Excerpt from The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He was sure that Annabel was all right. She had been pragmatic even before she had her boys. But she had never been to London before, and she had left no messages with the landlady or the Home Office porters.

More to soothe his own unease than out of any real fear for her, he sent a telegram to her post office in Edinburgh from the desk at work, in case she had had to go home already. He bought some biscuits and some sugar for proper tea on his way home, though, in case she hadn't. The grocer at the end of Whitehall Street had started opening in the early mornings to catch the home-going night-workers.

Annabel wasn't there when he got back but he was cooking when there came a small tap at the door. He opened it with his shirtsleeves still rolled up, beginning to apologise that the flat smelled of dinner at nine in the morning, then stopped when he saw that it wasn't Annabel but a boy with a post office badge and an envelope. There was a clipboard for him to sign. He signed it. The telegram was from Edinburgh.

What do you mean? Am in Edinburgh as usual. Never left. HO driven you mad at last. Will send whisky. Told can be beneficial. Happy returns. Sorry to have forgotten again. Love A.

He put the paper face down next to him. The watch was where he had left it on the chair. Because of the steam from the pan, it was dull from condensation, but the gold still hummed its voice colour. He went to the police station on his way to work the next morning, incoherent from the switch of time that always made midweek difficult. He was snorted at by the desk officer and asked not completely unreasonably whether the culprit might be Robin Hood. He nodded and laughed but as he left a creeping worry seeped back. At the office he mentioned it during a tea break. The other telegraphists looked at him oddly and made only vaguely interested noises. He stayed quiet after that. For the next few weeks, he expected someone to own up, but nobody did. The sound of the ships creaking outside his window was not something he usually noticed. It was there always, louder when the tide was in. It stopped on a cold morning in February. The river had frozen the hulls into place overnight. The quiet woke him. He lay still in bed, listening and watching his breath whiten. Wind hissed in the window frame, which was loose where the pane had shrunk. The glass had mostly steamed over, but he could make out part of a furled sail. The canvas didn't move even when the hiss became a whistle. When the wind dropped, there was nothing. He blinked twice, because everything looked suddenly too pale.

Today the silence had a silver hem. He turned his head against the pillow, toward the chair of collars and cufflinks, and a faint sound became clearer. The outer side of the blankets felt clammy when he moved his arm to lift up the watch. It was much warmer than it should have been, as usual. As he moved it, the chain slipped almost off the edge of the chair, but it was long enough not to fall and made a gold slack rope.

Holding it close to his ear, he could hear mechanisms going. They were so quiet he couldn't tell if they had started just then, or had been turning all along and masked by other things. He pressed it against his shirt until he couldn't hear it at all, then lifted it again, trying to compare it to his memory of yesterday's version of silence and its shadow colours. Eventually he sat up and pressed the catch. It still wouldn't open.

He got up and dressed, but stopped with his shirt half buttoned. He didn't know whether it was even possible for clockwork to start itself after two months dead. He was still thinking about it when his eyes caught on the door latch. It was up. He pushed the handle. The door was unlocked. He opened it. Although the corridor was empty, it wasn't quiet; water mumbled in the pipes and there were steps and sudden bright thumps as his neighbours got themselves ready for work. He hadn't left the door unlocked once since the burglary in November, or not that he knew; he did forget things spectacularly every now and then. He closed the door again. On his way out, he stopped, thumped his knuckles slowly against the door frame, and went back for the watch. If somebody were tampering with it, leaving it out in his room all day only made the task easier. The thought made his stomach turn nastily, though God knew what kind of burglar came back to adjust previously deposited presents. Not the cricket-bat-and-mask kind, but then, he didn't know all of the kinds. He wished the policeman hadn't laughed so much.

Excerpted from The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. Copyright © 2015 by Natasha Pulley. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury USA. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.