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

“Westwood... There’s a family with that name in the village, but we don’t mix socially.”

“I think he will be of that family. Allingham is not a large village, there cannot be many Westwoods.”

“I know only the one family in the village of that name.”

“I see. Were you and your wife happily married?”

“Very. We hadn’t been married long and we were enthusiastic about our union, wanted children. Yes, yes, we were happy.”

“You know of no one who’d want to harm your wife?”

“No one at all. She was well liked, much respected.” Richardson opened the door of his Range Rover.

“Where will you be if we need to contact you, Mr. Richardson?”

“At the farm. Penny Farm, Allingham. Large white Georgian house, easily seen from the village cross.”

“Yes, that is my husband,” Marina Westwood said, and she said it without a trace of emotion. Then she put her long hair to her nose and sniffed. “Chlorine.” She turned to Hennessey. “The constable said I could dry but not shower. I was in the pool, you see, when the constable came, told me I was needed to identify someone. I wanted to shower the chlorine out of my hair but that takes an hour. So he said I couldn’t. Smells of chlorine. Shower when I get back.”

Detached; utterly, completely detached. Hennessey was astounded, frightened even. This smartly dressed woman with long yellow hair, high heels to compensate for her small stature, was looking through a pane of glass at the body of her husband and all she was concerned about was the chlorine in her hair. “Yes,” she said, “that’s Dominic. He looks like he’s sleeping, sort of floating. I thought you were going to pull him out of a drawer.”

And the nurse, used to many and varied emotions at the viewing of the deceased for purposes of identification, could only gasp at Marina Westwood’s lack of emotion.

Hennessey nodded his thanks to the nurse, who shut the curtains and seemed to hurry from the room, to escape Marina Westwood? To tell her colleagues what she had witnessed? Hennessey thought probably both.

“Your husband died in mysterious circumstances, Mrs. Westwood.” Hennessey and she remained in the viewing room for a few moments.

“Oh?”

“He was found deceased in the company of a woman identified as Wendy Richardson, of Penny Farm, Allingham.”

“Oh.”

“Do you know her?”

“Yes... no... know of her, not speak to.”

“Do you know anyone who’d want to harm your husband, Mrs. Westwood?”

“I don’t. Dominic had no enemies. Rivals, perhaps, but no enemies.”

“He was a businessman?”

“He had a computer company. Software.”

Whatever that is, thought Hennessey, who was proud to be the last surviving member of the human race who didn’t possess nor know how to use a computer.

“A farm worker found the bodies,” Hennessey continued. “He thought they were two lovers, though it was a bit early in the morning for that sort of thing. Also thought they were a bit long in the tooth for it, as well, but left them at it. When he returned, retracing his steps an hour later, saw they hadn’t moved, he took a closer look. And here we are.”

“I was getting a bit curious.” She sniffed at her hair. “I wondered where he’d got to when he didn’t turn up last night. I thought he had had too much beer again, and stayed somewhere rather than drive home. He’s done that before. He’s sensible like that.”

“Who would benefit from his death, do you know?”

“Me, I suppose, I’m his wife. I’ll get everything. Everything that’s paid for, anyway. Debt didn’t seem to bother Dominic.”

“Were you happily married?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

Yellich drove home to his modest new-built house in Huntingdon, to his wife and son. His wife explained that Jeremy had been “impossible” all day and she needed “space,” so she put on a hat and went for a walk. Yellich went into the living room. Jeremy, cross-legged and sitting far too close to the television set, turned and beamed at his father. Yellich smiled back. Jeremy was twelve years old, he could tell the time and point to every vowel-sound letter in the alphabet, including the letter “y.”

Hennessey too drove home, to his detached house in Easingwold, to a warm welcome from Oscar, his brown mongrel. Later in the evening, he stood in the landscaped rear garden which had been planned by his wife shortly before she died, suddenly, inexplicably, as if she fainted, but it was life, not consciousness, which had left her. “Sudden Death Syndrome” was entered on her death certificate, “aged twenty-three years.” And in the thirty years since her death, her garden, where her ashes were scattered, had matured to become a place of tranquillity. Each day, winter and summer, rain or shine, Hennessey would stand in the garden telling Jennifer of his day. “Just lying there,” he said to the grass, to the shrubs, to the apple trees, to the “going forth” at the bottom of the garden, where lived the frogs in a pond. “The farm worker thought they were lovers at first. Don’t like the widow of the deceased male, she’s an odd fish and no mistake.”

TUESDAY

Hennessey held the phone to his ear. “They drowned?”