SUITE FOR FLUTE & TOMMY-GUN

 

 

I waited till the train had pulled out, and still nobody had got off it. Nobody, that is, except the funny-looking little guy with the shell-rimmed glasses and the hat that looked like a country preacher's.

But the great McGuire wasn't on it. I was glad, in a way, because I--well, I might as well admit that I resented Old Man Remmel having thought I wasn't good enough for the job and having sent for the biggest-shot private detective in the country. Just on a matter of some threatening letters, too. Didn't even want me to call in a postal inspector; said he'd have the best detective in the country or none.

Well, I decided, he'd been stood up. I grinned and turned to head back home, figuring maybe this guy McGuire had phoned Remmel he'd be delayed and Remmel had phoned me and I wasn't there. But this funny-looking little guy I mentioned steps up to me and sticks out his hand. "Sheriff Clark?" he asked. And when I admitted it, he said, "My name is--"

Yeah, you guessed it.

I gawped at him. "Not the--"

He grinned at me. "Thanks for the compliment, sheriff, if it was meant for one. If I disappoint you, I'm sorry, but--"

I'd recovered enough by then to take his hand and to stammer out something that was probably worse than if I'd kept my big mouth shut and let it go at that. But honesty, not subtlety, has always been my long suit, and the people here have elected me ten terms running, in spite of it. I don't mean in spite of the honesty; I mean in spite of my being not much of a diplomat.

"Well," I said, "I'm glad you're here anyway." I saw too late that the "anyway" was putting my foot in it farther, but a word's like a bullet in that once you've shot it you can't get it back into the gun and pretend you didn't. A guy really ought to be as careful about shooting off his yap as about shooting off his gun, come to think of it. There'd be fewer murders either way.

"I'm sorry, Mr. McGuire," I told him sheepishly. "But, gosh, you sure don't look like--"

He laughed. "Never mind the mister, sheriff. Just call me Mac. And I'm not sensitive about my looks; they're an asset. Now about those letters. Got them with you?"

I took his arm. "Sure," I said. "I'll show 'em to you over a drink before we drive out to see Remmel. I'll give you the picture first, since we'll be working together. Anyway, I can say some things better if it isn't in front of him."

"You mean he isn't on the level?"

"Nix," I said. "I don't mean that at all. If anything, he's too much on the level. He's not only interested in his own morals, but in everybody else's, see? He's a reformer, and he's a damn teetotaler. You know these smug teetotalers. Pains in the neck, all of them."

I jerked my thumb toward the building we were passing on the other side of our main street. "That's his bank," I said, "and if he'd stick to banking, he wouldn't have got those letters. But he had to stick his nose into politics and get himself elected to the county board. And with his ideas--" I shook my head.

"Such as--" McGuire prompted.

I steered him into Sam Frey's place that we'd just come to, before I answered. If I was going out with him to see Remmel--and I had an appointment with Remmel to do just that--we'd be in for a long, dry conversation. A bit of prelubrication would come in handy.

I answered his question as we headed for the bar. "Such as tavern keepers and roadhouses, mostly. I know we're not too tight on the roadhouses down this way, but that's mostly because the people want it that way, and it brings a lot of business and money into the county. We keep 'em closely enough supervised that there's no rough stuff, you know, or anything really much wrong, but--"

"But what?"

"But this Remmel has a bill up before the county board--the gosh-awfulest bill you ever heard of. It would shut up all taverns and roadhouses at ten o'clock in the evening. Not midnight or one o'clock, mind you, but ten, when their trade is just starting. Naturally, the boys are sore. It's just the same thing, practically, as closing them up entirely."

I crooked a finger at Sam, and he came ambling down toward us behind the bar.

"And the worst of it is," I went on, "that there's a chance of it going through, with Remmel swinging all his influence back of it. Now, reform's a darn good thing where it's needed, but it isn't needed here, and it's going to play hell with things. That's the trouble with these damn intemperate teetotalers--

"--Derryaire for mine, Sam, short beer for a wash. Yours, Mr. McG--I mean, Mac?"

His eyes twinkled at me from behind those shell-rimmed cheaters. He said, "I'll have coffee, if Sam has some hot. Sorry, sheriff, but I'm a damn teetotaler."

