The basic setup: A housewife's idea for catching a serial killer hits too close to home. This script was reused with minor changes for the 1946 Whistler summer series, and was reworked years later with a darker feel as Suspense 1961-09-24 "Man in the Fog."
The Whistler 1945-08-20 "X Marks the Murderer"Directed by George W. Allen
Story by Joseph Cochran, music by Wilbur Hatch
Announcer: Marvin Miller
Whistler: Marvin Miller (filling in while Bill Forman was in the service)
Cast (uncredited): Jack Moyles (Ben), Edmund MacDonald (Captain Shane), Charles Calvert (Patrolman / Sgt. Schmitt), Earle Ross (Police Commissioner / Plant Timekeeper), Sarah Selby or Adrienne Marden? (Mamie)
(Thanks, Karl Schadow and Keith Scott, for voice identification!)
The story: Mamie Kast chats with her husband Ben about the recent series of murders in the headlines: four women stabbed. The police think it's a working man, because the killings all occurred on weekends. The newspaper is offering a reward for any clue leading to the arrest and conviction of the monster. Ben seems put off by the word "monster," and is scornful that Mamie could have any idea about the killings. Mamie explains her theory: she marks the location of each killing on a map, forming a square. Theorizing that the killer lives near the middle of the square, she connects the opposite corners and finds that the diagonal lines cross right near their own block!
The next night, Wednesday, a woman is killed almost on the Kasts' doorstep. Ben comes home from the factory where he works nights, washes his hands, and asks for a drink of brandy—neither of which is his habit. He taunts Mamie about her fine theories: this time the killing didn't occur on a weekend, or far away in another direction.
Meanwhile, the police are getting desperate, and Detective Captain Shane asks his sergeant if, among all the screwball letters they've gotten, there's anything that he gave a second thought. The sergeant says Mamie's letter caught his attention because the day after it came in, the next murder took place within a hundred feet of the spot she'd indicated. Shane says he'll look into it when he has time.
Ben forgets his lunch box at home, and Mamie brings it to the factory for him. The timekeeper says Ben Kast didn't punch in tonight, and that he's missed work only once before—last Wednesday. When Ben gets home and starts washing his hands, Mamie offers him brandy and doesn't ask questions.
At the factory the next night, the timekeeper mentions Mamie's bringing Ben's lunch. Ben rushes home to confront Mamie, and overhears Captain Shane on his way out. When Ben demands to know what the police were doing there, Mamie says it was just routine. She didn't tell them he wasn't at work last Wednesday. It comes out that she knows. Ben picks up a knife, but Mamie convinces him that he needs her because only she can tell the police he was at home those nights. She can be his alibi.
Days later, a heavy fog rolls in and, despite Mamie's pleading, Ben is compelled to go out and strike again. Shane brings Ben in for questioning and lays out the circumstantial evidence against him. Ben says he has an alibi. Shane says Ben's alibi is worthless!
The twist: Shane explains that after questioning Mamie again he knew that she both feared Ben and loved him enough to protect him, and unless she broke down and helped the police, they'd never be able to prove Ben was guilty. Then Shane has Mamie brought in... on a stretcher. "Tonight she ran out after you, probably to try to stop you, and walked right into your trap. It was your wife you killed tonight, Mr. Kast."
Suspense, sixteen years later:
Suspense 1961-09-24 "The Man in the Fog" (at The Suspense Project here) has essentially the same sequence of events as "X Marks the Murderer" until the final scenes, and the main characters even have the same names. (It's a little funny that the announcer says the script was "written especially for Suspense by Joseph Cochran"!) The Suspense episode is set in England, the cops have different names, and the story has a new ending—but I think the most significant difference is that "The Man in the Fog" feels like a darker story than "X Marks the Murderer." It focuses more on the mind of the murderer, and I think is also a little more explicit about the nature of the crimes.
The opening narration of "X Marks the Murderer" says, in part:
It was a long series of murders which baffled and terrorized the city. Not only because of their fiendish quality, but because of their apparent lack of motive. I say apparent lack because you can't expect the police to find and recognize a motive deep in the mind of a man who simply enjoys killing, a man who rationalizes his feeling into a sort of righteous cause.The briefer announcement before the first act of "The Man in the Fog" also says the murders "are without pattern and apparently without motive." But by 1961, crime fiction audiences probably did expect the police to make use of psychology. The Suspense episode adds a new scene before the last murder in which the detective, Mr. Britt, discusses the killer's compulsion to strike again and even correctly links the murders to the weather; and has a new ending in which Britt uses his understanding of the killer's psychology to get a confession.
In this version, Mamie is not murdered, but goes to the police on the night of the last murder and asks them to take Ben in. Britt explains that Mamie can't testify against her husband (a legally dubious plot device), and he'll need a confession. Again he questions Ben and Ben says Mamie is his alibi. Britt expresses doubt about having a woman for an alibi, because of how sneaky and greedy women are. He pretends to confide in Ben: "I hate women too." Then Britt lets Ben see Mamie talking to the sergeant, apparently selling Ben out.
"X Marks the Murderer" ends on the revelation that Ben's alibi is broken, implying that he now has no choice but to confess. In "The Man in the Fog," Britt convinces Ben that he understands, and we actually get to hear Ben tell him about it. "...I could hear a soul wailing in the body of a woman, begging to be freed from the claws of the flesh, and then my hand would lift the knife, and in a minute the soul would be free. And then my head would stop hurting." Ben also talks about freeing souls in the scene with Mamie before the last murder, and calls it his "mission." These speeches expand on the "righteous cause" that the Whistler cynically posited in the earlier episode—in which the closest thing to an explanation of Ben's motive was his remark that the murder victims are "better off anyway. We'd all be."
