Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 114, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 697 & 698, September/October 1999

The Gilbert and Sullivan Clue by Jon L. Breen

As in Ed Hock’s pastiche (p. 100), the Ellery Queen we meet in the following story is a contemporary of ours — there is even a reference here to Y2K! But it is clear which phase of the original Ellery Queen’s career Jon Breen has been inspired by: This is Ellery Queen the Hollywood screen writer. Ellery’s shift to the West Coast corresponded to the publication of Queen material in national magazines. With Inspector Queen still in N.Y, Ellery mostly goes it alone.

The voice on the telephone said, “How are you, Ellery?”

Gazing at the Hollywood hills from his insanely luxurious hotel suite, Mr. Ellery Queen answered honestly, “Worn to a nub by the pressures of the treadmill, racked with guilt at stealing money for doing nothing a roomful of word-processing chimpanzees couldn’t do as well, terminally bored by sunny weather, and ready to return to the restful chaos of New York City. Who is this?”

“Same old Ellery,” his caller laughed. “It’s Gil Castberg.”

Castberg was a Hollywood agent, a snappy dressing cheapskate with more high-powered clients than Southern California Edison. “Sounds like you need to get away. When are you leaving for the Big Apple?”

“I’m here till Wednesday, when for reasons too complicated to explain I must needs take one more meeting and do one more lunch before returning to civilization.”

“Nothing to occupy you till then?”

“Apart from plotting the murder of a twenty-two-year-old studio executive who never heard of Dashiell Hammett, nothing.”

“How about a cruise? As my guest.”

“That’s kind of you, but where to?”

“Nowhere.”

“Sounds perfect.”

For two days and three nights in January, said Gil Castberg, the smallish but luxurious ship Sea Twin would cruise the California coast, beginning and ending in San Pedro, offering champagne, entertainment, and no ports of call. A lady friend for whom Castberg had procured a separate cabin had sent regrets at the last moment.

The headline entertainer on the cruise was to be an old Castberg client, Ozzie Foyle, once of the comedy team of Dugan and Foyle but for the past ten years a single act. Ellery had done the second or third version of the script for the team’s last film together, a detective comedy, but nothing of his had wound up on the screen. The producers had decided such frills as fair clues, sensible motivation, and plotting logic undermined their concept.

“So why did Dugan and Foyle break up the act, Gil?” Ellery inquired, sipping Mumm’s Cordon Rouge under a grey sky on the deck of Sea Twin. A half-hour out of San Pedro, the sea was already choppy.

The agent shrugged. “Who knows with these artistic types? They never did get along, and Ozzie wanted to stretch his wings. He signed up for six weeks of Waiting for Godot at a little theatre in Hollywood, working for Equity scale. Dugan was on vacation. Funding came through suddenly for a Star Wars parody that would’ve been the perfect follow-up to their detective flick, but they’d have had to fly to Canada immediately to start shooting. Foyle refused to pull out of his stage engagement. Dugan got pissed, called his partner a pretentious poser, and took a walk. Ozzie was just as happy. He’d saved his money and wanted to do more serious stuff. Godot’s an entree into high culture for low comedians. Bert Lahr played in it. Chico Marx.”

“I thought Groucho was Foyle’s idol,” Ellery remarked.

“Well, Groucho loved Gilbert and Sullivan, but he wasn’t the specialist Foyle’s become. Ozzie’s been appearing in productions of the operettas all over the country. Again, not much money, but he’s happy and fulfilled.”

“And still rich.”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“Is Foyle still your client, Gil?”

“No, we parted company. Still friends, though, or I wouldn’t be here.”

“What became of Joey Dugan? I haven’t heard much of him since the team split.”

