А еще дальше тоже интересное:
The Hanged Man, the village pub, did a roaring trade that night; the whole village seemed to have turned out to discuss the murders. - to have turned out - это же Past Infinitive. Наверное, после глагола в Past Simple он эквивалентен Past Perfect? [Кстати, я трижды переслушала, и Стивен Фрай говорит the whole village had turned out to discuss the murders :)) (но текст гуглится именно seemed to have turned)]
Но почему используется инфинитив именно прошедшего времени? Ведь обсуждали убийц именно тогда же, когда паб собрал огромную выручку.

Cambridge Dictionary приводит 3 принципа употребления Past Infinitive, все похожи друг на друга, но ни один не кажется подходящим к ситуации:
1 The perfect infinitive often refers to things that might have happened in the past
2 The perfect infinitive can refer to something that will be completed at a point in the future
3 We can use the perfect infinitive in a clause with a verb that has no subject (a non-finite clause). It can refer to events which did happen in the past or to events that might have happened (but did not happen)