Man with the Dark Beard

by Annie Haynes

  Stoddart’s quick, glancing eyes looked round. “Anything found here?”

  The superintendent answered :

  “Not so far, but we have made no very vigorous search. We waited till you came.”

  Stoddart nodded. “Quite right. The body?”

  “Over there.” The superintendent pointed to the barn in the field opposite. “Temporary mortuary,” he explained. “The inquest will be opened tomorrow at the Crown Inn down in the village. In the meantime –”

  “The body is here, I understand,” the inspector finished. “We will have a look at that first, please, sir.”

  He made an imperceptible sign to Harbord as he glanced at Major Vincent.

  “Any more evidence as to identity?” he questioned, as they walked across the rough grass together.

  Major Vincent shook his head. “You will be able to help us about that, I understand, inspector.”

  “I may be able to. I ought to be if your suspicions are well founded,” the inspector answered. “You rang up the house, of course.”

  “Of course! Answer, ‘Not at home.’ Said then we were afraid Sir John had met with an accident. His valet is coming down, should be here any minute now.”

  “Good!” the inspector said approvingly.

  The Major opened the door of the barn. “I will stop out here, and have a cigarette, if you don’t mind,” he said apologetically. “I have been in two or three times already and it has pretty well done for me. It is a ghastly sight.”

  Stoddart’s glance spoke his comprehension as he went inside; the doctor and the superintendent followed with Harbord.

  Inside was, as Major Vincent had said, “a ghastly sight.” The light was dim, little filtering through, except what came from the open door. The place was evidently used for cattle fodder. The floor was strewn with straw, trodden down and begrimed. The dead man lay on a hastily improvised stretcher of hurdles raised on a couple of others in the middle of the barn.

  Stoddart and Harbord instinctively stepped forward softly. The superintendent took off the covering some kindly hand had laid over the distorted face. Then, used though they were to scenes of horror, both Stoddart and Harbord with difficulty repressed an exclamation, so terrible was the sight. A momentary glance was enough to show that the man had been shot through the lower part of the face. The head had lain in the water of the ditch for some time face downwards. It was swollen and livid and grazed, but was not impossible of recognition. Yet, as Stoddart gazed on the figure, still in evening-dress, over the strong-looking hands with their manicured almond nails that had made marks on the palms as they clenched in the death agony, a certain look that Harbord well knew came into the inspector’s eyes. He held out his hand. “The card – ‘Sir John Burslem,’” he read aloud. He looked at the dead man’s wrist-watch, turned it over and looked at the monogram, glanced at a letter that was peeping out of the pocket – “Sir John Burslem, 15 Porthwick Square.” The postmark was that of the previous morning.

  The superintendent watched him in silence for a few minutes. At last he said:

  “Well, inspector, what do you say – is it Sir John Burslem?”

  “I believe so,” the inspector said without hesitation. “It is Sir John Burslem, I firmly believe. But I only had a casual acquaintance with him.”

  And, hardened though he was, Stoddart turned aside and blew his nose as his mind glanced from the twisted, broken thing before him to the prosperous financial magnate of whom he retained so vivid a recollection. He replaced the covering over the shattered head and looked at his watch.

  “The valet should be here directly. It seems to me we must await more positive identification from him. Until he comes, I should like a few words with you, doctor. How long had death taken place when you first saw the body?”

  The doctor coughed. “It is difficult to say with precision. I reached here about half-past seven this morning. I should say the man had been dead at least five hours when I saw him, possibly more, certainly not less.”

  “The cause of death?”

  “Evidently the man had been shot through the lower part of the face. For anything more we must wait for the post-mortem.” He added a few technical details.

  Harbord waited outside with Major Vincent and the superintendent.

  “Sir John Burslem,” he repeated thoughtfully. “A financier, you say. I seem to remember this name in some other connection.”

  “He was a big gun in what is called high finance,” Major Vincent told him. “It is said that no international deal, no great scheme of Government stock was launched without his advice. For himself, he was head of the great firm of Burslem & Latimer, the iron and jute merchants, Wellmorton Street, and of Burslem & Co., diamond merchants of South Africa, besides being director of Heaven knows how many companies. Sir John Burslem’s name spelt success to any undertaking.”

