Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Inner sanctum, mysteries. Good evening, and friends of the creeking door.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
This is your host who has in your back into
the owner's sanctum for another half hour.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Out of this, say hello to one of our hapless heroines.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Aspire said he was going to the club one evening,
but he brought it back and clouded her with it.
The poor girl was almost decapitated, which shows what can
happen when you lose your hair. Anyway, the whole affair
was responsive well for the song's success. Your head the
spa all my friend here at the light plaster your
(01:17):
hairm curd her close to the fire and listen to
Arnold Mass tell us his weird and chivalry starle.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
It was after sundown and I was working in my
garden fixing the roses when I first saw Jane Carter.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
The soft spring air was full of the smell of flowers,
and in.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
The cemetery next to my house, long shadows were covering
her graves.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
The darkness. Jane Carter was standing.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Under the dogwood tree, the tree I never touched.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I picked up the garden shears and I came over
to her. Oh I didn't notice you in the shadow
good evening.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I hope you don't mind.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
I I we just demiring you, lovely God?
Speaker 5 (02:06):
Or do you love flowers too? I do them?
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Well? Then I will give you some of the roses,
my roses, one of the county prize last year.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
Oh I I am fronds knarco that you care.
Speaker 5 (02:20):
Take all the cemetery you.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Leave you alone, all alone with my flowers.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Here.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Hold out your arms, here are some roses. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I never much the loney here.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
There isn't a house to marble wool, not too lonely.
The dead are always near.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
Hold the flowers close to your face?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Oh right, but no good?
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Why did it make you look even lovelier than you are?
Speaker 5 (02:55):
So young and charmingly? Roses next to your neck?
Speaker 4 (02:59):
They look like blood?
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Really?
Speaker 5 (03:04):
No armison, that garden shoes?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
What are you going to do?
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Don't be frightened.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
There's nothing to be afraid of.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
I'm just going to do this, my dear.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
The little birds were frightened, but when she was dead
they began to sing again. That night there was a
full moon, and I buried Jane Carter under the dy
of bed.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Place head Quarter chieftain speaking now, Jane Carter's still missing,
she's last saying yesterday afternoon. We don't hear by the night,
we can understand out in nah state alarm, ask godman,
good morning, he Frans, how are you fine?
Speaker 5 (04:11):
Fine?
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Thank you, Ethan. I brought you some flowers. They're brooming
early this year.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Today is the twenty seventh.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
You know, April twenty seventh. Yes, Franz, I expected you.
You haven't missed a visit on the twenty seventh and
twenty years.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
It seems incredible. On April the twenty seven, twenty years ago,
my wife Martha disappeared, and in all this time you
having found any trace of her.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Maybe we do know the man responsible for her disappearance.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
You don't mean you found her.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Did you see the courier this morning?
Speaker 5 (04:46):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Did you see a small item about a pretty young
girl named Jane Carter who was reported missing?
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Well, yes, yes I did know to see the true story.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
But uh, what has that got to do with my wife?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
I'll tell you, Franz, but this must be kept in
strict confidence. Every year since your wife disappeared, we've had
reports of two, sometimes three young women who disappeared and
were never heard of again.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
To whether you're trying to tell me that somewhere in this.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Country there's a homicidal maniac, a person who, for some
reason or other hates pretty young women. Huh, hates them
enough to murder them and dispose of their bodies.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
But it's shocking you think Martha fell into the hands
of this maniac? Yes, but why didn't you tell me
this before?
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I didn't want you to lose hope.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
I know how you felt about Martha, but she was
so lovely and only nineteen when you've got to find
this person, Ethan Franz.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
It's bigger than I can handle.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Now.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
But you've had more schooling than I. I know you
read a lot in that little cottage of yours next
to the cemetery. Maybe you know more about why a
human being would do a thing like that.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Oh, yes, yes, Ethan, I do know.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
It's because sometimes the murderer has been hurt deeply, maybe
by a woman he loved who has been unfaithful, and
when he sees other women, pretty attractive young women, day,
they remind him of her, and then he suddenly overcome
by a strange emotion to seize them, to overpower them,
(06:28):
to make them suffer for what they did to him,
to destroy them, to murder them, to.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Go on, Franz.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
But that's what it says in the books I've read, and.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
I've got to go now.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Be sure to put those roses in water right.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Away, or they'll die.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
I won't let them die. Franz, good Bye, goodbye.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
I could have told him more, much more, how it
felt to live in a nightmare of fear, How I
tried to fight the wild surging of my blood, that mad,
insane bounding that made me kill. Later that night, when
(07:23):
the dogwood scent came into my room, I cried. I
cried like a child. I I was thinking of Martha,
my beautiful Martha Woo. Two days later I saw Eaton again.
