Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

Unfortunately for Mr. Withers, the current owner of the historic diner, Donnie Vernon, having been burned on more than one occasion by customers of dubious character’s palming off on the diner large denomination bills that turned out to be either counterfeit or stolen, had instructed his employees that without his explicit approval they were never to accept anything larger than a twenty. And being her daddy’s daughter, Donna Sue was not the sort to be reticent, or terse, in staking out and defending her position in the ensuing debate.

More important, the increasingly heated, not to mention increasingly loud, disagreement over the payment of the check that followed from Donna Sue’s refusal to accept the suspect hundred dollar bill, an argument that was resolved only when the exasperated waitress finally announced that she would pay for the refill out of her own pocket, eventually caught the attention of another of the diner’s handful of early morning customers. For sitting at the far end of the counter, quietly eating his breakfast and reading the morning newspaper, was none other than our own Sheriff Clyde Duncan.

Worse still for Mr. Withers, who ironically had never even considered the possibility of venturing into the counterfeiting business, this was not the first time that his rather distinctive profile, with its beaklike hooked proboscis and offsetting bushy, jaw-length sideburns, had caught the eye of the wily old sheriff. It had, in fact, been only the day before that, off duty and dressed in civilian clothing, the sheriff had stood behind this very unusual looking man, tall and gangly to the point of being spidery, in the checkout line at Schulte’s IGA. And on that occasion, as on this one, the sheriff, already on his sharpest lookout as a result of a recent bulletin from the state police detailing the activities of a counterfeiter working the southern reaches of the state, had watched with keen interest as the man had paid his bill with a crisp new one hundred dollar bill.

Now the sheriff, no matter what else he is, or has been called, is at heart a man of action. Having already been put on his guard with respect to the possibly criminal nature of the mysterious stranger’s activities, and seeing what looked like the perfect opportunity to strike a preemptive blow against the counterfeiting operation, it seemed only natural that he should surrender to his natural proclivities and attempt to follow the man back to his base of operations. Which, At

least to some degree, accounts for why it was that on that fateful afternoon when the town of Crenshaw burned to the ground the sheriff of Crenshaw found himself, of all things, conducting surveillance on the beautiful old Victorian mansion that belonged to none other than the love of his life for these past sixty-some years, Miss Petula Clairborne.

Of course, the real key to understanding the utter chaos that ensued lies in the realization that, in spite of his profound dedication to the enforcement of law and order and his fifty-odd years of loyal service as an officer of the court, the sheriff was not about to let something as insignificant as his inability to secure a search warrant stand in his way. Not of his catching the counterfeiters, of course, though that was how he was later to justify his actions. For them undoubtedly he would have waited. After all, it would only have been a matter of another day or two before the circuit judge finally made his way to Crenshaw and the warrant could have been obtained.

But if it wasn’t for fear of losing the opportunity to capture the counterfeiter, you might well ask, what then was the source of this great urgency that drove him? It was, of course, nothing less than the opportunity of obtaining some especially succulent bit of goods on Miss Petula. For such a plum, there can be little question, an illegal search would have seemed trivial to the sheriff. In the past, as is well known among Crenshaw’s insiders, bigger obstacles than that have failed to stop the man. As they no doubt will in the future, too.

So it was that, when Martin Withers and his partner, a squirrelly little twice-convicted con artist by the name of Donald Jeffries, left the Clairborne mansion shortly after four o’clock that afternoon, the sheriff quickly availed himself of the opportunity. Using the spare key he just happened to know Miss Petula kept hidden under the gorgeous, hydrangea-filled ceramic planter standing next to the front door and totally unconcerned with the finer technicalities regarding the legality of his actions, he entered the mansion for a quick look about.