“Neither have I, neither has anybody,” said a querulous voice behind Ellery. Swinging around, he beheld a familiar lanky figure leaning against the deck railing. The sad-eyed hound-dog features of Joey Dugan, the skilled straight man of the Foyle and Dugan team, looked more lugubrious than ever. “Actually my career went just where this tub is going, right, Gil? A voyage to nowhere. Hiya, Ellery, good to see you. Wish we’d’a shot your script; I love a good mystery, but these days you gotta blow up stuff. That’s the key to a good gross. My partner, typically, overdid it. Blew up Dugan and Foyle so he could pander to the opera crowd.”

“I wish I could get you boys back together,” Gil said.

“There are a few slight barriers.” Joey Dugan enumerated them on his fingers. “One, my former partner is suddenly allergic to anything that appeals to an audience without tuxedos and lorgnettes. Two, my former partner probably has Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore engagements up the wazoo five years into the new millennium. Three, by now most fans think Dugan and Foyle are about as cutting edge as Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello. Four, I can’t stand to be in the same room with the little bastard. But I guess a great agent like you can overcome minor things like that, huh, Gil?”

“Is that the point of this reunion?” Ellery asked. “You want to get them back together?”

“If I thought I could,” said Gil. “But it’s no reunion. I didn’t even know Joey was going to be on the cruise.”

“Sadie wanted to come. I figured what the hell, I got nothing better to do, and this ship may not be the Queen Mary but it’s big enough I can avoid running into Foyle for three days.”

Ellery said, “You two worked so well together. Did you hate each other all that time?”

“Naw, not till the second week. The little creep thinks he’s a genius, thinks he was the whole act because he was the funny one. But he knew how important my part was, just wouldn’t admit it. Ozzie Foyle would always go that little bit too far, add that one last unnecessary frill, milk a gag just a beat beyond where the laugh peaked. I could rein him in.”

“The straight man never gets his due,” said Gil. “Show biz tradition.”

“Sure. Take Bud Abbott. Brilliant performer, criminally underrated. It’s good George Burns got some appreciation in his last years. Gracie was great, sure, but George was the key to that act. Well, gotta go meet the wife. See you guys around.”

As Dugan loped off, Gil Castberg muttered, “Sadie’s on board.”

“Is that a problem?” Ellery asked.

“It makes it all the more important those two guys stay out of each other’s way. The break-up of Dugan and Foyle had more to do with Sadie than Samuel Beckett.”

Across the empty swimming pool, Ellery noticed a young woman in a long raincoat looking pensively out at the Pacific.

“Lovely girl,” he said softly.

“Yeah,” Castberg agreed, “but she tries so hard to hide it. Has to in her position. That’s Rainbow McAllister, Ozzie Foyle’s assistant.”

A couple of hours later, after a nudge to the maître d’, Ellery found himself at a table for two in the dining room, with Rainbow McAllister. (“Hippie parents,” she explained.)

“So are you part of the Dugan camp or the Foyle camp?” Rainbow asked over the sorbet course.

“Neither.”

“Good. There must be hundreds of people on board who never even met Dugan or Foyle, but every time I turn around I see some of the old crowd.”

“I understand you work for Foyle.”

“His personal assistant. I answer his mail, read the scripts that come over the transom, that kind of stuff. His wife Amanda’s jealous as hell, so I also have to keep out of the way as much as I can.”

“And do your best to look like Little Orphan Annie?”

“Not hard, I’m afraid. The funny thing is, I’m not the least bit attracted to Ozzie Foyle, and God knows he’s not attracted to me.”

“If he’s a straight male, I have a hard time believing that last part. So tell me about the old crowd, as you call it.”

“At that table to your left are four of them. The skinny guy who looks like an accountant is Ozzie’s accountant, Fred Breedlove. No sense of humor, but nice. The huge African-American with the earring is Dale Washington, known professionally as Daddy Trash. He’s a rap singer who loves Gilbert and Sullivan, go figure. The short crewcut is Marlon Crandall, old pal of Ozzie’s on the comedy-club circuit, now raking it in as a TV evangelist — I think he’s funnier doing that than as a standup. The one with the grey hair is Herman Gable, Ozzie’s accompanist, forty and doesn’t look a day over seventy. Oooh, look at that.”

