Realism sleeve with angel, eye and pocket watch

The gentleman in number seven has gone, owing me a week, and left a pocket watch on the mantel that he swore he would come back for. I have wound it every morning since, out of spite more than kindness. Its Roman numerals are worn at the six, and the hands have never once agreed with the church clock along the front. Mr Fallowell at the post office says a watch that keeps its own time belongs to a man who has stopped listening to other people, and I told him to mind his own counter.

Last night the candles in the back parlour burned down to nothing, all eleven of them, which is what happens when the wind comes off the harbour and nobody shuts the sash. I sat up with the lamp and looked at the print he had pinned above the sideboard, a plaster angel with her wings folded over a sinking ship, and I thought she looked tired rather than holy. Eyes like hers would have seen plenty of drowned men. Then I found the tin of old keys he had been rattling in his coat pocket, brass and iron, none of them fitting a lock in the house.

This morning a parcel came by carrier from Hastings, addressed to me in his square hand. Inside was a little skull of carved bone with two keys threaded through its eye sockets, and a note that says only: "Keep the watch going until I know which door these open."

I have put the kettle on. Come for Whitsun and bring your reading glasses, because I cannot make out the rest of the postmark.

Love, Edie