Georgette Heyer 
Death in the Stocks 

A moonlit night. A sleeping village. And an unaccountable murder…
An English bobbie returning from night patrol finds a corpse in evening dress locked in the stocks on the village green. He identifies the body immediately. Andrew Vereker was not a well-loved man, and narrowing down the suspects is not going to be an easy job. The Vereker family are corrupt and eccentric -and hardly cooperative …
It”s another case for the resourceful Superintendent Hannasyde, who sets off on the trail of a killer so cunning that even his consummate powers of detection are tested to their limits…