 Good evening, friend. This is your host to welcome you through the creaking door in the inner sanctum. There, a lot of job seekers came up through the cracks in our floor the other midnight. One argued that he was a writer of the sinister variety, claimed he wrote poetry on tombstones. We put him to work in our burial bureau. Another of the girls said she specialized in screen. We told her to meet our gang and demonstrate. One look and our young miss never got her voice up off the floor. We all chipped in to blow the girl to a 20 week course in sign language. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Tonight's inner sanctum mystery, appointment with death, was written by John Robert and star Charlotte Haaland in the role of Janet with Carl Swanson as Richard. Tonight's story is custom tailored for the timid. We guarantee you are fit. Manhattan's East River harbour, cold grey granite, an architectural eyesore imported from the old world. A high wall and iron fence hide its secrets from the city's teeming millions. Inside the high wall, a woman in black walks slowly toward a man. The man is silhouetted under the moon, bending over a lilac bush. Richard! Hmm? Oh, I'm sorry I started you, ma'am. I am trespassing, I know, but I couldn't resist your garden. I'll go. No, wait! You are not Richard. You're staring as if you don't see. My eyes are old. Turn your face to the moon so I can see you. All right. I've forgotten. So many faces have been Richard's. So many, many faces everywhere. Everywhere? What does your Richard do when he isn't roaming about? He sleeps right where you stand. There is a grave, and in it Richard sleeps. How did you get in here? I walked in through that open gate, the rear of the garden. The Florentine gate you found it unlocked? Yes. You're trembling. Is there something wrong? The open gate means the last Lowell is about to die. I am the last Lowell. I am about to die. There were five of us. My brother Tom, my sister Melanie, and me. We lived silently and sullenly in this house which father had bought in Italy and then had shipped stone by stone to be restored here. It was as if a dark plague hidden in the ancient granite had infected us all. As if we were born to destroy each other. Mother was first. She roamed the great halls and hide. We never knew where she slept or how she managed food. All we knew of her was a laugh. It was the only way she spoke to us. One day she just disappeared. Never to be heard or seen again. Father was next. He was sick and grew worse but refused to allow a doctor to enter the house. On his last night we were gathered around his bedside, Tom, Melanie, and me. Water. Water. Melanie brought a tumbler of water but Tom struck it from her hand. God! No tenderness Melanie. It doesn't become you. He's calling for water. You'll get all the water he wants soon. His casket will be brimming over. Father passed on during the night. A shrunken figure just skin and bone. We buried him in a simple mocking ceremony during a rainstorm. You see my sisters, it rains water for father. Father was gone but he lived on in Tom. With the same dark, brooding obsessions we had known in father, Melanie, and I, we're there in Tom. We'll go on rotting away exactly as we have. Nothing's changed. Tom, we don't have to go on like this. Don't we, Melanie? No, with father's death we're free. And this new freedom, Melanie, what would you do with it? I asked what would you do with it? Just live, Tom. I see. And you, Janet, are you full of new purpose? We have a right to womanhood, Tom. Nice word, womanhood. I'll give you another word, manhood. I turned the word over in my mind a thousand times before I gave it up. Womanhood. Give it up. It's an impossible word. Your whole life's against it. An impossible word, womanhood. I tried to forget my whole life was against its realization when Richard came. I met Richard here in the garden. I was in mourner's clothes, listening to the foghorns and staring out into the river one night. Hello. Oh, did I frighten you? Yes. I'm sorry. I'm Richard Dunn. I'm a lawyer. Oh, you're here to read Father's will? Yes, but that isn't until 10 o'clock. Shall we stroll a bit? You mean pace, from wall to wall? Well, a drive, then, if the garden's too confining. We can leave through that rear gate. The Florentine gate? No. What, did I say something wrong? Just never be unlocked. Hey. I'm sorry. Are you kind of in the dumps over your father's death, huh? Richard, he had come into my life like a gust of clean wind. Shut away here in a granite tomb like a dead woman. Come alive, Janet. How, Richard? How? Just get up and leave. There's nothing here to hold you. But there is. What? There's a mother, the past. That's imaginary rot. You've all cast a spell over yourselves. Why, uh, forget the past. Think of the future. Can there be a future for me? Give me half a chance, and I'll show you. Show me, Richard. Show me. But Richard never got that half a chance. My life was against it, and my fears, and Tom, my brother. One night Tom saw to it that Richard or I would never get that half a chance. I was asleep in the grip of an old nightmare, an old fear that haunted my sleep. In