(07:48):
He surprised me by knocking at my door late in
the afternoon.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Franz, I drove up here to ask a favor of
your old course.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
He's in any thing you want.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I believe there's a tomb in the cemetery that's never
been you.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
You mean the one old Missus Smith built.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yes, that's the one.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Well, I always have to laugh when I think of it.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Old Missus Smith was so fussy about that tomb. But
she died at sea and she was never.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Buried in it.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Well, there's someone I'd like to have buried in it.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
There is, yes, a.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Young girl that of a heart attack. Helen Winners is
her name. Judging from the clothes and those who knew her,
she apparently comes from a good family, but we can't
see them locate them.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Well, why don't you bury her in Potter's Fields like
the others?
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Because I think her family will eventually want the body.
Couldn't you put her in the smith tomb?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
I guess so, I don't think missus Smith would mind.
Speaker 5 (08:52):
Good.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
I'll have the body brought up in an hour.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
The body was.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Brought in a coffin by Ethan and one of his men.
I opened the tomb. There were no mourners, no one
to say a few words. I cut some of my
flowers and brought them to her tomb.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Would you like to see her before you mark the
tomb again?
Speaker 4 (09:20):
Franz? Oh, yes.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
There. Oh, what a pity she She's so young and
so strangely beautiful. She looks as though she would get
up out of the coffin at any moment. I uh,
brought some flowers, lilies from my greenhouse.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
That's very thoughtful.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Of your friends. You love these flowers, don't you where her?
Speaker 5 (09:51):
All?
Speaker 4 (09:52):
I have since martled vanished. What are you doing there?
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Just looking at the petal, the soft to the touch,
like a woman's skin.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yes, even what's the matter? You tore that petal?
Speaker 3 (10:10):
You ripped it. It's just a flowering the flower far
you won't fuck it?
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Oh, I I'm sorry, Ethan. I didn't mean to hit you.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
I lost my head.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
I I can't see any one harm or flower like that.
I couldn't sleep that night.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Somewhere far in the countryside, the.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Dog was paying at the moon.
Speaker 5 (10:43):
I went to my window. My gaunt was all silver
in the moonlight, and then I noticed it.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
The dog would tree.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
A strained glow.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Like a fine blue fire hung over the branch near
the patch of iris.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
It was shy, with a light that was not of
this world.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
And then I saw the face of Helen Winters. She
was staring at the glowing branch.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
It was the dead girl, wearing the shrouds she wore
in the coffin.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Wow wildly slipped tomstairs on the way into the garden.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
I picked up the shears.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Mister Narko, you're you're you're Helen Winters.
Speaker 5 (11:38):
That is one of my names.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
But you can't be here.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
You're dead and this is a trick.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Who are you look?
Speaker 5 (11:46):
I had something to show you.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
The branch of the dogwood tree.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
You see how it shines in the moonlight. Look at
it close?
Speaker 4 (11:57):
But why what are you.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Throw it? There's a ring, the brand's crew right through it.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Matha, it's mother's ring?
Speaker 5 (12:10):
Was it? Well?
Speaker 4 (12:11):
How did you you that? But that belonged to my wife.
I must have it.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
No.
Speaker 5 (12:19):
I looked at her handing here among the flowers.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Oh, she was beautiful, and the moonlight made her look
like a woman in a dream.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
And suddenly I felt a strange power rising in my.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Bloods, my belng to touch her, to the seas her.
I tightened the grip on my shoes.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
And came closer to her.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
You still like bo If you do, I know, maybe
you get blossom free of job?
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Eh?
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Where were we?
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, the flowers were blooming over all the bodies of
the people friends at bad and he was talking to
a copse who was picking dog with blossoms by the
light of the boom.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
The blossoms have a lovely.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Whose I know why the ring was on this branch,
and I know what.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
You intend to do. Did you kill her with the shears?
Speaker 5 (13:38):
Tool?
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Come here alright?
Speaker 5 (13:42):
I have your hand and it's flesh. You can't get
away now, I don't know one to get away.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
You're not afraid, No, I'll show you how afraid I am.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
What are you going to do?
Speaker 5 (13:59):
You will see? Her face came closer than.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
I felt her lips on mine.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
It was the first time I kissed a woman in
twenty years.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
What was she? A woman? It was warm flesh.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
I kissed and I knew it. I broke away from her.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I swung wildly with my shears, and suddenly I felt
her hand on my face. I smelled the scent of
a thousand flowers over parring me, making giddy. She swayed
in front of me as I plunged the shears into
her body, and then suddenly I felt myself sink into
(14:48):
a sea and flower.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
I opened my eyes. I was lying in the patch
of iris.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
I saw the moon glowing blood red, shining through the
dogwood tree. I got up.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
What had happened? I must have been unconscious.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
My shears were lying on the ground where I had fallen.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Helen minters had disappeared.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
I picked up the shears, got my keys, went to
the tomb.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
I opened the door, and then I opened the coffin.
When he was lying there laugh a wound on her.
I couldn't believe it. I raised the shears. I would
find out.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
You better get away from that coffin.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
What made you come here?
Speaker 5 (15:51):
You said?
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Never mind?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
What's this?
Speaker 4 (15:55):
A sprig of darm wood? And that ring you reckon?
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Recognize it?
