Das Geheimnis der schwarzen Koffer (1962)

A macabre series of murders alarms the citizens of London. Shortly before their deaths, all the victims find their suitcases packed and ready. A masked knife-thrower is never far behind. The film does not begin with the first murder in the series, but shows a man, Mr. Forester, on his way to his hotel, the Bishop’s Hotel. At the entrance, he quickly buys matches from a beggar in a wheelchair, Ponko, who will later turn up in other places as well. Forester intends to leave and gives the appropriate instructions at reception. When he reaches his room, he is surprised to discover that both his suitcases have already been packed. He wants to thank the maid, who has just come to help, but she runs in alarm to reception. The porter, too, recognizes the danger facing his guest, though Forester himself has no idea. In the past, people in London whose suitcases had also been unexpectedly packed shortly beforehand were murdered immediately. The porter orders a taxi, a minicab, at once to get Forester to safety, but as Forester gets in, a throwing knife strikes him fatally in the back. The attacker is a masked man who vanishes without a trace. At Scotland Yard, Sergeant Cannings, who has been contacted by the porter, tries to reach the investigating inspector, Robert Finch, at home. Chief Inspector Ellison muses that failing to solve the murder series could cost Finch his career. Finch is sitting in the bath and expecting his cousin from Scotland; eventually he is informed. Curtis then turns up as well. Finch is hurriedly getting dressed and has to cancel their planned weekend horse-riding outing. Inspector Finch finally arrives outside the hotel on Bishop’s Street and sees Dr. Bransby beside the body. Bransby claims to have happened upon the crime scene by chance and examined the corpse. Finch’s cousin, Arnold Wickerley, has also been at the scene for some time and is carrying a tape recorder, as he says he has become a sound hunter. Reporters have arrived, and the viewer learns that the dead man is the fourth victim in the series. It now becomes apparent that one of the victim’s pieces of luggage is missing and cannot be found. A petty crook climbs through an open window into Curtis’s villa and immediately finds his passport in the desk. It identifies him as Humphrey Curtis of Texas. Curtis surprises the intruder, who questions his identity, saying he met the real Curtis in Texas and that he was a short man, with one leg shorter than the other. The intruder demands hush money in exchange for keeping this secret. Curtis does not give in to the blackmail, nor does he confirm the allegation. Instead, he reveals that he had already noticed the man spying on him, and addresses the blackmailer by name: Tom Garnett. Curtis accuses him of being an escaped convict from Dartmoor. This knowledge unsettles Garnett, who is no longer so sure of himself. Curtis claims to be a crime writer with good police connections, and points through a window to Inspector Finch arriving outside. Garnett decides to slink away. Finch, with his cousin in tow, wants to draw on Curtis’s criminological knowledge and asks about killers from the world of variety performers, since the murderer appears able to strike his victims fatally in the heart with throwing knives from as far as 15 metres away. Curtis shows him his book, *Variety Artists and Their Crimes*, but cautions that the murderer need not necessarily be a performer. Curtis also points to another element of the modus operandi: the packed suitcases. Asked whether anything was found in them, Finch says no, and mentions the piece of luggage missing in the latest case. Wickerley now recalls that the doctor at the scene seemed interested in the suitcases. In passing, the viewer learns that the American Curtis has been in London for a year because the crime cases here are more interesting. Finch visits the doctor’s practice. Dr. Bransby is distracted, practically brushes off a patient, and locks a piece of luggage in a cupboard. In the waiting room, Finch recognizes the receptionist, Susan Brown, whom he met at a bus stop three weeks earlier and gave a handkerchief to. Finch directly asks the doctor about the missing piece of luggage. Bransby claims to know nothing and seems forgetful and old. Susan tells Dr. Bransby that a patient has called to report an emergency, whereupon he leaves the practice. Finch would now like to look around the premises unofficially, but Susan interrupts him. His attempt to invite her to dinner also fails. Dr. Bransby reaches his patient at the address he was given. The patient, Mr. Kudernacz, asks for an injection. He has a fever, but above all is terrified of dying. He suspects he will be the next victim in the murder series, like one of his friends, presumably Forester. Another friend, Mr. Beach, had recommended the doctor. Kudernacz