The Scare Salon

It’s time to dive back into Boris Karloff’s Thriller. This time, we’ll discuss season two, episode eight, “Letter to a Lover.”

This installment was directed by Herschel Daugherty and based on a stage play by Sheridan Gibney. I don’t know anything about the original play but the episode itself seems to suffer from a somewhat convoluted story with too many twists, some of which strain credulity a bit. It’s an intriguing tale that kept me guessing, but I’ll admit I had to pay close attention to make sure I was clear about what was going on. It’s also not a horror story at all; it’s more akin to a murder mystery (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Oh, and the title has barely anything to do with the plot, but that’s neither here nor there I suppose.

The first scene of the episode almost plays out like a strange, wordless comedy of errors (only not particularly funny). We see a blonde woman (who we later learn is named Sylvia and is played by Ann Todd) leaving a doctor’s office all sneaky-like. An older man in a car outside (later identified as Andrew and played by Murray Matheson) watches her as she walks to the Underground station (the story is set in London, by the way), then he too goes into the building and up to the same office. While he’s in there, yet another woman, this one dark-haired and bearing a big scar on one side of her face (this is Nurse Webber, played by Avis Scott), comes in. Andrew hides behind a filing cabinet and skedaddles out of the office while the nurse’s back is turned.

It’s then revealed that a man we presume is the doctor is lying dead on the sofa in the office, having been stabbed with a scalpel. Nurse Webber glances out the window and sees Andrew in the street; he turns and locks eyes with her as well. The nurse then proceeds to act sus as fuck, cleaning up a few cocktail glasses and a handkerchief from the scene, as well as pocketing an appointment pad that was lying on the doctor’s desk. Only then does she call the authorities to report the murder.

In the next scene, Sylvia shows up at the home of a friend and possible lover by the name of Donald (Felix Deebank). The first thing she says to him is, “I had to,” leading the audience to assume that she was perhaps the person who killed the doctor for some reason. She then passes out. Donald wakes her up with smelling salts, but she seems confused and isn’t really sure why she came here; she just says she wasn’t feeling well. Donald asks if she’s finally left her husband or if he’s done something else bad to her, but she says no. Donald gets a bit salty, low-key accusing her of purposely being wishy-washy and only coming around when she needs something, but before he can admonish her any further, she simply leaves.

She then goes home, and we discover that the guy Andrew from before is actually her husband. He’s packed a whole bunch of suitcases and tells her that he was waiting for her to come back so they could get on the road to their isolated country house. They had this whole trip planned, you see; they needed to get away from the city for a few months to look after their mental health, and they had previously discussed this at length. Sylvia doesn’t seem to remember any planned trip at all, but Andrew implies to her that maybe it’s her fragile mental state making her forget things.

The pair drive out to the remote country house at night, and Sylvia is frightened by Andrew’s aggressive attack dog, Caesar. Andrew chains him back up and opens up the house, surreptitiously pulling the phone cord from the wall. He then puts Sylvia to bed and goes to get the electricity turned on.

Sometime later, Sylvia seems very anxious about being in the house, wanting to go into town but being shot down by Andrew because the weather is too bad. In desperation, she writes a letter to someone and tries to give it to the postman without her husband seeing her; Andrew does witness the exchange, but the hero postman stonewalls and won’t let him have the letter. The postman does say that he has a message for Andrew, though; a dark-haired woman with a scar wants to meet him at an inn down in the town. Andrew immediately seems to know what this is about and leaves the house right away.

So of course the woman is Nurse Webber, and she basically tells Andrew that she knows that Sylvia was the one who killed the doctor. She found a cocktail shaker with Sylvia’s favorite drink in it, she says, and a glass with Sylvia’s lipstick color smudged on the rim. Further, the handkerchief she found had Sylvia’s initials embroidered on it, and the appointment pad confirmed that Sylvia had an appointment scheduled right around the time the doctor was murdered. From all this, we’re led to believe that Sylvia was having an affair with the doctor and killed him when something didn’t go her way, which also seems to be what Andrew suspects.

Nurse Webber tells Andrew that she’ll go to the cops and get his wife arrested if he doesn’t come up with some cash. Andrew balks at first, but finally agrees to let Nurse Webber work in the country house for a regular salary; that way, she’ll be getting the money she wants, and Andrew will have someone to watch over Sylvia when he’s not around.

