Die roten Schuhe (1917)

One day, the noble Count Othmar von Rotheneck enters the detective agency of the young Eva Heiden and asks for her help with a tricky case. His fiancée, who is also his cousin, Liane, has disappeared! On the eve of their wedding, he had given her his mother’s heirloom jewelry as a sort of early wedding present. At that moment, the household servant appeared and handed her a letter. After reading it, Liane is said to have run off, white as a sheet. Count Othmar then wanted to retire to his rooms and caught one last brief glimpse of Liane on the stairs. After that, she vanished completely and did not appear on the wedding day either. At the very moment Liane seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth, her brother suddenly appeared and took up residence with Othmar. To get to the bottom of these strange events, Eva must also go to the Rothenecks’ castle. So as not to attract attention, she is introduced as Othmar’s cousin. Liane’s brother, who has invited himself to stay, is not at all pleased by her arrival and now tries to get rid of Eva as quickly as possible. When he fails to do so by ordinary means, one day he simply locks her in the castle dungeon. Eva manages to free herself, however. During her escape, she suddenly comes across a wardrobe whose door will not open. It turns out that the missing Liane is locked inside, stone dead. When Eva opens the wardrobe, Liane’s overbearing brother suddenly appears in front of her. Eva bluntly tells him that she believes he murdered his sister. She wants to coax a confession out of him, but he is just as horrified as the young detective. He does admit, however, that he wrote the ominous letter that the butler had handed to the future mistress of the house shortly before Liane disappeared. In the letter, he announced to Liane that he intended to move into the count’s castle and live at the expense of his future brother-in-law. It turns out that while “fleeing” from her husband’s room, Liane had dropped this highly embarrassing letter. In a panic, she began searching everywhere. When Liane saw Othmar on the stairs, she tried to hide from him and chose, of all places, the wardrobe with its apparently badly jammed door, which she then could not open again. In the end, she starved to death inside.