19 - Red Lamp by Mary Roberts Rinehart

When English professor William A. Porter unexpectedly inherits a grand seaside mansion from his late Uncle Horace, his curiosity is piqued by the unexplained circumstances surrounding his uncles death. Along with his wife and niece, he decides to spend the summer in the propertys lodge, renting out the main house. As darkness falls, the quiet seaside neighborhood takes a sinister turn, with strange occurrences and eerie events becoming the norm. At the heart of these mysteries is an ominous red lamp, a subject of local folklore and believed to cast a malevolent spell. Can Professor Porter unravel the truth behind these oddities, or will he himself become a suspect in this webs of mysteries?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section nineteen of The Red Lamp by Mary Roberts Reinhardt.
This LibriVox recordings in the public domain conclusion chapter three.
The steps by which Halliday solved the murder of the
main house, and with it the mystery which had preceded it,
constitute an interesting story in themselves. So certain was he that,
by the time we were ready for the third seance,

(00:20):
his material was already in the hands of the district Attorney,
and it was not the material he had given to Greenow.
For the solution of a portion of the mystery, then
one must go back to the main house and consider
the older part of it. It is well known that
many houses of that period were provided with hidden passages
by which the owners hoped to escape the excise. Such
an attempt, many years ago had cost George Pierce his life.

(00:44):
But the passage leading from the old kitchen now the
den to a closet in the room above it had
been blocked up for many years. The builder was dead.
By all the laws of chance, time might have gone on,
and the passage remained undiscovered. In eighteen ninety nine, however,
Eugenia Riggs bought the property, and, in making repairs the
old passage was discovered, although she denies using it for

(01:04):
fraudulent purposes. Neither Halliday nor I doubt that she did so.
She points to the plastered wall as her defense, but
Halladay assures me that a portion of the base board
hinged to swing out but locked from within, would have
allowed easy access to the cabinet. But Halladay had at
the beginning no knowledge of this passage with its ladder
to the upper floor. He reached it by pure deduction.

(01:24):
It had to be there, he says, modestly, and it
was up to the time young Gordon was attacked at
the kitchen door. However, Halladay was frankly at sea. That is,
he had certain suspicions, but that was all he had discovered.
For instance, that the cipher found in my garage was
written on the same sort of bond paper as that
used by Gordon, by the simple expedient of having any

(01:45):
Cochran get him a sheet of it on some excuse
or other. But his actual case began, I believe with
that attack on Gordon. At least he began at that
time definitely to associate the criminal with the house. There
was something fishy about it is the way he puts it,
and with Bethel's story to me, forced by his fear
that the boy knew who it was he who had
attacked him, their belief that it was Fishy gained ground.

(02:08):
Gordon was knocked out, he says, and that ought to
have buny enough, but it was not. He was tied, too,
tied while he was still unconscious. Somebody wasn't taking a chance.
They did get back into the house very soon. It
was that play for time, as he terms it, that
made him suspicious all this time. Of course, he was
ignorant of any underlying motive. He makes it clear that

(02:31):
he simply began first to associate the crimes with the
house and then with Bethel. He kept going back to
his copy of the unfinished Letter. But they didn't help much,
he says quietly. Only there was murder indicated in it,
and we were having murder. He had three clues, two
of them certain, one doubtful. The certain ones were the
linen from the oarlock of the boat, torn from a

(02:53):
sheet belonging to the main house, and the small portion
of the cipher. The one he was not certain about
was the lens from an eye glas outside the culvert.
He began to watch the house. He didn't get Gordon
in the situation at all. There was no situation there
really nothing that is that he could lay his hand on.
But on the night I called him and he started
towards Robinson's point. As he came back toward the house,

(03:15):
he saw the figure of a man certainly not Gordon.
Entered the house by the gun room window. When he
got there, the window was closed and locked. He was puzzled.
He looked around for me, but I was not in sight.
Still searching for me, he made a round of the
house and still was on the terrace when I fired
the shot. From that time on he saw Bethel somehow
connected with the mystery, but only as the brains. There

(03:38):
were some devil's work afoot, he said. But I all
was iking up against that paralysis of his. He had
to have outside help. On the night in question, then
he was certain that this accomplice was still in the
house through all that followed, through Heyward's arrival and stars.
He was so certain by that time of Gordon's innocence
that he very nearly took him into his confidence the
next day, But he was afraid of the boy. He

(04:00):
was not dependable. Halladay had an idea that he was
playing his own game. But if this man was in
the house that night, where was he. He grew suspicious
of the den after that, and he found out through
Star and even the builder who had put in the
paneling of the den for Uncle Horace. It was a
long story, but in the end he learned something tearing
the old base board prior to putting up the panels,

(04:22):
the builder had happened on the old passage to the
room overhead, and he had called Horace Porter's attention to it.
It seems to have appealed to the poor old chap.
It belonged somehow to the room with the antique stuff
he was putting into it. He built in a sliding panel.
It was not a particularly skillful piece of work, but
it answered, and he kept his secret, at least from me.
I doubt if he ever used it until prohibition came in.

