Mystery House 1938

At a snowbound hunting lodge, a tense confession sets the stage for a deadly deluge of secrets. Banker Hubert Kingery gathers five fellow officers and reveals a chilling accusation: one of them has forged documents and embezzled $500,000. The mood shifts from conspiratorial to lethal when Kingery is shot that same evening, and the police quickly write it off as suicide. Gwen Kingery, Anne Nagel, the victim’s daughter, refuses to accept the official verdict. She seeks help from her aunt’s nurse, Ann Sheridan Sarah Keate, who in turn suggests her detective boyfriend, Dick Purcell Lance O’Leary, as the right person to unravel the truth. Lance wastes no time, bringing all the suspects back to the lodge for a meticulous, methodical investigation as the snowed-in retreat becomes a crucible where trust dissolves and motives come to light.

Gwen’s plea for justice evolves into a weekend-long examination when she invites everyone who was present the night of her father’s death to stay in the country estate. The atmosphere tightens as the day’s hunting excursion ends and another tragedy hits: Helen Page, Jean Benedict, dies in what appears to be a suicide. Her husband Joe Page had recently sought a divorce to marry another woman, a detail that adds a layer of possible motive. Lance begins to piece together the reality behind the apparent self-destruction: Helen was strangled and then shot after death, a staged sequence designed to disguise murder as suicide. The tension among the guests grows as secrets emerge and the trail grows colder, until Gwen herself becomes a focal point in a web of deceit.

The tension escalates when Gwen visits Gerald Frawley, Ben Welden, in his room. After she leaves, Gerald removes his toupee and is killed in the exact same way as Kingery had been—triggering a chilling pattern that links the two murders. Sarah discovers a letter Gerald wrote to Gwen, revealing a critical clue: the “key” to the mystery lies in his toupee. This odd detail becomes a turning point in Lance’s investigation, pointing toward a carefully constructed scheme rather than random violence.

A startling revelation follows: Lucy Kingery, Aunt Lucy, Elspeth Dudgeon, who is bedridden, might actually be able to walk. Lance engineers a ruse to test Lucy’s mobility and, in the process, uncovers a pivotal truth: Lucy stole Gerald’s toupee, which bears the safe’s combination written inside it. With this discovery, Lance and Lucy leave the room, giving Bruker, the family chauffeur, a chance to copy the combination. The slam of the door behind them confirms a life-or-death race: the killer needs the safe’s contents to cover his tracks.

Lance quickly rules out the chauffeur, and the trap closes when he catches Bruker in the act of opening the safe. Bruker confesses a long-silent debt: six years earlier he had stolen money from Kingery’s office, and the boss had forced him to sign a confession to keep him in line. Kingery’s insistence on containing the truth now backfires, because a gun mounted on the wall, arranged as a decoration, has been rigged to fire if the office door is bolted. The stage is set for a dramatic confrontation where every suspect becomes a potential killer.

Lance rounds up the eight suspects into the office and candles the tension as he bolts the door, challenging the truth to surface. The moment of reckoning arrives when Julian Barre, Anthony Averill, the man Lance has long suspected, recoils as the weapon fires. Barre launches a fierce struggle with Lance, trying to escape while Bruker and a ferocious dog complicate the scene. In the chaotic fight, Lucy unexpectedly rises from her wheelchair and wields a vase in a critical misstep that temporarily KOs Lance. The others close in, and Barre is eventually restrained by the witnesses, his escape thwarted by the combined efforts of the remaining suspects.

In the aftermath, Sarah tends to Lance’s head wound and seeks a straightforward explanation. Lance reveals a carefully hidden truth: a paper found in Kingery’s safe accuses Barre of forging securities to finance his escapades, and Gerald had confided the crime to Helen, leading them both into Barre’s deadly orbit. The motive becomes crystal clear: Barre orchestrated the embezzlement cover-up, exploiting relationships and the fear of exposure to keep his own name out of the affair. With the web of deceit exposed, Barre’s plan unravels, and he is finally brought to account for the three murders that had haunted the lodge.

Yet even amid the forensic certainty, humanity lingers. As Lance and Sarah stand close, about to kiss, Lucy calls for her medicine, prompting a lighter, almost humane moment. Lance notes that Lucy’s regained ability to walk could be good exercise for her, and Lucy, feeling the sting of emancipation, rolls away in a huff. The moment restores a sense of warmth to an otherwise grim saga, and Sarah and Lance share a quiet embrace that hints at a budding partnership forged in the crucible of danger. The fierce, puzzling case at the snowbound lodge ends not with triumph alone, but with a tempered sense of justice, the painstaking unraveling of a conspiracy, and a reminder that truth, even when hard-won, can coexist with human tenderness.