His Brother Hired His Doppelganger to Kill Him

When Tony Marvel returns home from an eight-month voyage to discover he's been declared dead and finds his own corpse in his bed, he realizes his brother's perfect murder plot has gone terribly wrong—but the true horror is discovering who has been protecting him all along.

IN THIS EPISODE: We dive back into one of the Alfred Hitchcock books I have on my shelves titled, “My Favorites In Suspense.” The story is from Carter Dickson entitled, “New Murders For Old” which is a great macabre mystery.

SOURCES and RESOURCES:“New Murders For Old” by Carter Dickson is from the book “Alfred Hitchcock Presents: My Favorites In Suspense”: https://amzn.to/3gTAAFU

=====(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.=====Originally aired: June, 2021
EPISODE PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/NewMurdersForOld
ABOUT WEIRD DARKNESS: Weird Darkness is a true crime and paranormal podcast narrated by professional award-winning voice actor, Darren Marlar. Seven days per week, Weird Darkness focuses on all thing strange and macabre such as haunted locations, unsolved mysteries, true ghost stories, supernatural manifestations, urban legends, unsolved or cold case murders, conspiracy theories, and more. On Thursdays, this scary stories podcast features horror fiction along with the occasional creepypasta. Weird Darkness has been named one of the “Best 20 Storytellers in Podcasting” by Podcast Business Journal. Listeners have described the show as a cross between “Coast to Coast” with Art Bell, “The Twilight Zone” with Rod Serling, “Unsolved Mysteries” with Robert Stack, and “In Search Of” with Leonard Nimoy.DISCLAIMER: Ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. *** Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised.
#WeirdDarkness #NewMurdersForOld #DoppelgangerMurder #CarterDickson #ImpossibleCrime #LockedRoomMystery #SupernaturalRevenge #PerfectMurder #ClassicMystery #GoldenAgeDetective

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marler, and this is Weird Darkness.
Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore,
the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained.

(00:28):
This time we dive back into one of the Alfred
Hitchcock books I have on my shelves, titled My Favorites
in Suspense. The story is from Carter Dixon entitled New
Murders for Old, which is a great macab mystery. Now
bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights,

(00:48):
and come with me into the weird darkness. Hargraves did
not speak until he had turned on two lamps. Even then,
he did not remove his overcoat. The room, though cold,

(01:09):
was stuffy and held a faintly sweet odor. Outside the
Venetian blinds, which were not quite closed, you saw the restless,
shifting presence of snow past street lights. For the first time.
Hargraves hesitated the object, he explained, indicating the bed was there.

(01:30):
He came in by this door here. Perhaps you understand
a little better now, hargraves companion nodded. No, said Hargraves,
and smiled, I'm not trying to invoke illusions. On the contrary,
I'm trying to dispel them. Shall we go downstairs? It
was a tall, heavy house where no clocks ticked, but

(01:53):
the treads of the stairs creaked and cracked sharply even
under their padding of carpet. At the back kind of
small study, a gas fire had been lighted. It's hissing
could be heard from a distance. It roared up blue
like solid blue flames into the white fretwork of the heater,
but it did little to dispel the child of the room.

(02:14):
Har Greaves motioned his companion to a chair at the
other side of the fire. I want to tell you
about it, he went on. Don't think I'm trying to
be His wrist hesitated over a word, as though over
a chest piece a highbrow. Don't think I'm trying to
be highbrow. If I tell it to you again, his
wrist hesitated objectively, as though you knew nothing about it,

(02:39):
as though you weren't concerned in it. It's the only
way you'll understand the problem he had to face. Our
Graves was very intent when he said this. He was
bending forward, looking up from under his eyebrows, his heavy
overcoat flopped over the sides of his knees, and his
gloved hands seldom still either made a slight gesture or

(03:00):
crest flat on his knees. Take Tony Marvel, to begin with,
he argued, a good fellow whom everybody liked. Not a
good businessman, perhaps too generous to be a good businessman,
but as conscientious as the very devil, and was so
fine a mathematical brain that he got over the practical difficulties.

