The Music Box Enigma

by R. N. Morris

  There was no time to waste.

  ‘Off you go then, Mr Symington.’

  But Symington was shaking his head in a big, side-to-side pivot of refusal. ‘He’s not going to buy it! He’ll never believe it! You don’t know him. He can see right through you. He’s got these big, bulging eyes that see right through you!’

  ‘Remember what we talked about. Remember why you’re doing this. This is your chance, Symington. This is your chance to be rid of Benson. You hate Benson, remember. Benson is a giant toad who squats on you, holding you back, squeezing the life out of you. With Benson out of the way, you’ll be free. You’ll be Mr Big. Cock of the walk. You’ll take over his business. Deal directly with his suppliers. All his men will come over to you. You don’t need Benson.’

  Symington’s violent head shaking had transformed into equally violent nodding at Quinn’s vision of a grandiose future. ‘Yes. Yes. Yes. I just … need … some more … snow.’

  Quinn nodded to Macadam, who had turned round in his seat to watch. Macadam handed over the leather bag. The two policemen averted their eyes as Symington indulged his weakness.

  A moment later, they were watching Symington stride across the street with a drug-charged swagger. The street children broke off from their game to watch him in silence. Symington reached the front door of one of the houses. They saw his body twitch with the force of a massive sniff, then he raised his hand to rap a knuckle against the flaking paintwork.

  Quinn counted twenty tense seconds. Symington knocked again. The door opened; Quinn did not see by whom. Symington was admitted. The door closed with an ominous shudder behind him.

  ‘What do you want me to do, sir?’ asked Macadam.

  Quinn watched the children, whose game had become suddenly subdued at the action on the street. They watched him too, with large, unblinking eyes. ‘Neutralize them.’

  ‘Neutralize them?’

  ‘Yes. Ten to one they are in Benson’s pocket. I don’t want them tipping him off when Leversedge arrives with back-up.’ As an afterthought, he added, ‘Also, I don’t want them getting caught in any crossfire.’

  A deep frown rippled across Macadam’s brow at the mention of crossfire. ‘How do you suggest I neutralize them?’ It seemed he was still struggling with Quinn’s choice of word.

  ‘You’ll think of something, DS Macadam. You always do.’ Quinn took out his warrant card and handed it to his sergeant. ‘By the way, you’d better have this. In case they make me turn out my pockets.’

  Macadam shook his head unhappily but took the warrant card. ‘I really wish we’d waited for Leversedge.’

  The door to the house opened and Symington stepped out. He raised his hand and waved for Quinn to come inside.

  ‘Too late for that now.’

  Quinn knew immediately that the situation was more dangerous than he needed it to be, and was in fact already out of his control.

  He identified Tiggie Benson from his bulbous eyes. Some kind of thyroid condition, he speculated. Either that or internalized rage forcing his eyes out. Benson certainly appeared angry. He was pacing the room – a dingy parlour at the back of the house – with the quick, jerky steps of a short-legged man. He repeatedly punched the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. There were two other men there. Big brutes with clippered haircuts, sharp suits and confused expressions. Physically, they dwarfed Benson, but there was no doubt who had the power in that room.

  There might be others in other rooms, of course. If John Fonthill was being held there, Benson may have stationed men to guard him.

  What complicated things was the presence of two women. Quinn was not prepared for that. They were dressed flashily, literally – the sparkle of diamonds flickered about them. Fur stoles were draped over their shoulders as they shuddered away their distaste for their surroundings. No doubt they knew the grisly history of the place. They were pale, cold-eyed, pretty things, seated side by side on a tatty chaise longue, one filing the other’s nails. They barely glanced up from the task when Quinn came in. But still, they had enough time to take in all they needed to. He revised his opinion of one of them, the subservient one engaged in grooming the other. He had been unfair to her, he now thought, lumping her together with her companion. He now saw that she had a softer face, which hinted at some chink of humanity that he might be able to exploit. It was possible that her fixed, empty expression came from fear. Equally, it could be narcotically induced.

