The Whistler 1950-10-22 "The Wall" (story reused as 1954-08-29 "Quadrangle")
The basic setup: A man is bound to his aunt's old house by the fear that her renovations will uncover the deadly secret hidden inside the stone wall.
Produced and directed by George W. Allen, story by Adrian Gendot
Whistler: Bill Forman
Announcer: Marvin Miller
Cast (credited): Don Randolph, Jean Tatum, Norma Varden
The surviving recording of "Quadrangle" has no credits, but it sounds like John Dehner in the lead.
The story: Channing House, on the edge of Cartertown, with its wide, high surrounding wall, is a popular subject for artists. Hypatia Channing lives there alone with her nephew Geoffrey since Colonel Channing's death five years ago. A caretaker, Sam Lewis, also lives on the property, and Hypatia is always having him renovate the house and grounds, claiming that the sound of the hammer and saw keeps her husband's memory alive.
Geoffrey Channing's friend Ned introduces him to Leah Munsen, an artist who has come to paint Channing House. Their conversation turns to the wall. Ned tells Leah the stone wall is hollow, and he wonders when the old lady is going to get around to tearing it down. Geoffrey hopes she won't go that far. Because Colonel Channing really didn't drown while on a fishing trip with Geoffrey. Geoffrey killed him in a rage and hid his body inside the wall. The wall has been on his mind these five years, and he stays close to home in fear that Aunt Hypatia will demolish it and reveal his lie.
As the weeks go by, Geoffrey has fallen in love with Leah. He doesn't want her to leave Cartertown, but she wants to travel and pursue her artistic career. She wants him to go with her... if he can. Geoffrey decides he must free himself of Channing House. That night, he learns that Aunt Hypatia plans to begin demolishing the wall in the morning.
Rainy weather sets in, delaying work on the wall, and Hypatia puts Sam to work on the staircase instead. After days of rain, Geoffrey seizes an opportunity to poison his aunt's bedtime drink with her own sleeping powders, knowing her death will be taken for an accidental overdose. Some time after bidding her good night, he hears her scream as she falls down the stairs. She's dead, and Geoffrey didn't do it.
Or did he? He rushes upstairs to make sure. The poisoned drink is untouched. As he moves to get rid of it, he's startled by the doorbell and spills the drink on Aunt Hypatia's pillow. He quickly hides the stained pillow in his room and goes downstairs to answer the bell. It's Judge Fuller, Hypatia's attorney, who had an appointment to see her on a financial matter. They call the police, and the sheriff pronounces her death accidental.
The twist: The sheriff returns after a talk with Sam, and tells Geoffrey that Sam thinks Hypatia was pushed down the stairs, and Geoffrey pushed her. It turns out Colonel Channing hid a large sum of money in the house before he died, and never got around to telling his wife where. That's why she's been having the house torn apart—and she was sure Geoffrey was only sticking so close to home in order to get his hands on the money. Today Sam found $50,000 in the staircase and handed it over to her, and now it looks like Geoffrey killed his aunt for the money.
Geoffrey protests that he didn't know about any money. But no jury will believe that: the police found the whole $50,000 right where he put it, stuffed in a bureau drawer in his bedroom closet, hidden inside his aunt's pillow.
Some changes between "The Wall" and "Quadrangle":
The aunt's name is changed from Hypatia to Agnes.
Some of Ned's gossip is removed from the first scene, including his speculation that the old lady was happy to be rid of her husband.
- In "The Wall," Geoffrey apparently fought with and killed his uncle because his uncle didn't approve of the woman Geoffrey wanted to marry—and then they married after his death and the marriage didn't last. In "Quadrangle," the dialogue between Geoffrey and Leah that reveals this backstory is omitted, and the Whistler's narration just establishes right away that Geoffrey killed his uncle because he refused to lend him $5000.
In "The Wall," Geoffrey puts his aunt's sleeping powders in a hot buttered rum; in "Quadrangle," it's hot chocolate. Her line "Then I could throw away my sleeping powders" makes a little more sense the first time!
- "Quadrangle" omits some other lines of dialogue from "The Wall," including the information in this exchange (dialogue in italics is heard in "The Wall" only):
The wall's hollow, right Geoff?
GEOFFREY.
Yes. It is.
NED.
I helped Geoff and the Colonel put it up. Remember, Geoff? Matter of fact you finished it up alone, didn't you? Not long after the old fellow died.
GEOFFREY.
That's right. I finished the wall alone.
WHISTLER.
You want to scream the words, don't you, Geoffrey?
- The Whistler's final narration in "The Wall" includes the sentence "An accidental death, and in the sheriff's own words, you had absolutely nothing to do with it."—which sounds odd, because the sheriff didn't specifically say Geoffrey had nothing to do with it. The narration is rephrased to make more sense in "Quadrangle": "Aunt Agnes' death was an accidental one in the sheriff's own words. While you had planned to poison her with an overdose of sleeping powders, you had absolutely nothing to do with it."
Connections: Gendot's later script for 1951-07-01 "The House on Hainsley Boulevard" hearkens back to "The Wall." That story also involves a young man living in an old family home with his aunt, his uncle having walked out and disappeared eight years ago. In "The Wall," the protagonist is afraid to move away because he actually killed the Colonel and hid the body on the property; in "The House on Hainsley Boulevard," the protagonist suspects that his aunt is reluctant to move because she actually killed the Captain and hid the body on the property! He's apparently mistaken; this uncle presumably really did disappear of his own accord.
For another Adrian Gendot Whistler story involving the idea of preserving a landmark in order to conceal murder evidence, see 1951-11-25 "The Clay Tree."
And, going off on a tangent from that episode, see 1951-02-18 "Man in the Storm" for another Gendot story in which a man tries desperately to protect a piece of real estate, apparently from noble motives but really in order to prevent his own crimes from coming to light.
Additional listening: Other Whistler episodes in which the intended murder victim dies before consuming the poison given them by the protagonist include 1944-12-18 "Windfall" by Harold Swanton and 1951-09-16 "A Matter of Patience" by George Adrian and Carol Nicks.
See also 1950-04-16 "Murder in Mind" by Dick Anderson for another episode in which the intended murder victim dies accidentally and the protagonist fears being blamed.
