The Crystal Beads Murder
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"Early this morning a gruesome discovery was made by a gardener employed at Holford Hall in Loamshire..."
Robert Saunderson's murdered body is found in the summer house at Lord Medchester's country mansion. Some crystal beads, broken off a neckace and found on the scene, form the primary clue. But where is the necklace, and whose could it be?
Detective Inspector Stoddart and his assistant Harbord have to unravel a mystery that cost two men their lives and destroyed the reputation of others.
The Crystal Beads Murder, first published in 1930, was the last of the Inspector Stoddart mysteries, and Annie Haynes' final book overall. She died, after a long illness, before completing it and it was finished by an unknown friend and fellow writer. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
"An uncommonly well-constructed tale... throughout the reader is kept continually on the 'qui vive'" Western Australian
Annie Haynes
Annie Haynes was born in Leicestershire, England, in 1864. With an “intense interest in crime and criminal psychology,” she once cycled to Ightham in Kent to visit the scene of Caroline Mary Luard’s 1908 murder and pushed her way into the Hilldrop Crescent home of Dr. Crippen after the remains of his wife, Corrine, were found in the cellar in 1910. Haynes also attended the doctor’s trial. Haynes’s first novel, TheBungalow Mystery, was published by Agatha Christie’s publisher, The Bodley Head, in 1923. Haynes and Christie were the only two female authors to be published by the imprint. Eleven more novels followed, the last two being published posthumously.
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