The Vanishing of Tera by Fergus Hume — Read

There are policemen who in their own eyes are wholly estimable. In Grimleigh dwelt such a one. He was a lean, solemn, taciturn being, with red hair and moustache, a freckled face, and the coldest of blue eyes, shrewdly observant in proportion to their coldness. The man really possessed capabilities, though for want of opportunity they had grown rusty. But that was not his fault. To arrest drunken sailors and seek out rural malefactors of a half-hearted type, and to see to it that public-houses were not open after prescribed hours -- of such order were the duties of Jeremiah Slade. And the paltriness of them filled his ambitious soul with disgust. For this village constable was an omnivorous reader of the detective novel, and ardently admired the preternatural acuteness and dexterity brought into play by the fictitious miracle-mongers, who therein are depicted as ever able to solve the most impenetrable of mysteries.

He longed for a chance to distinguish himself after the same fashion, and he chafed that opportunity was so long withheld. But now his hour had come, as we are told it comes to all men who know how to wait; and the discovery of Tera's body in the cornfield seemed to promise a criminal thesis intricate enough even for his most ambitious desires.