Daylight saving time

Daylight saving time creates a brief mismatch between the actual evening light and people’s expectations, a detail Zachariah Osborne sees as an opportunity to watch Mr Venables. Its significance lies not in the clock change alone but in the everyday habits that persist after it ends.

Seasonal Habit

Zachariah Osborne observes that when daylight saving first ends, people may not draw their curtains as soon as they otherwise would. Accustomed to darkness arriving an hour later, they continue to expect it, leaving their rooms visible from outside for longer.

Role in Osborne’s Plan

Osborne proposes using that delay to spy on Mr Venables. He imagines entering the grounds and, if the curtains remain open, looking into the library to see whether Venables is walking about there. The seasonal clock change thus offers a possible way to test Osborne’s suspicion about Venables’s supposed movements and alibi; the account presents this as a plan, not as a completed observation.