A 67-year-old retired London conservator inherits her grandmother's Victorian pocket watch, and finds eleven words inscribed inside it that the family solicitor never wanted her to read.
Step into a quiet Bloomsbury townhouse in late autumn. The lamp is low. A rosewood box rests on the lid of an upright piano. Inside, on a folded square of cream silk, lies a Victorian silver pocket watch on a long chain, stopped at twelve minutes past four. Cordelia Ashcombe inherits the use of the house, the watch, and a question she does not yet know to ask.
Her grandmother's family solicitor, a man the Ashcombes have trusted for forty years, has already taken the watch once, for the executor's inventory. He has returned it with a small wrong note in his account of it. The case is silver, not tin. And on the inner cover, beneath the case-back, in the spring of nineteen seventy two, Estelle had eleven words micro inscribed in her own hand, dated and witnessed, naming her true beneficiaries and one final instruction about a small brass key.
A slow-burn cozy audio drama of a Bloomsbury drawing room, a Hatton Garden watchmaker, a quiet niece at a horology auction house, a probate hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand, and the inscribed will inside a silver case that had been ticking, patiently, for over half a century before anyone thought to listen.
Voice Cast:
Cordelia: Cordelia Ashcombe
Nigel: Nigel Pemberton
Estelle: Estelle Ashcombe
Felix: Felix Ashcombe
Saoirse: Saoirse Ashcombe-Quinn
Mr. Wexford: A. Wexford
The Judge: The Senior Master
Ms. Petrie: Ms. Petrie
Dim the lights, pour a warm drink, and let this heartfelt story guide you into a deep, peaceful sleep.
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"Trust is not a thing a person earns once and keeps. Trust is a thing a person renews, day by day, by bringing the key back."
Made with AI assistance for narration, music, and sound design. Written and directed by The Porch Light.