Equally unlikely is the fact that five films featuring Nurse Keate and O’Leary were filmed over a three-year period in the 1930s. While the Patient Slept (1935) featured Aline MacMahon as Nurse Keate and Guy Kibbee as O’Leary. The Murder of Dr. Harrigan (1936) starred Kay Linaker in the lead role, renamed Nurse Sally Keating and now much younger. Murder by an Aristocrat (1936) has Marguerite Churchill as Keating, and The Great Hospital Mystery (1937) features a much older Jane Darwell, before Warner Brothers-First National decided to go younger again with a lovely Ann Sheridan starring in both The Patient in Room 18 (1938) and Mystery House (1938).

Eberhart’s other series detective is Susan Dare who, like her creator, is a mystery writer. Young, attractive charming, romantic, and gushily emotional, she has a habit of stumbling into real-life murders.

“Postiche” was originally published in the August 1935 issue of The Delineator.

Postiche

By Mignon G. Eberhart

Postiche: A pretentious imitation, particularly used of an inartistic addition to an otherwise perfect work of art.—Encyclopædia Britannica.

THE WIGGENHORN house could never have been a pleasant place: its slate roof was too heavy and dark; its turrets too many, its windows too high and too narrow. It was still less so on the cold, windy March afternoon when Susan Dare dismissed the taxi that had brought her from the train, and put her hand upon the gate.

Susan pressed the bell and thought of Jim’s words to her over the telephone. “Go ahead, if you must, Susie,” he’d said. “But if it looks like trouble, you get out. You take too many chances, my girl.” He’d paused there, and then said in an offhand way: “Where’d you say the place is? Just outside Warrington? And what’s the name of the people?” She’d told him, and had an impression that he’d written it.

The door opened. A plump little maid took Susan’s bag and invited her to enter.

The interior of the house was exactly what one would expect. There was a great deal of heavy, darkly upholstered furniture; stiff curtains which looked dusty and a musty smell tinged with camphor.

She had only a glimpse of the hall, however, for she was ushered at once into a hideous drawing-room and from a jungle of armchairs a woman arose. She was a large woman, very fat, with a jolly smile, several chins, eyes that were almost hidden in folds of flesh and lightish, untidy hair. There was an open box of chocolates on the table beside her.

“Miss Dare, I suppose,” she said in an asthmatic voice. “I was expecting you. I am Miss Wiggenhorn. Miriam Wiggenhorn. Do sit down. Will you have tea?”