Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 9, No. 3, March 1964

An Exercise in Insurance by James Holding

Dostoyevsky proclaims that “true security is to be found in social solidarity”, but there are occasions — and here we learn of one of them — when more primitive measures must suffice.

When three masked men walked into the bank with sawed-off shotguns that afternoon and calmly began to clean out the tellers’ cash drawers, I wasn’t even nervous. I was sure they weren’t going to get away with it. I was perfectly certain that five straight-shooting policemen, strategically placed, would be waiting for the robbers outside the bank door when they emerged.

That’s the way it would have happened, too, if it hadn’t been for Miss Coe, Robbsville’s leading milliner.

As proprietress and sole employee of a hat shop, just around the comer from the bank and felicitously called Miss Coe’s Chapeux, Miss Coe fabricated fetching hats for many of the town’s discriminating ladies. She was an excellent designer, whose products exhibited a fashionable flair, faintly French, that more than justified her use of the French word in her shop name.

Miss Coe was middle-aged, sweet, pretty, methodical and utterly reliable. Indeed, her dependability was often the subject of admiring comment from local ladies who had become somewhat disillusioned by the unreliability of other tradesmen. “You can always count on Miss Coe,” they frequently told each other. “If she says she’ll have the hat ready on Tuesday at eleven, she’ll have it ready. She’ll be putting in the last stitch as you come in the door.” I had even heard remarks of this kind at my own dinner table, since my wife was one of Miss Coe’s steady customers.

But perhaps you are wondering what Miss Coe, a milliner — reliable and methodical as she undoubtedly was — could possibly have to do with the robbery of our bank P

Well, you may remember that some years ago, several of the companies that insured banks against robbery agreed to reduce the premium rates on such insurance if the insured bank was willing to conform to a certain security arrangement.

This meant, simply, that to win the lower insurance rate, a bank must maintain a robbery alarm system somewhere outside the bank itself; that in the event of a robbery, a warning bell or buzzer must sound elsewhere so that police could be instantly alerted without interference, and arrive on the scene in time to prevent the robbery and even, hopefully, to capture the bandits in the act.

In those days of rather primitive electrical wiring, the insurance companies did not insist that, to meet this security requirement, the outside alarm be necessarily installed in the police station itself. Any other location where the ringing of the alarm would unfailingly initiate instant action would serve as well.

The potential savings on insurance premiums made possible in this way were quite substantial. Our bank accordingly decided to take advantage of them. As Cashier, I was entrusted with the job of selecting a suitable outside alarm site, preferably somewhere near the bank, since the installation charges would thus be minimal.

After some thought, and with the memory of my wife’s recent words to a bridge partner, “You’ll find Miss Coe utterly dependable,” fresh in my mind, I went around to see the milliner on my lunch hour one day.

After introducing myself I explained to her that the bank intended to install an alarm buzzer somewhere in the neighborhood. I explained the alarm’s purpose. Then I went on diplomatically, “Miss Coe, I have never heard you referred to among the ladies of my acquaintance without some warm testimonial to your complete reliability, to your calm, methodical turn of mind.”

“How nice,” she murmured, pleased. “I do try to be precise and methodical about things, it’s true. I find life less complicated that way.”

“Yes. And that’s exactly why I am going to ask you to permit us to install our alarm buzzer in your shop.”

“Here?”

“Right here. You are always in your shop during banking hours, are you not?”

“Of course. I carry my lunch, so I’m not even away at lunch time.”

“Good. With your penchant for doing exactly what is needed at exactly the right time, I am certain that our alarm buzzer, although placing a new responsibility on your shoulders in the unlikely event of a bank robbery, will in no way discommode or harm you. And I might add that the bank will naturally expect to pay you a small stipend for your cooperation.”

She flushed with pleasure. “What would I have to do?” she asked.

“If the alarm buzzer should ever ring, you merely go at once to your telephone there, Miss Coe...” I indicated her telephone on a counter at the back of the shop, “... and place an emergency call to the police, giving them a prearranged signal. That is all. Your responsibility then ceases. You see, it’s very simple.”

“I’m sure I could do that, if that’s all there is to it,” Miss Coe said, glancing at her wall clock a little guiltily, as though she feared she were three stitches late on a hat promised a customer one minute from then. “And I won’t say that a bit of extra income won’t be more than welcome.”

By the end of the week the buzzer was installed in her shop. The system was thoroughly tested, and it worked perfectly. On our first “dry run”, the squad of police arrived at the bank just four minutes from the time they received their telephone call from Miss Coe. The insurance people, satisfied with their inspection of the system and my recommendation of Miss Coe, granted us the lower insurance rate forthwith.

Since a daily test of the wiring circuit, to assure its constant readiness, was specified in our insurance agreement, I arranged with Miss Coe that at exactly three o’clock each day, I would press the button under my desk at the bank and ring the buzzer in her shop. That was as far as the daily test needed to go; it was expected that Miss Coe’s telephone would always be operative but if, in the event it were out of order or in use when the buzzer should ring, Miss Coe could merely nip into the shop next door and telephone the police from there.

For two years it seemed that Miss Coe would never be called upon to display her reliability in behalf of the bank’s depositors. We had no bank robbery, nor even an attempted one. I tested the alarm buzzer each day at three; Miss Coe continued to make fetching hats for Robbsville’s ladies undisturbed; and each month I mailed her a small check for her participation in the bank’s alarm system.

You can readily see now, I am sure, why I had no qualms whatever when our bank robbery finally did occur. This was the event for which the police, Miss Coe and I had so carefully prepared. This was the actual happening that our rehearsals had merely simulated. I knew that our outside robbery alarm was in perfect working order. I knew that Miss Coe was in her shop, ready to act, as dependable and unfailing as the stars in the heavens,

So, far from being startled or apprehensive, I really felt a certain pleasurable excitement when I looked up from my desk just before closing time that afternoon, and saw the three masked bandits presenting their weapons to our staff and terrified patrons. In common with the other occupants of the banking room, I slowly raised my hands over my head at the robbers’ command. Simultaneously and unnoticed, however, I also pressed my knee against the alarm button under my desk.

I could picture clearly the exact sequence of events that would be set in train by that movement of my knee. Miss Coe’s buzzer would sound. She would perhaps sit immobile for a shocked second at her work table. She would drop the hat she was working on, and cross speedily to her telephone. She would place her emergency call to the police with splendid calm. And then she would wait confidently for the news from me that our bank robbers had been circumvented or captured.

Unfortunately, as I found out later, Miss Coe did none of these things.

What she did do, when the alarm buzzer sounded in her shop, was merely to glance at the clock on her wall, rise impatiently from her sewing stool and cross the room, and there, (bless her methodical heart!) push the minute hand of the wall clock ahead ten minutes so that it pointed to exactly three o’clock.