Ellery was already looking. A six-foot blonde in a revealing gold gown was striding across the room, seemingly oblivious to the masculine eyes following her. She passed a shorter, older, darker, and heavier woman who, Ellery suspected, probably had cut an equally striking figure twenty years ago. The women acknowledged each other with glares.

“The blonde,” Rainbow whispered, “is Amanda, Ozzie’s trophy wife, his third.”

“He’s been married three times?”

“Four times, but that’s his third trophy wife. The other one is Sadie Dugan, Joey’s wife. They say she and Ozzie had an affair once, but it was before my time.”

After several more courses of Japanese-themed nouveau cuisine (pretty but sparse), Rainbow agreed to accompany Ellery to the ship’s impressive tiered showroom to see Ozzie Foyle’s one-man performance. Their table far to one side afforded a good view of the stage and an even better one of the glittering front row. Daddy Trash and Marlon Crandall sat at a ringside table with Amanda Foyle and Fred Breedlove. Gil Castberg was seated a few tables away with a young woman Ellery didn’t recognize. Surprisingly, Joey and Sadie Dugan also had ringside seats. Given what Dugan had said about his old partner, could he even stand to watch him perform?

“This is quite a crowd,” Rainbow whispered. “There’s an L.A. County supervisor and his wife at that table next to Dugan, and the guy with them may back a Broadway show Ozzie hopes to get off the ground. The girl with him would like to be in the show.”

Every seat was filled when Ozzie Foyle came on stage at ten o’clock. The short, cherubic-looking comic bowed to the ovation, did a few cruise-ship jokes to more laughter than they deserved, and began a rapid-fire Gilbert and Sullivan medley, with selections from Trial by Jury, H.M.S. Pinafore, and The Pirates of Penzance.

When Foyle brought out an oversized, dangerous-looking samurai sword and started brandishing it with clownish clumsiness, the audience knew what was coming: Foyle’s theme song from The Mikado, in which Ko-Ko, the comic Lord High Executioner, tells what he would do in the event he actually had to carry out an execution. In long-honored theatrical tradition, new lyrics had been freshly minted for the occasion.

“As someday it may happen that a victim must be found,/ I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list—”

A fresh outburst of applause covered up the second line. Herman Gable, Foyle’s frail and wasted-looking piano accompanist, vamped for a bit while the comedian beamed and bowed, waiting for the ovation to subside.

“A group of fellow voyagers who might as well be drowned;/ They never would be missed; they never would be missed./ There’s the exercising ingenue who runs six miles a day,/ The glum computer expert who drones on of Y2K,/ The posturing politicos who won’t say what they mean,/ The philanthropic patron who loves every other scene — /The pierced and tattooed rapper who’s just waiting to be dissed — /They’d none of them be missed — they’d none of them be missed!”

Several good-natured smiles and guffaws from the front-row targets — the girl with the potential angel must have been the exercising ingenue given her whoop of delight — greeted this first verse.

“That parasitic agent who lives royally off your toil, /And the rich evangelist — I’ve got him on the list!/ The fickle fans who ask you, ‘Weren’t you once Ozzie Foyle?’/ They never would be missed — they never would be missed!”

Comic turned preacher Marlon Crandall looked like a man who resented the crack but was determined to be a good sport. Gil Castberg smiled convincingly. But laughter was less general now, not because of the more personal nature of the attacks — most of those in the crowd wouldn’t get them anyway — but because Ozzie Foyle’s manner had changed. No longer good-humored, he seemed to be putting the lines across with genuine venom. Even those not targeted were feeling uneasy without knowing why.

“The former partner whining ’cause he cannot get a job,/ The tennis player sobbing ’cause she cannot hit a lob,/ The broad who married money but divorces poverty,/ Who’d come into your cabin for a price upon the sea,/ That superior freeloading detective novelist — /I don’t think he’d be missed — I’m sure he’d not be missed.”