That was my third boner since the train had pulled in at seven p.m., which was ten minutes ago. There wasn't anything to do but to laugh it off or else get down on my hands and knees and crawl for the back door. But the corners of McGuire's mouth showed me I could laugh it off all right, and I did.

"Make mine coffee, too, Sam," I said. "But be sure it's got whiskers on it. Let's get back to Banker Remmel, Mac. Now, I don't mean that he is a complete louse, even if he is a--I don't mean he is a complete louse at all. He's got a soft side, too. He loves music, for one thing; plays piano at the Sunday school. And once a week regular, for thirty years, he and Dave Peters get together and jam it up."

"Jam what up?"

"I got a daughter in high school," I explained. "That's the kind of English they teach them there. It means they play together. Dave plays a squeak-pipe."

"A what?"

"I didn't learn that from my daughter," I told him. "It came natural, because I hate flutes. They smell to high heaven, and especially when Dave wheezes a high note on his. Golly!"

"Who is Dave?"

"Dave Peters, the clerk at the bank. He and Old Man Remmel are friends from kidhood. Guess Dave couldn't hold a job anywhere else; he's a little light in the head. Guess anybody has to be to take up playing the flute for a hobb--Say, Mac, you don't by any chance play the flute, do you?"

He put back his head and laughed heartily. He said, "Sheriff, you're a wow. May I see those letters?"

I nodded and handed them over. There were three of them, and they were the perfectly ordinary type of threatening note.

One of them read:

 

 

Remmel: Get out of politics or get out of Crogan County.

 

 

Another one:

 

 

Remmel: Resign from the county board or be measured for a wooden kimono.

 

 

The third one was about like the other two; I forget the exact wording.

"You checked them for prints, I suppose?" McGuire asked.

"Sure. Even us hicks know that much these days. Nope, no prints, Mac. But did you notice anything about the spelling?"

"Hm-m-m. Not especially. What do you mean?"

I nodded wisely, glad of a chance to show him that even out in Springdale we are able to give a whirl or two to the old deductive angles. "It's the spelling of a fairly well-educated person," I pointed out. "Makes no attempt to sound illiterate, you see. He spells words like 'resign' and 'politics' all right. But he misses an easy one, and that little slip wouldn't have been faked. When we find a guy who spells 'kimona' with an 'o' on the end, we really got a suspect. See?"

He looked surprised. "You sure, sheriff? I've always thought it was spelled with an 'o.' " He opened his brief case, which he's put on the stool beside him, and pulls out a little pocket dictionary and--well, when we'd looked it up, he had to admit that my deduction would have been a good one if I'd only not known how to misspell kimono myself.

Sam brought our coffee and I put three spoonfuls of sugar in mine before I realized what I was doing, being kind of confused. And then, rather than make a worse fool of myself by admitting it, I had to pretend I'd done it on purpose and drink the sickly stuff. There's a bottom limit to what a sheriff wants a famous detective to think of him, and I felt two degrees below that already, even if Mac was too nice to show that he thought it.

He drank his coffee black and unsweetened, and he asked. "Do you think these threats are from some roadhouse owner who'll be ruined if that bill of Remmel's goes through?"

1 shrugged. "Could be. There's plenty of owners that will be ruined, and some of those boys might play for keeps if they saw their livings being yanked out from under them. There are a few that--well, they stay within the law now because under the law they can still make a fair profit, but--"

He said, "Put yourself in the place of one of these roadhouse proprietors, sheriff, and try to imagine you don't give a hang about the law. Now, if the situation were what it was, would you figure it would be best to try to scare Remmel with notes like these, or would you figure it safer in the long run just to eliminate him quietly, without threats?"

"Hm-m-m,' I said. "I see your point." Well, I did see it, even if I couldn't see where it would get us. "If I really intended to go so far as killing him, I don't think I'd send notes first that would give away my motive and make me one of a limited number of suspects."

"Fine," Mac said, "but you wouldn't send the notes, either, unless you thought there was a chance of them working. Would you?"