my dream, there was a knife, a cold, cool steel blade, moving across my face, marking me, and I screamed. A whoop was my face aflame, and Tom standing over me in the pale morning light. You have no beauty anymore, Janet. No, no beauty? Tom, I dreamed of a knife branding me. An old dream with you, Janet? Tom, my face! The scar will heal, and you'll wear a black veil. No one will look upon your face. The scar healed. I wore a black veil, and no one looked upon my face. I hid as my mother hid. I hid and spied and eavesdropped. I hid from Richard, too. In time, Richard stopped asking about me as his infatuation for Melanie grew. I eavesdropped on a hundred intimate talks they had Melanie and Richard. But I remember one. They were in the music room. Melanie, come away with me. You're just speaking to Janet through me. You forgot, Janet. She disappeared. She's gone. It's you that I want. Why, Richard? Why do you want Janet or me? I don't know. Sometimes I feel compelled, as if somehow I was fated to come here. I feel that I must pull one of you from this contamination. Melanie, say yes. Why? At least I need time to think. But I'm going away! Well, when you come back, if you come back... I'll come back. You're right to me. Yes. Yes, Richard, I will write to you. Melanie and Richard, I had lost him. And I was lost. I had lost him, but Melanie would, too. Melanie must lose him, too. I stole Melanie's letters to Richard before the postman could pick them up. Finally, I intercepted a letter from Richard to Melanie, steamed the envelope open, and substituted a typewritten letter I had written. And then I watched Melanie tear the envelope open. It's a letter at last from Richard. I watched her read it equally, then silently. I could hear the words I'd put into Richard's mouth whispering my brain. Melanie, if you can ever forgive me. But here, out in the world, it's as if I'd never known you. I see men at play, and I hear women laugh. And I remember that these are the things that are really me. If you can ever forgive me. Oh, no. Bad news, Melanie. Bad news. Oh, no. No, it's good news. The best for Richard. He's escaped. He almost became one of us, but he escaped, Melanie. It's a wonderful world he's escaped into. A world of laughing women. Laughing women, Janet. When did you laugh? Laughter isn't for us, nor marriage, Melanie. Nor escape? Nor escape. Oh, but you're wrong, Janet. There is escape for both of us. Your escape is the Florentine Gate. The gate opens and you escape. Now, Melanie, stop. Your heart cannot stand the strain. Oh, but that's my escape. My heart. My poor, wonderful, unpredictable heart. I'm worried about it as children, you remember? You used to put your hand on it and count. Well, Janet, put your hand on it. Now. Melanie, you're deliberately provoking an attack. Put your hand on my heart, Janet. Just one last time. Melanie, Melanie, now stop it, please. The storm in my heart dies, and the lights go out. Goodbye, Janet. Melanie. She had fallen, as if she had willed her own death. Poor Melanie. It was all too much for her. Tom, she dropped dead right before me. Melanie dropped dead. If you feel more comfortable thinking of it that way. What do you mean? Melanie's collapse was about to your talent for writing letters, or to put it crudely, that you murdered her. I lived on with an hourly wish for death. Wishing Melanie's escape for me too. But death was to come to me last. First Richard was to come back, re-enter our lives, as if the touch of us had contaminated him. I was in the garden here, lost in the foghorns, and the noises of the river. Hello, Janet. Richard. I've come back to you, Janet. To me? No, Richard, not to me. Yes, to you. I've come to know that it's always been you, and only you. But you gave your pledge to Melanie, I heard you. That was only compassion. It wasn't love. It's not the feeling that I have for you. No, Richard, you must... No, you can't hide from me anymore, Janet. You can't veil your face or your heart. If I were to raise my veil, if you were to see my face... See your face? Yes, Richard. Look. What do you see? A mark running the length of your cheek to your eye. A brand, Richard. But how? Tom? Never mind how or who. You're lovely. Oh, does it? Didn't you really think the beauty was just something outside? Come. We'll tell Melanie about us. Tell Melanie? Telling Melanie is something to do. Why can't we tell Melanie openly and honestly? For a simple reason, Richard. Melanie's dead. Richard wanted me. He wanted me. He wanted me. And I wanted him, if only for a moment. It was an impossible wish, but I turned my thinking aside. I packed to a load. You're forgetting, Janet, that your whole life is against it. Now, Tom, don't try to stop me. Don't pull me deeper into your insanity. Third finger left hand. When he slips the wedding band on, how will you keep him from seeing the blood? Tom, please! And the uninvited witness standing between you. How will you stare between you? Stop playing on my feelings. And how will Richard take the dowry you bring him, Janet? A dowry of murder, blood, and guilt? Tom went straight to Richard. And it was another Richard who came to me. His face was