Whitfield Connor stars as an assistant district attorney who receives a visit just two hours before the burial of a wealthy widow who was a well-known artist. Her only child, a 23-year-old daughter, goes to the police to demand an autopsy be performed because her death was suspicious. The woman was believed to be the victim of a common heart attack after being diagnosed with cardiac issues for many years. The daughter had previously been hospitalized for mental illness, and that fact made people skeptical about the request. She insists that while she might be legally incompetent, she is sane enough to know her mother did not have a heart attack, and believes her doctor was the one who did it. The doctor seems to have unimpeachable credentials, and had even written about police forensics related to the heart. The assistant DA is suspicious, as something does not seem right, and delays the funeral. The medical examiner is requested to do an autopsy and finds something shocking that indicates a homicide, but they are not certain exactly how it was done. All of the people involved, especially the doctor and his wife, the father of the distressed daughter, are questioned before the grand jury meets. The title of the story is a clue. The father’s view of a clock in an art gallery when he picks up a dropped thimble belonging to the doctor’s wife is a key fact for the solution to the case. The killer and the motive for the murder are very surprising.
A thimble is a small pitted cup worn on the finger that protects a finger from being pricked or poked by a needle while pushing it into cloth.
The story was originally broadcast on Indictment 1956-03-04 and was written by Eleazar Lipsky and adapted by Allen Sloane.
No script can be found to identify the program recording date.
For many years, this program circulated in very low quality sound, and there are now two highly listenable recordings available. The network recording is an aircheck from WROW in Albany, New York. The Armed Forces Radio Service recording (AFRS#762) is the much better of the two. It has a rich, clean sound. The recording is new to circulation among hobbyists.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
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https://archive.org/details/TSP591122
THE CAST
Whitfield Connor (Morgan), Teri Keane (Miss O'Neill), Paul McGrath (Dr. Cypress), Joe de Santis (Detective Russell), Dan Ocko (Uncle), Maurice Tarplin (Dr. Wyman), Ruth Tobin (Miss Brady), Jane Rose (Mrs. Cypress)
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