What happens
Professor Hubert Schumacher, a Swiss botanist, prepares to sail with his wife Hermione to America, where he is to lecture. Hermione manages every detail of their lives, and Hubert secretly digs a hole in the cellar to plant a devil's garden of wild orchids. Hubert meets Marion Markham, a bookshop clerk who listens to him, and their friendship grows. Hermione insists the couple will be back for Christmas. The episode is a Suspense play from December 23, 1943, starring Peter Lorre, with the Roma Wine Company as sponsor.
A Swiss university town and the family home there, then a bookshop, a transatlantic liner and New York.
Characters: Hubert Schumacher, Hermione Schumacher, Marion Markham, Freddy Sinclair, Professor Goodenow, Mrs. Goodenow, Stuart
Listen for: Hermione's repeated promise that they will be back for Christmas, and the sound of the cellar digging.
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.