The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” tells his story with a strange mixture of vagueness and precision, though the precise details are often so strange as to make his story even less convincing. Nowhere is this more evident than in his description of the passage of time. For seven nights, he says, he “thrust” his head into the old man’s bedroom, taking an hour to do so. Since the movement of the hand that marks the hours on a clock is imperceptible, it is probably not possible for a person to move this slowly, as he would not be able to sense himself doing so. The narrator himself uses this image when he says that on the eighth night “A watch’s minute had moves more quickly than did mine.” This, however, is still sixty times as fast as he puts his head round the door.

According to the narrator, it took four hours to kill the old man and dispose of his body, though a lot of this time was spent in waiting. As he waited, the old man’s heart kept time with “a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.” While he suffocated the old man “for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound.” The image of the watch enveloped in cotton recurs at the end of the story when the narrator is talking to the police, signifying that time is running out for him. Having congratulated himself on his cleverness in taking his time, working in a thorough, unhurried manner when killing the old man and disposing of his body, he will now be captured in less time than it would usually take for the police to discover that a murder has been committed.