The Deer Leap — Martha Grimes

All roads don't lead to the village of Ashdown Dean. The one that did led writer Polly Praed right to the police station ... to be questioned about a corpse. Poor Polly admitted to opening the phone booth door, but the dead woman had fallen out quite on her own. Now Polly needed to phone again--to call Melrose Plant and Scotland Yard's Richard Jury for help. for something was rotten in Ashdown Dean. Pets were missing. Some had been found dead.

Three roads led away from the village. One led Plant and Jury to a sinister laboratory on the edge of town, another to La Notre, a rundown mansion where an aging dowager lived with her mysterious teenage ward. But the third took them to the Deer Leap, a pub where they would discover a chilling old crime and a brand-new way to die.