It is revealed that the aforementioned George Timmons is locked in the closet, which has been reinforced for this purpose; he is the sixth person the Enderbys have imprisoned there.

Mr. Timmons is a businessman from Albany, New York whom Mr. Enderby met in McSorley's Old Ale House and invited home for dinner, whereupon the couple drugged him by putting chloral hydrate in his wine and imprisoned him in the closet.

They are now waiting for him to die from thirst and starvation, upon which they will use the van of Enderby Enterprises – their company, which folded two years prior due to the Great Depression – to deposit his body in the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

Mr. Enderby jokes that music "hath powers to soothe the savage beast" and the couple "laugh together, comfortably, the way people do when they have been married for many years and have come to know each other's minds".

It was included in the 2016 anthology In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper edited by Lawrence Block.

In July 2024, King noted that "The Music Room" had been omitted from his 2024 short story collection You Like It Darker due to him forgetting about it, but that it would "probably" be included in the paperback edition.