  Benson broke off from pacing the room to look Quinn up and down thoroughly. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘My name is Moon.’

  ‘Man in the moon?’

  ‘No. Mr Moon.’

  ‘Mr Moon? What are you, Mr Moon?’

  ‘What am I? Did my friend not—?’

  ‘Your friend? This your friend, ’ere?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tut-tut. You’re not very good friends, are you? I don’t think you know each other very well at all. You say your name is Moon. Mr Moon. That’s what you said, ain’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, your friend ’ere, he says your name is Quinn.’

  Quinn did not miss a beat, kept his tone even and unflustered. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes? What do you mean, fucking yes? Is you Quinn or is you Moon?’

  ‘I do sometimes go by the name Quinn. I find it useful in my line of business to have a number of aliases I can call upon.’

  ‘Now what line of business would that be?’

  ‘It’s one that sometimes places me on the wrong side of the law. And so, I am obliged to take precautions. I am sure you understand.’

  ‘No. In fact, I haven’t got a fucking clue what you’re talking about.’

  Quinn pressed on. ‘I have other names too. Thompson, Mendez, Pettifer, Dunston … So, yes, now that I think of it, it’s quite possible that Symington knows me as Quinn. I sometimes forget what name I’ve given to whom.’

  ‘I’ll just call you Cunt then, shall I?’

  Quinn winced in the aftershock of Benson’s rage.

  ‘Or maybe Copper.’

  Symington began to shake uncontrollably. At the same time, he let out a strange, stifled snorting noise that resolved itself into high-pitched laughter. It was certainly an annoying sound. Tiggie Benson screwed up his face in a pained wince before screaming in Symington’s face: ‘Shut up!’

  But the overstimulated junkie couldn’t stop.

  ‘I said shut the fuck up!’

  It went on for what seemed like an eternity. Symington giggling horribly. Benson screaming at him to Shut up!

  Giggling.

  Screaming.

  Giggling.

  Screaming.

  Giggling.

  Until Tiggie Benson pulled a revolver from inside his jacket and held it up towards Symington. When even the threat of a gun did not stem the laughter, Benson did the only thing he could. He fired into Symington’s mouth at point-blank range. The crack of the report was startling. As was the deafened silence that rushed in to fill the vacuum in its aftermath. Symington slumped to the floor, writhing like a hooked fish. There was still some noise coming from him that might – still – have been laughter, but it was very changed from the giggling he had just been producing. It was more of a gurgling. It suggested something rent and ragged and flapping and flooded. It went on for longer than any of the men standing over it would have thought possible. In many ways, it was a far more jarring noise than the one Benson had attempted to silence.

  It was only now that one of the women screamed and ran from the room. The delayed reaction could be put down to shock. Quinn was not surprised to see that it was the woman whose more sympathetic face he had noted. She dropped the nail file as she fled. Her companion tilted her head upwards in an expression of icy disdain that seemed to have been provoked by the dropped nail file as much as anything. A small, tight, vicious smile played around the corners of her mouth.

  ‘Right,’ said Benson, when the noise in Symington’s thro
at finally died down. ‘I can hear myself think now.’

  ‘I’m glad you did that,’ said Quinn.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We don’t need him.’

  ‘You know what, Mr Moon? I don’t give a fuck what you think.’ Benson’s gun hand hung limply by his side, his energy spent by the violence he had just unleashed, for the moment at least. His other hand trembled as he held it up to pinch his forehead in thought.

  The look of confusion that Quinn had detected in the two henchmen deepened. They were out of their depth, that much was clear. And it was their boss who had taken them there.

  The only person who seemed to be enjoying herself was the woman on the chaise longue. Quinn could not be sure, because he was not looking at her directly, but he had the sense that she licked her lips.

  In these situations, if it was possible to think in terms of ‘these situations’ in what was essentially a unique moment in the world’s history, Quinn had often noticed that time simultaneously moved both quickly and slowly. Perhaps there had not been an eternity of giggling and screaming before Benson had shot Symington. It had just felt that way. Perhaps there had not been a delay between the gunshot and the sympathetic girl running from the room. It had just felt that way.

