Dead on Time (The Inspector Harry Charlton Series)

The scene is The Blue Boar in the High Street, Lulverton. The occasion: the stag party planned to celebrate Sergeant Bert Martin’s retirement after thirty years’ service.
“It was good while it lasted,” said Bert, putting down his empty tankard with a reflective sigh. “Bein’ in the Force, I mean. Lookin’ back over the long vista of the years…” But Bert had still until midnight before Bradfield was due to step into his shoes.
At nine twenty-five Jimmy Hooker was still very much alive, if a little the worse for wear, when he barged in on the party in the upstairs room. At closing time he was dead in the saloon. “And I don’t think,” said ‘Pop’ Collins, licensee of the Blue Boar, “that it was in the way of nature.”

Clifford Witting (1907-68) was an English writer who was educated at Eltham College, London, between 1916 and 1924.
During World War II he served as a bombardier in the Royal Artillery, 1942-44, and as a Warrant Officer in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, 1944-46.
His first novel Murder in Blue was published in 1937 and his series characters were Sergeant (later Inspector) Peter Bradford and Inspector Harry Charlton. Unusually, he didn’t join The Detection Club until 1958 by which time he had written 12 detective novels.