Shortly afterward, Donald arrives at the country house; he is the person Sylvia had written the letter to. Sylvia tells him she’s scared; Andrew won’t let her leave the house, she says, and he’s hired this strange woman to spy on her. He’s also bought a gun that he keeps in the desk in his study, and she’s starting to get worried that she’s in danger.

Donald comes inside, and when Andrew comes downstairs, Donald just pretends that he was in the neighborhood and decided to drop by. Andrew is suspicious, though, and rightly concludes that Sylvia wrote to him and asked him for help. Andrew straight up asks Donald what was in the letter Sylvia sent him, but Donald pretends he doesn’t know what Andrew is talking about.

It seems that Andrew also believes that Sylvia is having an affair with Donald, and it’s clear that Donald has feelings for Sylvia, though it isn’t revealed until later what the exact nature of their relationship is.

The whole gang is about to sit down to dinner when Nurse Webber reports that Andrew’s dog Caesar has gotten out of the gate, presumably after Donald accidentally left it open. Andrew grudgingly goes to find the dog, and while he’s gone, Donald decides to do some snooping in Andrew’s office. He doesn’t find the gun that Sylvia talked about, but he calls a journalist friend in London to ask about a doctor Andrew had been seeing for his heart condition. Turns out this doctor was operating under several false names, one of which was Dr. Evans, who was also Sylvia’s doctor and the same doctor who was murdered at the beginning of the story.

Andrew comes back and catches Donald and Sylvia poking around in his study, at which point Andrew tells Donald that Sylvia actually killed Dr. Evans. Sylvia denies this, claiming he was already dead when she got there. Andrew then says that he hired Dr. Evans to specifically meet Sylvia at a party and befriend her, since she refused to see a doctor for her purported mental illness. It’s all very complicated. Sylvia then insists that Andrew is actually the crazy one, because none of the stuff he says is the way shit really happened.

Donald leaves, upset that Sylvia won’t abandon her husband and come away with him. Andrew then leaves the house too in order to give Nurse Webber a ride back to town. While they’re gone, Donald breaks the lock on the gate and returns to the house, saying he was worried about Sylvia and didn’t feel right leaving like he had. Sylvia confides in him that she had only met Dr. Evans once, and was actually trying to get him to treat Andrew on the down-low since Andrew is actually the delusional one who refused to see a doctor, not her.

As they’re talking, they hear the very distinct sound of a rotary phone being dialed in Andrew’s office. Yep, turns out Andrew faked leaving to see what would happen while he was gone. When Donald and Sylvia enter his study, he’s sitting at his desk, pointing a gun at Donald and talking on the phone to the police about shooting a prowler. He admits that he’s the one who killed Dr. Evans since he was afraid that the doctor would tell Sylvia what was wrong with him. He also demands to see the letter that Sylvia sent Donald, presumably thinking it said something incriminating about him.

But when Donald hands it over, it’s literally just like two sentences, with Sylvia just saying she’s scared and asking Donald to come see her. Andrew seems confused by how innocuous the letter is. Moments later, the cops show up, responding to the call Andrew made about the prowler, but Andrew tells Sylvia to get rid of them and closes himself back up in his study. Sylvia tells the police that it was a false alarm and that Andrew just saw his dog in the yard and thought it was a person. The officers buy this story and go on their way.

Only a minute after they leave, though, a gunshot sounds behind the door of Andrew’s study. Donald and Sylvia try to get in, but the door is locked. They assume that Andrew has shot himself, and Sylvia is very distraught, attempting to get into the study by preparing to break a glass terrace door. Donald prevents her from doing this, though, thinking she’ll be blamed for Andrew’s murder. He instead tells her to just go to bed like nothing happened, get up early in the morning before Nurse Webber shows up for her shift, tell her she thinks Andrew fell asleep in his study, and ask Nurse Webber to go in there and wake him up. That way, the nurse will find the body and there’ll be less chance of suspicion falling on Sylvia.

The first part of this plan goes without a hitch; Sylvia comes downstairs just as Nurse Webber is coming in, and innocently asks if the nurse saw her husband in the garden because he wasn’t in his room. Nurse Webber says no, at which point Sylvia chuckles and says he probably fell asleep in his study again; she’s told him not to work so late, but what can you do?

