Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 108, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 661 & 662, September/October 1996

Murder Set to Music by Henry Slesar

© 1996 by Henry Slesar

“It’s one-thirty P.M.,” Tommy Noone said, lips close to the microphone. “One-thirty and still Noone Time.” It was his catch-phrase, familiar to radio listeners in White Mills and beyond — not too far beyond, the range of WMZ being less than two hundred miles.

Tommy had been the station’s engineer before he married the station owner’s daughter. Now he was also its disk jockey, spinning Sixties records from noon to six, to an audience of truck farmers and bored housewives, none more bored, or more truculent, than his wife Trina.

He dropped a needle on a Bee-Gee record and thought about Trina dead, her eyes closed, and, more gratifying, her mouth. He had conjured up the vision more than once in their fifteen-year marriage, but never thought of making it a reality until two weeks ago, when Trina told him she might sell the station.

“It costs more than it’s worth,” Trina said, and showed him the papers that proved it.

Tommy looked at the old wall clock. It read 1:45. He would make the first move in fifteen minutes.

He thought about how he would behave when they found her body. He wouldn’t overdo his grief. Everyone in White Mills knew the Noones were hardly a loving couple. He would be more shocked than tearful. He had warned Trina about that shaky ladder a dozen times. In fact, he mentioned it in front of Irma Goodwin when they picked out new curtains in her dry goods store. “You’re not hanging these until we get a new ladder,” Tommy had said.

It was time. He leaned into the microphone and said: “It’s two o’clock, folks, but it’s still Noone time, and time for more of your favorite Golden Oldies...”

The old tape reel was already in position. He flicked a switch to start it rotating, then slipped into a light topcoat. It was close to seventy degrees outdoors, but he felt the need for outer covering.

He was sure the treelined road between the studio and his house would be deserted. He could walk to his front door in less than eight minutes. If he met anyone, he would simply postpone his errand for another day. He liked to think of it as an “errand.”

When he arrived, Trina was sweeping the front porch. She looked at him in surprise.

“What are you doing home?”

He smiled. “Come inside and I’ll show you.”

She followed him. Sure enough, the curtains had been hung; the ladder leaned against the wall.

“They look great,” he said. “Only you shouldn’t have used that old ladder. You could have fallen and gotten a concussion.”

Before she knew what was happening, Tommy gave her that concussion. With her body arranged in front of the window, he ripped a curtain off its rod and put one end in her hand. Then he left. This time, he was far more careful about being seen.

It was just two-thirty when the last recording ended. It sounded like Frankie Avalon, but he wasn’t sure. “It’s two-thirty,” he said lovingly into the microphone, “but it’s still Nooooone time!” He stretched out the name longer than usual. But then, he felt better, stronger than usual.

He’d expected to be the one to call the police, but Ed Joseph, delivering the dry cleaning, peeked through the window when Trina didn’t answer the doorbell.

“Oh my God,” Tommy said to the solemn group around the dead woman. “What happened?” He looked at the curtain clutched in her hand, the old ladder with its wobbly rungs. “She fell, didn’t she? I warned her, but she wouldn’t listen!”

“Don’t think it happened that way,” Officer Buck Potter said, a man usually far more genial. “I think you killed her, Tommy.”

“Are you crazy, Buck? You know where I was all afternoon!”

“Sure do,” Potter said, and there were handcuffs in his big fists.

Why was Noone arrested? See The Final Paragraph (p. 285).

Continued from page 172

“We heard your broadcast,” Buck Potter said. “So we knew you had to be someplace else. You shouldn’t have left the weather report on that old tape, Tommy. Don’t think we’re expecting five inches of snow in June.”