Michael Arlen - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine #097v018 (1951-12)

Then the music pulled his gaze into the studio. He didn’t like what was going to happen, what he was going to have to do.

Four notes — so carefully hidden in the skillfully designed orchestration that no one would know, until —

“Goodbye — forever —”

The red-haired, stocky clarinet player dropped his instrument as though it had bitten him. Then he slumped to the floor like an expiring toy balloon.

Once more, everything stopped.

This time it was von Flanagan who moved first. He said, “So that’s how it was done. Aconite on the reed of his clarinet.”

“No,” Malone said quickly, “that wasn’t how it was done. Right now, stay put, and don’t talk.” He grabbed von Flanagan’s arm and said, “If the guy is dead, hang me. But this is the only way I could prove what happened.”

Again there was the sudden rush of people towards the fallen clarinet player. Jack Shields, who had shoved his way into the studio, threw a protective arm around his wife and demanded loudly that someone call the inhalator squad. Betty Castle ran forward, then paused, her homely little face dazed and bewildered. Lorna Lee burst into tears. Someone called for water. There didn’t seem to be any water available, unless someone took the time to drill a well. Larry Lee moved in, the first-aid look back in his eyes.

Malone nodded to von Flanagan, and walked into the studio. He laid one hand on Larry Lee’s arm and said, “Sorry your recording was spoiled. But you’ll probably get a better performance next time, when everyone isn’t worried about who is the murderer.” He took a few steps more and said, “All right, Buck, you can get up now. It was a magnificent performance.”

If anyone had dropped a pin while the red-haired clarinet player rose to his feet, it would have smashed every seismograph on Mars.

“If you’d been really smart,” Malone said, “you’d have carried an extra Dixie cup to drop on the floor, to account for the one you carried away with you — the one you had to carry away with you because it had traces of aconite.”

He paused for a moment. He was really tired now.

“You knew that with Art Sample dead, Larry Lee would just quietly keep the royalties from the songs,” the little lawyer went on relentlessly. “You wanted the money — and Larry Lee. You were confident that Larry Lee would get a divorce and marry you. You knew that in a pinch you could blackmail him because of the songs.”

He hated to go on, but he had to. He avoided looking at Larry Lee, and wished that Lorna Lee were deaf.

“You knew that he’d grown sick of beautiful faces the way a man can get sick of chocolate éclairs.”

Betty Castle had teen like solid stone, now she exploded in a flaming rage, aimed at Lorna Lee. Malone caught a few words, the kindest of which was “tramp,” and the most definite “— all the boys in the band.” Lorna Lee exploded right back at her, and the words Malone caught from her surprised even him. Snowflake, he thought. Spring flower. he said, “Shut up, both of you.”

Von Flanagan had come into the studio. He said, “But — Goodbye Forever—” He stopped just short of adding, “Dog whistles.”

“It worked in perfectly,” Malone told him. “She killed him after he was supposed to be dead. Isn’t that right, Betty?”

She smiled at him wanly. “It was a good try, anyway.” She looked at Larry Lee and her eyes said, “I’m sorry for everything.” She looked at Lorna Lee and her lips moved silently around a very unpleasant word. Then she walked over to von Flanagan without a tremor.

Malone rushed over to her and said, “Don’t forget, I’m your lawyer. Let me do the talking for you. Don’t say a word, and don’t sign anything.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Remember, my dear, you couldn’t be in better hands.”

“But how did you know?” von Flanagan said, hours later.

“Because there wasn’t a clue,” Malone said. He waved at Joe the Angel for two more beers. “I had the motive — in fact, I had a motive for everybody. When I slipped that red-haired clarinet player a hundred bucks to pull a phony faint, I was slipping a slug in a slot machine, as far as I knew.” He reached in his pocket to linger the retainer check Larry Lee had given him.

“It paid off,” von Flanagan said wearily.

“She knew he was nervous, she knew he was superstitious,” Malone went on. “She talked Larry Lee into pulling this stunt as a press-agent gag, and made sure everybody in the band, or connected with it, knew all about it. Then she worked Art Sample into such a state that he was bound to collapse in the studio.”

He relit his cigar and said, “He fainted — she counted on that. Someone rushing up with a Dixie cup of water was the instinctive tiling no one would even notice. But there wasn’t an empty Dixie cup among the odds and ends your boys picked up from the floor!”

Malone buried his face in his hands for a moment. He was seeing Betty Castle’s straight little back when she’d walked over to the police officer and said, “Okay.”

“Don’t worry,” von Flanagan said. “After all, she’s got a good lawyer.”

But Malone was thinking of something else. He was seeing Art Sample again, his handsome young face as he reached for that one high note on the clarinet, and he was hearing a melody.

“It never pays to be a ghost,” Malone said. He stared into the circle left by his upraised glass. “To ghost anything. You’re dead before you. can even start.”

Allan Vaughan Elston grew up on his father’s ranch near the Colorado-New Mexico line, where fences were built not to keep stock in but to keep cattle out... where, alfalfa meadows stretched for miles along the creek in a narrow, purple ribbon... where land without waterholes wasn’t worth paying taxes on... where antelope were plentiful and the rincon of a timbered mesa teas full of deer and bear and wild turkey... where at the age of ten Elston could own a paint pony and ride up the canyons to catch trout ... where ranches of those days were like autonomous villages, including rambling adobe houses, barns, bunkshacks, stores, school, church, and where the children of the help were born, educated, married, employed for life, and eventually buried without ever having left the ranch land... where the men of the sage and mesquite habitually wore six-guns and where the Three R’s stood for riding, roping, and roaring... where picnics for the youngsters meant going out to the blind canyons to trap and tame bands of wild horses and where you could trek for weeks through the border counties, through vast wildernesses and false-fronted cowtowns...

From these deep-rooted beginnings how was it possible for Allan Vaughan Elston to write a story like “Eva? Caroline?” Well, Mr. Elston left the ranch of his father (although he has gone back from time to time), went to college, became an engineer, gave up surveying railroads for a career of writing, and now plots stories from the logical, mathematical viewpoint of his later professional, rather than his earlier environmental, background. But the plots are not cold logic, absolute mathematics: they are about people, and that quality stems, however changed, however transmuted, from Mr. Elston’s boyhood and young manhood on the old ranch, where the sea of bunch grass heaved in the sun and the lordly herds lowed down in the wind ...

“That,” Roger Marsh asserted with a strained effort to speak calmly, “is absurd and impossible. My wife died almost four years ago.”