Title: Heartbeat of Death
Air date: September 5, 1954
Plot summary: The Seftons are an aristocratic family with their own mansion on a private island. They are also a family in serious decline. The Seftons have a streak of mental instability that runs in the family, which has by this point declined to sisters Hepzibah and Louise, and their nephew Paul. They live in the once-grand mansion, now decrepit.
Hepzibah, now a sickly old lady, seems to be going insane herself. She is convinced that Louise, Paul, Adam the caretaker, and Dr. Cunningham the family physician are all plotting to kill her and take her money. She is so terrified that she calls her old friend Lamont Cranston and begs for help.
Lamont and Margot Lane arrive and find that Hepzibah, as near as can be determined, is in fact just a crazy old lady. Dr. Cunningham assures them that it's all in Hepzibah's mind, but Lamont still senses that something's fishy, and they have to stay regardless, as a massive storm is rolling in and has cut off the bridge to the mainland. Come the next morning, Hepzibah has disappeared.
Note: This episode is lost, as is almost every episode of The Shadow over the last six seasons, 1949-54. But a script survives, and is the basis for this recap.
Tropes:
- As You Know: The denouement has Lamont and Margot telling each other stuff that they already know but the audience doesn't, about how Lamont noticed the gourd shaped like a heart and wrote a quick message to Margot, telling her to beat on it to make a Heartbeat Soundtrack for Paul.
- Buried Alive: Adam the weird caretaker has a morbid fear of being buried alive, because he was buried alive. Back during "the war" (WWII, presumably), he was buried for three days when a mine exploded. Lamont uses this story to gaslight Paul into thinking he may have buried Hepzibah alive.
- Chekhov's Gun: In the opening narration Hepzibah is described as "miserly." That turns out to be the cause of the murder: Paul has been forging checks to steal money from his stingy aunt, and she caught him, and was going to turn him in.
- Closed Circle: Lamont and Margot have to stay over at the Sefton mansion after a massive storm hits and washes out the bridge.
- Cock-a-Doodle Dawn: The stage directions specify that "a cock crows in the distance" as Margot and Lamont meet each other on the morning after the storm.
- Dramatic Thunder: The stage directions in the script call for a lot of claps of thunder, as the storm comes in and confines everyone to the island.
- Heartbeat Soundtrack: The script specifies that the sound of a beating heart can be heard, as Lamont suggest to Paul that "a murderer...carries around with him forever the sound of the dead man's heartbeat." It is later revealed that Margot was making the sound herself, by beating on a gourd.
- It Runs in the Family: The opening narration says about the Seftons that "strange maladies and distorted their minds." Later, Margot wonders how Paul could possibly have fallen for the beating heart trick. Lamont reminds her that "things weren't exactly normal at the Seftons'", pointing out how Hepzibah was a neurotic loon, and Paul was being driven around the bend by guilt over what he'd done.
- Narrating the Obvious: Paul feels the need to say out loud that he's putting on "my shoes...my trousers...a jacket..." and that he's getting a flashlight, before he goes out to dig up Hepzibah.
- Whole-Plot Reference: This episode owes a lot to The Fall of the House of Usher. There's the weird family with a history of insanity, the idea that the once-proud family has gone into decline, the decaying old mansion, the whole Gothic Horror vibe, and all the talk of being Buried Alive.
