Free Death at Hallows End by Leo Bruce

give me any idea of the time when you saw him?”
    Stonegate sighed.
    â€œThey all ask me that,” he said. “And the police kept on about it. Most important, they said it was. I can only work it out from what time I got home. That was twenty past four by that clock over your head now, and I rode straight home here. Say it was a little before four when I saw him and you won’t be far out.”
    â€œThank you,” said Carolus. “That
is
important. But there’s something which to my mind is more important still.”
    â€œOh,” said Stonegate haughtily, “and what might that be?”
    â€œJust where on the road the car was standing.”
    â€œBy those three elms.”
    â€œI don’t mean that. Would you try to recall whether it had stopped on the crown of the road or pulled into the side.”
    â€œI don’t need to
try
to recall. I can see it as plain as a pikestaff. It was near enough in the middle.”
    â€œThen had another car come along it couldn’t have got past without moving it?”
    â€œI wouldn’t go so far as to say that.”
    â€œBut the road is narrow there.”
    â€œIt is that. No, I don’t suppose a car could pass without going over the grass border. Now you come to mention it, I’m sure it couldn’t.”
    â€œYet your employers, the two brothers Neast, must have been able to do so unless they moved the car to one side.”
    â€œI see what you mean.”
    â€œThey were out in their lorry that day?”
    â€œOf course they were. They’d gone to the market.”
    â€œAnd they weren’t back when you left the farm?”
    â€œCertainly they weren’t or I should have told them I was going … It’s funny, isn’t it? I mean that’s where the car was found in the morning.”
    â€œNo, it was found on the side of the road.”
    â€œYou think the Neasts pushed it there?”
    â€œI don’t think anything so definite. But somebody must have, since you remember it so clearly as being in the middle.”
    â€œCould have been the chap himself. Woke up and saw where he was and drew into the side before he dropped off again.”
    â€œI suppose it could, if he was merely sleeping when you saw him.”
    â€œI don’t know why you keep on about that. The chap was asleep.”
    â€œThen you may be right. He could have driven it to one side himself. Was the car still there when you went to work next morning?”
    â€œI see you know very little about it,” said Stonegate loftily. “It was me who reported it to the police.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œNext morning when I got to the farm. As I was riding there on the Tuesday at my usual time, which is before eight because I leave here at seven-thirty, I saw that car in the same place.”
    â€œIn exactly the same place?”
    â€œWell, I thought so at the time, but now I know it was nearer into the side.”
    â€œAnd the man was no longer there?”
    â€œNot a sign of him. The first thought I had was that the car must have broken down so he must have walked on to the farm and the Neasts would know about it. So I went on to work, where Holroyd Neast was out in the farmyard. He’s the older one, you know.”
    â€œThe taller of the two?”
    â€œThat’s him. I told him about seeing this chap asleep in the car on the afternoon before, but he didn’t seem much interested. I said the car must have been there when he and his brother came home from market and he said yes, he had noticed a car in the road but hadn’t thought much of it. I told him the chap was no longer there and he said no of course he wasn’t. Who was going to spend a night in a car at this time of year when there were pubs and places handy? He could have got a room at the Ploughman in Hallows End or taken the taxi from the village somewhere else. So I told him I thought we ought to inform the