If you don't know, "Cabin B-13" is a story by John Dickson Carr which was dramatized on Suspense fairly early in its run (Carr wrote the bulk of episodes in the show's first year). It was first braodcast March 16, 1943, but we have no copies of that version. Fortunately it was repeated later that same year on November 9th (indicating it was a well-regarded script as they used few recycled scripts at the time) and that version still exists. It's a riff on "the Vanishing Lady" story popularized by Alexander Woolcott (many of Carr's Suspense stories are riffs on other people's works - "The Man without a Body" is Wells' "the Invisible Man," "The Body Snatchers" is obviously inspired by Stevenson's story of the same name, etc.).
In that drama, a woman on her honeymoon aboard a ship is alarmed when her husband disappears and no one aboard seems to remember seeing them together. The solution to the mystery is rather stupid but imagines itself to be very clever (which I find is a common problem in Carr's writing). The solution (spoilers for "Cabin B-13") is no one remembered seeing her husband because he was really a member of the crew. So basically it's only a mystery because no one asks the right questions or gives a complete answer - if just one crewman had said, "But I didn't see you with your husband -- just a member of the crew" the whole story would have ended right there.
The series Cabin B-13 features the character of Dr. Fabian as host (portrayed by Arnold Moss) - he was the one who solved the mystery in the original - and he frames the stories told on the program from Cabin B-13 itself (which was not his cabin in the original story, but whatever). It ran on CBS from July, 1948 to January, 1949. Unfortunately, although much of CBS radio has been preserved, very little of Cabin B-13 has survived - just three episodes. Even then, we know very little about the series of programs themselves and what stories were told. Heck, we don't even know for certain if the original story "Cabin B-13" was dramatized!
We do have the 1st episode, "A Razor in Fleet Street," which promises the series will feature brand-new stories by John Dickson Carr. But they didn't hold to that promise since the other two surviving episodes (both near the end of the run) were recycled from Suspense: "The Bride Vanishes" and "The Sleep of Death" (retitled from "The Devil's Saint"). The latter two episodes are interesting to compare with the Suspense versions and do have the type of quality expected of a post-war CBS dramatic program, albeit sans the big stars in the Suspense productions (Peter Lorre really carried "The Devil's Saint").
So let's talk about "A Razor in Fleet Street," the one surviving episode which is original to Cabin B-13. The plot concerns a couple on holidays in England when the husband is sought out by Scotland Yard. They inform him he looks a lot like a killer they're trying to capture and they'd appreciate it if he stayed off the street. Determined to improve his career in the diplomatic corps, the man decides to ignore their warning and go seek the killer himself, hoping to capture him. It's already a pretty far-fetched premise but, indeed, he just so happens to encounter the criminal who looks like him. You might wonder what impact his resemblance to the killer has upon the plot; the answer is "absolutely nothing." It's merely an excuse to have Scotland Yard seek him out at the start of the story.
A common failing in Carr's radio writing is that his mysteries are too literary and don't make for good radio. He tends to bury his clues in the text and that's a problem in an audio medium. Such is the case in "A Razor in Fleet Street," which does not do a good job of presenting the clues. The murder happens about 20 minutes in and the rest of the runtime is devoted to characters making wild hysterical assumptions until the case is solved (which is typical for Carr's scripts). A better program - the sort of thing Suspense would attempt after Carr left - was to have the murder happen in the opening 5 minutes and devote the rest of the show to solving the problem. "A Razor in Fleet Street" would have been improved to my ears had it been structured in that manner - and better yet if the clue had been indicated through the audio, not just the dialogue. The clue to solve the mystery could have been conveyed using careful sound effects but instead it plays out like a magazine short story - which is, at heart, what Carr was best at writing.
I think Cabin B-13 is an important bit of Suspense's story and definitely one for the fan who's heard everything of that series and still wants more. You can hear the 3 surviving episodes on the Internet Archive.
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