The Music Box Murders
Glenn Low
Ten Detective Aces, October 1946
Detective Sully Heath had to obtain a mysterious music box for his entry fee to the McCullochs' tower of terror. But when Heath heard the ghoulish tunes that eerie clockwork picked off, he knew the price of the tower's secret was death.
CHAPTER I
IT WAS nice there in the big yellow convertible. Any way you looked at it, it was nice. Around you the tiny hillocks and the snug little valleys seemed alive, to waft swiftly away—a monster drab-backed bird, feathered with dying grass and stiff, spiky fir trees.
Out there it looked cool, too; but not too cool. Looking at it, the gentle lift of the shadowy land, slanting upwards to the grey and rust of an hour old sunset, Detective Sully Heath had an impulse to get out and walk- walk long and hard to a mile away to the summit of the fir-clad ridge, there to listen to the wind, to taste of the lonely darkening world.
On lonely nights when he'd walked a beat, bored with dogging it over deserted streets, making routine call-ins, he'd attempted to think out poetry—stuff about such as he now saw in the swift, silent passing of the stones, the trees, the old farm fences. He'd been trying to imagine in rhyme something of which he knew nothing, and how pitiful his efforts had been. . . . He looked across at Mary McCulloch and laughed.
As if in complete understanding Mary laughed, too. But the worried expression that had clouded her greyish green eyes since they'd left Baltimore was still there. In the two months Heath had known her he'd never seen her eyes like that, and he didn't like it. A bit of sadness, a touch of alarm, a pinch of fear mixed in. They all added up to the intent look she sent out along the hard ribbon of highway.
Until she spoke he studied with admiring care the delicate, yielding firmness of her face; the fading sunset playing in her wide eyes, striking them a pure jade; the slow curve of her dark lashes reaching out; the just- rightness of her nose, its slight tilt setting off the smooth, melting curves of her chin.
“There it is!” she suddenly said.
He stiffened, startled, looked around.
She laughed. “The sign, silly.”
He glanced to the right of the road and saw it. Coverlee. Pop. 7,003. He said, “Antique dealers usually ask murderous prices for their junk. But I do hope your little heirloom is still waiting for a buyer.”
“Only forty miles to McCulloch's Rest now, Sully,” she said, letting the coupe slow to thirty miles an hour.
“McCulloch's Rest.” He turned the words on his tongue as if tasting them. Then, “How about the antique shop—think you can find it?”
“I was a kid in this town,” Mary said lightly. “I remember most of the streets. My mysterious correspondent wrote that the shop is on Tydings, five blocks off Main. It'll be a cinch to find it.”
“Probably closed now,” he said.
Mary shook her heart “Not if Mr. Anonymous is right. According to his letter the dealer lives in back and keeps open until bedtime.” She paused, glanced at Sully Heath's strong, rough-featured, half-handsome face. “The old fellow's eccentric. The letter says so, says it will be best to humor him.”
“Got to coddle the old codger, eh?”
“Please, Sully, don't forget this does mean a great deal to me.” A sudden seriousness in her manner sobered him.
He thought the fear-trace in her eyes grew. “Grandfather McCulloch meant that I should have this heirloom. It was a specific request in his will. Then he disappeared and it with him. If it's really turned up in this antique shop— well. . .”
“I'll behave,” he promised. “I won't kid the old boy, not even a little bit.”
''Thanks,'' said Mary solemnly.
“Tell me more about your home, about McCulloch's Rest,” said Heath, nestling deeper into the cushions, a bit lazy with the coupe's easy motion, the comfy warmth.
“It's just an old house in the hills with a stone tower beside it. When you see it, know the people who live in it, you'll probably decide my family was and is kind of—goofy.”
“Nothing goofy about a family building a tower. It's been done before, and by kings and their children.”
“Father and grandfather built the tower. They built it right after my father came home from spending ten years in Baltimore. My mother was dead then. I was five years old.”
“You don't know why they built it—for what purpose?”
Mary shook her head. “No. They never gave a reason.”
“Well,” said the big-town detective, frowning, “maybe they just wanted a tower, just wanted one. Like I want an atom bomb, just for the heck of it. A tower makes more sense though.”
“It was built because of their fear,” said Mary, not responding to his banter. “Grandfather spent most of his time locked inside it. Of nights my father stayed there with him, behind bolted doors in the little room at the top.”
“Then at seventy Grandfather McCulloch disappeared?” said Heath.
“A storm was coming up,” said Mary. “The last he was seen he was standing in front of the tower, watching some excited crows that were flying above a clump of distant cedars. The storm came as a cloudburst. I remember it took only a few minutes for the creek to overflow its banks.”
AS SHE lapsed into silence he didn't ask any questions. He knew the story of David McCulloch's strange disappearance. His knowledge of the circumstances surrounding that event had prompted him to ask his boss, the county prosecutor, for time off so he could accompany Mary on her visit home.
An anonymous letter recently received by Heath—Mary had received one the same day—had suggested a new angle on a nineteen-year-old unsolved kidnapping and murder. Heath had been doing research along lines suggested in the letter. But when the county prosecutor understood the circumstances that Heath thought made the trip with Mary important, he'd been anxious for the detective to go.
“Probably just another crank letter,” the prosecutor had said. “Never knew of a thing of its kind leading anywhere. But Roland Marcot and his wife have never been satisfied the dead baby was theirs. Besides the crooks got away with thirty thousand dollars or more. The business has been one big black eye to the county department for nineteen years. So if you think this lead is worthwhile, why, follow it. Take all the time you want.”
Bothered by the anxiety in Mary's eyes, Heath said, “Maybe it's only because I'm a detective that you've asked me along. Maybe you think—”
He was teasing her, and she knew it; but she didn't take what he said lightly enough. “Sully,” she interrupted jerkily, “if anything should harm you because of—”
He leaned, quickly kissed her to silence. A minute later she parked the coupe in front of the little antique shop on Tydings Street.
The old antique dealer glared up at Heath, eyes swimming in red behind rheumy, vein- bulged lids. “Look, Mister,” he said, his voice a sharp lisp. “I'm not a man to quibble about a deal. Anything I got I'd just as soon keep as sell. I say two hundred, and two hundred it is.”