I downed the last of my super-sugared coffee while I thought that one over. "Guess I wouldn't," I said. "But they might work, at that. Remmel doesn't show it, but I think he's really scared. Oh, he says he's going ahead with his campaign with redoubled energy, but I think he's weakening. He'd like some sort of an excuse, I think, to back out without looking like he was yellow."

"And since you'd rather not commit murder unless you had to, for purely selfish reasons, if no others, how would you go about giving him that excuse to back out?"

"Darned if I know," I admitted, after I'd scratched where my hair used to be. "How would you?"

"I don't know either, sheriff. I'd like to meet one of these road-house owners of yours, though, just for a sample."

"Under your right name?" I asked him. "Or undercoverlike, with me introducing you as a textile man from Texas, or something?"

He smiled. "Since I'm being introduced by the law, I may as well go under my true colors. I'll be freer to ask questions without making excuses."

"O.K., Mac," I told him. I turned around and yelled, "Hey, Sam." Sam Frey came waddling over to us again, and I said, "Sam, meet Mr. McGuire. The McGuire, the guy you've read about."

Sam said, "Glad to meet you." I told Mac: "Sam, here, owns a roadhouse, besides this tavern. It's out on the Kerry pike, near where we're going. He works there nights and here days and evenings, like now. He never sleeps."

Sam grinned. "Oh, I catch a few hours now and then. Few more years and I'll retire, and then I'll sleep twenty hours a day for a while and catch up. I'll be able to afford it then."

"Unless this new law goes through," said McGuire.

Sam's face sobered. "Yeah," he said.

I looked at the clock on the wall over the bar. "It's eight o'clock, Sam. Want to turn your place here over to Johnny for the rest of the evening and go over to Remmel's with us?"

I caught the surprised look on McGuire's face. "Sam's a deputy of mine," I explained. "He knows all about the notes. And he's a good guy to have along."

"Here I thought you were introducing me to a suspect," protested McGuire. "Or are all the suspects deputies of yours?"

Sam chuckled. "Nope," he answered for me. "I'm the only one fits both ways. Sure it ain't too early to go there, sheriff? This is his evening for Dave Peters to be there. And you've told me how Remmel won't let anything at all interrupt those doo-ets of his."

"Remmel's expecting us," I told him. "Said he'd have Dave come early tonight so they'd be through by the time we got there. Go get your coat, Sam, if you're coming."

Sam went to the back, and McGuire wanted to know, "Why are you taking him? Not that I mind, but I'm curious."

"Two reasons. First, Sam knows every roadhouse proprietor who'll be affected by that law. After you've talked to Remmel, Sam can give you enough leads to keep us going all night. Second, Sam's been wanting to get a chance to see Remmel, to have a talk with him about that law. He says he thinks maybe he can make him see how unfair it is."

"Oh," said McGuire. Suddenly I saw what he was thinking. He'd just asked me how the sender of the notes could go about giving the banker a chance to back down without looking yellow.

"Sam never sent those notes," I said suddenly. "Sam's an honest guy, a swell guy. He wouldn't kill a fly."

McGuire said quietly, "I agree with you. But the sender of those notes hasn't harmed a fly yet, has he? And maybe he has no intentions of harming Remmel."

"You mean the whole thing is just a bluff? Is that what you think?"

He smiled. "Sheriff, are you asking me to give a considered opinion on the case before I've even seen Mr. Remmel? Lord, man, I just got here, and all I've got is an open mind. I'm discussing possibilities, not opinions."

Well, he was right as usual, and I'd asked a silly question. But before I could try to back-track on it, Sam came with his coat and hat on and we got into my car and went to the Remmel place.

It's a big, rambling house with three wings to it, and the minute I turned in the gateway I had a feeling that something was wrong. I get feelings like that sometimes, and every once in a while they're right, even if they mostly aren't.

And the minute I stopped the motor of my car in the driveway, I knew I was wrong again, and breathed a sigh of relief. They were still playing.

A flute isn't exactly loud, but it carries well, and Dave's wheezy tones were unmistakable. I grinned at McGuire as we walked along the path from the driveway to the porch, past what Remmel called his "music room." The shades were up and the curtains drawn back, and we got a glimpse of them hard at it as we walked by, Remmel at the piano bench pounding away at the keys and Dave standing behind him and to his left, tooting.

