Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

I hadn’t planned on breaking into the case, but that’s what I did then, after I picked the lock. The book seemed too fragile to riffle, and even touching it worried me, but the first two leaves turned easily and well, and as it turned out, those were all I needed to see. Adhering to the title page of the New Testament was an ancient label that read GIUSEPPE GUARNERI IHS.

I turned the pages of the Bible back to Matthew 1, locked the glass case, replaced everything as I’d found it in the collector’s safe, and examined the room a last time to make sure I wasn’t leaving any traces of unauthorized entry.

My watch said it was time to go, but I found the main stair and hurried to the top of the house instead, where I could look out and down at the melting ice of the lake, using the binoculars I still had with me. I didn’t see anything important, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the car horn beeping twice. I descended carefully, locked the door on my way out, pulled off my white gloves, and joined the woman in tweeds for a quick getaway to her uncle’s farm and orchard ten miles north of Lake Geneva, the place where the trouble had begun.

On an evening two weeks earlier Ginny had called me to the telephone.

“R. J., you big old grampus,” said her Uncle Peter over the phone line, “how would you like some work?”

“What kind of work?” I asked him back.

“Well, it’s quite a story, if you can listen.”

“Sure. Only I don’t take payment in apples.” A lie if the job was for him.

“Nope,” he replied. “Ten thousand dollars — maybe. At first they... nope. Let me back up and start off right. Are you ready?

“I was out along County D this morning, you see, round about eleven, pruning some broken branches and looking over the stock, when a car pulls up and two guys climb out and come on over to talk. Well, I’m always ready to talk, but I couldn’t barely understand the one, and he was translating for the other. Seems this one I’m talking to is the son-in-law of the other one, and the other one is the seventy-four-year-old twin brother of a retired violin teacher from down by the lake, only the violin teacher went and disappeared — now I remember reading about it — back in that twenty-two inch storm we had before Christmas. This pair are straight from Prague, Czechoslovakia, and they’ve saved up their kopecks or whatever and come up here to try to find the missing brother themselves because the Wisconsin Highway Patrol don’t know its job.

“Let me tell you, R. J., these poor guys looked even more lost than they were, and I’m wondering what the Sam Hill possessed ’em to try this stunt until they mention Richard Mumphrey — ‘Slick Dick’ is what we call him hereabouts — who’s the lawyer assigned by the county court to oversee the violin teacher’s property. Am I being clear?”

“Sure,” I said. “You invited them in for lunch and told them you’ve got a nephew by marriage—”

“Well, they looked hungry, you’re right, and I couldn’t see this pair standing much of a chance if they’d let Slick Dick send ’em off, chasing wild geese from here to up near Watertown.

“So, yeah — Judy and I fed ’em some grub and got the story out of ’em. The violin teacher’s actually a big name sort of guy — from Czechoslovakia, of course — played fiddle with all the top symphonies at one time and was a professor over at Madison a few years, too. Widower, no children, so this brother from back in the old country is the guy’s next of kin, and eventually even Slick Dick probably had to drop a card in the mail and let him know what had happened.”

“And the lawyer’s in no hurry to find what’s probably a dead man because he can milk the estate for fees for the next five years—”

“You got it, R. J., and this couple of Czechs had pretty much got it, too, by the time I was through with ’em. The missing man owns a nice little place down near the west end of the lake worth a hundred and a half — I swung over and took a look — plus some CD’s in the bank and some valuable violins and what not, plus whatever Slick Dick is holding back on.

“But I told ’em if the troopers and such hadn’t found the old guy they’d never do it themselves, which I think they realized about two miles out of town. I also told ’em my niece’s husband had a nose like a bloodhound on this kind of thing but you were a professional and you’d have to come up from Chicago and you didn’t work for free.

“So, you know, R. J., I was sort of wondering if you might consider helping these fellas out on spec. They’ll pay your expenses — and if they can’t, I will, what the hell. But if you find the old guy’s remains — he went off the road some damn place, sure as apple cider — they’ve volunteered to put up ten thousand dollars from the estate. Mum’s the word with Slick Dick about it, of course. They’re heading back to Prague day after tomorrow, so...”

So that’s how the story began: with myself, as usual, on the hook — but also with a small, professional reservation, which I kept to myself, about the proposed size of the fee.