I was sure this was a Tuppence & Tommy book (Christie), but it's not -- and I just finished reading all her books again. No luck; it's not one of hers! This mystery hinges on the time it takes (used to take) to dial a phone number -- the way a 9 on a rotary phone took longer to rotate back, when you dialed, than, say, a 2 would. Someone heard a number being dialed in the next room, at the beginning of the book, and realizes much later the reported phone number had to have been a lie -- didn't fit the sounds actually heard. I read this book around 1975, and it was old then. Thank you!!
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
Don’t have an answer, but I read this book, too, or at least one with the same incident. Have you checked Josephine Tey? Or possibly a Sayers short story?
Wow, those are great suggestions! I’ve only read a few Tey novels (Franchise Affair, a couple more). I think I’ve read all of Sayres’s work, and have never come across it. So glad someone else knows it! (I didn’t hallucinate / invent / misremember it!) Will check Tey–many thanks.