The Clockmaker in Workshop B

Tess Adebayo-Lund, 31, is a junior conservator at the underfunded Bellmouth Civic Museum. She works in Workshop B, a basement room with humming dehumidifiers, a broken vending machine and a whiteboard of overdue repairs. Her assignment is to restore the Tin Scholar, a Victorian writing automaton credited to celebrated inventor Sir Horace Quill, before it headlines the museum's centenary gala in fourteen days. When she winds it, a soot-streaked man tumbles out of 1887. He is Ambrose Pell, a proud clock-repairer who insists the automaton was built by his late sister, Hattie, and that Quill stole it. Tess hides Ambrose in the workshop after hours. He battles motion-sensor taps, microwaves chestnuts, flirts with the voice assistant and outclasses her with forgotten hand techniques. She teaches him that a woman's expertise can be written down and believed. Proving the truth means contradicting Dr. Florence Abernathy, Tess's beloved mentor and author of Quill's definitive biography. Each clue they uncover shifts suspicion onto someone new, including a hidden signature, a pawn ticket and Ambrose's own debts. Then Tess realizes that every gear she repairs pulls Ambrose closer to being wound back to 1887.