Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

“Oh dear, it’s so tedious making a claim on the estate of the departed, but I don’t do it, personally...” He tapped the head of the compact computer on his desk and Yellich was amused that a very conservative gentlemen’s outfitters could still embrace modern technology. “So...” James Wednesday spoke in a matter-of-fact, no trace of emotion, manner. “Dominic Westwood, son of Charles Westwood, grandson of Alfred Westwood, gentlemen of this shire. All three have outstanding accounts. Dominic owes us five thousand pounds, not a large sum, his credit limit is twenty thousand. Last paid us two years ago; he owed over ten thousand. Both his father and grandfather are customers. I dare say that’s why the manager allowed him a twenty-thousand-pound credit limit.”

“Address?”

“His, Westwood the younger? It’s the Oast House, Allingham.”

“Allingham?”

“A small village to the north and east of York.”

“We’ll find it. Is he — was he — married?”

“Oh yes, he married Davinia Scott-Harrison a year or two ago. It was the wedding of the year in the Vale. We sold or hired much of the costumes.”

“We’ll go and visit the house.” Yellich retrieved the photograph. “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.”

“They’re not man and wife.” George Hennessey spoke softly.

Yellich gasped. “I assumed the female...”

“It’s always dangerous to assume, Sergeant. Very dangerous. The female deceased is believed to be one Wendy Richardson, aged about twenty-nine years. Wife of Herbert Richardson, gentleman farmer.”

“How did you find her name, sir?”

“Exactly the same way as you found his, Sergeant. I showed the clothes to a group of female officers, they told me that the only outlet for clothing of that cost in York is a shop called Tomkinson’s. I asked D.C. Kent to visit the shop, which is in St. Leonard’s Place, very small frontage, she tells me, but a deep floor area, and four stories. The staff recognised ‘madam’ in the photograph and the manager gave her address. ‘Penny Farm’ in the village of... can you guess?”

“Allingham.”

“Got it in one. Not man and wife, but lived in the same village, were of the same social class, and in death were neatly laid out side by side, as if peacefully sleeping.”

Hennessey watched the man from out of the corner of his eye. The curtain was pulled back by a solemn nurse who tugged a sash cord, and revealed Wendy Richardson with a clean face, wrapped tightly in bandages so that only her forehead to her chin was exposed; even the side of her head was swathed in starched white linen. She lay on a trolley, tightly tucked into the blankets, and was viewed through a large pane of glass, in a darkened room, so that by some trick of light and shade, she appeared to be floating peacefully in space.

“Yes. That is my wife.” The man nodded, then breathed deeply and hard, and then lunged at the glass and cried, “Wendy! Wendy!” It was all the overacting George Hennessey wanted to see. He knew then, as only an old copper would, that he was standing next to a guilty man.

Hennessey smiled and nodded to the nurse, who closed the curtain.

“Do you know how she died?” Herbert Richardson turned to Hennessey. He was a big man, huge, with a farmer’s hands, pawlike. His eyes were cold and had anger in them, despite a soft voice.

“We don’t.” Richardson and he walked away from the room down a corridor in the York City Hospital. “We don’t suspect natural causes, but there’s no clear cause of death.”

They walked on in silence. Out of the hospital building into the sunlit expanse of the car park, which Hennessey scanned for sight of Louise D’Acre’s distinctive car, and seeing its red and white and chrome, Riley circa 1947, her father’s first and only car, a cherished possession, lovingly kept, he allowed his eyes to settle on it for a second or two. Then he turned his thoughts to the matter in hand. “When did you last see your wife, Mr. Richardson?”

“What!? Oh... don’t know... sorry, can’t think.”

“Well, today’s Monday...”

“Yes... well, yesterday morning. She went out at lunchtime, just before, really, about eleven-thirty, to meet her sister, she said. Phoned me to say she’d be staying at her sister’s house overnight, so I wasn’t to worry if she didn’t return. She often said that. She and her sister were very close.”

They stopped at Richardson’s gleaming Range Rover.

“You’re a farmer, I believe, Mr. Richardson?”

“Yes, I don’t do much of the actual work, I have a manager to attend to that. I’m more of a pen pusher than a bale heaver, if you see what I mean.”

“I think I do.” He patted the Range Rover. “It clearly pays.”

“Don’t be too taken in by the image. It’s run out of the business, still being paid for, as well.”

“Even so... Mr. Richardson, I can tell you that your wife was found out of doors, she and a deceased male were lying next to each other.”

“She was what!” Richarson turned to face Hennessey.

“She was lying next to the life-extinct body of a man we believe to be called Dominic Westwood.”

“Westwood?”

“Do you know the name?”