Herbert Marshall stars in a courtroom drama as the prosecutor attempting to convict a man of killing his wife. The husband testifies of a dream in which he is clutching a huge snake to avoid being bitten; he awakens from the dream to find he had just strangled his wife. Is he guilty of murder? The husband man has several excellent witnesses to bolster his story of the vivid nightmare. His sister recalls that he almost strangled her one night when they were children while under the spell of this very same dream. Another witness testifies that she narrowly escaped being strangled in the same manner after she and the defendant had fallen asleep while lounging on the beach. The prosecutor tries unsuccessfully to shake the stories of these defense witnesses. He is convinced that the defense is phony, that the husband committed premeditated murder. Marshall’s character sees his case crumbling before him, and the husband is found innocent. The wife’s brother is inconsolable with the verdict, yelling at the court about this miscarriage of justice.
The prosecutor persists after the trial, knowing he has an apparently impossible task of eventually proving the husband’s guilt. There is nothing he can find that can initiate another trial. He pieces some information and realizes the husband’s plot. He increased the value of the insurance policy on the wife. The husband was planning this for years, including the cultivating of a special witness who was also aware of “his dream.” He made anonymous monthly payments to her, using a pseudonym, continuing them as long as she agreed to keep the mysterious benefactor aware of her whereabouts. He knew he might possibly need her testimony in a trial, should it come to that, which it did.
The prosecutor never gets a chance to bring the murdering husband to justice. (Spoiler alert… mentioned here because the dialogue starting at 25:45 makes it easy miss as key details are delivered as mostly matter-of-fact without fanfare...) The husband seems to have jumped out of a hotel window in a suicide or an accident involving a broken balcony rail. It just so happens that the distraught brother of the murdered wife, happened to be staying in the room next door.
The story was by Michael Gilbert and was adapted by Antony Ellis. Gilbert was a lawyer in England who wrote on the train commuting back and forth. He was a very prolific and successful author. His legal and justice system background was often used in the stories, as was this one. He started writing professionally in 1947. This story was published in Britain in 1951, and was picked up in the January 1954 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine which is likely where Ellis (or Lewis or both) got the idea of adapting for Suspense. In print, Gilbert had a favorite character, Chief Inspector Hazelrigg, but the Ellis adaptation changed it to Marshall as the head of the prosecution’s case. Wikipedia has information about Gilbert’s life and career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gilbert
At 15:30 there is an exchange with Miss Mason where she is asked her age. It is an amusing exchange to modern ears. It fits in with the old politeness of “never asking a woman her age.”
The company highlighted in the Auto-Lite spot is Wyllis Motors. The company created the “Jeep,” is its main legacy after many financial problems, auto industry takeovers and ownership changes.
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THE CAST
HERBERT MARSHALL (Peyton), Joseph Kearns (MacCrae), Ben Wright (Edward Mason), William Johnstone (Inspector / Foreman), Herb Butterfield (Judge), Richard Peel (Hector Easterday / Riegel), Norma Varden (Miss Mason), Betty Harford (Amy Burke), Keith McConnell (Director of Prosecutions), Larry Thor (Narrator)
COMMERCIAL: Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Dorothy Collins? (Miss Drake)
GUEST FOR THE AUTO-LITE CHARITY PROMOTION: Mark H. Harrington, President of the National Tuberculosis Association thanks Auto-Lite for its spotlight on charitable causes. He had a long and distinguished legal career while serving in local and national capacities for charitable organizations in Colorado in the early years of his career and Connecticut in the later years. He developed a personal interest in tuberculosis because his wife contracted the disease in the mid-1930s. The association was famous for its “Christmas Seals” campaigns. As tuberculosis came under control, the organization revised its name to become the American Lung Association and all related diseases. He passed away in 1974.
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