Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

He stood aside, waving me past him with mocking formality, and watched me, quizzically enquiring and infuriatingly at ease, while I unlocked my car, reached into the glove compartment, and found my phone. With a very unsteady forefinger I stabbed out 999.

“Hello? Yes, police, please.”

Pause.

“Police? There’s a dead body in Tilbrook Church.” I prayed the operator wouldn’t take me for a hoaxer. “Yes, that’s Tilbrook St. George, three miles west of the A140 and five miles south of Mendlesett.” And I added ridiculously, “I suspect foul play.” Where do such expressions come from? “My name’s Ellie Hardwick. I’m the church architect. Yes, of course I can stay put. About fifteen minutes? As long as that? Okay. Yes, of course. Thanks.”

I snapped shut the phone and looked at Edward Hartest. His astonishment and dismay were all that I could have asked for. Without a word he turned and began to run up the path to the church.

“Oy! Stop!” I called after him. “Mr. Hartest, you shouldn’t go in there! Wait for the police!”

He stopped and waited for me to catch up with him. “Now, listen! It’s my church and if some clown’s dumped a body in there I’ve a right to know about it. If you’re scared, you can wait outside.” He paused for a moment and went on, “On second thoughts, you’re right. I’d be a fool to go blundering around in a crime scene without a witness, so you’ll have to be it. Come on!”

He tucked my arm firmly under his — partially as a support but more, I believed, to stop me running off again — pushed open the door, and marched me into the church. We set off to walk up the aisle, the strangest couple to undertake this walk together in the thousand years of its existence, I thought: middle-aged farmer, boots treading grass and earth up the smooth red Wilton, and me, a Lego figure in the firm’s green overalls and white plastic hard hat.

“The table tomb,” I whispered. “She’s laid out on the tomb. East end, south transept.”

He stood to gaze down at the scene which had held me spellbound moments before. I watched him closely. He made the sign of the cross and went on looking, drinking in every detail. An expression of great sadness came over him, sadness which burned away the irritation between us. It was clear the girl was known to him, possibly even well known.

“My God,” he muttered, and again, shaking his head, “My God!”

“Do you know her? Family?” I asked diffidently.

“Yes,” he said. “Well, almost. Let me present...” He gestured to the figures on the tomb. “...on the right, my ancestor, Sir John Hartest, first Baron Brancaster, and on the left, the mortal remains of the future Lady Brancaster, my son’s fiancée. At least — she was the future Lady B., but not anymore, it seems.”

I didn’t know what to say. Polite phrases of condolence would have been out of place but he looked at me questioningly, expecting some sort of response.

“She’s — she was — beautiful,” I said hesitantly. “I think, no, I’m sure, I’ve seen her somewhere before...”

“You’d have had to have been living on Mars not to recognise her,” he said surprisingly. “This is Taro Tyler. She’s staying with us.”

“Taro Tyler! Oh yes, how stupid of me not to have seen it! It’s just that... with her eyes closed... those wonderful green eyes... she’s not so recognisable perhaps.”

Those remarkable eyes now growing milky under their stiffening lids — I’d seen them smiling out from the side of every bus in London, working their magic in countless up-market TV cosmetics ads.

“Thank you. It’s tactful of you to mention the eyes.”

Was there irony in what he said? I didn’t doubt it and it made me angry. Her eyes, lovely though they were, had received far less publicity than her famous breasts. Every man in the country knew their size — 36D — most had run lustful eyes over them on page three of tabloid newspapers. It shocked me that, however obliquely, he should be calling up the memory as we gazed in fascinated revulsion at the rust-fringed puncture in that glorious, money-spinning bosom.

“ ‘On her left breast/A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops/I’ the bottom of a cowslip,’ ” he murmured, but he wasn’t really talking to me.

“Why do you suppose there’s so little blood?” I whispered, my eyes drawn to the red-brown patch encircling the dagger blade. “There’s just the merest trickle.”

“It’s been expertly done. The dagger was placed with precision and left in the wound. It’s a skillful job, a surgical job, not a wild, crazed stabbing. But perhaps it was just a lucky stroke?” He shrugged. “At any rate, I don’t think we’re going to find any blood-drenched overalls in the graveyard dustbin.”