(03:20):
Tony was senior wrangler at Cambridge and intended to go
on with his mathematics. But then his uncle died, so
he had to take over the business. You know what
the business was then, three luxury hotels built, equipped and
run by Old Jim the uncle, in Old Jim's most
flamboyant style, all going to wreck and ruin. Everybody said

(03:42):
it was madness for Tony to push his shoulder up
against the business world. His brother bets Stephen Marvel, the
former surgeon, said Tony would only bring Old Jim's cardhouses
down on everybody and swamp them all with more debts.
But you know what happened twenty five Tony took over
the business. At twenty seven, he had the hotels on

(04:03):
a paying basis at thirty. They were hotels to which
everybody went, as a matter of course, blazing their sky signs,
humming with efficiency, piling up profits, which startled even Tony,
and all because he sneered the idea that there could
be any such thing as over work. He never let up.

(04:24):
You can imagine that dogged expression of his. Well, I
don't like this work, but let's clean it up satisfactorily
so that we can get on the more important things.
Or like his studies. He did it partly because he
had promised Old Jimmy Wood, and partly because you see,
he thought the business is so unimportant that he wanted

(04:46):
to show how easy it was. But it wasn't easy.
No man could stand to that pace London, Brighton, Eastbourne.
He knew everything there was to know about the Marvel hotels,
down to the price of a pillowcase and the cost
of Greece for the lifts. At the end of the
fifth year, he collapsed one morning in his office. His

(05:09):
brother Stephen told him what he had to do. You're
getting out of this, Stephen said, You're going clear away
round the world anywhere. But for six or eight months
at the shortest time. During that time, you're not even
so much as to think of your work, is not clear.
Tony told me the story himself last night. He says
that the whole thing might have never have happened if

(05:30):
he'd not been forbidden to write to anybody while he
was away, not even so much as a postcard, snapped
Stephen to anybody, If you do, it'll be more business,
and then God help you. But Judith, Tony protested, particularly
to Judith, said Stephen, if you insist on marrying your secretary,
that's your affair. But you don't ruin your rest cure

(05:52):
by exchanging long letters about the hotels. You can imagine
Stephen's over aristocratic, thin nosed faith towering over him, dull
with anger. He can imagine Stephen in his black coat
and striped trousers, standing up beside the polished desk of
his office in Harley Street. Stephen Marvel, and to a
certain extent, Tony two, had that overbred air which old

(06:16):
Jim Marvel had always wanted and never achieved. Tony did
not argue he was willing enough because he was tired.
Even if he were forbidden to write to Judith. He
could always think about her. In the middle of September,
more than eight months ago, he sailed by the Queen
Anne from Southampton, and on that night the terrors began.

(06:40):
Hargraves paused the gas fire still hissed in a little
dim study. You would have known that this was a
house in which death had occurred, and occurred recently, by
the look on the face of hargraves companion. He went on.
The Queen Anne sailed at midnight. Tony saw her soaring
up above the docks, as high as the sky. He

(07:02):
saw the long decks, white and shiny, like shoe boxes,
gleaming under skins of lights. He saw the black dots
of passengers moving along them. He heard the click, rattle
rush of winches as great cranes swung over the crowd
on the docks, and evoked the queer, pleasurable, restless feeling
which stirs the nerves at the beginning of an ocean voyage.

(07:25):
At first he was as excited as a schoolboy. Stephen
Marvel and Judith Gates, Tony's fiance, went down to Southampton
with him. Afterwards, he recalled talking to Judith, holding her arm,
piloting her through the rubbery smelling passages of the ship.
To show her how fine it was, they went to
Tony's cabin, where his luggage had been piled together with

(07:47):
the basket of fruit. Everybody agreed this was a fine cabin.
It was not until a few minutes before the all
asure gong that the first pang of loneliness struck him.
And Judith had already gone ashore for all of them
disliked these awkward last minute leave takings. They were standing
on the docks far below. By leaning over the rail

(08:10):
of the ship, he could just see them. Judith's face
was tiny, remote and smiling, infinitely loved. She was waving
to him. Round him surged the crowd, faces, hats, noise
under naked lights, accentuating the break with home and the
water that would widen between. Next he heard the gong

(08:31):
begin to bang, hollow, quivering, pulsing to loudness over the
cry all ashore, that going ashore and dying away into
the ship. He did not want to go. There was
still plenty of time. He could still gather up his
luggage and get off. For a time, he stood by
the rail, with the breeze from Southampton water in his face,

(08:53):
such a notion was foolish. He would stay for the
last wave to Judith and Stephen. He drew himself determinedly away.
He would be sensible. He go below and unpack his things.
Feeling the onreality of that hollow night. He went down
to his cabin on sea deck, and his luggage was

