What happens
Jack Mallory is an artist at Fred Martin's advertising agency, and his coworker Rita Bartow is stabbed to death in her apartment one afternoon. Olivia Martin, Fred's wife, is the suspect the police focus on after a note she sent her husband turns up. The Whistler presents this episode of the series, first broadcast on June 26, 1943. The story is told through a scheming figure who lays out a murder plan with his accomplice, reworking the events of the day and an earlier plane crash to fit a false account. Orson Welles is not named in the transcript, so the lead actor is left unstated here.
New York and Buffalo, 1940s, an advertising agency, an apartment, and a private airplane.
Characters: Wilson, Grisk, Olivia Martin, Fred Martin, Doris Hammond, Jack Mallory, Rita Bartow, Captain Evans
Listen for: The schemer reworking the timeline of the day, and the stain on Jack Mallory's coat.
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.