But here’s where a problem arises. Nurse Webber goes to the study to ostensibly wake Andrew up, but the door isn’t locked anymore, and when she goes inside, there’s no sign of Andrew, or of anything untoward happening at all. Nurse Webber then tells Sylvia that Andrew must have gone into town because his car is gone.

Completely befuddled, Sylvia calls for a taxi to take her to Donald’s house in London. When she gets there, however, he’s not home, and there’s a detective snooping around his place. He tells Sylvia that the police got a tip that Donald and Sylvia might have something to do with a murder and were planning to leave the country. Sylvia seems to have no clue what he’s on about.

The detective brings Sylvia back to the country house, which has been closed up again in the few hours she’s been gone; all the furniture is covered with sheets, the electricity is off, the whole nine yards. The detective accuses Sylvia of closing the house up before she went to London to make it look like she just left normally, but she insists she didn’t, that maybe Andrew did, though she admits she has no idea where Andrew might be or why he would have done it.

Just then, another cop arrives with Nurse Webber in tow. The nurse is in high dudgeon, accusing Sylvia of killing Dr. Evans, who she then reveals was her husband. She also screeches that Sylvia murdered Andrew as well.

As if on cue, some more officers come in and say they’ve found Andrew’s car submerged in a lake with his body inside, and that they’re in the process of extracting said body. Shortly afterward, the main detective steps out for a moment, presumably to help in this endeavor, when a very much not-dead Andrew creeps into the house after shooting (but not killing) a cop outside. I’m not entirely clear on how Andrew made the police think that his dead body was in a submerged car when it very obviously wasn’t; at first, I thought Andrew had killed Donald and put him in the car to throw the cops off the track, but it turns out that Donald isn’t dead either, so now I’m really at a loss. Anyway.

So in the last scene, we see Andrew and Sylvia having a drink after Andrew admits that he constructed this whole convoluted situation to frame Sylvia for killing him. Andrew is seen putting poison into one of the drinks, and I’m guessing we’re supposed to think he’s trying to poison his wife, perhaps because she knew something was wrong with him and/or he believed she was having at least two affairs (which it turns out she wasn’t). The cops burst in and see Andrew standing there big as life, and then Donald also shows up; he wasn’t home when Sylvia came to him earlier because he was doing some sleuthing about Andrew’s history, you see, and discovered that Andrew’s previous doctor had diagnosed Andrew as a delusional psychopath who was possibly dangerous, a diagnosis he didn’t want Sylvia to find out about.

So the cops then pull a switcheroo and arrest the person who actually killed Dr. Evans, who turns out to be his wife, Nurse Webber, who was simply trying to frame Sylvia so she could get away with the crime. She was the one who put all that “evidence” in Dr. Evans’s office, but removed it later after having a change of heart, which doesn’t really make much sense because she was still trying to accuse Sylvia of the murder right up until the end, but whatever.

It’s implied, though, that Andrew was so far gone that he genuinely believed he’d killed Dr. Evans. Sylvia, who really did love her husband and was trying to help him this whole time by making him realize how crazy he was, happily tells him that he didn’t kill anyone, no matter what he believed (he totally did shoot that cop, though). But it’s too late; Andrew, perhaps finally understanding the depths of his mental illness, had poisoned his own drink and dies on the floor in his wife’s arms as she wails inconsolably.

As you can probably tell by that synopsis, this was a very complex plot and one that I don’t think worked all that well in places. Some aspects of Andrew’s scheme (as well as Nurse Webber’s) were insufficiently explained and left the viewer wondering exactly how that would have worked in real life. On the other hand, I really liked the uncertainty of the narrative due to all of the gaslighting going on; you really weren’t sure until the end whether Andrew or Sylvia was the crazy one, though I admit I did guess that Nurse Webber would turn out to have killed the doctor at the beginning.

Not one of the better Thriller episodes, unfortunately, but still worth watching if you like complicated murder mysteries. It might be one that needs a couple of viewings in order to pick up all the details; I was paying pretty close attention, but still feel like I might have missed some things.

Well, that’s all for now; eventually, I’ll get around to the next installment. Until then, keep it creepy, my friends.