‘Murder, She Wrote’ star Angela Lansbury killed in suspicious circumstances by falling typewriter
The New York Police Department was appealing for witnesses today after the body of Angela Lansbury, star of stage and screen, was found crushed under the 1949 Underwood manual typewriter made famous in the opening titles to her long-running TV drama series, ‘Murder, She Wrote’.
‘Few adversaries have got the better of Angela Lansbury in her role as amateur detective Jessica Fletcher,’ said NYPD’s Lieutenant Dan Gardezi, ‘but there’s no disputing that on this occasion it was the typewriter that came out on top. Lansbury’s smashed skull lying beneath its sturdy, rhythmical-sounding keys paints a tragic tableau of the writer-investigator’s precarious lot. I can honestly say I’ve never been involved in a more disturbing or ironic case.’
The discovery of Lansbury’s body in a disused warehouse came just days after the disappearance from her home of the script for a forthcoming ‘Murder, She Wrote’ TV movie. It is now suspected that the 84-year-old actress began her own investigation into the missing script when her restless curiosity and writerly instincts were piqued by detectives’ stubborn refusal to accept that there was more to the disappearance than met the eye.
‘It seems Mrs Lansbury was led to the scene by a combination of unspoken hunches and apparently perplexing leaps of logic, but looking back now after the event all the clues were there,’ continued Lt Gardezi. ‘We believe she picked up the leather-bound ‘Murder, She Wrote’ script from where her assailant had placed it on the warehouse floor. The script’s opening dialogue had been replaced by the stage direction ‘Typewriter falls from above’, and as Mrs Lansbury read it and looked up the 50lb manual Underwood wrote the final line in her glittering career.’
‘We believe we’re looking for a writer-murderer with a taste for 80s TV drama, but otherwise we’ve nothing to go on,’ a dejected Lt Gardezi told assembled reporters today. But as the press conference was about to end, a little old lady in the front row with no training in criminal investigation helpfully pointed out a man sat beside her wearing a black balaclava and carrying a blood-spattered typewriter, and immediately the case was solved.
‘I can’t believe it was staring us in the face all along,’ sighed Lt Gardezi afterwards. And as he walked back to his cruiser, his day’s work done, he afforded himself a disbelieving, world-weary chuckle as officers led away the little old lady and jaunty, up-tempo piano music inexplicably played out the scene.