Suspense - Radio’s Outstanding Theater of Thrills

The Light Switch

Originally Aired: May 12, 1949
Suspense #340, "The Light Switch," stars Claire Trevor as Mrs. John Winston, a wealthy banker's wife who makes a fateful decision to visit a run-down detective agency on East Main Street. Hiring the down-on-his-luck private investigator Skid Webb to follow her husband John, she insists nothing is wrong but simply wants to check on his late nights at work. When Webb reports back with evidence of another woman, their contentious relationship takes a dark turn. The bitter detective's cruel observations about her age and fading marriage strike a devastating nerve, pushing Mrs. Winston toward a desperate act.
As the episode unfolds, Mrs. Winston finds herself trapped in a gas-filled room, waiting for the voices in the hallway to disappear so she can escape. Through her increasingly dizzy recollections, she pieces together how her meeting with the insolent Skid Webb set everything in motion. She has rigged a light switch to spark at exactly 7:30, designed to blow up everything she despises in the world—yet also everything she loves. As the gas overwhelms her senses, time is running out.

Death Has a Shadow

Originally Aired: May 5, 1949
Suspense #339, "Death Has a Shadow," finds attorney Harvey Warren trapped in his office building late at night, waiting for a call that could save his life. Still reeling from his wife Lily's murder, Warren sits alone in his office when he receives an ominous phone call from a man named Bolster, who insists on picking up his money in person rather than having Warren mail it. The sudden change in plans convinces Warren that Bolster is coming to kill him.
Desperately, Warren tries to reach his friend Lieutenant Joe Scarponi, calling homicide detective Mike, Joe's hotel, and even Joe's girlfriend Madge, but the lieutenant is nowhere to be found. As the clock ticks toward the ten o'clock meeting, Warren's panic grows. He considers fleeing but discovers he's trapped on the eighth floor when he finds the stairwell gate locked. Every elevator movement and telephone ring sends his nerves into overdrive as he waits to discover whether Bolster will arrive before Joe can save him—or if Bolster's intentions are as deadly as Warren fears.

The Lie

Originally Aired: April 28, 1949
Suspense #338, "The Lie," starring Mickey Rooney, presents a twisted tale of murder and family dysfunction. Martin Delavan, a young man expelled from college for the third time, returns home to find his despised stepmother Glad dead on the bed with a broken neck. His father's telltale cigarette butts and newspaper suggest Dad came home early and discovered Glad on the phone with another man. Believing his long-suffering father finally snapped and killed the manipulative, unfaithful woman who tormented them both, Martin makes a desperate decision. He destroys the evidence, tears his own clothes, scratches his face with Glad's fingernails, and calls the police to confess to the murder himself.
But Lieutenant McTavish isn't buying Martin's story quite so easily. As the young man eagerly repeats his confession, the detective grows increasingly suspicious of how convenient and theatrical the whole scene appears. Martin insists he's guilty and demands to be taken downtown and booked, but the lieutenant wants to film a reenactment first. When McTavish's assistant discovers warm ashes from a burned newspaper in the kitchen stove, the investigation takes a new turn that threatens to unravel Martin's carefully constructed lie.

The Copper Tea Strainer

Originally Aired: April 21, 1949
Suspense #337, "The Copper Tea Strainer," stars Betty Grable as Jeannie Dunn, a thirty-year-old model working at photographer James Irwin's studio when a detective arrives asking pointed questions. The detective produces a gleaming copper tea strainer, and at the sight of it, Jeannie's carefully suppressed memories come flooding back. She lives with her invalid mother, preparing her breakfast each morning before leaving for work, always leaving a teacup with tea measured out and a strainer ready. As the detective spins the strainer between his fingers, asking repeatedly about her relationship with boyfriend Ted Wark and whether he gets along with her mother, Jeannie struggles to maintain her composure.
The detective's relentless questioning and the hypnotic sparkle of the tea strainer break through Jeannie's mental blocks. Everything she has managed to forget throughout the day suddenly becomes clear again. The photographer Irwin eagerly offers to cooperate with police, making him another threat to Jeannie as she realizes there is no escaping either her past or this persistent detective who seems to know far more than he reveals.

Murder in Black and White

Originally Aired: April 14, 1949
Suspense #336, "Murder in Black and White," stars Edmund Gwenn as Rice Archer, a meticulous murderer who has planned every detail of the perfect crime. The episode opens with Archer standing over his business partner Tom Hannigan's body, methodically consulting his notebook to ensure he's followed each step of his carefully orchestrated plan. From muffling the gunshot with a blanket to wiping down glasses and replacing items exactly where they belong, Archer moves through his checklist with chilling precision, confident that Tom's daughter Thomasina and her companion Clark won't discover the body until he's safely established his alibi.
Archer takes his usual evening walk and catches his regular weekly train to the city, checking into his hotel and going through his normal business routine. He expects to be notified of Tom's death at any moment, but as he makes his rounds and repeatedly checks for messages, nothing arrives. The morning paper contains no mention of the murder, and the hotel desk has no telegrams or calls waiting. As Archer continues to consult his notebook for every contingency, his perfectly planned murder begins to unravel in unexpected ways.

