"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.