Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

He removed his jacket and wrapped it gently round her. Then he touched — as he knew he should, but knew was pointless — the side of Winspeare’s neck. No. No pulse.

“Where does he keep the keys to his car?” he asked quietly.

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“Get rid of him, of course.”

“You don’t think — the police?”

“Do you?” He held her gaze.

She shook her head. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t quite know yet. Give me a moment to think. You go and get yourself cleaned up, my girl. And then make yourself a cup of tea. Well, both of us a cup, I should think.” As an afterthought, he added, “What time’s Reg Cobbold likely to be back?”

“Not till after ten. Mr. — ” she stopped as she glanced at the body — “he sent him down to the village to post some letters — the sort of job a stableboy should do! It’s Reg’s free evening: He said he’d go straight on down to his nephew’s for a bite of tea and a look at his early broad beans.”

“Good. Now, off you go and leave me to think.”

Well, he’d accomplished it. He’d welcome a good bowl of porridge and maybe a rasher or two of Jemima’s bacon to follow. He’d never known himself so tired and hungry, not even after a lifetime of hard work. The body was safely under several feet of rubble and concrete under the foundations already started for the house extensions. The car was on a cliff-top near the coast, Winspeare’s valise left carelessly on the backseat. That had been Jemima’s idea, and he’d thought it a good touch. Then he’d had to walk back across country, arriving only minutes before Len the postman brought a batch of serious-looking letters in thick brown envelopes.

“Bills, I shouldn’t wonder,” Jemima whispered, as she laid them on the study desk.

She’d tidied the room beautifully, cleaning unmentionable brown spots from the carpet and curtains. She’d left the drawings where they were, George’s and the London architect’s, side by side, George’s lines plain and strong against a tangle of curlicues and gargoyles and turrets and flying buttresses and goodness knows what else. George shook his head in disbelief. Hadn’t the man learnt anything over the last forty years?

“He said he wanted to make it a dream castle,” Jemima observed.

“Nightmare, more like,” George muttered. “Look, there’s blood spattered on it: I think we should burn it, don’t you?”

No one seemed surprised that Winspeare had left without trace. When his car was found, everyone agreed he’d done a runner. His debtors sold off the Big House lock, stock, and barrel, as quickly as they could, so the hospital for disfigured ex-servicemen came to the village after all. Since the plans for extensions were still lying in the dusty study, the trustees assumed that that was what was in progress, and simply engaged a local builder — the navvies, unpaid, having vanished, leaving no more than the first few rows of bricks in the gothic gateway that Winspeare had flaunted.

Tom Withers pulled a fluffy-headed pint, admiring the light through the tawny brew as it settled. Frank coughed his thanks and joined the circle of drinkers on the bench in the warm sun, listening to the creak of the new signboard in the lazy wind.

“Have one yourself,” George said.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Tom said. “So everything’s worked out all right in the end. Plenty of work for everyone. Lads building and maintaining the place; wenches training up as pretty little nurses. Though I hear there won’t be a job for Mrs. Pearce, on account of hospitals don’t need housekeepers.” There might have been a twinkle in his eye.

“I know someone as might,” George said.

“Funny business all round — Winspeare doing a flit and leaving all those debts. But you never could trust a man who wanted a gatehouse that looked less like a decent man’s than Hell’s Gate.”

George didn’t reply. The way he felt now, it was more like Heaven’s Gate. He supped his pint, and smiled quietly.

Leopold in the Vineyard by Edward D. Hoch

When Ed Hoch created Captain Leopold he decided to let him age in real time, but that meant he had to figure out a way to retire the popular police-man at some point. Ever since his official retirement from the force, Leopold’s been coming back now and then as an amateur detective. Is he ever going to give up sleuthing? “I was planning to retire him for good after the 100th story featuring him,” Hoch said, “but this is his 105th case.” So who knows...

* * *