A long time ago I read a murder mystery and I was not able to find it by searching the internet. I read the story as a tween and I don’t have the greatest memory so any (or all) of this may be wrong:
A rich old codger (who may collect rare stamps) is killed–assassinated, really–by being shot through a window. His dying words sound like “I suspect mice…”. The trajectory of the bullet through the window makes it look like it came from a near by house. Both of these facts are red herrings; the codger is attempting to say “I suspect my solicitor” who is indeed the murderer. He rigged up the fire escape in a way that he could fire the gun to look like it came from the neighbor.
Thanks for solving another mystery for me – *The Three Blind Mice *is also the story that uses the line “What is so rare as a day in June?” as a clue. I’ve been wondering about that story forever (well at least since around 1972). I do remember the “my solicitor” clue as well. It’s funny how those stories stick with you.
A late reply. I was watching ‘You’ and the subject of murder mysteries came up and triggered a memory of the story I had read in a book borrowed from our mobile library when I was about 9, 57 years ago. I remembered ‘it was mice…’ and that it was my solicitor and that it was a Hitchcock story. An Internet search led me here.
The mother of one of my best friends when I was a teen was a lawyer. She told a group of us once that, while on holidays in the States, asked what she did for a living she replied, “I’m a solicitor,” and everyone assumed that she was a prostitute.