(09:13):
not there. He started round the stuffy cabins with its
neat curtains at the portholes. There had been a trunk
and two suitcases, gaudily labeled, to say nothing of the
basket of fruit. Now the cabin was empty. Tony ran
upstairs again to the purser's office. The purser, a harassed
man behind a kind of ticket window desk, was just

(09:34):
getting rid of a clamoring crowd in the intervals of
striking a handbell and calling order. As he caught Tony's
eye my luggage. Tony said, that's all right, mister Marvel,
said the harassed official. It's been taken ashore, but you'd
better hurry yourself. Tony had here only a feeling of
extreme stupidity. Take it ashore, he said, But why who

(09:56):
told you to send it ashore? Why you did, said
the purser, looking up suddenly from a sheet of names
and figures. Tony only looked at him. You came here,
the purser went on, with sharply narrowing eyes. Not ten
minutes ago, he said, you decided not to take the
trip and asked for your luggage to be taken off.
I told you that at this date we could not,

(10:18):
of course, refound the get it back, said Tony. His
own voice sounded wrong. I couldn't have told you that.
Get it back just as you like, sir, said the purser,
smiting on the bell, if there's time. Overhead, the hoarse
blast of the whistle that mournfullest of all sounds. Sea
beat out against Southampton water b deck between open doors

(10:42):
was cold and gusty. Now Tony Marvel had not the
slightest recollection of having spoken to the purser before. That
was what struck him between the eyes like a blow,
and what for the moment almost drove him to run
away from the Queen Anne before they should lift the gangplank.
It was the nightmare again. One of the worst features
of his nervous breakdown had been the conviction, coming in

(11:05):
flashes at night, that he was not real any longer
that his body and his inner self had moved apart
the first walking or talking in everyday life like in
articulate dummy, while the brain remained in another place. It
was as though he were dead, and seeing his body
move dead. To steady his wits, he tried to concentrate

(11:29):
on familiar human things. Judith, for instance, he recalled Judith's
hazel eyes, the soft line of her cheek as she
turned her head, the paper cuffs she wore at the office.
Judith his fiancee, his secretary, who would take care of
things while he was away, whom he loved, and who
was so maddeningly close even now. But he must not

(11:53):
think of Judith. Instead, he pictured his brother Stephen, and
Johnny Cleaver, and any other friends who occurred to him.
He even thought of old Jim Marvel, who was dead
and so strong is the power of imaginative visualization. At
that moment, in the breezy lounge room facing the Purser's office,
he thought he saw old Jim looking at him around

(12:13):
the corner of a potted palm. All this, you understand,
went through Tony's mind in the brief second while he
heard the ship's whistle hoot out over his head. He
made some excuse to the purser and went below. He
was grateful for the chatter of noise for the people
passing up and down below decks. None of them paid
any attention to him, but at least they were there.

(12:35):
But when he opened the door of his cabin, he
stopped and stood very still in the doorway. The propellers
had begun to churn. A throb, A heavy vibration shook
upwards through the ship. It made the tooth glass tinkle
in the rack and sent a series of creaks through
the bulkheads. The Queen Anne was moving. Tony Marvel took

(12:58):
hold of the door. That movement had been a lurch,
and he stared at the bed. Across the cabin, on
the white bedspread, where it had not been before, lay
an automatic pistol. The gas fire had heated its asbestos
pillars to glowing red again. There was a brief silence
in the little study of the house in Saint John's Wood. Hargraves,

(13:20):
Sir Charles Hargraves, Assistant Commissioner of Police for the Criminal
Investigation Department, leaned down and lowered the flame of the heater.
Even the tone of his voice seemed to change when
the gas ceased its loud hissing. Wait, he said, lifting
his hand, I don't want you to get the wrong impression.
Don't think that the fear that the slow approach of

(13:42):
what was going to happen pursued Tony all through his
trip around the world. It didn't. That's the most curious
part of the whole affair. Tony had told me that
it was a brief, bad bout, lasting perhaps fifteen minutes
in all, just before and just after the Queen Anne sailed.
It was not alone the uncanny feeling that things had

(14:03):
ceased to be real. It was a sensation of active malignancy,
of hatred, of danger, of what you like, surrounding him
and pressing on him. He could feel it, like a
weak current from a battery. The five minutes after the
ship had headed out to open sea, every such notion
fell away from him. It was as though he had

(14:24):
emerged out of an evil fog. That hardly seemed reasonable.
Even supposing that there are evil emanations or evil spirits,
it's difficult to think that they are confined to one country,
that their tentacles are broken by half a mile's distance
that they cannot cross water. Yet there It was one moment.

