Keywords: murder of a pregnant woman, pregnancy, beacon hill boston, attempted blackmail, diner, candlestick as weapon, foot chase, cape cod massachusetts, murder gun, playing handball
Budget: $730,000
Plot:
A human skeleton is found among the tall grass in the dunes on a Cape Cod beach. Barnstable Police Lieutenant Pete Moralas is leading the investigation, with his gut feeling being that the victim met with foul play. He is enlisting the services of Dr. McAdoo with the Legal Section of the Harvard Medical Department. Pete will use whatever forensic evidence Dr. McAdoo can uncover from the skeleton and the crime site, combined with regular police evidence, such as missing persons cases, to discover the victim's identity. With that evidence, they are able to determine that the victim is twenty-four year old Vivian Heldon, a Boston based nightclub dancer and bar girl. She had been reported missing four months earlier by Jackie Elcott, who was a neighbor in a rooming house owned and operated by Mrs. Smerrling. Jackie knew that Vivian, like herself, was all alone in the world, that being the reason Jackie felt compelled to look out for her. Dr. McAdoo also discovers that single Vivian was in the early stages of pregnancy when she died. Pete is able to track Vivian's movements on the night she was probably killed, including how she got out to Cape Cod from Boston. With that evidence, Pete is able to charge married Henry Shanway with the murder. Henry pleads his innocence, he admitting that he had met Vivian that evening at the bar where she worked, but that he was drunk, drowning his sorrows as his wife, Grace Shanway, was in the hospital just having miscarried. The evidence against Henry includes several eyewitnesses being able to identify him as being with Vivian that night, those people including the bartender where she worked, one of her casual friends, and an employee at a roadside diner in Cape Cod. Mrs. Smerrling also identified him as snooping around the rooming house immediately following. Pete has no choice but to charge him, even though there still is a nagging feeling that something is missing in the investigation. That something could be helped or hindered by one of the external parties working on his/her own agenda.
