Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 59, No. 1. Whole No. 338, January 1972

Turnabout by Miriam Allen deFord{© 1971 by Miriam Allen deFord.}

The first anonymous phone call to Mrs. Renfrew was bad enough — but it wasn’t obscene. The second anonymous phone call was worse than obscene…

The first call was annoying. The second was frightening. They both came in the middle of the morning on a weekday, when Howard was least likely to be there.

“Mrs. Renfrew?” The voice was a woman’s, unfamiliar.

“Yes. Who is it?”

“That doesn’t matter — a friend. Does the name Lotta mean anything to you?”

“Lotta? No, I don’t — do you mean your name is Lotta?”

The caller laughed. “Hardly. Well, Mrs. Renfrew, I think it my duty to warn you. Lotta Corey, your husband’s secretary.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Madge Renfrew said brusquely. “My husband often speaks of his secretary, and he has no personal interest in her whatever. In fact, I believe he told me she had been out of the office all last week because of some kind of heart trouble, and if she couldn’t keep up he’d have to replace her.”

The woman laughed again, not pleasantly. “Oh, yes, she has heart trouble, all right. In both senses of the word. Well, if you think I’m some jealous female just being catty, I suggest that you find out where she was when he made that trip to Chicago last month.”

“I think you’re being offensive,” Mrs. Renfrew said coldly. “Goodbye.”

Of all the cliché soap-opera situations, she thought angrily. Wait till she reported it to Howard that evening!

But through the afternoon a memory began seeping in. The way she had tried to get Howard at the hotel he told her he’d be staying at, to remind him he must be back in time for the Barretts’ dinner on Thursday, and how the hotel clerk had said Howard wasn’t registered there. He could have had a dozen reasons for changing hotels and not have thought of telling her. But—

Their marriage was no great romance; neither of them had ever pretended that. If she hadn’t been an heiress, she doubted if he would have married her. She was considerably older, an inch taller, and the best anyone had ever said about her appearance was that she was nice-looking. But they had been getting along well together — had been for 14 years — and he was no gigolo; he worked hard and was prospering in his own right. He was well-born — better than she was — and in earlier days he’d been handsome. They had no children because neither of them wanted any. It was a satisfactory enough marriage, and Madge Renfrew had not the slightest intention of having it broken.

But she did not mention the phone call to Howard that evening.

It was a week later that the second phone call came. This time the voice was a man’s.

It began like the other one: “Mrs. Renfrew?”

“Yes, who is calling?”

“Never mind,” he said. “Just listen. Mrs. Renfrew, my business is killing people. I am what they call a professional killer.”

She was too horrified to speak.

“Perhaps you would like to know that your husband has offered me $10,000 to dispose of you.”

“You’re insane,” she breathed. “Or is this your idea of a crazy joke?”

“No joke. And I’m not insane. I would be, though, if I took up that offer without getting in touch with you first.”

“What— why—”

He chuckled unpleasantly.

“I plan my jobs,” he said in a matter-of-fact way. “I find out all I can about the subject, to make a good clean job of it. I’m not a common thug, Mrs. Renfrew, and I have a reputation in my field. No case I’ve handled has ever been suspected of being anything but a natural death.”

He sounded proud and businesslike at the same time. Madge Renfrew listened, beyond power of reply.

“So,” he went on, “when I cased this assignment I found out something. You’re the one with the big money — and that gave me an idea. Mrs. Renfrew, how would you like to double the ante and have me knock off your husband instead of you?”

“I — oh, this is ridiculous! I’m going to notify the police.”

“Notify them of what? That some loony they can’t find called you up and made a crazy proposal to you? Uh-uh. Think it over, lady. One of you is going to die. Which would you rather it be — your husband or you?”

She sat there silent and shivering.

“Take your time to decide, Mrs. Renfrew,” the man said. “I’ll call you again about this time tomorrow.” He hung up.

