Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1980.
I didn’t want to waste my time on another fruitless call at Annabel Corelli’s home, so I telephoned her at eight-thirty Friday morning.
After two rings, I heard the receiver lifted and a voice said, “Hello.” The voice was unmistakably female and it sounded like contralto coffee cream—rich and very, very smooth. It gave me such a jolt of pleasure that for an uneasy moment I felt somehow disloyal to Ellen Crosby, one of our librarians, whom I’d been assiduously courting for over a year.
I said, “Is this Miss Annabel Corelli?
“Yes. The way she said it painted an instant image of a tall, Junoesque creature in a string bikini walking along a tropical beach.
“My name is Hal Johnson,” I said, “and I’m calling about your overdue library book, Miss Corelli. I stopped at your house yesterday to collect it, but you weren’t home.”
“I’m almost never home in the daytime, Mr. Johnson. I’m an Argyll Lady. I’m just on my way out to work now.” That figured, I thought, a door-to-door cosmetics lady. With that voice, she ought to be able to sell skin lotion to a porcupine. “I’m sorry about the book, she said. “I’m afraid I let a friend borrow it and then forgot all about it.
“It’s six weeks overdue, I said, “and it’s a one-week book, so it’s costing you a bundle in fines.”
“I’m really sorry, Mr. Johnson.” Her voice caressed me. “How much do I owe on it?”
I told her.
“Well, how about if I leave the book and the fine in my carport for you so you can pick it up today while I’m out?
I said, “Today? But if you’ve lent the book to a friend—”
“No, today’ll be fine,” she said with a laugh. “The friend I lent it to lives here with me.”
Lucky friend, I thought as I hung up.
* * * *
I stopped at Miss Corelli’s house in the Last End in mid-morning. Sure enough, there was the library book—The Hong Kong Diagram—on a shelf in the carport, with the exact amount of the fine neatly stacked on top of it. A cornerpost concealed the book and money from anyone not specifically looking for it.
As I put the book on the back seat of my old Ford, it occurred to me that Annabel Corelli must do pretty well as an Argyll Lady. Her house was nothing elaborate, but it was no hovel either—two-story white clapboard with green shutters and a neat yard attractively planted. And the carport was a two-car job. Maybe Miss Corelli’s friend contributed to the budget. I felt a vague sense of regret that I hadn’t been able to meet the lady and her exciting voice in person.
That Friday was a busy day for me. By the time I’d made the last call on my overdue list, the hot August afternoon had already gobbled up my usual cocktail hour and was shading rapidly toward dinnertime. I was tired and out of sorts, and I felt sticky. I wanted a long shower and an ice-cold martini, straight up. So instead of returning to the library to check in my hooks and fines before I knocked off for the day I went straight home, luxuriated for twenty minutes in the shower, and had not one but two ice-cold martinis before dining in bachelor loneliness on a double package of frozen chicken chow-mein.
I cleaned up the dishes, listened to the news on television, then turned it off, feeling fidgety and restless and wondering how long it was going to be before Ellen agreed to marry me—or at least let me see her more than two evenings a week, which was my present ration.
Thinking about Ellen reminded me of Annabel Corelli’s sexy voice, and that in turn reminded me of her overdue library book, The Hung Kong Diagram. It was a relatively new novel of the stolen-nuclear-device-endangers-the-world school, and a suspense blockbuster.
It was full dark now. I went out the back door of my garden apartment into the garage, unlocked the car, and, by the light in the dome, rummaged through the stacks of books in the back seat until I found The Hong Kong Diagram.
Have I mentioned that I’m an avid reader? Well, I am. I’ll read anything—from coffee-table art books to paperback gothics. I’ve found that reading’s the best way to educate yourself beyond the few basic disciplines you get in college. When I was working as a homicide detective under Lieutenant Randall, before I decided to become a library cop, I d taken courses in speed reading and memory development. You know how an ambitious rookie in any new job can be an eager beaver? That was me. But, as a matter of fact, the speed reading and memory training come in very handy in my present work, which, as you’ve probably gathered by now, is to run down overdue and stolen books for the public library.
