A pocketful of rye - Agatha Christie

his back to the house surveying his surroundings. Mary Dove appraised the two men thoughtfully.
Inspector Neele and presumably a subordinate.
She turned from the window and looked at herself in the full-length mirror that hung on the wall
where the staircase turned... She saw a small demure figure with immaculate white collar and cuffs
on a beige grey dress. Her dark hair was parted in the middle and drawn back in two shining waves
to a knot in the back of the neck... The lipstick she used was a pale rose colour.
On the whole Mary Dove was satisfied with her appearance. A very faint smile on her lips, she went
on down the stairs.
Inspector Neele, surveying the house, was saying to himself: Call it a lodge, indeed! Yewtree Lodge!
The affectation of these rich people! The house was what he. Inspector Neele, would call a mansion.
He knew what a lodge was. He'd been brought up in one! The lodge at the gates of Hartington Park,
that vast unwieldy Palladian house with its twenty-nine bedrooms which had now been taken over by
the National Trust. The lodge had been small and attractive from the outside, and had been damp,
uncomfortable and devoid of anything but the most primitive form of sanitation within. Fortunately
these facts had been accepted as quite proper and fitting by Inspector Neele's parents. They had no
rent to pay and nothing whatever to do except open and shut the gates when required, and there were
always plenty of rabbits and an occasional pheasant or so for the pot. Mrs Neele had never
discovered the pleasures of electric irons, slow combustion stoves, airing cupboards, hot and cold
water from taps, and the switching on of light by a mere flick of a finger. In winter the Neeles had an
oil lamp and in summer they went to bed when it got dark. They were a healthy family and a happy
one, all thoroughly behind the times.
So when Inspector Neele heard the word Lodge, it was his childhood memories that stirred. But this
place, this pretentiously named Yewtree Lodge was just the kind of mansion that rich people built
themselves and then called it "their little place in the country." It wasn't in the country either,
according to Inspector Neele's idea of the country. The house was a large solid red brick structure,
sprawling lengthwise rather than upwards, with rather too many gables, and a vast number of leaded
paned windows. The gardens were highly artificial - all laid out in rose beds and pergolas and pools,
and living up to the name of the house with large numbers of clipped yew hedges.
Plenty of yew here for anybody with a desire to obtain the raw material of taxine. Over on the right,
behind the rose pergola, there was a bit of actual Nature left - a vast yew tree of the kind one
associates with churchyards, its branches held up by stakes - like a kind of Moses of the forest world.
That tree, the Inspector thought, had been there long before the rash of newly built red brick houses
had begun to spread over the countryside. It had been there before the golf courses had been laid out
and the fashionable architects had walked round with their rich clients pointing out the advantages of
the various sites. And since it was a valuable antique, the tree had been kept and incorporated in the
new set up and had, perhaps, given its name to the new desirable residence. Yewtreee Lodge. And
possibly the berries from that very tree -
Inspector Neele cut off these unprofitable speculations. Must get on with the job. He rang the bell.
It was opened promptly by a middle-aged man who fitted in quite accurately with the mental image
Inspector Neele had formed of him over the phone. A man with a rather spurious air of smartness, a