Tom is further upset to find that good ol' Jeff has used his three year incarceration to court and become engaged to Tom's former girlfriend Susan. Then, on the day of the wedding, Amy Jordan is found murdered. Suspicion immediately falls on Tom because he has reason to hate her, was seen by someone when he was arguing with her, and was later witnessed getting in a scuffle with Amy's husband Mick at the local pub. He is taken in for questioning by the police, but then an angry mob of villagers shows up, determined to see Tom pay for Amy's murder and he escapes in the ensuing confusion. On the lam, he accidentally comes face to face with the real murderer in an abandoned mill.
A slight quibble I have with The Large Rope is that I don't really understand the title. There are no ropes involved in the plot, either large or small. The only expression that I can think of involving rope is "give him enough rope to hang himself," which also doesn't apply in this situation. No one in the film is stringing the murderer along in the hopes that he'll slip up and expose himself. On the contrary, no one from the police on down has a clue who really murdered Amy until the final scene.
So in the end, I thought that The Large Rope was more interesting as a study of human nature and individual characters than as a murder mystery. But it was interesting enough and a not unpleasant way to spend an evening.