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

The man was about thirty years old; the woman, thought George Hennessey, was approximately the same age, perhaps a little younger. Both were slender, both athletic-looking, and they lay fully clothed side by side in the meadow, among the buttercups. Hennessey pondered their clothing. Both wore good-quality designer wear: She had a blouse and skirt and crocodile-skin shoes; he wore a safari jacket over a blue T-shirt and white trousers. Both had expensive wrist watches. She wore a wedding ring and an engagement ring, he wore a wedding ring only. And they looked like each other; in their feminine and masculine way, they looked similar, same balanced face. Hennessey could see the basis for mutual attraction: If they looked at each other they’d see the opposite-sex version of themselves. He took off his straw hat and brushed a troublesome fly from his face. He glanced around him: meadows, woods, and fields in every direction and above, a vast, near cloudless sky, scarred, it seemed to him, by the condensation trail of a high-flying airliner. KLM or Lufthansa, probably, flying westwards from continental Europe to North America. Then, nearer at hand, the blue-and-white police tape suspended from four metal posts which had been driven into the rock-hard soil, for this was mid June and the Vale of York baked under a relentless sun.

Dr. Louise D’Acre stood and glanced at Hennessey. “Well, all I can do is confirm Dr. Mann’s finding. Life is extinct. There is no obvious cause of death, not that I can see. They look as though they are sleeping, no putrefaction, just the hint of rigor, but they are definitely sleeping their final sleep. If you have done here, they can be removed to the York City Hospital for the postmortem.” Dr. D’Acre was a slim woman in her forties, close-cropped hair, a trace of lipstick, but very, very feminine. She held a momentary eye contact with George Hennessey and then turned away.

“Yellich.” Hennessey turned to his sergeant. “Have we? Finished here, photographs, fingerprints?”

“Yes, all done and dusted. Still to sweep the field, though.”

“Of course.” Hennessey turned to Louise D’Acre. “All done.”

“Good. I’ll have the bodies removed, then.” She placed a rectal thermometer inside her black bag. “As soon as they’ve been identified, I’ll see what I can find.”

“Identification won’t be a problem.”

“You think so?”

“Two people, young, wealthy, both married, probably to each other... they’ll be socially integrated and easily missed. It’s the down-and-outs, estranged from any kin, that take awhile to be identified.”

“I can imagine.”

“Nothing so useful as a handbag or a wallet to point us in the right direction. Strange, really. If they had been robbed, their watches would have gone.”

“There’s definitely the hand of another here, though.” Louise D’Acre spoke quietly. “What I can tell you is that they died at the same time, possibly within a few seconds of each other, as if in a suicide pact, but with such a pact, we would expect to see some evidence of suicide, a bottle of pills, a firearm. Death came from without, most definitely, by which I mean they didn’t die of natural causes. Two people, especially in the prime of life, do not die from natural causes at the same time in the same immediate, side-by-side proximity of each other. They just don’t. But I’ll get there.” She smiled and nodded and walked away across the meadow of green grass, ankle-high buttercups, and the occasional fluttering blue butterfly, to the road where her distinctive motorcar was parked beside a black, windowless mortuary van.

Wealth. It was the one word which spoke loudly to Hennessey. He’d used it in talking to Dr. D’Acre earlier that morning and now, examining the clothes, he used it again. “There’s money here, Yellich. Real wealth.”

“There is, isn’t there?” Yellich examined the clothing. All seemed new, very little worn, even the hidden-from-view underclothing had a newness about it. His offhand comment about there being nothing useful like a name stitched to the collars earned him a disapproving glance from the chief inspector. “Well, I don’t know about the female garments,” Yellich struggled to regain credibility, “but you know, sir, there’s only one shop in the Vale of York that would sell gents’ clothing at this quality and price and that’s Phillips and Tapely’s, near the Minster.”

“Ah... I’m a Marks and Spencer man myself.”

“So am I, sir, police officers’ salary being what it is, but you can’t help the old envious eye glancing into their window as you walk past. Only the seriously wealthy folk go there, only the Yorkshire Life set. So I believe.”

“Be out of my pocket as well, then. Right, Yellich, you’ve talked yourself into a job. You’ll have to take photographs of the clothing, especially the designer label, and take the photographs to the shop...”

“Phillips and Tapely’s?”

“Yes... The actual clothing will have to go to the Forensic Science lab at Wetherby to be put under the microscope.”

“Of course.”