The Music Box Enigma

by R. N. Morris

  ‘He wanted me to provide him with information on my friends. What valuables they had in their houses and when they would be away. I refused, obviously.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Fonthill closed his eyes with a shudder. ‘He told me if I didn’t agree …’ Fonthill swallowed hard but couldn’t go on.

  ‘He threatened to take John?’

  ‘He threatened both the children. He gave me a day to think about it. Told me to meet him in the church on Saturday with some information he could use. I wasn’t going to go. But after what happened, I thought perhaps he could help me.’

  ‘Help you? How?’

  ‘Well, he’s a criminal, isn’t he? He would know how to stay out of the way of the police. Emma had promised to get money to me and so I told Benson he could have that. But he lost his temper. Told me he had waited long enough. Promises were no good to him, he said. That was when the policeman came in.’

  ‘And he shot Willoughby.’

  ‘I had to go with him after that. He said the police would have me down for it. If ever I was caught, I’d be hanged as a double murderer. And a cop murderer to boot. He said there was nothing the police hated more than a cop murderer. That was why he did it, I think. To tie me to him.’

  ‘But who was the man you killed?’ cried Leversedge wildly, no longer able to contain his frustration.

  ‘That was the blind piano tuner,’ said Quinn.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sir Aidan.

  ‘Very well! It was the blind piano tuner!’ The impressive calm that Leversedge had shown when disarming Tiggie Benson had deserted him entirely. ‘But why did you kill him?’

  ‘He wasn’t really blind, of course,’ began Sir Aidan, somewhat pointlessly. ‘Or a piano tuner.’

  ‘I think we knew that.’

  ‘Who was he, Sir Aidan? A German agent?’

  ‘I suppose you could call him that, though traitor would be the more accurate word. His name was Peters. He was there. That night. At that house. I’d never met him before then. I wasn’t even sure what his name was, until he came to see me on the day of the rehearsal. It was strange, at the time … a friend of mine, I say friend, but really, I think I hate him. Well, you see, the thing was, Lucas thought it was amusing to keep getting us muddled up, as if we were identical, which we weren’t, of course. But as you say, there was a superficial resemblance. We were both clean-shaven, with sandy hair, and I suppose our features were similar. I couldn’t see it myself. Emma did, though, straight away.’

  Leversedge groaned. ‘No, I’m sorry. I am still confused. You will have to go back to the beginning.’

  ‘The beginning? What was the beginning, I wonder? The beginning for me? Or the beginning for him? For me, I suppose it was twenty or so years ago in Baden-Baden. I got into a spot of difficulty on the tables. I was there as a guest of Baron von Reventlow. We were not at war with Germany at the time, of course. Baron von Reventlow was one of the most civilized and intelligent men I have ever met. And possibly, I see now, one of the most evil. I ended the evening owing the house more than a thousand marks. An amount I could never hope to pay. Von Reventlow had of course loaned me the money, so really it was to him that my debt was owed. And do you know what he said? He said, “Think nothing of it, my dear boy! We had fun, didn’t we!” And then he slapped me on the back and laughed. I was in a daze. Stunned. “You are such a talented young man,” he said. “It is my pleasure to do this for you. It would be a crime if the world were to be deprived of your talent because of this youthful foolishness.” I thanked him profusely and said – it was I who said it, you see – that is what was so clever … I offered myself voluntarily. I said, “If there is ever anything I can do for you, please do not hesitate to ask.” He bowed solemnly and thanked me. “You are a man of honour,” he said. And he made a little speech about honour, about how hard it is to find honour in the world today. “When honour is lost,” he said, “all is lost.” And he put his hand on my chest, and he said, “Here. It will always reside here, I know. For when a man of honour gives his word, he can never go back on it.”’

  ‘“Ehre verloren, alles verloren,”’ said Quinn.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The music box.’

  ‘When I received that, I knew he was calling in the debt. The next day Peters turned up at the rehearsal in disguise …’

  ‘The blind piano tuner?’