“Why the attack?” Ellery murmured to his companion. “I’m not freeloading off him.”

“And that sniveling accountant, who says the money’s gone, /A math contortionist — I’ve got him on the list! /That love-starved married lady who will vanish with the dawn — /No more will she be missed — she is no longer missed!”

Foyle was shouting the lines more than singing them, and the audience sensed a great talent in full meltdown. A pained-looking cruise director had stepped tentatively onto the stage as if to interrupt Foyle, but the comedian held him off with a gesture.

“There’s that wife who spends my money in exchange for jealous glares; /That bad piano player who snorts cocaine all he dares;/ Those patronizing toadies that we call an entourage; /Those unrepentant roadies with their half-wit badinage; /All who would drain genius of its reason to exist; /They damned well won’t be missed, and I have... them... on... my... list.”

Foyle gave an ironic bow. There was no applause, just stunned silence. The stage lights dimmed, the houselights came up, and Joey Dugan bounded onto the stage with the apparent intent of throttling his former partner.

“I’ve had all I’m going to take from you, you little bastard!” Dugan roared. The shorter man stood his ground as Dugan was restrained by a burly waiter. Several other bodies, ship’s crew and passengers, insinuated themselves between them.

Rainbow said softly, “Out of character.”

“Who? Foyle you mean?”

“Oh, no, Ozzie didn’t surprise me. I’ve seen his tirades. But for Dugan to go postal like that... he’s cynical, sarcastic, sure, but always in control.”

“I didn’t catch all the allusions,” Ellery admitted.

“Well, I’m the sobbing tennis player,” Rainbow said wryly. “Thought I’d be playing at Wimbledon by now, not gofering for Ozzie Foyle. The love-starved married lady is probably Mrs. Dugan — that’ll be what set Dugan off, more than the crack about him. The broad who married money — well, there are so many, how can I narrow it to just one? I’m a little tired, Ellery. Shall we call it a night?”

After Ellery returned to his cabin, the gentle rocking of the ship sent him off to sleep surprisingly quickly. When the ringing of the telephone interrupted his slumber, he glanced at his watch and saw that it was three A.M.

“Mr. Queen, this is Captain Badger speaking.” The crisp British tones had an uneasy edge. “I’m sorry to interrupt your rest, but there’s an awkward matter I’d like your help with. It’s, ah, well, it’s murder actually.”

“That is awkward, Captain, I’ll agree. Who’s been murdered?”

“Mr. Ozzie Foyle. His wife, returning to their suite rather late, found his body stretched out on their bed. There’s quite a lot of blood. It looks like a stab wound in the back. It’s, ah, really horrible, and I need your advice.”

“Put into the next available port and turn the case over to the local police.”

“Well, yes, that of course, but given your proven expertise in these matters, I thought perhaps... you do have a reputation as a detective. They call you Maestro, don’t they?”

“Only Sergeant Velie, who works for my father, and in light of some of my failures, I’ve always found the expression rather ironic.”

“Well, ah, in any case, couldn’t you just have a look?”

“I guess so,” Ellery said, with feigned reluctance. “What’s Foyle’s cabin number?”

“Suite 1B. On the deck above you. I’d be obliged if you didn’t mention what’s happened to any other passengers.”

As he was dressing hurriedly, Ellery heard a tapping on the door of his cabin. Had the impatient captain sent an escort for him?

Opening the door, he found a short, fat, bald man in an expensive gold-dragon robe standing in the doorway, smiling apologetically.

It was Ozzie Foyle.

“Can we talk a minute, Ellery? I heard you moving around in here, so I knew I wasn’t — is something wrong?”

“Come in, Ozzie. I regret to inform you that you’re a dead man.”

“Hey, I know I got a little rough in my act tonight, but nobody’s come after me yet.”