The Noose of Coincidence

Originally Aired: April 7, 1949
Suspense #335, "The Noose of Coincidence," Christopher Swan, a mild-mannered London bookseller, encounters a strange visitor to his shop—a man who shares his exact name and claims to be a mental telepathist and prophet. The mysterious Christopher Swan makes an unsettling prediction: the bookseller will soon marry a pretty, red-haired woman named Margaret. When this prophecy comes true within days, Swan's skepticism begins to waver. However, his marriage quickly sours as Margaret reveals herself to be a bitter, nagging shrew who resents his modest bookshop and covets his inherited fortune of 50,000 pounds.
Months later, the unhappy bookseller encounters the telepathist again at Hampstead Heath, where the prophet delivers a far more chilling prediction. After accurately recounting intimate details of Swan's life—details that couldn't be mere coincidence—the mysterious visitor foretells that on the morning of November 9th, Christopher Swan will be hanged by the neck until dead. As the fatal date approaches, Swan must grapple with whether this prophecy, like the first, will prove terrifyingly accurate.

You Can’t Die Twice

Originally Aired: March 31, 1949
Suspense #334, "You Can't Die Twice," stars Edward G. Robinson as Sam Brown, a struggling milkman whose mundane life takes a shocking turn on April Fool's Day. When police call to inform Sam's wife Katie that her husband has been killed by a hit-and-run driver on the Clinton Turnpike, the couple initially dismisses it as a cruel prank. But the news is confirmed on the radio, and they soon realize Sam's wallet was pickpocketed the night before. The body in the morgue, identified only by that wallet, belongs to someone else entirely.
Katie sees an opportunity too tempting to pass up: with Sam's life insurance policy offering twenty thousand dollars with double indemnity for accidental death, she proposes that Sam disappear to Chicago while she collects the money. Despite his moral reservations about the scheme, Sam reluctantly agrees under pressure from his desperate, money-hungry wife. What begins as a bizarre case of mistaken identity quickly transforms into a dangerous game of deception as the couple attempts to exploit a tragic accident for financial gain.

Dead Ernest

Originally Aired: March 24, 1949
Suspense #333, "Dead Ernest," stars Pat O'Brien in a harrowing tale of life and death hanging by a thread. Ernest Bowers, a 34-year-old man suffering from catalepsy, is struck by a car at a busy intersection. The accident appears minor—just a cut on the forehead—but Ernest's condition mimics death so convincingly that the ambulance doctor pronounces him dead at the scene. What no one realizes is that Ernest carries vital identification explaining his rare disease: a letter in his jacket pocket and a silver bracelet warning "Do not embalm me. I am not dead." But in the chaos following the accident, both items vanish from the scene.
Two young boys, Robert Manelli and Tommy Stoner, find the bracelet and melt it down to sell for baseball money, destroying the warning. Meanwhile, Honest Jerry Murdoch from a local swap shop picks up Ernest's blood-stained jacket and quickly sells it to an unsuspecting customer for five dollars. As Ernest lies in the hospital morgue, pronounced dead and headed for autopsy, his wife remains unreachable. With his identification gone and the clock ticking toward the moment doctors will begin their work, Ernest's only hope for survival slips further away with each passing minute.

Murder Through the Looking Glass

Originally Aired: March 17, 1949
Suspense #332, "Murder Through the Looking Glass," stars Gregory Peck as Jeffrey Bruno, a Greenwich Village mystery writer who awakens on a train to Philadelphia with no memory of how he got there. When Jeffrey checks his wallet, he's shocked to discover identification and personal effects belonging to someone named John Blake, an insurance agent he's never heard of. His confusion turns to terror when he spots a newspaper headline screaming "Killer Blake Escape!" alongside a photograph that appears to be his own face. Jeffrey has no recollection of the past three days or why he was traveling under another man's identity.
Racing back to New York, Jeffrey learns from his neighbor Rosalie that these unexplained disappearances have happened before—days when he vanishes completely and awakens with no memory of where he's been or what he's done. Now, with police hunting for a murderer who looks exactly like him and carries his face, Jeffrey must uncover the truth about John Blake and discover whether he's being framed for murder or if something far more sinister is happening during his mysterious blackouts.

Three O’Clock

Originally Aired: March 10, 1949
Suspense #331, "Three O'Clock," stars Van Heflin as Paul, a watch repairman consumed by jealousy who plants a bomb in his own basement, set to explode at three o'clock when his wife Francie returns from shopping. After wiring an alarm clock to a box of explosives, Paul heads back to his shop to establish an alibi. But before he can leave, two burglars break into the supposedly empty house. Duke and his partner discover Paul in the cellar and, despite his desperate attempts to warn them, tie him up and gag him before fleeing with their loot. Now Paul finds himself bound to a pipe in his own basement, helpless and alone, watching the clock tick toward three o'clock.
With over an hour until detonation, Paul frantically tries to free himself while wrestling with conflicting emotions about his wife. As the minutes slip away, he vacillates between justifying his murderous plot and desperately hoping Francie will return home early to save him. The irony of a watchmaker being at the mercy of time itself creates unbearable tension as Paul realizes the only people who knew his location have abandoned him to face the consequences of his own deadly scheme.