  And perhaps the interval between each beat of his heart was not really a lifetime. It only felt that way.

  How many of these lifetimes passed before the shrieking began, he could not say. And how long after that was it before the door to the parlour crashed open and DI Leversedge burst in, holding the once sympathetic but now terrified girl in front of him in a one-armed stranglehold, the barrel of his Weber service revolver pressing against her temple.

  ‘Drop it, Tiggie,’ said Leversedge quietly, his voice almost intimate. The calmness of his demeanour impressed Quinn. He felt the relief flood through him.

  Benson’s expression went through a series of complex mutations as he calculated his options. It settled on a look that came as close to tender as he was capable of. A look which the ice-eyed girl on the chaise longue noted with displeasure.

  For it was clear that while she was his floozy, his good-time girl, the little soft-eyed one shielding the copper from bullets was the girl he loved.

  Benson’s gun clattered to the floor.

  A moment later the room was filled with uniforms.

  FIFTY-ONE

  ‘Where are they, Benson?’

  ‘They?’ It was Leversedge who was confused by Quinn’s use of the plural.

  Quinn flashed his DI a holding glance. Although he owed him his life, Quinn did not feel he owed him an explanation quite yet. There would be time enough for that soon.

  ‘Upstairs. They’re both upstairs.’ Now in handcuffs, Tiggie Benson drew himself up as tall as he could. Although he had been bettered, he did not appear defeated. In fact, a new hopefulness seemed to have entered him. His eyes were fixed on the girl who had provoked his capitulation.

  ‘Is the boy unharmed?’

  ‘I was never gonna ’urt ’im.’ Benson looked imploringly at the girl, begging her to believe him.

  ‘Any of your men up there?’

  Benson shook his head.

  Despite the reassurance, Quinn drew his revolver.

  The stairs were narrow and steep. Every step he took set off a creak. He heard Leversedge’s tread behind him, and his urgent questions. ‘What did he mean when he said both? Who else is here? Guv?’

  The door was locked from the outside; fortunately the key was in the lock.

  There was a wrought-iron bed with a stained mattress on it. A boy of about five or six in green velvet knickerbockers and jacket lay curled up and shivering. His arms were bound at the wrists, his legs at the ankles. There was a gag over his mouth. He looked up at Quinn with eyes enlarged by fear.

  Slumped on the floor against one wall was a man, also bound and gagged. He had a loose fringe of sandy hair flopping down over his eyes. His face was shadowed with stubble and his clothes were streaked with rust-coloured stains. He too looked up, though his expression was more wary than the boy’s.

  ‘It’s all right. We’re the police,’ announced Quinn. ‘You’re safe now, John.’ Then he added, with a quick bow to the man huddled on the floor, ‘Sir Aidan.’

  Despite Leversedge’s impatience, the explanations would have to wait until the captives were untied and John Fonthill was held in his sobbing father’s embrace.

  ‘How did you know he wasn’t dead?’

  Quinn regarded his DI with a vague frown, as if trying to place him. He blinked, which seemed to cause his memory to return. ‘I knew something wasn’t right from the very beginning. The crime scene was simply not consistent with Lady Emma’s presentation of what happened.’

  ‘Please.’ Sir Aidan broke off from kissing the top of his son’s head repeatedly, compulsively, uncontrollably, as if he were instead drinking in a quenching draught. ‘Please leave my wife out of this. She is not to blame for any of it. It’s all my fault.’

  Quinn cocked his head as he considered Fonthill’s request. ‘I think we should get young John back to his mother and continue this conversation with Sir Aidan at Hampstead police station.’

  And so Leversedge was forced to wait a little longer for the answers to the many questions he had.

  They found Sergeant Macadam outside sitting cross-legged on the ground, with a loose semicircle of grubby children in front of him. The little ones sat quietly, hanging intently on his every word. Macadam caught his governor’s eye and did his best to wind it up. ‘And that is the story of how the elephant got his trunk.’