“Don’t be too sure. Somebody they think is you has been found dead in your cabin. Why weren’t you there? And who took your place?”

“Ellery, is this a joke? Did I sign on for a murder mystery cruise without knowing it?”

“It’s serious. Tell me what’s been going on this evening.”

The comedian scratched his bald head. “I had a fight with Amanda after the show. I was trying to apologize for the act. I wasn’t myself. Those lyrics just sort of came out.”

“Lyrics don’t just sort of come out in that kind of perfect meter. Those were premeditated insults.”

Foyle shook his head. “No, no, they were all in fun. It wasn’t the words, you know. It was the delivery. If I sang them the usual way, you know, light, people would see I was only joking. But I’ve been taking this new medication. It’s supposed to help my crazy mood swings, but sometimes I think it brings them on instead. That’s why I sang those lines the offensive way I did. Do you think I’d want to offend a guy like Gil Castberg, who did a lot for my career, or my accountant, Fred Breedlove, a terrific guy, good sport even if he doesn’t get the jokes, or Herman, my accompanist, who hasn’t put anything but his asthma inhaler in his nose for ten years, or my wife, who’s very sweet when she’s not terrorizing my assistant, or a swell writer like yourself? Did I ever tell you, by the way, I wish we’d shot your script? Dugan was against it, but he has no taste at all.”

“Ozzie, the person who thinks he killed you may have been one of the targets of your Mikado parody.”

“There was no motive for murder in that song, Ellery. Till that pathetic whiner Joey Dugan came after me, I didn’t realize what I was doing. By then I wanted to apologize to everybody, even Dugan, but I got escorted back to the cabin by three big crew members who kept telling me everybody should sleep on it. When my wife came back, like I said, I tried to apologize but she wouldn’t hear of it and we had a fight and she stormed out. I just wanted to sleep then — I’d had a drink and I shouldn’t mix that with the medication — but I didn’t want to be there in the cabin when she came back. Better we both cool off a little, right? So I looked for somebody who’d loan me their cabin for a few hours. I found Gil Castberg in the lounge, apologized about the song. He took it well. Gil’s a good sport. I said I was looking for a place to sleep. He said he thought he had something lined up for the night, a girl I guess, you know Gil, and anyway, he wouldn’t need his cabin. Use hers, I guess. So he gave me his key.”

“And did you give him yours?”

Foyle looked blank for a moment. “I suppose I did. I don’t really know why. He wasn’t going to sleep there. Unless he was sleeping with Amanda.” With automatic comic timing, Foyle paused and said, “That was a joke.” Another pause. “Wasn’t it?”

Ellery did not laugh. “Ozzie, stay in this room. Don’t communicate with anyone else and don’t let anyone in but me. You may have given somebody a motive in that song without even knowing it.”

“Dugan wouldn’t kill me. He doesn’t have the spine for it. You know, he never appreciated me. Always thought he was the straw that stirred the drink. Now a straight man is important, but who was getting the laughs? And who made a career for himself as a single? Not Joey Dugan.”

“Ozzie, stay here. Please.”

When he reached Foyle’s suite, Ellery was met at the door by the dapper but shaken Captain Badger.

“Mr. Queen, is it true the murderer always returns to the scene of the crime?”

“A stupid murderer might, I suppose. Why?”

“Just moments ago, while my officers and I were, ah, securing the murder scene, someone came dashing down the passageway and threw that through the door.”

The captain pointed. Soiling the white carpet of the opulent suite’s sitting room was the huge samurai sword Foyle had used as a prop. Its tip was bloodied.

“Deuced considerate of the killer to bring us back the weapon, eh?” the captain said with forced nonchalance.

“Did you get a look at him?”

“No, one of my officers gave chase, but the fellow was not to be found.”

“You haven’t touched the sword?”

“Certainly not. We’ll leave it where it lies. Would you care to view the body, Mr. Queen?”

“Please.” And find out who it is, Ellery added to himself.

