Margaret MacGregor discovers the decomposed corpse of a 1920s archaeologist in the garden outhouse of her new home.
Excerpt
'Forty years as a pathologist had left Dr. Allen comfortably wealthy, and in all that time he had never been tempted by the possessions of the dead. But this watch. This watch was different.
Cleaned and dried, it showed no signs of having lain at the bottom of a pool on the wrist of a decomposing corpse; the 18 carat gold case and strap, immaculate. Not a drop of moisture had penetrated. Dismantling it would tell him when the watch had stopped, and give him a probable date and time of death, but that would destroy this beautiful object. But there was another possibility. Tentatively he held the winding mechanism between thumb and forefinger and gently turned the ratchet.
At the second turn, and for the first time in eighty years, the watch began to tick.'