I figured I could probably zip through The Hong Kong Diagram in a few hours. At the very least, it would amuse me until bedtime. I relocked the Ford and went back inside, riffling through the book, looking for anything that might inadvertently have been left between the pages. The shake-out is standard procedure with me when I collect overdue books, and you’d be surprised at some of the items I’ve discovered. I once found a brand-new hundred-dollar bill in a library book borrowed by an offset printer on the South Side. From the alacrity with which he grabbed the bill and thrust it out of sight, I’ve always suspected it might have been one he’d printed himself.
There wasn’t any hundred-dollar bill in The Hong Kong Diagram. There was, however, a list of addresses written in a careless scrawling hand on the back of a sales slip that carried the heading Argyll Cosmetics. A memo, I concluded, to herself from Miss Annabel Corelli.
I ran my eye down the half-dozen addresses. They didn’t mean anything to me. But they might he important to a door-to-door Argyll Lady. At the very least, I thought, they gave me an excuse for further exposure to Annabel Corelli’s golden voice. I dialed her number and waited eagerly for the sound of rich contralto. What I got, after two rings, was a harsh, impatient baritone, “Yes?”
I said, “Is Miss Corelli there?”
“Who’s calling?”
“Hal Johnson from the public library. I spoke with Miss Corelli this morning.”
“Hang on.”
I hung on, reflecting on the sad fact that Miss Corelli’s live-in friend, judging from the depth and proprietary sound of his voice, seemed to be a man—and not another woman, as I’d imagined. Probably a Fuller Brush Man, I thought sourly.
“Hello, Mr. Johnson. Didn’t you get your book O.K.? It was gone from the carport when I got home.”
“I got it, Miss Corelli. And thanks. But I found a memo in it and I thought maybe you’d need it.
“A memo?” she said with a puzzled lift to that gorgeous voice.
“Yes. A list of addresses written on the back of an Argyll Cosmetics sales slip. Maybe a list of calls you plan to make or something.”
She hesitated a moment. Then, “Oh, yes, Mr. Johnson. I recognize if. It is a call list, but I don’t need it any more. You can throw it away.”
“OK I just wanted to be sure it wasn’t important.”
“It was terribly nice of you to call about it.”
“Not at all, Miss Corelli,” I said. “Good night.”
I hung up, tossed the list in the wastepaper basket, and started to read The Hong Kong Diagram.
The ads were right; it was a suspense blockbuster. It made me so nervous I couldn’t get to sleep until after midnight.
* * * *
Wild coincidences do happen occasionally in library work like mine, just as I suppose they do in other businesses. I was at my desk in the library the next morning, working on my weekly records, when I got a telephone call from my old boss, Lieutenant Randall of Homicide.
“Hal,” he said, “do me a favor.” It sounded more like an order than a request, but that was in character for Randall when he was in a hurry.
“Like what? I asked noncommittally.
“Like saving me a trip to the library. You can get me the information I need quicker than I can—if there is any.”
“What do you need?
“Any information you can dig up about one of your card-holders named Josephine Sloan. A twenty-seven-year-old woman. Single. A live-in maid. One of your best customers, judging by the stack of borrowed library books in her room.
“Who has she killed, if I may ask?”
“Nobody that I know of. She was reported missing on the eleventh of this month by her employers, a Mr. and Mrs. Gaither. When the Gaithers got home from a weekend at the shore on that date, she was missing.”
“Along with the family’s jewels and silver?”
“No. Nothing was missing except the maid.”
I said, “Since when have you been switched from Homicide to Missing Persons?”
“I haven’t. Josephine Sloan’s body was found yesterday afternoon by some kids playing in Gaylord Park. The body, with a badly cracked skull, was stashed under an overhang along the creek bank. It could be a hit-run, murder, or any other damn thing except a natural death.”
“Well, in that case,” I said, “sure. I’ll nose around for you. But her employers ought to be able to tell you a hell of a lot more about her than any of our people here.”
