Death at Hallows End by Leo Bruce

men. Old Harold Rudd. Lived in a cottage near the churchyard. Died over at Swanwick in the Ospittle. His old woman’s still in the cottage.”
    â€œReally? Which way do I go?”
    â€œThose Neasts have just come into a lot of money from their uncle.”
    â€œYes. I know. Is this the road to their farm?”
    â€œHe was Took too. Funny, isn’t it? Just after old Harold Rudd. Then there’s this fellow disappeared.”
    â€œQuite. If I drive…”
    â€œThey don’t know where he is and I don’t suppose they ever will.”
    â€œYou don’t? Perhaps you know where his car was found?”
    â€œI know all right. Just opposite where there’s three elms standing together on the road to the farm.”
    â€œBut which
is
the road to the farm?”
    â€œThat’s where they found his car. But they can’t find him. How could he have got away from there without anyone seeing him? That’s what I want to know.”
    Carolus resigned himself.
    â€œIs it a big farm?” he asked.
    â€œNot extra. They pulled the old house down years ago. Otherwise it would have fallen down. Rotten all through, they said. Neasts built themselves a bungalow when they came here.”
    There was a pause and Carolus made a last desperate attempt.
    â€œYou said the road …”
    â€œI didn’t say nothing about it. But no more did you say what you wanted up there. Still, I’ll tell you. Keep on down here for a bit and you’ll see it turn off to the right. It’s got a notice up Church Lane. Take that and you’ll come to it. Not more’n a mile away. You pass my cottage on the way. The only house you do pass. I’ve lived up Church Lane for years.”
    â€œThanks,” said Carolus and drove on.
    He found the turning. The road here was truly narrow but after a few hundred yards broadened slightly. He looked out for the three elms standing together and, when he was approaching them, stopped.
    Yes, it was possible for a car to be in to the side here and for another car to pass it. But only just. If Duncan Humby was still at the wheel of his car when it stopped here, he must have deliberately pulled it in to leave room for others. There was no sign of any wheel tracks on the grass edges, but that meant nothing, for it had rained since. If there had been anything of the sort, presumably the police would have seen it when they were first informed. He was accustomed to coming too late into an investigation for that sort of evidence and knew that it was not, in any case, his strong point.
    He drove on. When he first saw the house at Monk’s Farm, he thought that if the old character in the village had not told him that it was a bungalow he would never have recognised it as a farmhouse at all. It was large as bungalowsgo, but shoddy-looking and bare, with no attempt at a garden about it. It had the ugliness of a blatantly new building set in otherwise unspoiled surroundings. It was some distance from the farm buildings which were farther down the road, so that it was necessary, presumably, for the brothers to come out of their silly little front gate and walk a few hundred yards on the tarmac road every time they wished to reach the fine old buildings of the farm, which were unspoiled by corrugated iron.
    Carolus took this in as he passed slowly on his way to the church that he could see ahead. It was a surprisingly fine Norman building, and, like so many churches in the eastern counties, far too large for its present parish. As he approached it, he saw ahead of him a small clerical figure on a bicycle. They reached the church’s gate at the same moment and smiled at each other.
    â€œCome to see the church?” said the Rector, a rotund and cheerful little man in his forties.
    â€œIt looks very fine from the road,” said Carolus noncommittally.
    â€œIt
is
very fine,” said the Rector, who always spoke with such emphasis that he