Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 32, No. 13, Mid-December 1987

Editor’s notes by Cathleen Jordan

Want to try solving a real-life mystery? We’ve got a good one for you that’s been puzzling us for about a year now. In August 1986 some friends who own a weekend house in the country — on an isolated, heavily wooded mountainside in New York — arrived one Friday evening to find that someone had come calling, Goldilocks-style, in their absence. Only these folks, on the whole, were considerably neater than Goldilocks; in fact, they seemed to have a passion for cleanliness (see the list below). Nor were they regulation burglars in other ways. Left untouched were the TV, the stereo, the Nikon camera — in short, almost everything of real value. They did take the following:

four coffee cups (leaving two in the cupboard), but no saucers, and none of the coffee mugs

all the toothbrushes (there were four)

all soap, detergent, Clorox, SOS pads, toothpaste, razor blades, shaving soap

all plastic garbage bags, paper towels, paper napkins, toilet paper, boxes of Kleenex

all the flashlight batteries (but not the flashlights)

beer and some inexpensive wine, leaving behind good wine and liquor

all the canned goods and frozen food

several unopened boxes of pasta, but not the opened ones

all the coffee but no tea

two coffee cans of bacon drippings from the refrigerator

several bath towels and hand towels, no sheets

Other clues? They took showers — there were wet towels in the bathroom — and washed clothes. The evidence for that was threefold: a pair of boy’s briefs, size 12, found behind the washing machine; an empty box of Clorox, ditto; and at least two loads’ worth of lint in the dryer (our friends clean the lint out after each use). They did take one pair of good winter boots, size 10 medium, the only really expensive thing that was gone. They tossed several beer cans onto the lawn (drunk while waiting for the washing to get done?) and left behind a telltale odor of cigarette smoke — but no cigarette butts or other trash was found in the house. They broke a previously opened bottle of pasta sauce (a small stain was found on the kitchen rug) and put the bits of glass and sauce-stained paper towels used to wipe it up under the deck of the house. And they took an old set of men’s running clothes — but left behind a large supply of other clothes. Everything except the beer cans and broken sauce bottle was left in perfect order; dust cloths over furniture (from the drawers of which items like paper napkins had vanished) were in place. They did, however, eat three leftover blueberry muffins from an Entenmann’s box in the refrigerator — and put back the empty box. There was no sign of forced entry, though it’s possible they found a key hidden on the property (and still in its hiding place when our friends arrived).

Campers making a pit stop? But toothbrushes? And cups but not saucers or mugs? The local constabulary just shook their heads.

Anybody out there have any ideas? Let us know what you come up with; we’ll print as many of your replies and ingenious solutions as we can in a future issue.