What happens
Sam and Helen Braden are a couple facing financial ruin when their small store fails and the bank refuses them a loan. Sam, who is heavily in debt, is in an automobile accident and his wallet is lost in the wreck, which leads the police to believe he is dead. Helen and Sam decide to claim his double indemnity life insurance policy, a plan that sets off a series of desperate and escalating choices. This is the Inner Sanctum Mysteries episode Beneficiary Death, first broadcast April 17, 1950, with the series' famous creaking door opening the story. Everett Sloan plays Sam and Barbara Weeks plays Helen.
A small town on a rainy morning, the Braden home, a county morgue, and a funeral home in Crestview.
Characters: Sam Braden, Helen Braden, Sergeant Landau, Mr. Granger, Stephen Winston
Listen for: The creaking door opening the broadcast, and the sound of Sam and Helen's tense conversations about the insurance claim.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.