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yes, belong to Martha.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
I gave it to her before she married you.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
You murdered that in June?
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Is it necessary to take out your gun?
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Ethan? I'm afraid zone.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Do you really believe I killed mar I believe you.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Buried her under the dog?
Speaker 4 (16:21):
Would tree in your girl?
Speaker 1 (16:23):
And it's ridiculous, Franz. I want the truth. I want
to full confession.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
What makes you think I killed her?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
I haven't any proof yet, but that body can be exhumed.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
And I suppose you'd accuse me of killing all those
girls who disappeared.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Too, Yes, Franz, I think you kill them too.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
You look closely at me.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
Suddenly I realized that his hand was shaking.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
He was fighting, that he.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Too, was stalling for a time.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Why of course there must be some.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
Of his men coming here.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
He was afraid to take me alone.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
When you say, Franz, I can assure you it will
be a lot easier here for you if you confess.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
But I have nothing to confess. What made you come
here tonight?
Speaker 1 (17:06):
It was just a hand you're lying.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Look there there are two men coming up here, policemen.
I suppose they came here by accident to her.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
I don't see anything.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
I have your gun, Ethan, Now get up, Get up.
Speaker 5 (17:21):
France, France, put that gun down.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
You don't know what you're doing.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Oh yes, I know, I know very well.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
I've been waiting for.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
This moment for twenty years.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Now, France, Please you can't one of the confession.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Where you will have it.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Yes, yes, I killed Martha. I murdered her, and she.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Is buried under the darkwood tree. That's what you wanted
to know, is yes.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
But and I'll tell you about the others now too.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
I killed them, all of them.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Their bodies are.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
In my garden.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
Now.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Now is the time for you to confess, Ethan, What.
Speaker 5 (17:55):
Do you mean?
Speaker 4 (17:56):
I mean you and Martha?
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Martha? You No, No, she didn't. I loved her after
she met you. She wouldn't have a thing to do
with me. If that's why you killed.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Her, season, that's why I killed her. But yours what
to blame it?
Speaker 1 (18:11):
She no, neither of us was to blame. There was
never anything between us. I can prove it.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I have a letter here.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Let me show your life.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Won't kid me here until your men arrive. You're going
to die now.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
No fans read the letter. Front the letter.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
He was dead and in his hand when a letter,
I picked it up. I heard a noise.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
It was in the boat.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
I went to the girl lying so still in the coffin.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
Was she alive?
Speaker 4 (18:48):
I would find.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
You are alive.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Get up, Get up out of that coffin.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
The God don't go on all right?
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Not?
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Please?
Speaker 4 (19:05):
He didn't put you here, didn't he.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Yes, I'll explain everything in the garden. I had a
little vow of chloroform. I broke it when you tried
to kill me.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
You made your unconscious chloroform.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
That was when I felt your hand on my face
and I kept stabbing.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
You, but you would not die.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
How did he know Martha was buried under the dogwood tree?
I told him I dug under that tree while you
were unconscious.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
It's strange eye, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
You would never have known about it if the tree
as it grew had been caught up the ring and
pushed it out on one of its branches. It's as
though nature itself were accusing me.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Won't you try to get away? Sand Skill?
Speaker 3 (19:50):
You are beautiful and evil like all of them, Like Martha.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
I'm going to keep because he's empty. Here here, come
back here. I'm not getting away.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
I still have these the garden slurs, the gardens.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I'm going to away.
Speaker 4 (20:20):
I ran out of the tomb.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
I saw poor men coming across the graveyard in the moonlight.
Speaker 5 (20:25):
I ran.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
The girl came out of the ward and screamed again,
Fire against me.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
I ran across the moon cemetery, stumbling morning, running for
my night.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
A piercing pain in my sigh. It struck my head
against the graves.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Here in the hospital, they tell me I will recover
from my wounds, but of course I'll have to be tried.
I know I should be put to death.
Speaker 5 (21:09):
Oh yes, the the letter Ethan tried to shown.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
It was just a few lines, dated April twenty seven,
twenty years ago. It read, dear Ethan, please come to
see France and convince him that there never was anything
between us, and that I am not seeing you now.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
It doesn't believe that I have always loved only him, Martha.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
You see my killing her, it was all a mistake,
a mistake that twisted of thread in my mind.
Speaker 5 (21:56):
I would like lots of flowers on my grave. Lose roses. Yes, yes,
memory men, blood red roses.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Send me one dozen roses, and put my heart in
the sides of good old friends. He takes his popular
ballads quite literally, which brings us to the moral for
tonight's story, Never decapitate the woman you love. You know
how angry people get when they lose their heads.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
And our friends.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
It's time once again to close that creaking door until
next week.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
At the same time, next week's.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Story is about a boy and a girl who go
off in their honeymoon and then discover that two is fine,
but three is a crowd, especially when number three is
a corpse. Now what the boy and girl said to
that corpse and what the corpse said to them for help,
You'll just have to wait until next week to hear
(23:23):
about it.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Until then, good night, pleasant Drea.