"We got here too soon, all right," I said as I rang the doorbell. "But it isn't our fault. They were expecting us at eight, and it's a quarter after."

The door opened and Craig, the Remmel butler, bowed and stood aside for us to come in. I said, "Hi, Bob," and clapped him on the shoulder as we went past.

Ethelda Remmel, regal in white, was sweeping down toward us along the corridor. "Sheriff Clark," she said, holding out her fingertips and looking like she was trying to pretend to look glad to see us.

I performed the introductions.

"Henry is expecting you," she informed us. "If you'll step into the drawing room a moment until he and Mr. Peters are through their--" She didn't name it; just gave a deprecating little laugh that made me understand why Henry Remmel--teetotaler that he was--sought release in pounding ivory. Another man might have set up a blonde, but Henry Remmel wasn't another man.

We went in; it was across the hall from the music room. There was a lull in the noise and then it started in again, right away. I'd recognized the music before; I didn't know the name, but it was something we had on the phonograph at home; but this one I didn't know, had never heard before. It sounded like a show-off piece for the flute, with high, short little runs and trills and octave jumps all over the place. Not bad, but not good, either.

Then it happened, so suddenly that for an instant that seemed a lot longer none of us moved. Once you've heard that sound you never mistake it again. I've heard it, and I know Sam has, and I have no doubt that McGuire had heard it more often than we.

I mean the staccato yammer of a sub-machine gun. One burst of about half a dozen shots, so quick together that it sounded almost like one. The flute, in the middle of a high note, seeming to give an almost humanly discordant gasp before it went silent. And at the same moment the dreadful discord that a piano makes only when a couple of dozen keys in a row are pushed down all at once and hard--like if you fall across them.

It seemed, as I said, like a long time that we just looked at each other, but it couldn't have been long, because the strings of the piano, with the keys obviously still held down, were still vibrating audibly when we reached the hall.

Mrs. Remmel had been nearest the door of the drawing room, and she was the first to reach that closed door across the hall. She wrenched at the knob, forgetting that her husband always turned the catch on the inside of the door to make sure no one would disturb him while he was in the one room he held sacred. Then she put up frantic fists to pound on the wooden panel, but before she could connect, the latch was turned from within and the door swung open.

Dave Peters stood there in the doorway, his face pale and his eyes so wide they seemed ready to fall out of their sockets. Over his shoulder I could see, at the piano, just what I had expected to see there. Somehow, merely from the way he lay slumped forward across the keyboard, I was certain that Henry Remmel was dead. I knew at a glance that there wasn't any use wasting time crossing over to feel for a pulse that wouldn't be there.

I saw Dave's flute on the floor where he had dropped it, and the curtain blowing slightly inward from an opened window on the side of the wing toward the back of the house. Dave was pointing to that open window. "Fired in there," he shouted, although there was no need for shouting. "Hurry, maybe you can--"

Cursing myself for not having thought of it before someone told me to, I jerked around and ran for the outside door. Sam had been quicker than I, and hadn't waited for a flute-playing bank clerk to tell us what to do. He was already outside and pounding around the house to the left.

I pounded out the door after him and started around the house the other way, yanking out my Police Positive as I ran.

Sam had nerve, all right, because I knew he didn't have a gun. Or maybe his running out had been more reaction than courage, because when we came in sight of each other at the back of the house and he didn't recognize me in the almost darkness, he gave a yawp and started to go back.

I called out to him and he stopped. I was beginning to think again, and I said, "Be quiet, Sam. Listen." It was too dark to see whoever might be making a getaway, but there was just a chance that they wouldn't be so far but what we could hear them.

We stood there a moment, and there wasn't any sound but the hysterical sobbing of Ethelda Remmel in the house. None that we could hear, anyway. I said, "Sam, there's a flashlight in my car. Will you get it?"

He said, "Sure, Les," and went after it. I stepped up toward the open window that the killer had fired through, and three feet away, too close to the window to be visible in the square of light that fell from the window onto the lawn, I stumbled over something. Something hard and heavy.

I bent over to look, and I could make out that it was a Tommy-gun all right. I didn't touch it until Sam got back with the flashlight. Then I picked it up carefully by hooking my finger through the trigger guard so as not to smear any prints. As I raised up with it, I shot a resentful glance in the window.