“Her employers can’t give us anything that helps. We’ve tried. Since they were away, they don’t know anything about her activities that weekend. To hear them tell it, she was a model maid—industrious, efficient, quiet, honest, no known boyfriends.” Randall cleared his throat. “Which figures, I suppose. She was quite unattractive.”
“I still don t get why you think we can help you, no matter how many library books she read.”
“The post-mortem shows her death had to have occurred that weekend. And we’ve only got one lousy lead to her movements that weekend.”
A pause.
“Something to do with the library.”
“Right. Apparently one of the last things she did before she went missing was to borrow eight books from your library on Saturday, the eighth—two weeks ago today. You and your people are probably the last ones to have seen her alive.”
“O.K.,” I said with a deep sigh. “What do you want me to do?”
“Ask around about her among your Saturday stall and volunteers, find out if anybody knows her. Does anybody remember her coming in on the eighth? Has anybody ever noticed her with a boy friend at the library. Did she, by some freak of chance, say anything to anybody about her plans for that weekend? Or about her employers being away? You know what I want, Hal. A starting place, that’s all.”
“I’ll try, Lieutenant,” I said, “but don’t hold your breath. I took out a pencil. “Josephine Sloan. Twenty-seven years old. A spinster. Unattractive. Address?”
“Same as her employers’, said Randall. “The R. C. Gaithers. Thirty-four North Linden Drive.”
I took it down. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Thanks, Hal.” We hung up.
That’s when the coincidence showed up. As I looked at the address I’d just jotted down on my pad, I realized I’d seen it before very recently. In fact, only last night. On the call-list bookmark left in her overdue library book by Annabel Corelli, the Argyll Lady.
* * * *
After plenty of questioning, what I got for Randall out of our Saturday staff and volunteers was exactly zero. We have four girls on the checkout desk of the main library, including Ellen, and only one of them had. Anything of even remote interest to reveal about Josephine Sloan, and that was Ellen herself, who, after much thought, said she vaguely remembered checking out some books for the name Sloan on the Saturday morning in question. Beyond that, nobody could remember anything at all. In fact, though two of the other girls and one of our men volunteers were familiar with Josephine Sloan through her frequent visits to the library, not one of them had ever exchanged any more words with her than were necessary to check her books in and out.
Before calling Lieutenant Randall with the bad news, however, I decided, on the basis of that odd coincidence of addresses, to take another look at Annabel Corelli’s call list, which should still be reposing in the wastebasket at my apartment. The library closes early on Saturdays. I went straight home, dug the list out, and was pleased to see my memory hadn’t let me down on the Sloan address. It was there all right, along with five others—34 North Linden Drive.
There was something else there too, something that hadn’t registered with me the night before when I’d found the list and telephoned Annabel Corelli. I stared at the tiny figures for a moment, then reached for my car keys.
* * * *
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting across the desk from Lieutenant Randall at Downtown Police Headquarters. “You got something for me,” he asked hopefully.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. One of the girls remembers Sloan checking out her books on that Saturday, but that’s all. And you already knew that.”
Randall sighed. Then he shot me a sleepy look from his cat-yellow eyes. “So why are you here?”
I told him about the Argyll Lady—about her overdue library book, her live-in boy friend, her bookmark memo with Josephine Sloan’s address on it. He snorted. “Your Argyll Lady probably called on the Gaither woman to sell her some cosmetics.”
“Right, Lieutenant. But look at the tiny figures under the Gaithers’ address there.” I handed him the list and pointed.
Randall peered at them. “Eight dash eleven,” he read aloud. “The other addresses all have numbers too. Probably order numbers. Or appointment dates.” He paused and his eyes narrowed. “Dates,” he repeated softly. He lit one of his vicious stogies and puffed acrid smoke across his desk in my direction. I coughed. “Dates,” he murmured again. “The eighth of the month is approximately when the Sloan girl was killed. And the eleventh is when the Gaithers came home from their weekend and reported her missing. Is that what you’re getting at, Hal?”
“Could be,” I said.
“Let’s find out.”
