The Case of Elymas the Sorcerer

the long version

*Less than an hour later, the nude body of the dead man lay in the outhouse which did duty at St. Mead as the official mortuary.* Anthony Bathurst is taking the sea-air at the village of St Mead, when the local constabulary drag him into the investigation of a local murder. The mystery is grotesque: someone has stripped the body and left it in a field - but not before shaving the victim's moustache off. Soon a second body is found, along with a mentally-challenged young man whispering about "gold" . . . With these obstacles in his path, can Bathurst possibly unmask the killer? *The Case of Elymas the Sorcerer* was first published in 1945.