Someone is stealing the clocks of Gearhaven, and time in the city has started running a little bit wrong.
In the steam-powered city of Gearhaven, the great tower clocks keep everything in step: the trams, the tides of the canals, the airship moorings. Now the clocks are disappearing one by one, and the city is starting to run late, then early, then sideways. A brilliant inventor, an automaton who is learning to be a detective, a street urchin who knows every rooftop, and a constable who is very new at the job open a detective agency in a disused bakery to catch the thief before Gearhaven stops altogether.
4 roles. You take one; your friends take the rest, and the narrator plays any left over. Anyone can bring a character of their own into a role instead.
A brilliant, absent-minded inventor who built half the clocks of Gearhaven and is now the chief suspect in their disappearance.
A brass automaton built to keep the inventor's workshop tidy who has, inexplicably, decided to become a detective.
A twelve-year-old who lives on the rooftops of Gearhaven, runs messages for anyone who pays, and knows the city better than its own maps.
The newest constable in the Gearhaven Watch, assigned to the clock case because nobody senior wanted it.