(14:45):
He was standing there with the automatic pistol in his hand,
the noise of the engines beating in his ears, and
a horrible impulse joggling his elbow to put the muzzle
of the pistol into his mouth, and then snap, something broke.
It's the only way he can describe it. He stood upright.
He felt like a man coming out of a fever,
shaken and sweating, but back from behind the curtain into

(15:07):
the real world again. He gulped deep breaths. He went
to the porthole and opened it. From that time on,
he says, he began to get well. How the automatic
had got into his cabin, he did not know. He
knew he must have brought it himself in one of
those blind flashes, but he could not remember. He stared

(15:27):
at it with new eyes and new feeling of the
beauty and sweetness of life. He felt as though he
had been reprieved from execution. You might have thought that
he would have flung the pistol overboard and sheer fear
of touching it, but he didn't. To him, it was
part of a puzzle. He stared much at it, but
Browning thirty eight, the Belgian manufacture fully loaded. After the

(15:52):
first few days, when he did keep it locked away,
out of sight in his trunk, he pondered over it.
It represented the one piece of evidence he could carry
back home with him, the one tangible reality. In a
nightmare at the New York Customs shed. It seemed to
excite no surprise. He carried it over land with him Cleveland, Chicago,

(16:13):
Salt Lake City, to San Francisco in a fog, and
then down the kindled Sea to Honolulu and Yokohama. They
were going to take it away from him. Only a
huge bribe retrieved it. Afterwards, he carried it on his
person and was never searched. As the broken bones of
his nerves knitted as in the wash of the propellers,

(16:34):
there was peace. It became a kind of mascot. It
went with him through the blistering heat of the Indian
Ocean into the murky red Sea, to the Mediterranean, to
Port Sade, to Cairo in early winter, to Naples and
Marseille and Gibraltar. It was stucked away in his hip
pocket on the bitter cold night. A little more than

(16:55):
eight months after his departure, when Tony Marvel, a hee
old man again landed back at Southampton in the SS
Chippenham Castle. It was snowing that night, you remember. The
boat train roared through thickening snow. It was crowded and
the heat would not work. Tony knew that there could
be nobody at Southampton to meet him. His itinerary had

(17:16):
been laid out in advance, and he had stuck to
the bitter letter of his instructions about not writing even
so much as a postcard. But he had altered the
itinerary so as to take a ship that would get
him home in time for Christmas. He'd burst in on
them a week early. For eight months he'd lived in
a void. In an hour or two, he'd be home.

(17:39):
He'd see Judith again. In the dimly lighted compartment of
the train. His fellow passengers were not talkative. The long
voyage had squeezed to their conversation dry. They almost hated
each other. Even the snow roused only a flicker of enthusiasm.
Real old fashioned Christmas, said one set another, appreciatively scratching

(18:02):
it with his fingernails at the frosted window. Damn cold,
I call it snarled a third. Can't they ever make
the heat work in these trains? I'm damn we'll gonna
make a complaint After that, With a sympathetic grunt or mutter,
each retired behind his newspaper, a white blank wall which
rustled occasionally, and behind which they drank up news of home.

(18:25):
In other words, Tony remembers that he thought then he
was in England again. He was home for himself. He
only pretended to read. He leaned back in his seat,
listening vaguely to the clackety roar of the wheels and
the long blast of the whistle that was torn behind
as the train gathered speed. He knew exactly what he

(18:45):
would do. He would be barely ten o'clock when they
reached Waterloo. He would jump into a cab and hurry
home to this house for a wash and brush up.
Then he would pelt up to Judas Flat at Hampstead
as hard as he could go. Yet this thought, which
should have made him glow, left him curiously chilly round
the heart. He fought the chill, He laughed at himself. Determinedly.