Howard didn’t come home that evening. Working late, he said. With Lotta? When she heard him come in and go to his own room, long after midnight, she had been lying awake for hours, thinking.

At last she came to a decision. In the morning she would tell Howard about the two calls — no, only about the first one. If he wanted a mistress, she’d tell him, why, all right; just keep it discreet, don’t make it public.

She couldn’t — nobody could — look him in the face and say aloud, “Somebody says you are paying him $10,000 to have me killed, and if I’ll make it $20,000 he’ll kill you instead.” With no proof but her own word. Howard would take her immediately to a psychiatrist, and any psychiatrist would declare her in need of treatment in a mental hospital. She’d rather be dead than that. Or a widow.

Wait. Wait and see if the man did call again. Then see if she could trap him into some slip that would enable her to tell both Howard and the police about it, and be believed.

So maybe she’d better not bring the subject up yet with Howard at all. Besides, what would be the use? He’d only laugh the accusation away, and then be aware she knew he was having an affair and was keeping quiet about it.

The more she thought about the second caller’s melodramatic story, the sillier it sounded. Why on earth should Howard want her dead? Imagine her balding, potbellied husband indulging in dreams of all for love and the world well lost! He knew she’d never divorce him, and in any event he wasn’t fool enough to disinherit himself of a really sizable fortune.

Oh. Her thinking came to an abrupt stop. But if she were dead, the thinking resumed shakenly, he’d be rid of her and have his Lotta and the money, too.

Nevertheless, if that man thought she was going to make herself an accessory to a murder — even the murder of an unfaithful husband—

The phone rang.

“Well?” the man’s voice said. “Have you made up your mind?”

And as if someone else had suddenly entered into her and was using her as a puppet, she heard herself say calmly, “Yes, I’ve decided. I’ll pay you $20,000 — if you make it another — what did you call it? — another subject.”

“The girl?” he asked coolly. So he knew — maybe everyone knew but her. All the better. Howard would stay alive, and stay married to her. And for the rest of his life he would be tortured by his bereavement, suspicious of the killer whom somehow he had been steered to, suspicious of her but afraid ever again to do anything but suffer.

Perhaps she would tell him then how she discovered he had planned her murder and that if she died before him, how she had given a sealed letter to her lawyer, revealing the facts and asking for a full investigation. Maybe she should have done that after the first call from the hired killer, to forestall any attempt on her life. But that wouldn’t have punished them enough. Anyway, it was too late now: she had cast the die.

All this darted through her mind in the split second before she answered calmly, “Yes. Her name is Lotta Corey. She is my husband’s secretary.”

“Why not?” said the man. “And I want to assure you, Mrs. Renfrew” — his voice took on the tone of an earnest salesman — “I have a reputation for honest dealing, and I value it. I never double-cross my clients. I’ll tell Mr. Renfrew at once that I’m turning him down, for reasons of my own, and from this moment on both you and he are entirely safe so far as I am concerned. Once the commission is carried out neither of you will ever hear from me again.”

She almost said, “Thank you.”

“Now as to details,” he went on briskly. “I don’t expect to be paid until the job’s done. But I have to protect myself and make sure of getting my money. You understand that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to give you an accommodation address. It will do you no good to inquire there — it’s just one of those places that receive mail to be called for, and they know nothing whatever about me. I’m going to dictate a short note to you, and you’re going to write it by hand and sign it and send it to William J. Smith at that address. That’s the name they’ll know me by — they expect phony names.”

“What kind of note?”

“Just a simple statement,” he said blandly, “that you, Madge Renfrew, are hiring me for $20,000 in cash to eliminate Lotta Corey.”

“I will not!” she screamed. “Why, that would make me an accessory to murder!”

“Precisely. It protects me against any attempt by you to investigate me. I will give the note back to you the day after you have proof of Miss Corey’s death, in exchange for $20,000 in used $50 bills, not numbered in sequence.”