"The Man in the Fog," even before the explicit misogyny in the final scene, is also much more persistent than the original Whistler episode in directing the listener's attention to the fact that these murders are specifically murders of women: "A man walks in the fog. And a woman dies." In "X Marks the Murderer," on the other hand, Mamie talks in the first scene about the victims having all been women, but the narration and dialogue tend to refer simply to "murders" or "killings," without giving much weight to the obvious pattern of the victims' gender.
For instance, in The Whistler, each of Mamie's four crosses "marks the place where a killing occurred," and she assumes the killer "goes out in a different direction from where he lives every time he wants to do away with somebody" because "it's just natural not to do something like that in front of his own house." In Suspense, each cross "marks the spot where a woman was killed, and Mamie assumes the killer "goes in a different direction each time" because "it stands to reason he's not going to kill a woman in front of his own house." The patrolman who finds the fifth victim in The Whistler says "Another one!" but doesn't specifically say anything to indicate gender (though we do hear later that a woman was killed); the patrolman in Suspense calls the victim "dearie" as he tries to wake her. There even seems to be a faint hint of the threat of sexual violence in the Suspense episode, when the timekeeper tells Mamie she ought to take the bus home: "You shouldn't be out alone in this fog, with that fellow still at large. I guess you know... what I mean."
A lost Whistler version:
Dr. Joe Webb has recently discovered a script for the Whistler summer series 1946-09-04 "Where the Lines Cross" by Joseph Cochran, of which no recording is known to survive. This script is almost identical to "X Marks the Murderer," with the main difference being some additional bits of dialogue—generally comparable in length to bits of dialogue that I've seen cut from other Whistler scripts. Dr. Webb points out that, since the Whistler summer series was a sustaining program, this additional dialogue may have been restored and/or added in order to fill the time taken up by commercials in the original Signal broadcast.
There's some brief additional action after the patrolman finds the fifth victim, including a woman screaming "It's him again. He's killed her. I can see her. It's a woman lying there and she's been stabbed." I think going straight from the patrolman's exclamation to Ben arriving home is more effective—but this scene would have put a little more emphasis on the killing-of-women angle.
The 1946 script also continues to develop the psychological elements that are prominent in the later Suspense episode. There's a little more dialogue between Ben and Mamie about Ben being compelled to go out in the fog, and there's some additional dialogue at the beginning of the interrogation scene in which Captain Shane explains that he's studied murderers like this and planned his interview accordingly. In the 1945 episode, Ben says, "Can't a man wash his hands when they need it?"—and in 1946, he then adds, "Can't he make himself clean without his wife yelling about it?" That phrase "make himself clean" is also heard in "The Man in the Fog."
In the 1945 episode, when Ben comes in after Shane leaves, Mamie exclaims, "Ben! You're home." The 1946 script has "You! You're home?" [underlining in original]. In 1945, the Whistler's narration after the last murder begins, "So the monster struck again. For the last time. You didn't know that, Ben, but it was for the last time." The 1946 script has, "So, Ben...you struck again. For the last time. You didn't know that...but it was for the last time."
In the 1946 script, we also learn that Ben is short for Ebenezer!
Further notes:
"X Marks the Murderer" is the first Whistler episode after Japan's surrender was announced on August 14, 1945, marking the end of World War Two. (Nowadays, we tend to think of the war as ending with the formal surrender on September 2.) The Signal commercial at the first break begins:
"Now it can be told!" is on everyone's lips these days, with all sorts of news breaking. For wartime security, American industry has had to maintain secrecy about many of its most amazing projects. For instance, Signal Oil Company, who brings you The Whistler each week, would like to have been able to tell you about Signal's new super-fuel as it was being developed. For during the last few years, petroleum chemists have found ways of completely changing the composition of gasoline, giving new performance undreamed of before the war. But the big news tonight is that soon these ingredients that have been helping us win the war will be in a new Signal gasoline!
The commercial at the second break says, "Where are you going? I mean, with that unlimited supply of gasoline you can enjoy from now on," but warns that you'll still have to make your current tires last a while longer.
The Whistler's narration in this 1945 episode is moving towards the familiar pattern of later years: setting the scene in third person past tense, and then narrating most of the episode in second person present tense. One striking difference from this later pattern is that instead of addressing one main character throughout, he switches to a different main character about halfway through! "Yes, Mamie. Now you're beginning to understand. And you know your plan was too good. Too good. But what about you, Ben, what are you thinking?"
There are other Whistler episodes from this era that address multiple characters, or that switch back and forth between second and third person; earlier Whistler episodes are also more likely to address the listener, and some early episodes are narrated almost entirely in third person. I hope to do at least one general post in the future about the different modes of narration on The Whistler.
Whistler episodes reused on other programs often replaced the Whistler's narration with more conventional first-person or third-person narration. "The Man in the Fog" omits the narration entirely and bridges the scenes with eerie music. This makes for some abrupt transitions, like going straight from Britt's "We'll have to make a routine call on Mrs. Kast" to Mamie's "Are you the timekeeper?", but the slighly disjointed feel works well with the sense of Ben's mental "fog" that pervades the episode.
Additional listening:
1945-06-25 "Death Watch" is another Whistler episode by Joseph Cochran involving a murderer with a compulsion—in this case, the compulsion to return to the scene of the crime—and a detective who plans to play upon the psychology of the murderer. (And, like "X Marks the Murderer," this episode also has Earle Ross as the detective's boss and Charles Calvert as his sidekick.)
See 1946-03-11 "Boomerang", based on a story by Nancy and Alfred Seel, for another story in which a woman apparently suspects her husband of being a serial killer.
