Dial while your pard[1] is breaking
Wife’s[2] neck—that call you’re making,
Then you[3] find out, that he dies, and she cries.
It was vile but caused you no sorrow,
Vile, ’cause you’d tired of borrow-
ing, so then you hired the dude, whom she slew.

Blight, you disgrace of badness,
Hiding traces of gladness
That you will cheer when she’s no longer here.
Bide your time—soon she will be dying:
Smile when no one is spying.
You’ll have your wife’s till’s big dough pile:
Yours in a while.

But your crime, sewed up, is untying—
Wily, the cop,[4] so frying:
You, who’ll lose your life in a while.
You shouldn’t dial.


[1]Charles Swan, as played by Anthony Dawson
[2]Margot Wendice, as played by Grace Kelly (Lisa Fremont in “Rear Window,” Frances Stevens in “To Catch a Thief”)
[3]Tony Wendice, as played by Ray Milland; hires swan to strangle his wife, but in the struggle she kills Swan and is subsequently found guilty of murder. She’s about to go to the gallows when Inspector Hubbard traps Tony into revealing his plot to get rid of Margot.
[4]Chief Inspector Hubbard as played by John Williams (H.H. Hughson in “To Catch a Thief,” roles in ten episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”). Could this John be the composer? Nope—two different people.


“Dial ‘M’ for Murder” (1954)