This McGuire was sure disappointing me. He was in there comforting Mrs. Remmel and trying to calm down Dave Peters so he could answer questions without shouting. That kind of stuff is what you'd expect from an ordinary private dick, but not from one with a reputation like McGuire's. Staying in there to jabber and leaving the man hunt and the dirty work to me and Sam.

I went around in the door again, and put the Tommy-gun down in a corner of the murder room. A housekeeper had appeared on the scene from somewhere and was taking Mrs. Remmel away toward the upstairs of the house.

"He got away," I said. "And the ground is too hard for prints. He left the typewriter, though. Maybe there'll be fingerprints on it."

"And maybe not," said Sam. Privately, I agreed with him. The only killers nowadays who leave prints are spur-of-the-moment boys, and they don't carry Tommy-guns around on the chance that they may decide to go hunting.

I glared at McGuire. I couldn't blame him out loud for not having gone chasing out with us, because it had turned out he was right and there hadn't been any use of trying. But I was mad at him anyway, and my tongue gave way at its loosest hinge.

"So you thought the boys were bluffing about killing Remmel, huh?" I said. I realized, even as I said it, that I was being unfair, because he hadn't made any such statement at all, and had refused to even guess until he had all the facts. Then I thought of another angle.

"So you thought Sam here was a suspect, huh?" I said accusingly. "That maybe he was coming here to give Remmel an out. Well, Remmel don't need an out now; he's got one. And Sam was with us when it happened, and he couldn't have done it any more'n me or Mrs. Remmel or Dave or you yourself, or--"

He said, "Be quiet, sheriff." He said it so softly and so calmly and authoritatively that I shut up so sudden I near sprained a tonsil, and felt my face getting red. In spite of my general resemblance to a spavined elephant, I have a blush--so I'm told--that is like a schoolgirl's.

McGuire wasn't even looking at me, though. He was talking conversationally to Dave, just like there wasn't a stiff in the room at all. "That piece you were playing after the 'IL Trovatore' number," he said. "Is this the score for it?" He strolled to the piano and looked at the music opened on it. It was written out by hand in ink, on ruled music paper.

Dave nodded. "My own composition," he said. "A suite for flute and piano. I brought it over tonight for us to try out."

"Interesting," said McGuire casually. He was leaning over to study the manuscript, and he'd taken a pencil from his pocket. He pointed to a place about halfway down the second page. "This would be about the point where the machine gun made a trio of it, wouldn't it? About so."

Lightly, with his pencil, he sketched in six slurred thirty-second notes below the staff. "About six notes right here."

I thought he'd gone nuts. I didn't change my mind at all when he turned and went on talking. "The history of music is very interesting, Mr. Peters," he said. I gawked at him.

A guy who'd talk about the history of music over a dead body was a new one on me. He went on: "Have you ever read about a Colonel Rebsomen who lived in France early in the last centur--"

Then I knew he'd gone genuinely and completely insane, because he tensed suddenly and his right hand darted inside his coat and came out holding an automatic. But this time I wasn't so slow; I dived before he could aim at whoever he was going to aim at, and the bullet went wild and snipped a stem from a potted plant on my left. My right to his jaw made him drop the gun and claw the air, and I grabbed for the gun and got it. McGuire didn't go down from my punch. He kept his feet and looked at me a little sadly. "You damned fool!" he said. "I was going to shoot it out of his hand."

I said blankly, "Shoot what out of whose hand?"

Then I turned around and saw Dave, and saw that he was slumped back in a chair, and that his face wasn't pretty to look at. There was a little bottle in his hand. Even as I watched, his relaxing fingers let it slide to the floor.

Sam said, "Prussic acid. It's all over; no use rushing for any antidote for that stuff."

I didn't understand it, but I did get that I'd made a fool of myself again. This time, though, I can't say I was really sorry. I'd known Dave pretty well, and if he'd killed Hank Remmel it was better for him to have had a sudden out than to go through what a murderer goes through before he climbs the steps. A guy like Dave.

