Whodunit
Alfred Hitchcock Presents

The mystery writer arrives in Heaven not knowing he’s been murdered, he’s allowed to go back and find out the facts by living his last day over again.

Back in Heaven, he still doesn’t know, but the recording angel helps him work it out.

“All mystery writers go to Heaven,” which is a mystery to Hitchcock.

The Rose Garden
Alfred Hitchcock Presents

A New York publisher flies down to New Orleans for a consultation with his new author, one of two elderly sisters who share a large house (cf. Gabel’s The Lost Moment).

The room he’s given is strangely familiar, he checks his memory of the description in the manuscript, it’s the murder room.

Outside is the stone bench amid the roses planted by the murderess over the body. Her sister was stealing her husband.

The authoress lost her beau to her sister, but after thirty years of marriage, he left.

The sisters go to choir practice. The publisher digs up the rose garden. Obviously, as her sister tells him, his authoress is “a neurotic, disappointed woman.” The book can’t be published.

The sisters confront each other. The book is true, the wife killed her husband for planning to leave with her sister. He’s buried where the stone bench used to be. The publisher prevents a second murder.

All the beauty of this is in Evelyn Varden’s truculent walk out of this scene, the sober, serious woman is mad as a hatter. Patricia Collinge plays the authoress as described. Both women anticipate Aldrich’s Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte or What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. John Williams is the publisher. “I’m sure Mr. Vinton doesn’t think he’s more important than God,” says the murderess excusing their needful departure for church. “No,” he says graciously, “not at all.”