The bicycle did not travel through time in any of the ways Mabel would have preferred.

There was no blue flash, no tunnel, no sensation of being artistically rearranged at the atomic level. One moment she was wobbling behind Bertie along Platform Zero with Inspector Vale strolling beside her in a manner that ignored several laws of locomotion. The next, the station lamps deepened from gold to amber, the air tasted faintly of nutmeg, and the posters on the wall changed from SUMMER TIMETABLE IMPROVEMENTS to BLACKWATER WINTER FESTIVAL AND DUCK AWARENESS WEEK.

"I dislike that this feels like an administrative update," Mabel said.

"That's Blackwater for you," Bertie replied. "Even eternity gets circulars."

They rolled off the platform into a service lane behind the town hall. Nothing seemed violently altered, yet dozens of details sat slightly out of register. The flowerbeds were planted with winter pansies instead of chrysanthemums. A statue in the square wore a scarf. Someone had hung bunting across the council entrance with WELCOME DELEGATES in cheerful red capitals, though there were no visible delegates unless one counted a ghost inspector and a man pushing a tea trolley bicycle.

Mrs. Vale-Smythe checked the brass key in Mabel's hand. "Next Thursday. Seven days ahead, assuming no lateral slippage."

"And if there is lateral slippage?"

"Then it may be Tuesday dressed as Thursday. Best not to encourage it."

The side door to the council chamber stood ajar.

From within came voices.

Mabel held up a hand and edged down the corridor. Light spilled through the crack. She peered in and saw the long committee table, half a dozen empty chairs, one exhausted potted palm, and Deputy Town Clerk Horace Spatchcock standing over an open minute book.

He was exactly what Mabel had expected and somehow more so: narrow, immaculate, and assembled from sharp corners. His mustache looked drafted. His waistcoat buttons shone with incriminating sincerity.

Opposite him sat the mayor, blinking with the dazed politeness of a man who had somehow missed his own life.

"So to summarize," Spatchcock was saying, pen poised, "the luncheon did occur, the receipts do exist, and the ducks were entirely metaphorical."

"Were they?" asked the mayor.

"For the purposes of the public record, emphatically."

Mabel stepped into the room.

"I don't think that's how records work."

Spatchcock started so violently he put a comma through the blotter.

"Miss Quince," he said. "You are not scheduled to arrive until after the confusion."

"I get that a lot lately."

Vale drifted in behind her. Bertie parked the bicycle in the doorway. Mrs. Vale-Smythe entered last, carrying moral disappointment like a ceremonial mace.

Spatchcock recovered himself with admirable speed. "Chief Administrative Officer. Inspector. Caretaker. Miss Quince. This is irregular."

"That's a strong word from a man laundering Thursdays," said Vale.

The mayor raised a tentative hand. "Am I in trouble?"

"Only retroactively," said Bertie.

Spatchcock closed the minute book. "You misunderstand the situation."

"Then do improve it," said Mrs. Vale-Smythe.

For the first time, something slipped in his expression. Not fear exactly. Fatigue, perhaps, coated in annoyance.

"Do any of you know," he said, "what this town requires to continue functioning? The forms? The revisions? The duplicate notices to departments that have changed names but not habits? I inherited three years of collapsed filing, a mayor who signs only in green ink, and a Tourism Subcommittee that meets in four different senses. There were never enough hours."

"So you stole some," Mabel said.

"Borrowed," he snapped. "From unused corners. Deferred intervals. Luncheons no one enjoyed. I made room where there was none."

Mrs. Vale-Smythe's gaze could have shelved books. "By carving gaps in the civic week."

"Temporarily. Until the winter festival accounts were reconciled."

The mayor brightened. "Were the ducks metaphorical?"

"No, Your Worship," said everyone except Spatchcock.

He pressed on. "I would have restored everything if the luncheon receipts had balanced. But Councillor Fenn claimed for fourteen blancmanges, and then the chronometer began demanding repayment. I had to keep shifting the deficit forward."

Vale gave a low, appreciative hum. "Time-travel embezzlement undone by pudding. That's almost elegant."

Mabel walked to the committee table and laid down the Thursday File, the recovered index cards, and Bell's red pencil. The props, arranged together, seemed to improve her authority.

"You sent no memo," she said.

Spatchcock's eyes flicked to the future-dated note she withdrew from her pocket.

"Of course I didn't."

"No. I did." She tapped her own signature. "Which means at some point I solve this, become even less cheerful, and start issuing instructions. I'd like to avoid whatever leads to that tone."

Bertie peered at the memo. "You do get brisk."

"Thank you, Bertie."

