2.2: Who is Poor Tom?

On waking the next morning, Alcock has two thoughts. First, and more important, he now wonders whether they are not caught up in the Poor Tom Puzzle but in the (Poor) Tom Thaumaturgy? 

Less importantly, he also realises that he knows who Poor Tom is. 

Back in 1977, when he first arrived to live in the area, trying to start a new life or at least put his old life behind him, the local newspaper printed a scurrilous attack on him. Afterwards, local people looked at him strangely or followed him around their shops thinking he might be trying to steal something. I suppose, he did look something of a rebel! It was the 1970s.

But now he remembers that, in the same newspaper, there was also a picture of the local pub, The Swan Hotel, with its customers and bar staff and he is sure that there was a familiar face. Finding the front page in his scrapbook... 

There is ‘Poor Tom’.

So ‘Poor Tom’ is really the Minkey, the Swan Hotel’s glass and bottle washer. Puzzle put-to-rights! Thaumaturgy thought-through!

But this leaves Alcock confused. No doubt there will be some sort of, no doubt rather lame, explanation why the Minkey appears to have lost his memory but if Alcock already knows who ‘Poor Tom’ is, doesn’t that mean that the mystery is solved and the case closed before it has really begun?