Hodgkiss and the Repeating Watch and Other Stories — Peter Sinclair

Hodgkiss doesn't miss a trick. Three new adventures of that cranky, obnoxious, insufferable but remarkably observant and astute senior citizen.One night Hodgkiss sees a rare repeater wrist watch in an antiques shop windows, but next morning when he goes to buy it he finds, to his disappointment, that a woman had just beaten him to it.In his efforts to persuade the woman to sell the watch to him he finds himself in the middle of a mesh of lust, deceit and murder.While attending a garage sale Hodgkiss and his friend Pat Strong witness a very one-sided transaction in which an elderly lady is persuaded to sell a collection of valuable stamp albums for a derisory sum. Hodgkiss and Pat decide not to let the matter rest there and their investigation ends with an extraordinary murder.Hodgkiss takes a public service job to supplement his pension. In the course of his new duties he sees one of his fellow workers behaving in a puzzling fashion.It is not until a senior public servant is found murdered during his morning commute that Hodgkiss makes sense of what he had seen and uncovers the killer.