The East Wessex police force had a dead man they couldn't identify. They had tried everything, including slipping it by dead of night over the border into West Wessex and leaving it there. Next day it was back, with a note from the West Wessex police pinned to it: 'Do your own dirty work, lads.'

'What do you reckon, Bob?' said Inspector Target. 'Slip it into South Wessex?'

'No,' said Sergeant Bob Tremlow reluctantly. 'He's getting a bit shopworn as it is. His tie got pretty crumpled in the last move.'

They looked admiringly at the hideous green, blue and orange fantasy round the late departed's neck. It could only be an old school tie.

'If I had been to a school with ties like that, I'd conceal the fact,' said Target. 'Still, I suppose we'd better run it through the file.'

It isn't commonly known that the police have a file on old school ties, also on regimental insignia, cricket club blazers, livery company markings or anything which might help identify dead people who insist on wearing such things.

'Fat lot of good,' said Bob Tremlow. 'Say we come up with his old school. What do we do then? Check all people who ever went there? Bring the oldest teachers in to look at him and say  "Do you remember teaching this corpse French?"'

'Have you got a better idea?'

They sent the tie away for questioning. Three days later the answer came back: This tie belongs to no known school. The tie had been cleaned and pressed. They went down to the morgue, put it back on the man and stared at him again.

'He's looking better,' said the sergeant. 'Shall we get the rest of his clothes cleaned?'

'Look,' said Target, 'Maybe it belongs to an overseas school, or a school that no longer does ties. I've got a friend in the haberdashery business who might recognize it. I'll give him a ring.'

It was a shot in a million, but sometimes shots in a million come off. The friend looked up the tie in his archives and revealed that it belonged to the old boys of Nossex Grammar School.

'Nossex?' said Bob Tremlow.  'Nossex?'

'You know, I presume, that Wessex is short for West Saxon?' said Target. 'And Essex means East Saxon?'

'And Sussex means …' said Bob, to whom it had never occurred before.

'Precisely. Nossex is the missing kingdom of the North Saxons. My haberdashery friend also told me something else. Nossex Grammar School was closed down in 1923.'

They considered the implications of this. A Nossex Old Grammarian could not be any younger than 90. Their man was 35 at most. Why would a young chap go around claiming membership of a school which hadn't produced an old boy for 65 years?

'I'm going to get a check done on the rest of his clothes,' said Inspector Target, who rather fancied the idea of haberdashery archives by now. When the results came through, he wasn't so happy. The manufacturers of the clothes worn by the dead man had all ceased trading before 1937.

'What we've got here,' said the sergeant, 'is a man who was too poor to buy new clothes.'

'These are very nice clothes. They cost a small fortune.'

'What we've got here …' tried Tremlow again. 'Is a man who died in the 1930s,' said Target.

It was the only theory that fitted the facts. This man had left Nossex in the 1920s and died in, say, 1938. He hadn't been found until 1989, and he was still in perfect condition.

'But how?' said Tremlow.

'This may sound crazy,' said Target, 'so don't tell anyone I said so. But what if a 1930s police force had found a better method of getting rid of corpses than just slipping them into West Wessex? What if they could slip them through a time-warp into another decade?  Pop! The mystery corpse vanishes from 1938. Pop! It reappears in 1989.'

'You've been watching too much telly, old son,' said Bob. 'Give us a bit of evidence at least.'

There was a knock and a constable came in.

'Sorry to interrupt, sir, but we've got something pretty weird out here. They've found a body in the street, dressed in pre-war gear with a newspaper in his hand.'

'So?'

'Well, the main headline in the paper says: Chamberlain Flies to Munich.'

There was a long silence. Then Bob Tremlow said: 'That sounds like evidence to me.'                                                  

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