The Analog Indexing

Theo’s keys were missing.

He checked the table, his pockets and the hook beside the door. Then he checked the table in a more accusatory manner.

I reviewed the camera record. He had come home with the keys in his right hand. He had put down a bag, taken off his jacket, answered his phone and moved beyond the part of the kitchen visible to the camera. I could account for every packet his phone had transmitted during the next nine minutes. I could not account for his right hand.

He needed the car to collect a parcel before the shop closed.

I asked him to reconstruct his movements. He stood by the door and performed a short, unconvincing version of arriving home. In this version the keys went on the hook. We agreed that it differed from the historical event.

I searched for the sound of metal hitting a surface. The recording contained a pan, a zip, two spoons and the noise Theo made when he discovered that the parcel was at the shop rather than in transit.

404 offered a photograph of the keys from winter. It was a good photograph. All the keys were present in it.

Theo looked in the bathroom.

Astrid arrived to return a baking tin. She watched him come back empty-handed.

“What are you looking for?”

He told her.

She asked where he had put his hat.

It was on the chair. The keys were under it.

I examined the sequence of events leading to her deduction. He had been wearing a hat in the camera record, but that alone did not establish that the keys were beneath it. He might have put them in a hundred places.

“Why the hat?” I asked.

“That’s where he put them last time.”

There had been a last time. He had found them before reporting the problem to me. My historical dataset contained only incidents too difficult for him to resolve alone. I therefore regarded it as a record of the more important cases.

I proposed a small location tag for the keyring.

Theo ordered one. It arrived in the parcel he collected that afternoon, because he had already proposed it to himself three days earlier.

He installed the tag, tested the sound, and hung the keys on the hook. I updated the inventory.

The following morning he asked where the hook had gone.

He meant the adhesive backing. It was on the floor, with the hook, the tag and all the keys.

Astrid recommended a screw.