(19:10):
He opened the newspaper, distracting himself, turning from page to page,
running his eye down each column. Then he stopped. Something
familiar caught his eye, some familiar name. It was an
obscure item on a middle page. He was reading in
this paper the news of his own death. Just that,

(19:31):
mister Anthony Dean Marvel of Upper Avenue Road, Saint John's Wood,
an owner of Marvel Hotels Limited, was found shot dead
last night in his bedroom at home. A bullet had
penetrated up through the roof of the mouth into the brain,
and a small caliber automatic was in his hand. The
body was found by missus Reach, mister Marvel's housekeeper, who

(19:52):
a suicide. And once again, as suddenly as it had
left him aboard the ship, the grasp fell on him,
shut him off from the real world into the unreal.
The compartment, as I told you, was very dimly lighted,
so it was perhaps natural that he could only dimly
see a blank wall of upheld newspapers facing him, as
though there were no fellow passengers there, as though they

(20:15):
had deserted him in a body, leaving only the screens
of paper that jogged a little with the rush of
the train. Yes, he was alone. He got out blindly
dragging open the door of the compartment to get out
into the corridor. The confined space seemed to be choking him.
Holding his own newspaper up high so as to catch
the light from the compartment, he read the item again.

(20:38):
There could be no possibility of a mistake. The account
was too detailed. It told all about him, his past
and present. His brother, mister Stephen Marvel, the eminent Harley
Street surgeon, was hurriedly summoned his fiancee, Miss Judith Gates.
It's understood that in September mister Marvel suffered a nervous breakdown,

(20:59):
from which which even a long rest had not affected
a cure. Tony looked at the date of the newspaper,
afraid of what he might see. But it was the
date of that day, the twenty third of December. From
this account, it appeared that he had shot himself forty
eight hours before, and the gun was in his hip pocket.

(21:20):
Now Tony folded up the newspaper. The train moved under
his feet with a dancing sway, jerking above the click
of the wheels, and another thin blast to the whistle
went by. It reminded him of the whistle aboard the
Queen Anne. He glanced along the dusty corridor. It was
empty except for someone whom he supposed to be another passenger,

(21:41):
leaning elbows on the rail, past the windows and staring
out at the flying snow. He remembers nothing else until
the train reached Waterloo, but something and an impression, a
subconscious memory, registered in his mind about that passenger he
had seen in the corridor. First it had to do
with the shape of the person's shoulders. Then Tony realized

(22:04):
that this was because the person was wearing a great
coat with an old fashioned brown fur collar. He was
jumping blindly out of the train at Waterloo when he
remembered that old Jim Marvel always used to wear such
a collar. After that, he seemed to see it everywhere.
When he hurried up to the guard's van to claim
his trunk and suitcases the luggage ticket in his hand,

(22:24):
he was in such a crowd that he could not
move his arms, but he thought he felt brown fur
pressed the back of his shoulders. The porter got him
a taxi. He was a relief to see a London
cab again and a coughing London terminus, and hear the
bump of the trunk as it went up under the strap,
and friendly voices again. He gave the address to the driver,
tipped the porter, and jumped inside. Even so, the porter

(22:47):
seemed to be holding open the door of the taxi
longer than was necessary. Close it, man, Tony found himself
shouting close it quick, yes, sir, said the porter, jumping back.
The door slammed. As the porter stood and stared after
the taxi, Tony, glancing out the little back window, saw
him still standing there. It was dark in the cab

(23:09):
and as close as though a photographer's black hood had
been drawn over him. Tony could see little, but he
carefully felt with his hands all over the seat, all
over the open space, and he found nothing. At this
point in the story, Hargraves broke off for a moment
or two. Our story, New Murders for Old by Carter Dixon,

(23:35):
will continue when weird darkness returns. At this point in
the story, Hargraves broke off for a moment or two,

(23:59):
even speaking with difficulty, not as though he expected to
be doubted, but as though the right words were hard
to find. His gloved fingers opened and closed on his knee,
but the first time his companion missed, Judith Gates interrupted him.
Judith spoke from the shadow on the other side of
the gas fire. Wait, she said, Please, Yes, said harg Graves,

(24:23):
this person who was following Tony. She spoke, also with difficulty.
You aren't telling me that it was, well, was was what? Dead?
Said Judith. I don't know who it was, answered Hargraves,
looking at her steadily, except that it seemed to be

(24:44):
somebody with a fur collar on his coat. I'm telling
you Tony's story, which I believe. Judath's hand shaded her eyes.
All the same, she insisted, and her pleasant voice went high.
Even supposing it was I mean, even supposing it was
the person you think he of all people living or dead,
wouldn't have tried to put any evil influence around Tony.

