The Hodgkiss Mysteries Volume 11. Peter Sinclair

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      About the author

      Peter Sinclair has spent most of his working life writing. He began reporting courts and councils in rural Orange (NSW) in the late 1950s then worked briefly for The Sydney Daily Telegraph where, because of his fluent shorthand, he was sentenced first to report local councils then banished to the Coroner’s Court.

      He’d had enough of sudden death and murder when opportunity knocked and he joined the staff of a new, large weekly paper in Sydney’s northern suburbs, The North Shore Times where he was soon reporting councils again.

      In 1965, he climbed over the journalistic fence to work as press secretary for a succession of NSW cabinet ministers (both Liberal and Labor) until 1991. Since then, he has made guest reappearances to help out in the PR sections of government departments.

      His absorbing hobby is playing the piano. He has made a number of CDs in very limited editions. The titles tell it all: Peter Murders Mozart, Wrecks Rachmaninoff and Desecrates Debussy. He says he gives them away to people he doesn’t like!

      He has been married to Margaret for fifty-seven years and they have two sons; Sam, who is married to Carolyn with one son, Harry, 18, and Patrick who is married to Beejai with twin boys, Jackson and Zachary, aged 13.

      Published in Australia by Peter Sinclair

      First published in Australia 2019 Copyright © Peter Sinclair 2019

      Cover design, typesetting: Chameleon Print Design

      The right of Peter Sinclair to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to that of people living or dead are purely coincidental.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

      The Hodgkiss Mysteries Volume X Sinclair, Peter

      ISBN: 9781925284034 (eBook)

      For Margaret

      Author’s Note

      It has been no easy task to assemble material in order to reconstruct these accounts of the extraordinary contributions which Edgar Hodgkiss made to criminal detection over the years in which he was active in the field.

      Hodgkiss himself kept no records.

      When he suggested solutions to investigations being undertaken by his son-in-law, Detective Sergeant Donald Burke, Hodgkiss was convinced that he was merely stating the obvious and that his contributions were unremarkable and not worthy of record.

      However, this presumption that he was ‘merely stating the obvious’ was frequently the cause of acrimony between himself and Sergeant Burke who resented the implied slur on his own powers of observation.

      Fortunately for readers of these reports (and for posterity), Hodgkiss’s daughter, Esme, kept detailed records in a series of exercise books which she has kindly made available to those of us interested in researching and recording the contributions made by this unique character.

      Jan Campbell-Jones, the General Manager of Kanundda Council during this testing period of its history, also kindly consented to assist by releasing relevant documents from her personal files and from council’s own official records system. Ms Campbell-Jones also graciously agreed to be interviewed and has given accounts of many of these extraordinary events from her point of view, relying on her remarkable powers of recall to provide in some cases verbatim accounts of significant conversations. In addition she has allowed us access to the many emails that passed between Hodgkiss and herself. Hodgkiss, of course, had deleted these emails from his laptop within days, or in some instances, within hours of transmission.

      I am indebted also to the many members of community organisations who supported Edgar Hodgkiss in his various campaigns against what he saw as the deficiencies of Kanundda Council and who have helped me verify many important details.

      Readers of these records should note that they do not appear in chronological order therefore minor temporal inconsistencies may appear.

      Many incidents in which Hodgkiss played an important role have not yet been committed to paper and many others, unfortunately, will never appear on the public record.

      On occasions both the innocent and the guilty must be protected.

      Peter Sinclair,

      Lillimoor, 2011