(04:44):
Then no drinker himself. He put there a small choice
supply of liquors, some of which we found later on,
and one bottle of which placed Halliday in peril of
his life. A day or so after the night I
had fired the shot into the hall, he had borrowed
any Cochrane's key to the kitchen door, and after good night,
entered the house and went to the den. Although he
was reticent about this portion of it, I gathered that

(05:04):
the house was not all it should be that night,
you know, the sort of thing, he says. But pressed
as to that, he admits that he was hearing small,
inexplicable sounds from the library. Chairs seemed to move, and
once he was certain that the curtain in the doorway
behind him blew out into the room. When he looked
back over his shoulder, however, it was hanging as before.

(05:25):
He had no trouble in finding the panel, and as
carefully as he could, he stepped inside. But he had
touched one of the bottles and it fell over. It
didn't make much noise, he says, but it was enough.
He was awake, and paralysis or no paralysis. I hadn't
time to move before he was in the closet overhead
and opening the trap in the floor. He had not
had time to move, and even if he had, there

(05:47):
were the infernal bottles all around him. So he stood
without breathing, waiting, for he knew not what things look
pretty poor, he says, I didn't know when he'd strike
a match and see me, and it was good night
if he did. But Bethel had no match. Evidently he
stood listening intently, and in the darkness below, Holiday held
his breath and waited. Then Bethel moved. He left the

(06:10):
trap door above open and went for a light, and
Halliday crawled out and close the panel quietly. From that
time on, however, he knew Bethel was no more helpless
than he was. He abandoned the idea of an accomplice
and concentrated on the man himself. Any Cochrane was working
with him, that is, she did what he asked her,
although she seems not to have known at any time
the direction in which he was working. Her own mind

(06:33):
was already made up. She believed Gordon to be guilty.
She made no protest, however, when he asked her to
break mister Bethel's spectacles one early morning and give him
the fragments. But she did it, pretending afterwards that she
had thrown the pieces into the stove. Bethel was watchful
and suspicious by that time, and she had a bad
time of it. But what is important here is that

(06:54):
Talladay took the fragments into the city and established beyond
a doubt that they and the peace of a lens
found near the culvert, made from the same prescription. And
he had no more than made his discovery when Gordon,
attempting at last the blackmail which he had been threatening,
was put out of the way as quickly and ruthlessly
as had been poor Peter Carroway twenty four hours, Halliday
says bitterly, and they would have saved him. But twenty

(07:17):
four hours later Bethel had made good his escape and
everything was apparently over. But from that time Bethel was Bethel,
ceased to exist. For Halliday, he was not working alone. However,
very early he had realized that he needed assistance, real assistance.
Any Cruckran's help was always of the below stairs order,
and he found the help he wanted. After the night
Gordon was attacked in Heyward. As a matter of fact,

(07:40):
it was Hayward who went to him. He was worried
about you, skipper, Halliday says, with a grin. He considered
it quite possible that they attempted to wrangle English literature,
and too many brain corrals might have driven you slightly mad,
and breaks off to wonder by jove if that's where
the English get their collegiate term of wrangler. On the
night then when Gordon was hurt, the doctor was impulsively

(08:02):
on his way to Halliday and the boat house. He
came within an inch of having you locked up that night,
says Halliday. Later on he did go to Halliday and
Halliday then and there enlisted him in his service. He
was not shrewd, but he was willing in earnest, and
from that time on he was useful. He had started,
presumably on his vacation, but actually on a very different
errand when the murder at the main house occurred and

(08:24):
Haliday recalled him by wire. But when he returned it
was at Halliday's request to hide in the Livingstone house.
It was from there that he came at night to
assist Holliday in guarding the main house and to provide,
by the way that sworn statement of the Livingston's butler,
that after the murder they had concealed someone in the house,
which threw Grino so completely off the track. One perceives,

(08:46):
of course, that the Livingstones had been brought into the
case dragged in, as the way Halliday puts it. But
after the first conference between the doctor and himself. They
were in it. Willy nilly, oh, Halliday asked Heyward, referring
to his copy of my uncle Horace's letter. But likely
to have access to Horace Porter at night now on,
so far as I know the Livingstons, possibly, then the

(09:07):
man who came in while he was writing this letter
might have been Livingstone. He was ill that night I
was with him. Then Livingstone's out, said Halliday, and turned
in a new direction. Some theory, some wickedness was put
up to him, and it horrified and alarmed him. A
man doesn't present such a theory without leading up to it.
Let's try this. What subject was most interesting Horace Porter

(09:27):
during the last years or months of his life? Here?
It isn't I imagine? I know he was working on
it alone. A man doesn't work that sort of thing
alone as a role. I'll ask missus Livingston, if you like,
she may know, and ask the Livingstones. He did, with
the result that Halladay got his first real clue and
deliberated the daring theory which culminated in that fatal fall
from the letter in the Secret Passage on the tragic

(09:49):
night of the tenth of September. All this time, of course,
it remained only a theory. He were scouted dead at first,
but came to it later on. The Livingstones offered a
more difficult problem. They didn't want to be involved, Halliday says,
but after Edith's letter came, I more or less had them,
And of course after he had tried to get into
the house and left the print of his hand on
the window ward, they had to come in. They denied

(10:12):
any knowledge of the passage before that, but he knew
it as well as I did, or better that there
was a chance oll Bethel knew it too and had
used it. This letter of Edith's, which I have already
referred Ronce's, follows. Dear Madam, I have read your article
with great interest and would like to suggest that a
good medium might be very useful to the circumstances. You
have one of the best in the country in your vicinity.

