridor scratching at the doors as it went.

[00:12:42]I could stand it no longer.

[00:12:45]Nightmare pictures of locked doors opening filled my brain.

[00:12:50]I took up the clock, wrapped it in my mackintosh, and dropped it out of the window onto a flower bed.

[00:12:58]Then I managed to crawl out of the window and getting a grip of the sill successfully negotiated, as the journalists would say, a 12-ft drop.

[00:13:10]So much for our much abused gym at St. Ursula's.

[00:13:15]Picking up the mackintosh I ran round to the front door and locked it.

[00:13:22]Then I felt I could breathe but not until I was on the far side of the gate in the garden wall did I feel safe.

[00:13:32]Then I remembered that the bedroom window was open.

[00:13:37]What was I to do?

[00:13:39]Wild horses wouldn't have dragged me into that house again unaccompanied.

[00:13:44]I made up my mind to go to the police station and tell them everything.

[00:13:48]I should be laughed at, of course, and they might easily refuse to believe my story of Mrs. Caleb's commission.

[00:13:57]>> [snorts] >> I had actually begun to walk down the lane in the direction of the town when I chanced to look back at the house.

[00:14:08]The window that I had left open was shut.

[00:14:15]No, my dear, I didn't see any face or anything dreadful like that.

[00:14:21]And of course it may have shut by itself.

[00:14:25]It was an ordinary sash window, and you know how difficult they are to keep open.

[00:14:31]And the rest?

[00:14:33]Why, there's really nothing more to tell.

[00:14:37]I didn't even see Mrs. Caleb again.

[00:14:40]She'd had some sort of fainting fit just before lunchtime, my aunt informed me on my return, and had had to go to bed.

[00:14:50]Next morning I traveled down to Cornwall to join mother and the children.

[00:14:55]I thought I'd forgotten all about it, but when 3 years later Uncle Charles suggested giving me a traveling clock for a 21st birthday present, I was foolish enough to prefer the alternative that he offered, a collected edition of the works of Thomas Carlyle.

[00:15:26]>> Mhm.