I turned back to McGuire, and I didn't call him Mac this time. I handed him his gun respectfully, and I said, "I sure owe you an apology, Mr. McGuire. I thought--but damn it all, I still don't see how Dave could have killed him. We heard 'em, all the time."

He slid his gun back into its holster. "Here's the score for it, sheriff," he said. "Suite for Flute and Tommy-gun. I don't like this case, sheriff, but just the same, I'd like to take along this piece of music as a souvenir of it. It's unique. May I?"

He took it out into the hall and put it into the brief case he'd left there. I followed him. "Listen," I said, "I'm still as dumb as I was. How did Dave--"

We were out of sight of the two dead bodies now, and he grinned. "The case is closed, sheriff," he told me, "and I can catch the ten-o'clock train out. If you can have your deputy stay here and call in the coroner and so on, why on the way back to town I'll tell you."

I fixed it with Sam, and as I started to drive McGuire in, I said: "I figure it this far. It's easy to see how Dave could have had motive, as teller of the bank. An audit'll show it. I'd guess offhand that he must have forged Remmel's name to cover up, too, and figured that with Remmel dead the forgery would never be found out. Maybe he even had it fixed to get control of the bank himself. If he was short, and had a choice between that and jail--well, you can see the motive, all right.

"And sending those notes was a natural to throw suspicion in another direction, and that, too, would show the murder was planned. But how on earth--Say, you mentioned a Colonel Reb-something. That was when Dave pulled out the bottle and--you know. What the hell would a colonel who lived last century have to do with it?"

"Colonel Rebsomen," said McGuire, "was quite famous. He was a one-armed flute player. Anyone much interested in the flute would have heard of him. He had a special flute he could play anything on and play it well. When I wrote in that part for the Tommy-gun into Peters' flute score and then mentioned Colonel Rebsomen, Peters knew I saw through it."

"A one-armed flute player! Holy cow! But . . . but that was a special flute, you say. Dave's is an ordinary one, isn't it?"

McGuire nodded. "But on an ordinary flute there are certain notes that can be played with the left hand alone. Quite a few of them, in fact. From G to C in the first and second octaves, and most of the notes in the top octave.

"You see, sheriff, he not only planned this murder, but he had written the music for it. Almost the whole of that suite he wrote is so pitched that it can be played with one hand.

"We were to be his alibi. He waited until he heard us come, and then persuaded Remmel to run through that number once before he went out to join us. As soon as they started he backed to the window, still playing. He'd planted the gun on the window sill when he came, and he'd probably opened the window earlier to be ready to get at it.

"He got the gun and, still playing, pulled the trigger. You can't do much with a Tommy-gun one-handed, but you can fire one burst that can't miss a man two yards away. Then he dropped his flute, probably wiped his prints off the gun and threw it out the window and came to unlatch the door. Perfect--except for Colonel Rebsomen's ghost."

I'd just swung my car in to the curb at the station, and we walked in. It was well before train time and, except for us, the station was empty.

I said, "My God, Mac, what a scheme for murder that was! Only an unbalanced mind would have planned it. I guess flute players really are a bit nuts."

McGuire nodded absently. He put his brief case down and took the score of Dave's suite from it. I looked over his shoulder and shuddered when I saw those penciled staccato notes that showed where the Tommy-gun had joined in.

And suddenly I realized how near Dave had come to getting away with it. He would have, for all of me or Sam. Offhand, you'd say only another flute player could have--

"Gawd, Mac," I said, "I just remembered that you didn't answer me before when I asked if you played the flute. Do you?"

"I was just considering," he said, "showing you how this would sound if it were well played. It's not bad music, really." He reached deeper in his brief case and came up with a black leather case that proved to be plush lining and the sections of a dismembered flute. And darned if it didn't sound not so bad at that, the way he played it.

I've had mine a month now, and I can play "My Country 'Tis of Thee," and a few other easy ones. Only, as my wife acrimoniously points out, if another fancy murder is ever pulled off in Crogan County, it'll probably be planned by a chess player instead of a flute player, and I'll make a fool of myself again because I don't know a pawn from a bishop, except that the knights look like horses.

But a guy can't be an expert in everything, and what's good enough for a guy like McGuire, who can solve a case practically while it's happening, is good enough for a guy like me.