  But as he made a move to get up, the children cried out, ‘Another one! Another one!’

  It was only by handing over a whole quarter pound bag of gobstoppers that he was able to extricate himself.

  ‘Stories, Macadam?’ said Quinn.

  ‘Children love stories, sir. They also love magic. Therefore, I thought I would start with a few sleight of hand tricks. I find there is nothing can capture a boy’s attention as a sixpence pulled from his ear. When I had exhausted my stock of magic, I’m afraid I rather shamelessly plundered the imagination of Rudyard Kipling.’

  ‘You are a constant wonder to me. I am sorry to tear you away from your friends, but I need you to drive us to Hampstead. We have a couple of extra passengers. Leversedge can sit in the front with you. We can fit John and Sir Aidan in the back, I’m sure.’

  ‘Sir Aidan?’

  Quinn closed his eyes to discourage further questions. The nod of confirmation that he gave was minimal.

  ‘It was the position of the body that first alerted me. It was obvious that it had been placed there. If you imagine the force that would have been required to drive that implement into the ear, it would not have left the victim sitting upright. My suspicion was confirmed by the appearance of a polished swathe across the front of the piano, as if it had been wiped clean there. That was the action of the victim’s hair – or should I say wig – rubbing against the surface as the body collapsed.’ Quinn turned to Leversedge who was sitting next to him in the Hampstead interview room. Sir Aidan was on the other side of a plain table. ‘You will remember, I found a red hair in the hinge of the piano lid, where the head landed, with some force, we may speculate. That suggested to me that the wig had originally been worn by the victim, not the killer. The appearance of the blood on the victim’s body was odd too. There was not as much blood on the victim’s clothes as you might have expected. None on the outside of the shirt collar, for example, only on the inside.’

  ‘I noticed that!’ cried Leversedge.

  Quinn frowned at the interruption. ‘That suggested to me that the clothes had been changed after death. At some point, Sir Aidan, you decided to change clothes with the man you had murdered. And don his disguise too. Whose idea was that? Your wife’s?’

  ‘Emma had nothing to do with it, I tell you. She wasn’t even there when I killed him.’

  ‘But she came in soon after, did she not?
We will have to talk to her, you understand.’

  Fonthill flinched as if he had been slapped across the face.

  ‘Was it she who noticed the passing similarity between you and the dead man, once the false hair and whiskers fell off? That was why there was blood on the beard found in Willoughby’s pocket, by the way,’ Quinn explained in an aside to Leversedge. ‘Not because the victim’s blood had sprayed in the murderer’s face, as I once speculated. But because the victim was wearing the false beard at the moment he was killed. It also explains the neat edge to the bloodstain on the victim’s face. That was where the false beard covered his skin.’ Turning back to face Fonthill, Quinn added, ‘It must have been a disgusting object to have against your face. That was why you discarded it in the churchyard, I suppose, which was where my officer tracked you down.’

  ‘I didn’t kill the policeman. You must believe me, I didn’t even have a gun. And I am no marksman. I’m a musician.’

  It was a fair point. ‘No. That was Benson, wasn’t it? We have his gun now. We haven’t had the report from the medical examiner concerning DS Willoughby yet, but I imagine he will find the bullet, or if he doesn’t, I’ll have Inspector Pool’s men comb the church. Once we have it, we will be able to check it against Benson’s gun. I have no doubt it will confirm your story.’

  Fonthill gave a weary nod, as if it pained him to show his appreciation. ‘He held me at gunpoint and made me call out to the policeman.’

  ‘And so, had you gone to the church to meet Benson?’

  ‘Yes. He had come to the house earlier in the week. I owed him money.’

  ‘The gambling debt?’

  Fonthill nodded. ‘He had been hounding me for it. I didn’t have it, of course. And I couldn’t go to Emma this time. So he proposed an alternative arrangement.’

  ‘Which was?’