  ‘Yes. He told me that Baron von Reventlow sent his regards. That sent a chill right through me. It was a shock, even though I had received the music box warning me that something was about to happen. I had no idea that the baron and Peters knew one another. But the baron knows many people and I dare say he has a hold over them all. Anyhow, it was then that Peters told me what was expected of me, how I was to repay my debt.’

  ‘You were to assassinate Winston Churchill?’

  ‘No. My role was simply to facilitate the crime. I was to arrange for the assassin – Peters – to get close enough to Churchill so that he could …’ Fonthill winced at the memory. ‘He had a stiletto. His intention was to stab Churchill with it.’

  ‘A stiletto in the shape of a tuning fork?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘The very weapon with which you killed Peters?’

  Fonthill gave a deep sigh and his shoulders quaked. ‘He thought it was funny. This loathsome object which he had made himself. He was fooling around with it. Pretending it was a real tuning fork. He held it to his ear, as if to listen to the note it produced. There was no note, of course.’

  ‘That explains the blood on his right hand. He was holding it when you …’

  ‘Something came over me. Rage, I suppose. I was under a lot of stress. And the man was so infuriatingly flippant. I just rammed it in.’

  ‘You stopped him. He was the assassin and you stopped him.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I did.’

  ‘In which case, you prevented England’s enemies from killing the First Lord of the Admiralty. That makes you a hero, not a criminal. Why did you then attempt to conceal what you had done?’

  Fonthill looked down at the table and refused to answer.

  ‘That was Lady Fonthill’s idea, wasn’t it? She saw the resemblance between you and the dead man. Not knowing the reason for the crime perhaps, or simply thinking that you had gone mad, she panicked and suggested that you change clothes with him. That way she would at least save your children from having a murderer for a father. She then helped you to arrange the body at the piano. Am I right? Was it Lady Fonthill who put the ring on the wrong finger? We have Donald Metcalfe to thank for pointing out that detail. “It’s not right!” he insisted. He knew that you wear your ring on the left hand. But the ring was on the victim’s right. Was that because the victim’s left hand had blood on it? And Lady Fonthill could not bear to touch it?’

  Fonthill’s small, flinching shrug suggested Quinn was on the right lines.

  ‘And then, of course, there was the painting which she destroyed. Augustus John’s portrait of the two of you. She couldn’t risk one of us policemen seeing it.’

  Fonthill groaned. ‘She needn’t have bothered with that. It didn’t look the slightest bit like me.’

  ‘You were in shock. Unable to think for yourself, you went along with her plan. You were used to Emma sorting out your problems for you, after all. And she offered you money to go away, I suppose. One last cheque for you to cash. She wanted you out of her life. She wanted you out of the children’s lives. This was a way to get rid of you.’

  ‘No. It wasn’t … like that.’ Fonthill’s face flushed with colour. ‘You don’t know Baron von Reventlow. If he thought I had gone back on my word, if he thought I had failed as a man of honour, he would have hunted me down and killed me. That is to say, he would have sent another one of his agents to do his work. I would be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. I could not be sure that he would not have gone after the children. This way, with me dead, with my death reported in all the pa
pers, I would be safe, and so would my family.’

  ‘But your children would never know their father?’

  ‘Perhaps it would be better that way. Or perhaps one day, when we are no longer at war with Germany, I could come out of hiding and make my confession to the authorities.’

  ‘How were you going to live? When Lady Fonthill’s money ran out?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead, I suppose.’

  Quinn paused for a moment to take in everything Fonthill had told him before asking, ‘And this Peters, what do you know about him?’

  ‘He had reasons of his own to hate Winnie. I think in some ways he was an accidental traitor. His soul was … twisted. He had lost all perspective. It was not so much that he wished to harm his country, rather that he was hellbent on destroying Churchill.’

  ‘But why? Do you know?’

