Another of Armstrong’s powerful suspense novels to be filmed was The Unsuspected (1946), a controversial novel that was both praised by critics for its writing skill but lambasted for disclosing the identity of the killer almost at the outset. A famous radio narrator steals money from his ward’s inheritance and, when his secretary discovers his thievery, he kills her. More deaths follow before he confesses—on air. It was filmed under the same title and released in 1947 to excellent reviews. Directed by Michael Curtiz, it starred Claude Rains, Joan Caulfield, and Audrey Totter.

During the filming of The Unsuspected, Armstrong and her family permanently moved from New York to California, where she continued to write stores and more than twenty novels, one of which, A Dram of Poison (1956), won the Edgar as the best novel of the year. She also wrote television scripts, including several that were produced by Alfred Hitchcock.

“The Enemy” was originally published in the May 1951 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; it was first collected in The Albatross by Charlotte Armstrong (New York, Coward-McCann, 1957).

The Enemy

By Charlotte Armstrong

THEY SAT late at the lunch table and afterward moved through the dim, cool, high-ceilinged rooms to the Judge’s library where, in their quiet talk, the old man’s past and the young man’s future seemed to telescope and touch. But at twenty minutes after three, on that hot, bright, June Saturday afternoon, the present tense erupted. Out in the quiet street arose the sound of trouble.

Judge Kittinger adjusted his pince-nez, rose, and led the way to his old-fashioned veranda from which they could overlook the tree-roofed intersection of Greenwood Lane and Hannibal Street. Near the steps to the corner house, opposite, there was a surging knot of children and one man. Now, from the house on the Judge’s left, a woman in a blue house dress ran diagonally toward the excitement. And a police car slipped up Hannibal Street, gliding to the curb. One tall officer plunged into the group and threw restraining arms around a screaming boy.

Mike Russell, saying to his host, “Excuse me, sir,” went rapidly across the street. Trouble’s center was the boy, ten or eleven years old, a towheaded boy, with tawny-lashed blue eyes, a straight nose, a fine brow. He was beside himself, writhing in the policeman’s grasp. The woman in the blue dress was yammering at him. “Freddy! Freddy! Freddy!” Her voice simply did not reach his ears.

“You ole stinker! You rotten ole stinker! You ole nut!” All the boy’s heart was in the epithets.

“Now, listen . . .” The cop shook the boy who, helpless in those powerful hands, yet blazed. His fury had stung to crimson the face of the grown man at whom it was directed.