They looked into the bedroom over a length of red ribbon, spanning the doorway in lieu of a crime-scene tape and adding an incongruously cheery touch. The body lay facedown on the bed, covered by a dressing gown with a springing tiger on its back.

“Mr. Queen,” said Captain Badger, “in the excitement I nearly forgot to tell you. The victim is not Foyle.”

“Who is it?”

“Gil Castberg, Foyle’s former agent. He was wearing one of Foyle’s dressing gowns, so Mrs. Foyle mistook him for her husband. And so, apparently, did the murderer.”

Ellery took in as much of the murder scene as he could from the doorway.

There was plenty of blood from the wound but not much other sign of struggle. The scene had an oddly staged look about it. A large book lay open on the bedside table, neatly undisturbed. Ellery peered at it from a distance.

“I recognized that book at once,” said the Captain. “A very fine illustrated edition of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas. I’m a bit of a bibliophile, Mr. Queen, as I believe you are as well.”

“The book is open to the first page of Utopia Limited,” Ellery observed. “Do you know if that play contributed to Foyle’s repertoire?”

“I rather doubt it. One of the team’s lesser works, in fact.”

“Why would the book be open to that play?”

“A dying message?” the captain ventured.

“Hardly. Even if Castberg could have left us a clue in his dying moments after that stab wound, I don’t imagine he could have done it so neatly. Has anyone been in the room?”

“Mrs. Foyle took a couple of steps in, recoiled at what she saw, and called the bridge. The ship’s doctor did nothing beyond assuring himself the victim was beyond help. Then we put up the ribbon, as you see.”

“Obviously the room and the weapon must be untouched until the police can come on board. In the meantime, you and I can begin an investigation. I’m afraid we’ll have to wake a few people up.”

“Starting with Mr. Joey Dugan?”

Dugan proved to have an alibi. His well-attended poker game had broken up a few minutes after the body of Castberg had been discovered. Most of the other targets on Foyle’s little list, including rapper Daddy Trash, accountant Fred Breedlove, pianist Herman Gable, evangelist Marlon Crandall, and Ellery’s new friend Rainbow McAllister had retired to their cabins, alone, hours earlier. When Castberg’s date for the concert was located, her testimony was particularly interesting: they had had a pleasant chat, but certainly had no carnal plans for the evening.

When Ellery returned to his own cabin, he found Ozzie Foyle waiting anxiously. “Who was killed, Ellery? What happened?”

“I think you know the answer to that, Ozzie. Why did you and Joey Dugan put aside your differences and plan Gil Castberg’s murder?”

Ozzie gaped at him. “I couldn’t have killed him, Ellery. I was here with you when...” Ozzie realized his slip a little late.

“When what, Ozzie?”

As the Sea Twin neared San Pedro, its return a couple of days early, Ozzie Foyle and Joey Dugan were in discreet custody in Captain Badger’s office, resigned to being turned over to the police. Ellery and the Captain listened to Foyle’s story.

“He deserved to die. Actors are simple people, you know, gullible, not good with figures, wrapped up in their art. Who knows how many of his other clients Gil Castberg swindled? You know, I killed him, really. Joey’s an accessory at best. I’m the real murderer here, Ellery.”

“I’m a full partner, damn you,” Dugan retorted. “It’s just like you to hog all the credit.”

“Some time after we broke up the act, Fred Breedlove figured out that Gil Castberg had been systematically cheating us for years. He kept all the records for the team and was constantly draining off money for himself, way beyond his commission, which was big enough. We were doing so well in those years, we didn’t notice. If either of us ever questioned anything, Castberg would put the blame on the other one. I was sure Dugan was running up needless expenses.”

“And I thought Foyle was,” said Dugan. “It made me hate him more than I did already.”

“We never talked about business,” Foyle said. “We never talked about anything except the act.”

“And we fought about that,” Dugan agreed.

