CHAPTER IX

THE MAN WHO LOST A FINGER AN EXAMINATION of local records produced no satisfactory result. Margaret Stuart had died at a farm three miles out of Beverley Manor, and the farm had changed hands twice since the date of her death. “Twenty years ago?” said the farmer whom Larry interviewed. “Why, twenty years ago this place was a sort of nursing home. It was run by a woman who took in invalids.” Where the woman is, he could not say. She was not a local woman. He thought he had heard she was dead. “I’ve been racking my b…