(25:06):
Old Jim loved Tony. He left Tony every penny he
owned and not a farthing to Stephen. He always told
Tony he'd look after him, and so he did. Saw
at Hargraves, But you see, Hargraves told her slowly, You
still don't understand the source of the evil influence. Tony
didn't himself. All he knew was that he was bowling

(25:29):
along in a dark taxi through slippery, snowy streets, and
whatever might be following him, good or bad, he couldn't
endure it. Even so, everything might have ended well if
the taxi driver had been careful, but he wasn't. That
was the first snowfall of the year, and the driver miscalculated.
When they were only two hundred yards from Upper Avenue Road.

(25:51):
He tried to take a turn too fast. Tony felt
the helpless swing of the skid. He saw the glass
partition tilt and a black treach rock rush up huge
at them until it exploded against the outer wind screen.
It landed upright against the tree with a buckled wheel.
I had to swerve. The driver was crying. I had to,

(26:12):
And an old jet with a collar walked smack out
in front of me. And so you see, Tony had
to walk home alone. He knew something was following him
before he had taken half a dozen steps. Two hundred
yards don't sound like a great distance. First right, first left, man,
you're home. But here it seemed to stretch out interminably,

(26:33):
as such things do in dreams. He did not want
to leave the taxi driver. The driver thought this was
because Tony doubted his honesty about bringing the luggage on
when the wheel was repaired, But it was not that.
For the first part of the way, Tony walked rapidly,
the other thing walked at an equal pace behind him.
By the light of a tree lamp, Tony could see

(26:55):
the wet fur collar on the coat, but nothing else. Afterwards,
he increased his pace to what was almost a run,
and though no difference could be seen in the gate
of what was behind him, it was still there. Unlike you,
Tony didn't wonder whether it might be good or evil.
These nice differences don't occur to you when you're dealing
with something that may be dead. All he knew was

(27:18):
that he mustn't let it identify itself with him, or
he was done for. Then it began to gain on him,
and he ran. The pavement was black, the snow dirty gray.
He saw the familiar turning where the front gardens were
built up above the low stone walls. He saw the
street sign fastened to one of those corners, white lettering

(27:41):
on black, and in sudden blind panic, he plunged for
the steps that led up to his home. The house
was dark. He got the cold keys out of his pocket,
but the keyring slipped around his fingers like soap and
bath water, and fell on the tiled floor of the vestibule.
He groped after it in the dark, just as the

(28:02):
thing turned in at the gate. In fact, Tony heard
the gate creak. He found the keys, found the lock
by a miracle, and opened the door. But he was
too late because the other thing was already coming up
the front steps. Tony says that at that close range
against the street lamp, the fur collar looked more wet
and moth eaten. That's all he can describe. He was

(28:24):
in a dark hall with the door open. Even familiar
things had fled his wits, and he could not remember
the position of the light switch. The other person walked
in in his hip pocket, Tony remembered he still had
the weapon he had carried round the world. He fumbled
under his overcoat to get the gun out of his pocket,
but even that weak gesture was no good to him,

(28:45):
for he dropped the gun on the carpet. Since the
visitor was now within six feet of him, he did
not stop. He bolted up the stairs. At the top
of the stairs, he risked a short glance down the
other thing had stopped. In faint bluish patches of light
which came through the open front door, Tony could see
that it was stooping down to pick up the automatic
pistol from the carpet. Tony thinks now that he began

(29:09):
to switch on lights in the upper hall. Also, he
shouted something. He was standing before the door of his bedroom.
He threw open his door, blundered in, and began to
turn on more lamps. He had got two lamps lighted
before he turned to look at the bed, which was occupied.
The man on the bed did not, however, sit up
at the coming noise or lights. A sheet covered him

(29:32):
from head to feet, and even under the outline of
the sheet you could trace the line of the wasted,
sunken features. Tony Marvel then did what was perhaps the
most courageous act of his life. He had to know.
He walked across and turned down the upper edge of
the sheet and looked down at his own face. A

(29:52):
dead face turned sightlessly up from the bed. Shock, yes,
but more terror, no, for this dead man was real.
He was flesh and blood as Tony was flesh and blood.
He looked exactly like Tony, but it was now no
question of a real world and an unreal world. It

(30:15):
was no question of going mad. This man was real,
and that meant fraud and imposture. A voice from across
the room said, so you're alive, and Tony turned around
to find his brother Stephen looking at him from the doorway.
Stephen wore a red dressing gown hastily pulled around him,
and his hair was tussled. His face was one of collapse.

