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Teas and Cs apply.

The extremely pleasant and most helpful lady with three ears by Peter Turnbull from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine,

July, August, 2023 edition.

It came to pass that in the land of Elizabeth, our queen, in the city of York, which in the

time of Augustus Caesar was called Iboricum, there dwelt a woman with three ears.

His mind turned unbidden on the Van Gogh murders, as the press had dubbed them.

Three men murdered, and each body folded up and placed in a huge sports bag,

the largest of such bags, and used mainly by professional sportspersons who always seemed to have a huge amount of kit to carry with them to sporting events.

Each man had had his left ear severed, taken, it appeared as a trophy.

Each bag had been left at the side of a country lane, spaced exactly 10 feet apart, and so it was reasoned, not dumped in haste. Each victim was fully

clothed within the bag he occupied, and a search of the victims elicited the information that

nothing had been removed from the wallet of any of the men, save for his driving license.

The man had been woken by the sun that morning as it streamed into his bedroom through the east-facing window.

It being the summer of that year, the sun had caused the man to wake earlier than he would have preferred,

but once awake, he had decided to rise, and he went downstairs to open the rear door of his house

to let Oscar, his black mongrel, romp on the still dew-soaked lawn.

He had stood on the patio relishing the sun's rays and also the fresh morning air,

...