grim, the gentleman was gone. His eyes were bright and hard. Change your dress, Janet. Change it, Richard. Yes. You will be married in the black dress. We have an obligation to the dead. We were married. A macabre ceremony with the principal's dressed in mourner's clothes. I couldn't stare, Melanie Dawn. The eye-do caught in my throat. Motoring back, I knew I'd never know that moment of life. We'll go back to the dead. Never know that moment of life. We'll go back to your house, Janet. No, no, not my house. Yes. Only to your house. Then, Richard, you don't mean to be really married to me. Could I really be married to you? You signed my name to a letter that killed Melanie. Yes, I wrote the letter that broke her heart. And Melanie will always be there between us, making any happiness impossible. We'll live in your father's house. Dark, malignant, hating, punishing each other. Marriage was a new nightmare. I watched Richard brood, watched his sensitive mind slowly slip into darkness, and I wished him dead for his sake and mine. The ghost of Melanie sits beside me. Is there, Janet? Richard, go away. If there's a shred of reason, let's please go away. Come, come, come. Here, sit on the bench with Melanie between us. I insist that you sit. My arm. Oh, I clawed your arm. Another brand scars your lovely white flesh. Richard, you can't stay here anymore. You can't live in this house anymore. I don't want to. But I must. He grew worse steadily. I dreamed of escaping him, being rid of him somehow. It was a nightly dream. Every night in my sleep, an old remixed with the new. The knife. The same knife that had lived in my nightmares for so many years. But this time, the knife was in my hand. This time, I was hovering over a victim. This time, I was the attacker. Janet! You won't torture me anymore. No, Janet, no. I won't live with your eyes on me anymore. No, don't! I'm dissolving our marriage. No, Janet, don't! Dawn came in a sick gray haze. I awakened huddle on the floor. Tom was in the room with me. I could feel his presence. Good morning, Janet. Oh, Tom, I had a terrible dream. A dream, Janet? In my dream, I was in Richard's room, and I must see Richard. You mean the remains of Richard? No. Janet, you murdered Richard quite thoroughly. No, it's a lie. I couldn't do murder. Is it a lie, Janet? I don't know. I don't know. Come. We'll bury Richard in the garden. You used to meet in the garden. Coming, Janet? No, no, I can't. I can't. Very well. If I must play solitary grave digger. My dream hadn't been a dream, Tom said. I stayed in my room until Tom came back. The stains of digging were on his hands and clothes. You know, I'm wondering, Janet, since you're averse to burying your victims, who bury me? Will you be my victim, Tom? Yes. One day when my strength is at its lowest, you'll kill me. Why must I kill you, Tom? Why? Because we were born to destroy each other. The years crept by, years and ghosts. In time, Tom's strength failed. He took to bear the shrunken figure, like father before him. It's come, Janet. My turn has come. Yes, Tom, you're dying. But that's not the way it's to be. I must die by your hand. You must kill me. No. You're insanely obsessed and you've tied me to your insanity. But you can't push me into murdering you. Janet, kill me, please. If only for hate. I'm too tired to hate Tom. Then if only to settle your score with me. I turned Richard against you. Because of me you were married in black to a bridegroom of death. Because of me your honeymoon was a crimson knife. Remember, Janet? I'm dead to memory. And if I could hate, this is your punishment. This is a payment of my score with you. You'll die, but just die. Janet, kill me. You must. Janet, come back. I turned away and never came back. Tom died, but not by my hand. But Tom was right about our dark family destiny. How was Tom right, Janet? The Florentine Gate is open, you say? Yes. Then Tom and Father were right. The gate opened of itself as they said it would. And now it's my turn to die. Richard sleeps under the lilacs. So now sleep beside him. Maybe, Janet. And maybe not. Did you say maybe not? What if your dream of murdering Richard were only a dream? What if Richard merely came to his senses and went away that morning long ago? If? But Tom buried him right where you're standing. Yes, but what if Tom deceived you into thinking so? What if it were a trick to keep you imprisoned here forever? What if this grave is empty? Tom deceived me about Richard's death. Yes, a ruse to make you insane and as hopeless as he was. I'm more confused. Janet, look at me again. This time, rarely open your eyes. You're... you're not... Yes, I am Richard. A bit older, but much... much wiser. Shall we stroll a bit? That's one way of getting out from under a lilac bush. Tender love story. Dream girl and rover boy. A love so haunting that everyone rounded was touched in the head. Though they picked up where they dropped off, bet they make a charming picture walking earth last mile together, strolling into eternity one day, arm in armature, two gay, skittering skeletons, and pressing so close, their two sheets flap as one. 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