wants an injection to get him fit enough to flee by steamer in an hour. During their conversation, an unknown person packs a suitcase in the next room. When Kudernacz is about to leave, the packed suitcase frightens him and he flees in a panic. At first, everything seems to go well. After several anxious minutes on foot, a minicab takes him to a feeder boat on the river. But as he boards, he is fatally struck by a throwing knife. Finch follows the trail of the new victim back to his former lodgings: the same address, 11 Fisher Street, where Dr. Bransby had been called. But at the practice he finds only Susan Brown, whom he finally succeeds in inviting to dinner. Finch mixes his private and professional interests by questioning Susan about Dr. Bransby, whom he suspects. Curtis, who recommended the restaurant to Finch, also enters the Soho establishment, apparently by chance. He hesitates, then leaves the dining room without either of them noticing him. Before that, he encounters Ponko, the wheelchair-bound man, whom he clearly has known for some time and with whom he appears to be working. Curtis gives him a surveillance assignment: he particularly wants to know where Inspector Finch goes for the rest of the day. That same night, Curtis visits a seedy Soho bar to buy the drug Meskadrin. The manager secretly watches him; Curtis’s frequent visits have already attracted his attention. Curtis has apparently made a point of acting like a drug addict and has persuaded the singer Lissy that he is addicted. The drugs seem to have severe side effects. When a dancer throws herself out of a window because of the drugs, Curtis calms the concerned Lissy by telling her to take only a little of the drug and to stop using it soon. This time Curtis wants to buy directly from the bar manager, claiming that the amount he has just bought from the waiter will not be enough. This only makes him more suspicious, since the manager points out that Curtis does not use the drug at all. The manager pulls a handkerchief from Curtis’s lapel, where the drugs he has just bought are hidden, even though Curtis claims to have already consumed some at the bar. Curtis tries to pass this amount off as his private emergency reserve. The manager orders his henchman Jack to deal with Curtis. They set a trap by laying the drugged singer Lissy in the street. Curtis gets out of his car, is beaten up, and thrown into the river. The next morning, Wickerley finds him completely soaked on the banks of the Thames. The next day, Dr. Bransby tells his assistant Susan that he will soon be closing his practice and proposes to her. She avoids giving him an answer. Finch returns to the practice to ask further questions, and Susan tells him about the proposal. Finch, who is himself interested in her, questions Susan further. Susan, who is from the United States, tells him about her brother Oliver, whose death she does not believe in. At about the same time, Curtis abducts the manager of the Soho bar. He ties him to a chair in the basement of his villa and subjects him to a prolonged interrogation, hoping to find out where the drug Meskadrin comes from and how it is delivered. Meanwhile, guests gather at the villa. Among them is a man named Beach, a friend of the previous victim. He appears to be the knife-thrower’s next victim, since he has found packed suitcases in his hotel. Finch has meanwhile been told that Meskadrin was found on the clothes of the murdered Kudernacz. He asks Curtis about the drug and notices Beach’s presence, but not that Curtis gives only evasive answers. Later, Beach is killed by the knife-thrower in his car on the way home, despite being under surveillance by Finch’s officers. None of the guests suspects what is going on in the basement. Finch’s cousin Wickerley, who has accompanied him again but remained outside the house, accidentally records the interrogation. While trying to record rats in a basement window well, he lowers his microphone into the shaft without realizing what his tape recorder is actually capturing. The manager of the Soho bar is giving details about the delivery vans that supply him with the drugs. Meanwhile, Finch questions Susan further about her brother in his own apartment and asks how she herself came to London. Susan answers freely, but Finch does not realize that she is withholding some information. Wickerley interrupts them by loudly playing his tape recordings in the next room. This reveals what Wickerley actually recorded, and Finch recognizes Curtis’s voice. As if on cue, Sergeant Cannings arrives and reports on the Meskadrin cases in the United States. Since the FBI will not provide information in this way, Finch decides to make inquiries in person. Before flying to New York, he orders Susan to be watched because he fears she is in danger. The day after Finch’s departure, Susan meets Curtis in the park. He had