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In the 1960's I audiotaped the stories off the telly, and wrote reviews of them. These I mostly kept, though only one of my audiotapes survives;
sadly I must admit I fell victim to the spirit of the age and wiped the rest! Well, tapes were fearfully expensive in those days.
Here's my review of
Temperamental leading playwright Eugene Calder has just died of a seizure. His wife Mary (Heather Chasen) claims his £25,000 life insurance. John Hunter probes into the writer's background and learns of his extra marital romance with actress Vivienne. Was Eugene going to divorce his wife to marry Vivienne and how much of the affair did husband Randolph (Philip Latham) know about it all? But Mary tells Hunter that she wouldn't agree to any divorce. However she's not well herself. Although noone yet knows, she is going to die within the next six months. Also living with Mary is her brother (Ralph Michael), a daydreamer who grows roses. Mary's son Peter Calder had died only two months previously. Having gone of the rails in France he had committed suicide. A call on Vivienne talking about Eugene includes this familiar dialogue: Viv: "When he died I felt as though a light had gone out, as though I was stumbling in the dark." Hunter: "Is that a line from the play, or were you talking to me?!" She had put all her money into his latest play Autumn Harvest- "my husband was furious." Oddly, she had taped their quarrels in which he boasts he could commit the old perfect crime. But he claims it was only an audition tape for the part he was hoping to get in the play. An autopsy shows that death was actually caused by poisoning. Randolph confesses to the murder. Headlines read "Unemployed Obscure Actor Murders Playwright." Hunter believes publicity is his motive for confession. A quick trip to Paris clears up the cause of Peter Calder's death. He died of poisoning too. The real murderer is forced into a confession. |