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CHAPTER 1
A Murder is Announced
Between 7.30 and 8.30 every morning except Sundays, Johnnie Butt made the round of the village of Chipping Cleghom on his bicycle, whistling vociferously through his teeth, and alighting at each house or cottage to shove through the letterbox such morning papers as had been ordered by the occupants of the house in question from Mr Totman, stationer, of the High Street. Thus, at Colonel and Mrs Easterbrook's he delivered The Times and the Daily Graphic^ at Mrs Swettenham's he left The Times and the Daily Worker; at Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd's he left the Daily Telegraph and the New Chronicle; at Miss Blackiock's he left the Telegraph, The Times and the Daily Mail.
At all these houses, and indeed at practically every house in Chipping Cleghom, he delivered every Friday a copy of the North Benham News and Chipping Cleghom Gazette, known locally simply as ''the. Gazette'.
Thus, on Friday momings, after a hurried glance at the headlines in the daily paper {International situation critical! U.N.O. meets today! Bloodhounds seek blonde typist's killer! Three collieries idle. Twenty-three die of food poisoning in Seaside Hotel, etc.) most of the inhabitants of Chipping Cleghom eagerly opened the Gazette and plunged into the local news. After a cursory glance at Correspondence (in which the passionate hates and feuds of mral life found full play) nine out of ten subscribers then tumed to the PERSONAL column. Here were grouped together higgledy-piggledy articles for Sale or Wanted, frenzied appeals for Domestic Help, innumerable insertions regarding dogs, announcements concerning poultry and garden equipment; and various other items of an interest-
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