Man with The Dark Beard : An Inspector Stoddart Mystery

The note left beside Dr. John Bastow's corpse simply read: "e;It was the man with the dark beard."e;Dr. Bastow hadn't approved of his daughter Hilary's fiance. So when Hilary's father is found shot dead inside his own office, the door-key turned from the inside, the fiance Basil Wilton becomes a chief suspect for Scotland Yard. Yet how could the crime have been engineered?Now an important lacquered box is missing; a former colleague of Bastow's has suddenly shaved his beard; and the doctor's ex-secretary has come mysteriously into money. Before Inspector Stoddart of the Yard can form conclusions, another murder takes place, again credited to the "e;Man with The Dark Beard"e;...The Man With the Dark Beard is the first of Annie Haynes' Inspector Stoddart mysteries, originally published in 1928. It is a sparkling lost classic from the early golden age of crime fiction."e;Miss Haynes, I think, improves steadily - this is the best detective story she has yet written."e; Time and Tide