“No, no!” she cried frantically. “The whole thing’s off.”

“I’d be sorry for that,” he said. “Your husband was more sensible. He agreed at once to send the note when I told him to. So if you renege I’ll just have to inform him I’ll go ahead.”

She thought hard and furiously.

“Tell me how the note should read,” she choked at last.

“Now that’s more reasonable. Get paper and a pen.”

Her hand shaking, she wrote the few lines.

“I won’t waste any time,” the man went on. “It will take a few days to complete my strategy. Then I’ll call you to have you send me the note. Two or three days later look at the obituary column in the morning newspaper. The day after that I’ll give you instructions for getting the money to me.”

She heard the click as he hung up. She had always known instinctively that his calls came from public booths.

That was Friday. On Monday he called, said curtly, “Mail the note,” and hung up. She began reading the obituary page of the paper. On Thursday she found a brief notice:

Howard was out of town. She did not have to pretend curiosity or interest.

The next day the man who called himself William J. Smith phoned again. She had drawn the money from three separate accounts, to avoid comment. The 400 bills fitted neatly into a small suitcase. According to instructions, she put it in a locker at the bus terminal.

She was tempted to sit there and wait till he came. But when would that be, and what good would it do? He probably had followed her at one time or another and now knew her by sight; and in any case he would not approach the locker until he had the key. She mailed it to him — what else could she do? She was at his mercy.

As he had said, he was honest. By return mail her note came back to her; she burned it immediately. She was even sure he had not had it copied; it would be of no use to him now without implicating himself.

That night, in a motel several hundred miles away, Howard Renfrew and Lotta Corey drank champagne to celebrate.

“I just can’t believe it, Howie!” she exulted. “It sounded so crazy, but you got away with it! How you got that notice into the paper I’ll never understand.”

“Simple,” he said complacently. “I just mailed the money and told them to run it on a certain date. I said you had no relatives here and as your employer I was taking care of things. Of course, honey, you realize that from now on Lotta Corey is dead. What did you say when you moved out of that rooming-house?”

“Like you told me, I told the landlady I was having trouble with my heart again — she knew about that time I thought it was a heart attack for sure, but it turned out to be only indigestion — so I was going back home for treatment by my doctor there.”

“Fine. And you haven’t lived here long enough to have made friends who’d be likely to investigate your disappearance. And now under the new name you can afford a decent apartment in another part of town, and things are going to be a lot easier for both of us.”

“I’ll say! And you’re really putting the whole $20,000 in my name?”

“Why not, sweetie? After all, you made that first call, finking on yourself! You’ve earned it.”

“In the office and out,” she smiled. “Oh, look, Howie, we forgot — it’s $19,000. You have to pay $1000, don’t you, to that unemployed actor who made the phone calls from your script?”

“Oh, yeah. He was pretty good, wasn’t he?”

“He worries me,” said Lotta, frowning. “What’s to keep him from talking?”

“Talking where? He must guess something, but suppose he goes to the fuzz. What can he do to me that wouldn’t involve him in a charge of extortion — to say nothing of agreeing to be a murderer?”

“Oh, I see, Howie. You’re so smart!”

Howard Renfrew looked at her meditatively. She was lots of fun, and without her he didn’t know how he could have endured his dreary marriage any longer. But $19,000 wasn’t going to last forever, and heaven knew how many years more he must wait and hope that Madge would die before him — she had ten years on him at least, in his opinion — and make him a millionaire.

Well, when he came to that bridge, he’d cross it. He’d think of something.

Lotta gazed equally meditatively back at him. $19,000 was a nice bit of money. But Howie really was going to seed, and a young pretty girl could do better than that for herself now that she had enough to buy new clothes and things. Set herself up without having to work, for one thing. Or maybe some day she could make a nice nest egg for herself by threatening to snitch. She hadn’t been involved in any plot. Well, time enough ahead to make plans about that.

She refilled their glasses.