called her the night before, even though he had already recognized her at the restaurant with Finch. Susan is his sister, and he is Oliver Brown. He asks her to return home, since nobody in London must know that he is still alive. He now learns that Finch has just gone to the FBI and realizes that he does not have much time left. At the FBI, Agent Harris tells Finch about the cases in New York. According to Harris, the officer investigating them, Oliver Brown, became a dealer himself and is supposed to be buried in Phoenix, Arizona, just as Susan had said. As Finch expects, however, the grave contains a body that is not Oliver Brown. After returning to London, the inspector confronts Susan because she withheld important details about her brother, including that he was an FBI investigator and a suspect. He says nothing about the exhumation. Susan, in turn, says nothing about her meeting with Curtis or the fact that he is her brother and is alive. Curtis is meanwhile keeping watch on the area around the Soho bar. He notices a bakery delivery van with Tom Garnett at the wheel and hijacks it, taking the driver with him so that he can lead Curtis to the drug cartel’s man behind the scenes. The van crashes, however, and Garnett initially manages to escape. Wickerley, who witnessed the abduction and secretly climbed into the back of the van, puts Curtis on the right trail. On a railway bridge, Curtis catches up with Garnett and throws him over the parapet onto the tracks in front of a freight train. As Curtis walks away, he realizes that he is near Cronsdale Castle. The castle’s returning lord bears a striking resemblance to Dr. Bransby. He tells his niece, Diana, that they will soon be leaving the house and taking a young woman with them. Earlier, his niece had teased him by finding a list of names in a secret compartment and turning it into a suitably themed death list. The names listed are Durant, Schulz, Forester, Kudernacz, Beach, King, Vanhauten, and Martell. Since the first five have a death cross beside their names, this is presumably an accurate record of the murder series. Her uncle then burns both documents in the fireplace. Sergeant Cannings tells Finch the results of the surveillance on Susan. He reports that she met with a man he does not know. Finch, apparently biased by his affection for Susan, guesses that the man was Dr. Bransby. Only when an urgent letter from the FBI arrives with a photograph of Oliver Brown do they recognize the man in the photograph and realize that Curtis is Susan’s missing brother. Neither Curtis nor Susan is found at home. Because Finch loves Susan, he fears that she may be involved in the criminal activity. During the searches, police officers discover a large quantity of Meskadrin packets in Curtis’s safe. Finch finds a clue to Cronsdale Castle in Bransby’s practice. He and Wickerley hurry to the castle, where they meet the lord. Finch notices the resemblance to Dr. Bransby, but the lord explains it away by claiming to be Bransby’s younger cousin. Susan has meanwhile managed to escape and is looking for a way out in the castle’s catacombs. Curtis is on his way too. He first stopped at a chapel outside the castle and began playing the organ there. Hearing the music, Wickerley did not continue to the castle with his cousin, preferring instead to record the organ playing. He recognizes Curtis and follows him when Curtis disappears into the chapel’s underground passages. The lord and the butler are clearly a practiced criminal team: they trick Finch into believing that Dr. Bransby is just leaving the castle and heading to his car by the chapel. The lord claims to know an underground shortcut to the chapel and lures Finch below ground. They all meet there, and the unscrupulous lord manages to lock Finch, Susan, and Curtis inside a cleverly concealed drug laboratory. Susan’s brother tells them that he was once dismissed from the FBI despite being innocent, after a suitcase containing Meskadrin, money, and a ticket to Mexico was found in his possession. He confesses that he is behind the revenge murders of the drug cartel’s members. Suddenly, Lord Cronsdale pours the powder of the sinister death drug into the laboratory’s ventilation system. By chance, Wickerley manages to open the steel door at the last moment. Sergeant Cannings and several officers rush to the scene, stop the lord’s getaway car just after it sets off, and take him back to the castle. Curtis is then struck by a fatal knife intended for the lord. It comes from the hand of the supposedly helpless beggar Ponko, who is addicted to Meskadrin and, also seeking revenge, carried out the murders while Curtis packed the suitcases. Finch confronts Ponko, but it is his cousin Wickerley who knocks him unconscious from behind with his tape recorder. The recorder breaks, and Wickerley marks the moment with the final word, “The End.”