But the problem was the suspect: Addington’s rival, Mr. Silas Grundy, a soft-spoken audio engineer. Grundy had a perfect alibi—he was across town, demonstrating his own “lossless” recording to Inspector Brackenreid and a room full of journalists at the moment of the murder.
Then Murdoch noticed the thermocouple—a device measuring extreme heat. And beside it, a small induction coil connected to a copper rod shaped exactly like the dented cup.
“Precisely.”
Murdoch rewound the cylinder and listened. Addington’s tinny, preserved voice boasted of a new process: “No more surface noise, no more degradation. My method etches sound into a durable metal disc using focused galvanic current. It is perfect. It is lossless.” Then came a sharp crackle, a thud, and silence.
“You didn’t need to be there,” Murdoch said quietly. “You recorded your own alibi in advance—your voice, your handshake with the Inspector, the clink of glasses. Then you rigged Addington’s phonograph. When he played your ‘lossless’ lecture, the final groove triggered a galvanic charge through that metal cup. It superheated the alloy, expanded it, and struck him. He died alone, listening to his own murder being announced.”
Detective William Murdoch examined the Victrola with an intensity usually reserved for autopsy reports. The device sat in the parlor of the late Mr. Percival Addington, a wealthy phonograph collector found dead in his study, a crushed silver cup near his hand.
“Impossible,” Brackenreid boomed later at the station. “I shook Grundy’s hand at 8:15. The coroner puts Addington’s death at 8:12. Even with your newfangled automobiles, he couldn’t be in two places.”