“Castberg sailed too close to the wind, though. Things got dangerous for him. He knew he’d be found out soon unless he could prod us into dissolving the partnership. That stuff about the sudden call from Canada to start shooting our sci-fi movie during my run in Waiting for Godot was all orchestrated by Castberg, designed to break up the team. And it worked. He knew just the right buttons to push to make us go after each other and stay on good terms with him. So we split up, him crying crocodile tears while breathing a sigh of relief and thinking his game wouldn’t be found out.”

“When Breedlove did find out, Ozzie and I got together again,” Dugan said, “united against a common enemy. For Ozzie it was all an ego thing.”

“Hell, it was a humanitarian thing, ridding the world of a scumbag.”

“Yeah, sure. For me, it cut more deeply. Castberg had ruined my career.”

“So you got it together one more time and plotted Castberg’s murder,” Ellery said. “Ozzie would do an over-the-top, offensive show to make himself an obvious target for murder. You, Joey, would be so incensed you’d have to be physically restrained from publicly killing your partner. He’d murder Castberg with the samurai sword at a time when you had a perfect card-playing alibi. Then, while he was talking to me and had an equally strong alibi, you’d come charging down the corridor to deliver the samurai sword to Captain Badger and his officers. Each of you alibied for one part of the crime. A perfect collaboration, one last time, all the while convincing the world you hated each other.”

“So how’d you get on to us?” Foyle demanded. “I thought it was a great plan.”

“It was like something out of a Charlie Chan movie,” Ellery scoffed.

“Well, yeah, as a matter of fact, it was. But still, what did we do wrong?”

“For one thing, your story about trading rooms with Castberg didn’t wash. I could see it if he really was planning to spend the night somewhere else, but I couldn’t believe he’d go into your cabin and put on your robe and sleep in your bed when your wife might be coming back at any time, which she did. How did you get him to put on the robe, by the way, Ozzie?”

“He always admired my robes. I got him to come to the suite on a pretext of talking business. He liked the robe, and I invited him to try it on. Piece of cake.”

“Another thing that bothered me was how this cruise came about. How did Castberg happen to be on the cruise in the first place, and why was such a notorious cheapskate so quick to offer a free cruise to me on the spur of the moment? He couldn’t have been paying for it — if he were, he’d be demanding a refund from the cruise line, not inviting me. I was indignant about that line in your Mikado parody about my freeloading because, though I was freeloading in a sense, it wasn’t off you. But if you gave Castberg his tickets, in a sense I was freeloading off you. Your inviting Castberg could have been quite innocent, I realize, just as the presence as your guests of Daddy Trash and Marlon Crandall could be innocent. But what was your old partner, the man who couldn’t stand to be in the same room, doing on the cruise anyway? And why did Joey Dugan act so out of character in his rushing-the-stage tirade after your act? It just didn’t add up, unless you were cooking something up together.

“With all that, however, I might not have figured it out without that deliberate clue you left me, Ozzie.”

“What deliberate clue?” Joey Dugan demanded.

“The book on the side table. Gilbert and Sullivan, like Dugan and Foyle, accomplished great things together despite strong personal differences. Ozzie, you left that collection of libretti open to one of their more obscure works, Utopia Limited. And what is significant about Utopia Limited? It was the operetta Gilbert and Sullivan completed after they had dissolved their partnership and been induced to collaborate one last time. Leaving that book open as it was told me that the murder of Gil Castberg was Dugan and Foyle’s Utopia Limited.”

“You did it again,” Joey Dugan said, more sadly than heatedly. “Always that last bit of gilding to make the goddamn lily droop, that last drop of milk out of the gag. A clue that implicates us just to show how clever you are. How could I ever work with you all those years, Foyle?”

Ozzie Foyle leaned over to his partner and said in a stage whisper, “It’ll help with the insanity defense. You know we’ll never be convicted. You know what juries are like nowadays. Face it, Dugan, I’m always thinking of the act.”