  ‘They were at Sandhurst together, apparently. I heard a strange rumour. Peters was a promising young cadet. Physically courageous to the point of reckless. A great horseman too. Well, it seems that Winnie, for some reason best known to himself, decided to spread a vile rumour about Peters. He accused him of sodomy with one of his fellow cadets. According to the rumour, Peters insisted that it was a lie, and that in fact it was Churchill who was indulging in these practices. The whole thing was hushed up. Except that Peters was forced out, in disgrace, of course. His career, and his life, was ruined. He went abroad. To Germany. Where it seems he was befriended by Baron von Reventlow.’

  The room was silent for several minutes before Fonthill asked, ‘What will happen to me now?’

  CODA

  Christmas Eve, 1914

  The Hampstead Voices’ Christmas Concert in aid of Belgian refugees went ahead as planned on Christmas Eve, with Sir Aidan Fonthill, recently raised from the dead, at the podium.

  Every seat in the Great Hall of University College School was taken. The gallery was packed, and extra seats had been crammed in at the rear of the hall, as well as along the sides and in the aisle. A total of two hundred and ninety pounds and six shillings was raised for a cause that was universally agreed to be worthy.

  Among those attending, in addition to the distinguished guest of honour and his black tie-clad security detail, were DCI Quinn, DI Leversedge and DS Macadam of the Special Crimes Department. Inchball was also there, proudly wearing the uniform of a sergeant in the Military Police. He had orders to report to army headquarters in Colchester on Boxing Day. To supplement the SCD’s now depleted manpower, following Inchball’s departure and the death of DC Willoughby, Sir Edward Henry had transferred over to Quinn a new recruit from his own staff. A person whose loss Sir Edward felt deeply, but whose ambition he could not in all conscience stand in the way of. He was confident that she would prove a valuable addition to DCI Quinn’s team. For the new recruit was none other than Lettice Latterly, who was also at the concert, seated next to Silas Quinn.

  Despite his feelings for Miss Latterly, or perhaps because of them, Quinn had initially objected to the appointment. The SCD, he argued, was no place for a woman. Besides which, she was not a trained police officer.

  But Sir Edward would have none of it. These were special times. The force, as well as the country, was losing men to the war. Women were stepping forward to fill the vacancies. They were taking on all manner of tasks that had previously been considered unsuitable for the so-called weaker sex, from driving buses to manufacturing armaments. And proving themselves more than capable. There was no reason Sir Edward could see that a woman, provided she had the aptitude, which he did not doubt Miss Latterly did, should not become a police detective. What training she needed, he felt sure that DCI Quinn, DI Leversedge and DS Macadam could between them provide on the job.

  And so, despite his misgivings, Quinn had acquiesced. When he saw the beam of pride on Miss Latterly’s face the day she reported for duty, he had to admit he was happy to have done so. Perhaps it would not be so bad to have her working alongside him. And he knew from his own experience that she was a resourceful and courageous individual.

  Also in attendance at the concert was Special Constable Elgar, whose contribution had proved vital in cracking one aspect of the case. He was the only police officer there to have a piece of his composition included in the programme.

  As far as the case was concerned, the case of Sir Aidan Fonthill’s ‘murder’, Quinn had submitted his report to Kell, who had passed it on to Churchill.

  On the strength of that report, it had been decided that no action should be taken against Sir Aidan and Lady Fonthill. In fact, Churchill recommended his old schoolfriend for the George Cross. This conferred on Sir Aidan a degree of bravery that he had not been aware of possessing at the time of the incident, but which he was now determined to live up to. If he was still afraid of reprisal from the agents of Baron von Reventlow, he did his best not to show it. Indeed, he appeared to be more anxious that the choir was under-rehearsed.

  In general, a certain discretion concerning the affair was deemed expedient. The extreme danger that the First Lord of the Admiralty had been in, and how close the country had come to disaster, could not be allowed to get out. And so that aspect of the affair was kept out of the papers, the official story being that Sir Aidan had been acting in self-defence. The necessary paperwork was produced to make the thing go away, from a judicial point of view. The absence of a body doubtless facilitated that, perhaps even necessitated it. No one was terribly inclined to enquire too closely into the circumstances of Peters’ death. In general, he was thought to be a bad lot and the feeling seemed to be that he was best forgotten about.