(10:32):
She has retired and is now living under another name
somewhere in the vicinity of Oakville. I understand her husband
has made considerable money, but she may be willing to
help in spite of that. When I knew her, she
was known as Eugenia Riggs, but This was her maiden name,
which she had retained. Her husband's name is Livingstone. I
do not know his initials. She has abandoned the profession

(10:52):
in which she made so great a success, but I
understand is still keenly interested. The letter is not signed.
Halliday did not require that led he had suspected it before,
but it gave him a lever. One attempt had already
been made by Bethel to get back into the house.
Time was getting short. Before long we would have to
go back to the city, and although he knew by
that time who and what Bethel was, he could prove nothing.

(11:15):
To go was to abandon the case. He could not
secure the arrest of a man because his land's prescription
was the same as the murderers, or on the strength
of an unsigned book manuscript left behind the wall of
the den. He could not prove that Maggie Morrison had
died in the process of the experiment Gordon had puzzled
over because the mud on the truck wheels corresponded with
the red iron clay of the lane into the main house.

(11:35):
He could not prove his own interpretation of the abbreviations
S and G T, so liberally scattered through the diary,
and he could not prove that it was Bethel, who,
looking for the broken lens in or near the culvert,
had found my fountain pen. There a fact which Gordon
had noted in the journal, as follows, I have them
They are sure w P was here last night and

(11:56):
left his fountain pen. But he could, through the Living Stones,
take a chance on proving all these things, and against
Livingstone's protests and fears, prove it he did. As a
matter of fact, he says, they were in a bad
position themselves, and they knew it. They had to come
over again. Things were indeed rather parloss for the Livingstones.

(12:17):
The butler's story had turned the suspicions of the police
toward them, and on the night of my threatened to rest,
Halliday deliberately used them to avert that catastrophe. As a
matter of fact, he says, cheerfully idea the police a
very pretty case against them. It was all there, according
to Greenow, even to the hand print. But he held
them off. He had done what he wanted, turned the

(12:37):
police along a false trail, and was free once more
to travel along the true one. And in this he says,
and I believe that his purpose was not mercenary. The
situation was peculiar, he says, the slightest slip, the faintest suspicion,
and he was off. And he goes back again to
the subtlety and worryings of the criminal himself, so watchful,
so wary, that throughout it had even been necessary to

(12:59):
keep me in ignorance. You had to carry on, skipper,
he says, in a way, the whole thing hung on you.
Even then you nearly wrecked us once, which was he
tells me, the night of the second seance, when the
criminal actually fell into the trap and entered the house.
Livingston was on guard upstairs that night, and everything would
have ended then, probably by your spelled the beans, he

(13:21):
accuses me. From the first the siances were devised for
a purpose, and I gathered that some of the phenomena
were deliberately faked in pursuit of that purpose. On the
other hand, Missus Livingston has always been firm in her
statement that things happened which she cannot explain. The sounds
in the library, the lights, and the arrival of the
book on the table are among them. But trickery or

(13:42):
genuine sake manifestations. In the end, they served at a purpose
I called the Third Seance, and the mystery was solved.
It is not surprising that my memory of those last
few moments is a clouded one. I was, of all
those present except the police, the only one in complete
ignorance of the meaning of what was going on about me.
Edith knew and was bravely taking her risk with the others.

(14:02):
Even my dear Jane knew a little, no wonder she
required her smiling salts. Actually, out of the confusion, only
two pictures remain in my mind. One was of Greenow
stirring at livingstone and then drinking aside the curtains of
the cabinet, where how old I had hayward It opened
the panel, and after turning on the red globe hanging
there were stooping over a body at the bottom of
the ladder. The other is of that figure at the
foot of the stairs. I know now that it could

(14:25):
not have been there, that it was lying dead of
a broken neck at the foot of the ladder. I
have heard all the theories, but I cannot reconcile them
with the fact. How could I have imagined it? I
did not know then who was inside the wall. I
am not a spiritist, but once in every man's life
comes to him with one experience which he can explain
by no law of nature as he understands them. To

(14:46):
every man his ghost, and to me mine. In the
dim light of the red lamp dead, though he was
behind the panel, I will swear that I saw Cameron
alias Simon Bethel, standing at the foot of the stairs
and looking up and of Secon nineteen