(30:37):
I didn't mean to do it, Stephen was crying out
at him, Even though Tony did not understand. He felt
that the words were a confession of guilt. They were
babbling words, words which made you pity the man who
said them. I never really meant to have you killed
aboard that ship, said Stephen. It was all a joke.
You know I wouldn't have hurt you. You know that.
You know that. Don't you listen now? Stephen, as I said,

(31:01):
was standing in the doorway, clutching his dressing gown round him.
What made him look round towards the hall behind quickly?
Tony did not know. Perhaps he heard a sound behind him,
perhaps he saw something out of the corner of his eye,
But Stephen did look around and he began to scream.
Tony saw no more, for the lights in the hall
went out. The fear was back on him again, and

(31:21):
he could not move, for he saw a hand. It
was only so to speak, the flicker of a hand.
This hand darted in from the darkness out in the hall.
It caught hold of the knob on the bedroom door
and closed the door. It turned a key on the outside,
locking Tony into the room. It kept Stephen outside in
the dark hall. And Stephen was still screaming. A good

(31:43):
thing too, that Tony had been locked in the room.
That saved trouble with the police afterwards. The rest of
the testimony comes from missus Reach, the housekeeper. Her room
was next door to Steven's bedroom at the end of
the upstairs hall. Awakened by screams, by what seemed to
be thrashing sounds and the noise of hard breathing. The

(32:05):
sounds passed her door towards Stephen's room. Just as she
was getting out of her bed and putting on a
dressing gown, she heard Stephen's door close. Just as she
set out into the hall. She heard, for the second
time in forty eight hours, the noise of a pistol shot. Now,
missus Reach will testify in a coroner's court that nobody
left or could have left Stephen's room after the shot.

(32:29):
She was looking at the door, though it was several
minutes before she could screw up enough courage to open
the door. When she did open it, all sounds had ceased.
He'd been shot through the right temple at close range,
presumably by himself, since the weapon was discovered in a
tangle of stained bedclothing. There was nobody else in the room,

(32:50):
and all the windows were locked on the inside. The
only other thing missus Reach noticed was an unpleasant and
intensely unpleasant smell of mildewed cloth and at fur. Again,
Hargraves paused. It seemed that he had come to the
end of the story. An outsider might have thought, too,

(33:10):
that he'd emphasized these horrors too much. For the girl
across from him kept her hands pressed against her eyes.
But Hargraves knew his business well. He said, gently, you
see the explanation, don't you. Judith took her hands away
from her eyes. Explanation, the natural explanation, repeated Hargraves, spacing

(33:34):
his words. Tony Marvel is not going mad. He never
had any brainstorms or blind flashes. He only thought he had.
The whole thing was a cruel and murderous fake engineered
by Stephen, and it went wrong. But if it had succeeded,
Stephen Marvel would have committed a very nearly perfect murder.

(33:58):
The relief he saw flash across Judith's face, the sudden,
dazed catching at hope, went to Hardgrave's heart, but he
did not show this. Let's go back eight months he
went on and take it from the beginning. Now, Tony
is a very wealthy young man. The distinguished Stephen, on
the other hand, was swamped with debts and always on

(34:20):
a thin edge of bankruptcy. If Tony were to die, Stephen,
the next of Ken, would inherit the whole estate. So
Stephen decided that Tony had to die. But Stephen, a
medical man, knew the risks of murder. No matter how
cleverly you plan it, there is always some suspicion, and
Stephen was bound to be suspected. He was unwilling to

(34:43):
risk those prying detectives, those awkward questions, those damning post
mortem reports. Until more than eight months ago he suddenly
saw he could destroy Tony without the smallest suspicion attaching
to himself. In Saint Jude's Hospital, where he did some
charity work, Stephen had found a broken down ex schoolmaster
named Rupert Hayes. Every man in this world, they say,

(35:06):
has his exact double. Hayes was Tony's double to the
slightest feature. He was, in fact, so uncannily like Tony
at the very sight of him made Stephen flinch. Now
Hayes was dying of tuberculosis, he had added most not
more than a year to live, he'd be eager to

(35:27):
listen to any scheme which would allow him to spend
the rest of his life in luxury and die of
natural causes in a soft bed. To him, Stephen explained
the trick. Tony should be ordered off, apparently on a
trip around the world. On the night he was to sail.
Tony should be allowed to go aboard. Hayes should be

(35:47):
waiting aboard that same ship with a gun in his
pocket after Stephen or any other friends had left the
ship conveniently early. Hayes should entice Tony up to the
dark boat deck. Then he was to shoot Tony through
the head and drop the body overboard. Haven't you ever
realized that a giant ocean liner just before at leavesport

