Scarecrow

Scarecrow, first published in 1937, is a classic British 'golden-age' murder mystery.

Chief Inspector Pointer has a problem. More specifically, he has a body and two women claiming it as their husband. The body, the apparent victim of robbery with violence, was discovered on the beach at Dover dressed in old clothes. The competing claims of the women are soon dismissed as those of women looking for a “convenient” body, the one to collect on an insurance policy, the other to remarry. That leaves Pointer with the question of the identity of the dead man and how did he come to be lying in a beach shelter with his head bashed in. His investigation leads him to the sunny fields of the south of France and entanglements with another, more sensational, murder case that had long been thought solved.