This week’s visit to the Listener Library provides us with a startling view! Our thanks to our Mysterious Listener Keara for recommending “The Thing in the Window” from Suspense! This Lucille Fletcher-penned tale features an out-of-work actor who becomes fixated on a window across from his own. Despite what everyone else claims, he insists that a dead body is visible through the pane. Why does nothing seem to banish the vision of this corpse? Are the two elderly women across the street as innocent as they seem? How different could Suspense’s two productions of this script possibly be? Listen for yourself and find out! Then vote and let us know what you think!
This didn’t work for me. I don’t believe Fletcher played fair; she didn’t even so much as hint about the existence of the character introduced in the final scene.
As you point out, as an alibi it would immediately fall apart. Despite that, my impression was that we were meant to interpret it as one. (Your suggestion that it was just a performance makes more sense, but I’m not convinced that was Fletcher’s intent.)
I just finally got around to listening to this one, and I loved it. It gets a “Timeless Classic” vote from me. I was wondering if it would turn out that he had actually murdered someone in the past, and his conscience and/or psychosis was causing him to imagine his own victim in the window. I did not anticipate the actual twists at the end. And judging solely by the bit that you tacked on to the end, the Robert Montgomery version sounds horrible, both in Montgomery’s performance and the extra added twist, which seems like one twist too many.… Read more »