Randall was never one to waste time. He called a police clerk into his office, gave him the list of addresses, and told him to get the names and telephone numbers that went with them. While we waited, Randall smoked in silence and I sat on the hard chair and remembered to be grateful I was no longer a homicide cop. Sissy library fuzz or not, it was a lot more restful collecting library books than murderers.
The clerk was back in eight minutes. Randall grunted his thanks, picked up his phone, asked the switchboard for an outside line, and dialed one of the numbers the clerk had just handed him.
After a short wait, a woman answered. “Mrs. Symons?” Randall said. “This is the Police Department.” His tone was as bland as vanilla pudding. “Maybe you can help us. We’re investigating a mugging that occurred on your street on the night of—” he read the tiny numbers under the Symons’ address from the call list “—either the twenty-seventh or the twenty-eighth of last month. Were you at home those evenings, can you remember?”
Mrs. Symons voice squawked in the receiver. Randall held the phone far enough from his ear so I could catch her words. They were heavily freighted with indignation. “A mugging!” she said. What’s the matter with the police in this city? It wasn’t a mugging at all, as you ought to know very well since you spent a whole morning here at my house investigating it!”
“Oh-oh.” Randall was abject. “We must have our wires crossed here, Mrs. Symons. If it wasn’t a mugging, what was it?
“Our burglary here! They stole every bit of sterling silver we had in the house!”
While she paused for breath, Randall repeated his question. “Were you at home that weekend, Mrs. Symons?
“At home? Of course not! If it hadn’t been Parents Weekend at our daughter’s college, we wouldn’t have lost our silver. The house was empty.” Her voice went shrill. “But I’ve already told all this to one of your men named Leroy! And we haven’t heard a word from him in almost a month now! Some police department! Lucky for us we were insured!”
Randall soothed her. “I’ll ask Detective Leroy to get in touch with you at once. I can’t understand this mix-up, Mrs. Symons. I’m very sorry—please believe me.” Mrs. Symons gave the Lieutenant an unladylike raspberry and hung up abruptly.
Randall grinned. “Remind you of old times, Hal?” he asked. He picked up the phone again and asked for Detective Leroy in Burglary. While he waited, he talked to me around his stogie. “We’ll take it from here, Hal. Thanks for the lead—
It was a dismissal. I stood up. “Thanks aren’t enough,” I said. “I want a reward.”
“Reward?” He glared at me.
“Reward.” I repeated. “If you decide to interview the Argyll Lady any point during your investigation, I want to be there.”
“What for?”
“So I can see what goes along with that sexy voice,” I said.
* * * *
The following Friday night, Randall called me after midnight. I’d just come in from a dinner and movie date with Ellen. Randall said, “You in bed yet?
“Almost,” I said. “Why?”
“We’ve got your Argyll Lady here. If you want to collect that reward come over to headquarters.”
“Now? Its after midnight!”
“So your Police Department never sleeps. You coming?”
“What happened?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.” He hung up with a crash.
I sighed. I was tired and sleepy. I wanted to go to bed, not downtown—not even to meet the girl with the sexy voice. After Ellen, Farrah herself would be an anticlimax. But I’d asked for it. I put my jacket and tie back on and went out to the car.
The Lieutenant was alone in his office when I got to headquarters. He smirked at me, and waved me to a chair.
“Couldn’t this wait till tomorrow?” I asked.
“You said you wanted to meet her. She may be out on bail tomorrow.”
“I said, Don’t tell me she killed Josephine Sloan.”
“I won t tell you anything unless you shut up.” He was enjoying himself. “O.K.,” I said meekly.
“The minute Detective Leroy in Burglary saw that list of your Argyll Lady’s, Randall said, we were practically home free. It was just routine from there on.”
“Let me guess. All those addresses had reported burglaries too?”
He nodded. Four out of six. All committed when the owners were out of town and the houses were empty. On the dates indicated by the little figures under each address.”
“And silver was stolen from all of them?”
He nodded again. “With the price of silver today, did you know you can get several grand at the smelter for a set of sterling flatware that retailed for only a few hundred bucks ten years ago? Silver’s very big in the B-&-E business these days.”
