What happens
Mark Devers and his wife Cora have waited seven years to collect a fifty thousand dollar insurance payout after Cora's first husband, Elliot Starnes, was declared dead. When Elliot unexpectedly returns and demands five thousand dollars to vanish again, the couple decide to deal with him. Elliot's second wife, Mrs. Starnes, then appears with a marriage license and begins her own demands, pushing Mark and Cora into a desperate race to keep the insurance money. This is an episode of the Inner Sanctum Mysteries radio series, which first aired on July 13, 1952.
A town house and insurance office in a mid-twentieth-century American city, during the seven years after Elliot Starnes's disappearance.
Characters: Mark Devers, Cora Devers, Elliot Starnes, Mrs. Starnes, Evelyn
Listen for: Mark's shifting resolve as the blackmail escalates, and Cora's increasingly frayed nerves as the plan begins to unravel.
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.