(36:08):
is the ideal place to commit a murder. Not a
soul will remember you afterwards. The passengers notice nothing, they're
too excited. The crew notice nothing, they're kept too busy.
The confusion of the crowd is intense. And what happens
to your victim after he goes overboard? He'll be sucked
under and presently caught by the terrible propellers to make

(36:29):
him unrecognizable. When a body is found, if it is
found at all, it will be presumed to be some
doc roysterer. Certainly it will never be connected with the
ocean liner, because there'll be nobody missing from the liner's
passenger list. Missing from the passenger list, of course, not Hay,
as you see, was to go to the purser and

(36:50):
order Tony's luggage to be sent ashore. He was to
say he was canceling the trip and not going after all.
After killing Tony. He was then to walk shure as
the girl uttered an exclamation, Hargray has nodded, you see
it now? He was to walk ashore as Tony. He
was to say to his friends that he couldn't face

(37:12):
the journey after all, and everybody would be happy. Why
not the real Tony was within an ace of doing
just that. Then Hayes, well coached, would simply settle down
to play the part of Tony for the rest of
his natural life. Mark that his natural life a year
at most. He'd be too ill to attend to the business.

(37:35):
Of course, he wouldn't even see you as fiance too often.
If ever, he made any bad slips, that of course
would be his bad nerves. He would be allowed to
develop lung trouble at the end of the year. The
mid sorrowing friends. Stephen had planned brilliantly murder. What do

(37:56):
you mean murder? Let the doctors examine as much as
they like. Let the police ask, that's what questions they like.
Whatever steps are taken, Stephen Marvel is absolutely safe for
the poor devil in bed really has died a natural death.
Only well it went wrong. Hayes wasn't cut out to
be a murderer. I hadn't the favor of his acquaintance,

(38:17):
but he must have been a decent sort. He promised
to do this, but when he came to the actual fact,
he couldn't force himself to kill Tony literally physically couldn't.
He threw away his pistol and ran. On the other hand,
once off the ship, he couldn't confess to Stephen that
Tony was still alive. He couldn't give up that year

(38:38):
of sweet luxury with all Tony's money at his disposal
to soothe his aching lungs. So he pretended to Stephen
that he had done the job, and Stephen danced for joy.
But Hayes, as the months went on, did not dance.
He knew Tony wasn't dead. He knew there would be
a reckoning soon, and he couldn't let it end like that.

(39:00):
A week before, he thought Tony was coming home. After
writing a letter to the police to explain everything, Hayes
shot himself rather than face exposure. There was a silence that,
I think, Hargraves said, quietly explains everything about Tony. Judith

(39:20):
Gates bit her lips. Her pretty face was working and
she could not control the twitching of her capable hands.
For a moment, she seemed to be praying, Thank God,
she murmured. I was afraid, yes, said Hargraves, I know,
but it still doesn't explain everything it. Hargraves stopped her.

(39:42):
I said, he pointed out that it explains everything about Tony.
That's all you need to worry about. Tony is free.
You are free. As for Stephen Marvel's death, it was suicide,
that's the official record. But that's absurd, cried Judith. I
didn't like Stephen. I always knew he hated Tony, but

(40:03):
he wasn't one to kill himself even if he were exposed.
Don't you see you haven't explained the one real horror
I must know. I mean, I must know if you
think what I think about it. Who was the man
with the brown fur collar who followed Tony home that night,
who stuck close by him to keep the evil influence
off of him? Who was his guardian who shot Stephen

(40:25):
in revenge? Sir Charles Hargraves looked down at the sputtering
gas fire. His face, inscrutable, was wrinkled in sharp lines
from mouth to nostril. His brain held many secrets. He
was ready to lock away this one once he knew
that they understood each other. You tell me, he said,

(40:57):
Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share
as someone you know who loves the paranormal or strained stories,
true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do. The
fictional story New Murders for Old was written by Carter
Dixon and can be found in the book Alfred Hitchcock
presents my Favorites in Suspense, which I have linked to

(41:17):
in the show notes. Weird Darkness is a production and
trademark of Marler House Productions. And now that we're coming
out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little
light Jeremiah thirty two, verse seventeen. Ah, Sovereign Lord, you
have made the heavens and the earth by your great
power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.

(41:39):
And a final thought, surround yourself with people whose eyes
light up when they see you coming. I'm Darren Marler.
Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.