“Even a library cop is aware of that,” I said sarcastically. “So what about Annabel Corelli?”
“In each case, she’d made a sales call at the burglarized house shortly before the burglary took place.”
I grimaced. “So she did set them up. A crooked Argyll Lady. She makes a call and during a friendly conversation learns when the lady of the house and her family will be away. She notes the best prospects for a large silver haul, and the dates when no one should be at home.”
Randall blew smoke. “A neat operation. You got to admire it.”
“I do. But I still don’t see how it gets you anywhere with the Sloan murder.”
Randall treated me to one of his unblinking yellow stares. Then he said “In each of the four burglaries, entry into the house was effected the same way. By means of a hydraulic jack.” I must have looked puzzled, because he went on to explain in a patronizing tone.
“You cushion the pushing head and the footplate of a jack with foam-rubber and position it horizontally against the edges of a door frame about the level of the lock. When pressure is applied, the jack spreads the doorposts apart enough so the lock and deadbolt tongues are drawn out of their sockets and the door can swing open. When you leave the house with your loot, you release pressure on the jack and the door frames spring back to vertical again, reseating the bolts in their sockets as though they’d never been touched. And the only sign of a break-in having occurred is a couple of shallow pressure marks on the doorposts made by the jack.”
“Well, well,” I said, “what’ll they think of next? I still don t see—” But as I uttered the words I did see. “You found the same jack marks on the doorposts of the Gaithers house.”
“The very same,” said Randall. “Exact match of the marks on the other four break-ins. Although nothing was reported stolen at that address, remember. Only the disappearance of the maid. Yet a break-in had obviously taken place. Are you beginning to get it now?”
“Yeah. Corelli set up the jobs, and she and her boyfriend probably worked them together. But when they broke into the Gaithers’ house, it wasn’t empty, as they expected it would be. The maid was there. She probably caught Corelli and friend at the silver chest and recognized Corelli as the Argyll Lady who called on Mrs. Gaither. So the fat was in fire, unless—”
Lieutenant Randall nodded. Unless something was done to keep the maid from talking. So they did something. They killed her and, leaving the silver behind, they relocked the door, packed the maid into their ear, and hid her body in Gaylord Park, six miles away.
“Do you have any proof of all this?” I asked.
“Some circumstantial stuff. And when their lawyer gets here and we can interrogate them, I’m hoping for more. Anyway, we sure as hell have proof they’re silver thieves if nothing else. We caught them red-handed, about two hours ago, burgling the last house on your list.” Randall yawned cavernously. “A blackjack in the boyfriend’s pocket could be the Sloan murder weapon. It’s at the lab now. And the boys have found a few faint bloodstains on the upholstery of the back seat of Corelli’s car that may give us something.”
Randall noted my sour expression and said cheerfully, “Hal, my boy, you were dead right about your Argyll Lady. She’s a real dish. Wait’ll you see her.”
He picked up the phone and spoke into it.
* * * *
Two minutes later, Annabel Corelli appeared in the doorway escorted by two uniformed cops, one holding each arm. Even without makeup, her auburn hair in a tumbled mess and her clothing in disarray, she was something to see. She was really impressively beautiful—and big. She must have stood almost six feet tall and tipped the scales at a good hundred and sixty-five pounds—every one of them distributed in the proper place.
Randall stood up politely. I also got to my feet. The Lieutenant said, “Miss Corelli, let me present Hal Johnson from the public library. I promised him he could meet you in person if that list of addresses he found in your library book should help us with this case.”
She seemed momentarily taken aback when she heard my name. Then she smiled at me very sweetly. In that unforgettable voice, she said, “I am glad to meet you, Mr. Johnson.”
Trying to hide my embarrassment, I started to mumble something fatuous, I don’t remember what. But I didn’t get a chance to finish it. Annabel Corelli pulled sharply away from her guards, took two steps toward me, drew back her right arm, and slapped me so hard I fell back against Randall’s desk, my head ringing like a church bell.
They hustled her out but I could tell by the frown on Lieutenant Randall’s face it was all he could do not to laugh himself sick.