  As for the missing body, that was Tiggie Benson’s doing, all on his own initiative as a way of increasing his hold over Fonthill. He had directed his men to steal it and subsequently dump it in the Thames. He had no idea who the dead man was, or why Fonthill might have wanted to kill him. In Tiggie’s world, a man did not need much of a reason to kill another man. The way Benson saw it, if Peters’ body disappeared, there would be no chance of the police ever finding out that Fonthill was still alive. That would place Fonthill even more in his debt, so he would be obliged to overcome his scruples and provide the information Benson wanted. The information itself no longer mattered to Benson and was of dubious value anyhow. ‘It’s the principle of the thing!’ he had protested to Quinn, his exasperation clear. Fonthill owed him money which he couldn’t pay, so Benson had proposed an alternative arrangement, ‘To my considerable detriment, I’ll have you know.’ In his view, that made it all the more unreasonable that Sir Aidan refused to play ball.

  But the theft of the body had failed to produce the desired effect. Fonthill, who had been Benson’s prisoner since they had met in the church, sank into a traumatized depression and was incapable of doing anything. That proved too much for Benson. ‘What can I say? I got angry.’ It was then that he decided to snatch Fonthill’s son, ‘To teach that stuck-up fucker a lesson,’ as he put it.

  The scenes from the Nutcracker Suite were a particular hit with the audience. Quinn could not take his eyes off the sylph-like Ekaterina Volkova. And it was only when la Volkova was not dancing that he noticed Miss Latterly was equally enrapt with her partner, Andrei Kuznetsov.

  ‘So graceful!’ she gasped, as she joined in the enthusiastic applause.

  ‘Leversedge has met them,’ said Quinn. ‘Perhaps he will introduce you after the concert.’

  ‘Would you?’ cried Miss Latterly.

  But Leversedge was strangely unforthcoming.

  Quinn had gained a new respect for his DI since the incident at Tiggie Benson’s house. There was no getting round it – Leversedge had saved his life, and had demonstrated considerable initiative, not to mention courage, in the process: he had gained admission to the house next door, gone through to the rear garden, climbed over the tumble-down fence and entered Benson’s house through the back door, which was unlocked. He had then opened the front door to let in the local boys. All this had been e
xecuted with great stealth and speed. He had even kept his head when the woman ran out of the parlour screaming.

  Perhaps, thought Quinn, it was time to trust Leversedge, after all.

  It was against the advice of Lieutenant-Colonel Kell that Churchill had insisted on going ahead with his appearance at the concert. He saw it as a way of expressing his gratitude to Sir Aidan. The minister had argued that the threat to his life was over, now that the would-be assassin had been killed. Perhaps so. But Quinn suspected that he was not the only one there who experienced a degree of apprehension. Once, he caught Commander Irons’ eye, there as one of Churchill’s discreet bodyguards. The MO5 (g) man looked unusually tense.

  But it was not just apprehension that Quinn was feeling. He felt oddly out of sorts. Frustrated, even. Which was irrational, given that the case had been concluded to everyone’s satisfaction. He had even managed to solve it without killing anyone. Symington was not entirely out of the woods, but he was somehow still alive, for now at least. If he did pull through, it was likely that he would spend the rest of his days in a wheelchair, paralysed from the neck down. And he would always have difficulty speaking and eating. But it was not as if Quinn had been the one to pull the trigger that blew away his mouth.

  Perhaps that was the problem. Had he now become so used to discharging his firearm in the course of an investigation that if he was deprived of the opportunity, it left him with this strange feeling of dissatisfaction?

  Quinn stood, along with everyone else, for the carols that the audience was invited to join in. But he did not sing, except occasionally to move his lips and murmur a tuneless fragment of one chorus or another. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Miss Latterly’s sly smile at his efforts, and could not help smiling back.

  As they took their seats after a spirited rendition of ‘Deck the Halls’, Quinn looked down at the programme and saw that they had come to the final piece in the main part of the concert. (It amused him that an encore was listed, obliging the audience to call for it, whether they wanted to or not.)