  “And will this” – Harbord jerked his head backward – “mean failure?”

  The major shrugged his shoulders. “Heaven knows! One’s imagination fails to picture the world of speculation without Jack Burslem, as he was generally known. But here’s the valet, Ellerby, I expect,” as a car stopped.

  An elderly man got out and came towards them. He was looking white and shaken.

  “Gentlemen,” he began in a quaking voice as he got near them, “they say that he – that Sir John has had an accident. He – he can’t be – dead!”

  “That is what we have brought you here to ascertain, Mr. Ellerby,” Major Vincent said, a touch of pity in his tone as he thought of the ordeal that lay before the man. “You will be able to tell us definitely. The clothes at any rate you will be able to recognize. The face has been – in the water for some time and is terribly swollen.”

  The man looked at him, his mouth twitching. “I should know Sir John anywhere, sir,” he said, his manner becoming more composed. “I couldn’t be deceived about him. It is an impossibility.'’

  Stoddart went in with him. Harbord stood with the other three at the door. They heard a cry of horror, then a hoarse sob, and Ellerby’s voice, broken now:

  “Oh, it is Sir John, sure enough! Oh, yes, his poor face is all swollen, but I could swear to him anywhere. There is the dress coat I put on him yesterday evening, and his shoes, and his eyeglass on his cord, and his wrist-watch. Oh, it is Sir John safe enough. And what are we going to do without him? And her poor young ladyship – and Miss Pamela?”

  He came out wiping his eyes openly.

  “You identify the body positively as that of Sir John Burslem?” Major Vincent questioned authoritatively.

  “Oh, yes, sir, there is not no doubt possible.” Ellerby’s careful, rather precise grammar was forgotten now in his excitement and his own real grief. “I could tell without looking at his face,” he went on, “for there’s just the things I put out for him last night, little thinking. And her poor ladyship with a big party today going to the races!”

  “The races – by Jove!” Stoddart looked at his watch and then at Harbord. “Of course that accounts for all the traffic on the road; it’s Derby Day!”

  “You are right, sir.”

  The valet put away his handkerchief and steadied his voice. “It seems but the other day that poor Sir John was telling us to put our shirts on Peep o’ Day – ‘Best colt Matt Harker ever trained,’ he says, ‘and a dead cert for the Derby; maybe the last we’ll have before the tote comes in,’ Sir John said, ‘so get the best you can beforehand.’ And we did, all of us, at Sir John’s own bucket shop.”

  Stoddart’s face altered indefinably. “I hope you didn’t build on the colt winning, Mr. Ellerby.”

  “That I have, sir.” The man looked at him half fearfully. “All my own savings and my wife’s I have put on, and I borrowed my sister’s too. It is a tidy lot I stand to win when Peep o’ Day passes the winning-post! Though poor Sir John will never lead her in now.”

  “Nor anyone else as the winner of the Derby,” Stoddart said gravely. Don’t you realize what tha
t” – with a nod at the barn – “means to all of you who have put your money on Peep o’ Day?”

  Ellerby began to tremble. “No, sir, I don’t. But we got our money on right enough. Sir John, he said it was as safe as if it was in the bank.”

  “So he may have thought, though in a gamble there is often a slip betwixt the cup and the lip,” Stoddart said dryly. “But don’t you know that an owner’s death renders void all his horses’ nominations and entries. Peep o’ Day is automatically scratched. If Sir John Burslem had died one minute before the race was run, and, not knowing, Peep o’ Day’s number had gone up, he would be disqualified. Today will be a grand day for the bookies. The favourite scratched at the last minute. You get your money back though, but we must wire at once for the sake of the poor devils who are putting on, on the course. Harker’s the trainer, you said.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ellerby stammered, his face working painfully. “Matt Harker said that Peep o’ Day was the best three-year-old he had ever had in training. He carried all the stable money.”

  “Well, it is to be hoped Harker hedged a bit,” Stoddart said slowly. “For Peep o’ Day won’t run to-day. And I wonder, I wonder –”

  Published by Dean Street Press 2015

  All Rights Reserved

  First published in 1928 by The Bodley Head

  Cover by DSP

  Introduction © 2015 Curtis Evans

  ISBN 978 1 910570 73 9

  www.deanstreetpress.co.uk