She opened the minute book Spatchcock had tried to close. The top page was dated a week ahead and headed SPECIAL TEMPORAL CORRECTIONS SESSION. Beneath it, in neat clerk's script, was a record of a meeting that had not yet happened.

AGENDA ITEM 3: Motion by Miss Quince that the town cease storing unsecured time within luncheon accounts.

Carried unanimously, though Mr. Spatchcock was visibly sulky.

AGENDA ITEM 4: Resolution that Inspector Vale remain dead only where practical.

At this, Vale looked deeply touched.

Mabel turned the page.

AGENDA ITEM 5: Authorization for controlled discharge of accumulated Thursdays during Winter Festival procession. Public explanation to involve decorative scheduling and no mention of metaphysics.

She read it twice.

"We're supposed to let the town have the missing time back all at once."

Mrs. Vale-Smythe came beside her. "During the procession. Clever. The confusion will be blamed on brass bands."

"That has precedent," Vale said.

Spatchcock looked between them. "You're not seriously considering following future minutes."

"Why not?" said Mabel. "You've been following them all week."

He opened his mouth, shut it, then rallied. "If you release the stored Thursdays, the winter festival timetable will collapse. The parade will overlap the civic raffle. The duck display will be early."

The mayor gasped. "Not the raffle."

"Horace," said Mrs. Vale-Smythe, with devastating patience, "you have hidden portions of the week inside meal reimbursements. We are already beyond good options."

The room fell briefly silent except for the clock over the chamber door, which had begun ticking backward in modest embarrassment.

Mabel looked at Spatchcock and saw, beneath the starch and spite, a clerk who had mistaken competence for permission. She knew the type. Archives had shelves full of them.

"You could have asked for help," she said.

"From whom?" he replied. "The mayor thinks ducks are metaphors. The Finance Committee thinks calendars are advisory. And Cressida" - here he made the error of glancing toward Mrs. Vale-Smythe - "has a leadership style one might charitably describe as glacial."

"Charity declined," said Mrs. Vale-Smythe.

Bertie set four cups of tea on the table.

"Five," Mabel corrected.

"Inspector doesn't spill enough to count."

Vale accepted a cup anyway and managed, through sheer dedication, to hold most of it.

Mabel picked up Bell's red pencil and drew a line beneath AGENDA ITEM 5.

"Here's what we're doing. We follow the minutes. We reopen the chronometer chamber. We let the missing Thursdays run out during the procession when the whole town is already distracted by bunting and trombones. We amend the record to note that no one is ever to store time inside luncheon accounts again."

"You'll need a seconder," said Vale.

"I second," said Bertie promptly.

"This is not a meeting," snapped Spatchcock.

"Then why are there minutes?" Mabel asked.

That finished him for the moment.

The chronometer chamber lay behind the council dais, concealed by a wood panel marked EMERGENCY STATIONERY. Inside, brass mechanisms rose from floor to ceiling in a glittering cage of gears, pendulums, and copper tubes carrying little pulses of pale light. At the center stood the municipal chronometer: a clock face six feet wide, its hands held rigid at Thursday, 3:12 p.m.

Mabel inserted the brass key.

The machine shuddered awake.

Outside, from the street, came the first distant notes of a brass band warming up badly.

"Perfect timing," murmured Vale.

"For once," said Mrs. Vale-Smythe.

Spatchcock hovered miserably at Mabel's elbow. "If this fails, the week may double back."

"Then we'll get more practice," she said.

She turned the key.

The chronometer released a sound like a filing cabinet exhaling. Light rushed along the tubes. Somewhere in Blackwater doors banged open, clocks lurched, and a hundred missing quarter-hours hurried home.

From the square came surprised laughter, shouts, a burst of trombone, and one remarkably triumphant quack.

The mayor straightened. "I remember the luncheon now. There were eighteen ducks."

"Of course there were," said Bertie.

The great hand of the chronometer moved. Thursday resumed.

Not perfectly. Blackwater was never likely to be perfect again. But the tick that followed felt solid, almost relieved.

Mabel glanced at the future minutes still tucked under her arm.

"Do you think," she asked quietly, "that I'm going to keep receiving these?"

Vale considered. "Almost certainly."

"Is that bad?"

He smiled. "Only if you were hoping for a quiet career."

From outside came the rising noise of the winter procession colliding gracefully with seven days' worth of missing time, municipal music, and liberated poultry. Mrs. Vale-Smythe closed her eyes. Bertie grinned. Spatchcock looked as though remorse and relief were engaged in administrative dispute.

Mabel, quite against expectation, laughed.

It was not every day one solved a mystery by weaponizing the minutes of a meeting that had not yet happened.

Then again, in Blackwater, it might soon be.