Archived report · 4 min read · Set in Tenth Street ·
The Return Shelf at the Tenth Street Locksmith
An audit of a locksmith's returned stock finds every faulty lock brought back to him now fits the door it was cut from, though none has been refitted and no entry explains the fitting.
- filed: "the morning after the audit closed"
- reference: "TS/RL/04"
1. This register records an audit taken at the locksmith's premises at 61 Tenth Street on the instruction of the Cantor, and entered under the reference above. The trade has stood in the same shopfront since 1951 under the name Ashworth. The locksmith, Dennis Ashworth, 67, received the audit without objection and answered in writing where speech was inconvenient, he keeping no clock in the shop and giving his times by the parish church.
2. The subject of the audit is the return shelf: a pine board above the bench on which Mr Ashworth keeps the locks customers have brought back as faulty, in place of the common practice of scrapping a returned lock once the account is credited. His reason, given in writing, is that a lock out of its door is owed an explanation. The returns are oiled, ticketed and kept in the order of their coming, and he does not treat the paperwork as settled until each is accounted for. Eighteen months of returns were counted: nineteen locks against fourteen dockets.
3. The instruction was to try each returned lock in the door it was cut from. Nineteen doors were visited over three afternoons, the locksmith attending with his ring, each trial witnessed and entered. In every case the lock now fits exactly: the bolt throws to the full throw, the key turns without force and withdraws clean, and the strike holds under the thumb. In no case does this agree with the docket. Every docket describes a lock that would not turn, or turned past the throw, or turned and did nothing, in the words of the customer who carried it in. Whether the doors or the dockets preserve the earlier condition of the trade is not established. The doors were answered by whoever answered them; the dockets were written at the counter and stand as taken.
4. Two returns were set apart for separate note. Ticket 7 was cut in 1979 for a door removed in the spring of 1985 and replaced new by a joiner of the parish. The joiner's bill, produced at the door, carries no charge for cutting or for a keep. Ticket 7 nevertheless answers the new door as if it had been cut for it, and the difference of six years stands unanswered in the papers of both trades.
5. Ticket 12 carries a docket giving a forwarding address on Wash Lane. The people at the address say they have had no such tenant. The trades book shows the account good at the time of the return, and no notice of removal has reached the office. Where neither a removal nor its last resort is filed, the Cantor writes; the letter is drafted, and remains unposted, the address being one the post will not confirm in either direction.
6. Of the nineteen locks, five stand against no docket at all. Their patterns are old ones, out of the catalogue since the fifties, plain-faced, with neither brand nor stamp. Doors on Tenth Street still carry their sisters, and the audit did not try the five in any door. Asked why, the auditor records the locksmith's advice, which was against it: a lock tried and fitting is settled, and he would rather the five waited their turn. The advice is entered without being accepted or refused.
7. One habit is recorded for what it is worth. Each Friday after closing the shelf is oiled, ticket by ticket, in the order of return. The audit fell on a Wednesday and found the shelf in Friday order. The Day Book carries the last oiling at the previous Friday and no entry between. Asked who had oiled the shelf in the interval, Mr Ashworth gave no name, and the Day Book does not supply one.
8. The audit closed without finding. The stock stands as found: nineteen locks on the shelf, ticketed and oiled, fitted to no door; fourteen dockets; five unexplained; one letter drafted and unposted. Correspondence remains open on the auditor's final note, entered here as the question it was left as: if the locks fit their doors already, and have fitted since before they were returned, the shelf has no work left in it — and what, Friday by Friday, is somebody keeping in practice for?