Suspense — 1942

Paging through a book on history's most notorious poisoners, a magazine editor freezes at a portrait of a woman executed centuries ago — her face is his wife's, exactly. The resemblance is too precise to be coincidence, and he can't decide if that's the frightening part. (after John Dickson Carr)

When his daughter kills the local schoolmaster in a fit of passion, Mr. Princey doesn't call the police — he starts building a case against an innocent man instead. Family loyalty, pushed past its breaking point, becomes its own kind of crime. (after John Collier)

This Suspense broadcast, "The Life of Nellie James" (1942-07-01), starred Jeanne Cagney; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.

This Suspense broadcast, "Rope" (1942-07-08), starred Richard Widmark; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.

Alix barely knows Gerald Martin before she's married him — a courtship measured in days, not months. The honeymoon glow fades fast once her new husband's behavior turns odd, and she begins to wonder exactly who she's tied herself to. (after Agatha Christie)

A parlor seance at a school for young ladies goes horribly wrong when one student drops dead of fright on the spot. Was it a genuine brush with the beyond, or did a classmate engineer the fatal scare for reasons of her own? (after Ethel Lina White)

Mr. Mummery hasn't been feeling himself lately, and when his business partner mentions a poisoner going door to door taking cook's positions, an uncomfortable thought takes root. Could the woman preparing his meals every day be exactly the killer everyone's been warned about? (after Dorothy L. Sayers)

Amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey talks his way into an exclusive criminal fraternity where every member hides behind a mask and answers only to a number. Unmasking them — without losing his own head in the process — is the real trick. (after Dorothy L. Sayers)

Driving alone across the country, a man keeps spotting the same hitchhiker standing at the roadside, mile after mile, state after state — a man he's never once stopped for. The impossible repetition chips away at his nerve long before he understands what it means.

A visiting doctor tours an asylum expecting routine business, but the longer he watches the staff at work, the less their methods add up. Something is being done to the patients here that has nothing to do with treatment.

Psychologist and armchair criminologist Henry Poggioli finds himself far from his usual lecture hall, untangling a murder on the island of Trinidad. Local customs and old grudges complicate a case that isn't nearly as foreign as it first appears. (after T.S. Stribling)

Over drinks at a fashionable New York club, a circle of gentlemen swap detective stories for sport — one about a coin that vanished into thin air, another about a stolen sapphire ring. Between the fiction and the fact, the lines blur more than anyone expects. (after Owen Johnson)

On the island of Zanzibar, a British consulate finds itself under quiet siege — a German agent has disguised himself as a powerful witch doctor and is turning the mainland tribes against the Crown. Exposing the impostor means beating him at his own game of fear.

A lawyer opens a letter that shouldn't exist — it's signed by a man who died twenty years ago, and it claims to hold the answer to a murder that was never solved. Reopening a cold case this cold means reckoning with the impossible.

A man strikes an outrageous wager with his own stepfather: that the older man cannot murder him within six months and get away with it. He accepts the bet fully — and agrees he'll never be told the time, place, or method of the attempt.

Behind the glass-eyed figures of a wax museum after closing time, spies are trading coded messages under everyone's nose. The exhibits may be motionless, but the danger circulating among them very much isn't.

A student of anatomy needs bodies to dissect, and the men who can supply them aren't particular about where those bodies come from. He gets his specimens — and finds himself owing debts to killers he can't easily walk away from. (after Robert Louis Stevenson)

Three years ago, a young bride stepped onto a balcony and was never seen again — no struggle, no trace, nothing. Now another new bride stands on the same balcony, and the household around her seems to be holding its breath for a repeat.

A wronged husband stops nursing his grievance and starts acting on it, engineering a scheme of revenge aimed squarely at both his unfaithful wife and the man she's been seeing. Vows, it turns out, cut both ways.

A small-town police chief nabs a fugitive wanted for murder back in Philadelphia — an easy collar, on paper. But the wanted poster, the confession, and the case itself all start to smell wrong the closer he looks. (after Dashiell Hammett)