Johannus Carver, clockmaker by hobby, had strange guests at his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields. When he had just completed a large steel stable-clock for Sir Edwin Paull's country house, and gilded it with slow-drying paint, someone stole the hands. On the next night the long arrow-headed minute hand was found driven into the body of an unknown man. The corpse was identified and at once evety member of the house fell under suspicion. Questions started. Why did Boscombe have a silencer on his gun? Who locked the door to the attic? What had happened to the sixteenth-century watch, the death-watch, that Boscombe kept in the brass box? Dr Fells meets a curious and varied group of characters, and chuckles his way through fast action to the startling disclosure of the murderer.