Close Quarters

A series of deaths, the first one an apparent accident, takes place in the normally quiet cathedral town of Welchester, more particularly within the "Close" of the 500-year old cathedral itself, "Close" being the English word for the precincts of a cathedral.
The setting here is the tightly limited confines of the cathedral Close and those few houses within its exterior walls, much as many Golden Age stories were set in isolated country houses; two full pages are devoted to a complete cast of the "householders" inhabiting the Close; the main characters (and suspects) are strictly limited to those ecclesiastics living within these confines; we have three full-page diagrams showing the grounds of the Close with its cathedral and houses; an inspector and detective sergeant are sent down from Scotland Yard to conduct the inquiries; a loving imitation of a London Times crossword puzzle is presented, along with its recondite clues, and is the subject of an entire chapter, with three iterations of the puzzle itself being shown as it is gradually filled in by two of the story's scholarly characters; there is much leisurely description of the cathedral, the neighboring houses, and of the characters themselves; and there is one lengthy red herring in which the detective sergeant follows two of the suspects to London to no great purpose. And finally, of course, Inspector Hazlerigg deduces the identity of the murderer, contrives to trick him into an incriminating act, and then explains all of the story's most baffling events to a gathering of the surviving characters.