The Black Camel
Shelah Fane, an actor shooting a movie in Hawaii, asks for time off, and goes to meet the man she is dating. Her friend Julie comes to her dressing room and shows Shelah a newspaper article about a psychic named Tarnaverro coming to town. Shelah says she has sent for him to decide if she should marry the leading man, Alan Jaynes. Later, as Sheila and Jaynes are out driving, she promises to give him an answer that evening.At the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Charlie Chan goes undercover to meet Tarnaverro. Tarnaverro calls Chan out as a policeman. Chan wants to know if he has information about the murder of Denny Mayo in Hollywood three years ago.Shelah arrives at the hotel for a psychic reading. Over a crystal ball, Tarnaverro tells her that he sees something in her past, and describes the murder Chan mentioned. She admits to being in the house the night of the murder.Later, Shelah is in tears after deciding not to marry Jaynes. Anna, a maid, comes in to deliver some flowers, but on seeing a torn photograph, drops them. The flowers are from Robert Fyfe, and Shelah sets up a meeting with him.Jessop, a butler, finds Anna distraught. He tells her that he loves her and would do anything to help her.Later, Jaynes confronts Tarnaverro, asking him why he advised her not to marry him. Chan intervenes before a fight ensues. Jaynes stalks off, and Tarnaverro tells Chan he may be able to show him a murderer that day.The cast meets for a party, but Shelah hasn't shown up. Julie and her friend Jimmy go to find her, and discover her body. Julie insists on taking a ring from her finger before anyone can see.Chan meets Tarnaverro and asks him to ride with him to the murder scene. Tarnaverro says she was murdered because she knew who killed Denny Mayo. At the scene, Sheila has been stabbed through the heart, with flowers torn from her dress and crushed. Her wristwatch is smashed, possibly giving the time of the murder. Footprints are found at the scene.While interviewing the witnesses, a note is delivered to Tarnaverro. Chan takes it from him, but lights are turned out and part of the note is ripped away from him. Jessop says Shelah was crying over a man's photograph that morning. A woman says she saw a man running from the pavilion but she is not believed.Chan questions Julie about the jewelry she wore, but she does not admit to the existence of the ring, until Anna points out that Shelah was wearing it. All of the actors were also present at the murder of Denny Mayo. Chan's assistant finds the remains of the photograph, but one of the men manages to pocket a crucial part of it. Later, the man who ran from the pavilion appears - it is Robert Fyfe, Shelah's ex-husband. He tells Chan they had met at 8:00 and he had left at 8:04 to return to the theater.Chan's assistant brings in the man who had left footprints. He is a painter named Smith. He tells Chan he doesn't know what time he was on the beach, but he did hear voices on the pavilion, a man's and a woman's. He saw Shelah and Fyfe. Fyfe then cuts off the painter's explanation and confesses to the crime. However, Chan points out that she was alive at 8:12 when she had spoken with the cook. He then lets everyone leave.Chan then finds the torn-away part of the note under the carpet. It is from Shelah to Tarnaverro, telling him to ignore everything she had said that afternoon.Smith tells his girlfriend that he will sell a painting to someone, or else he will tell. Meeting Robert Fyfe, he asks for $500, but Fyfe can only afford $100 and $200 later. As Smith leaves the rendezvous, he is shot, but survives.Chan goes to the library to go over newspaper articles concerning the Mayo case, but every picture in them has been cut out. The librarian tells him a woman had been the last to look at them, and identifies Julie as the woman. Julie denies cutting out the pictures, but gives Chan an anonymous note she had received telling her to do it. On Jimmy's urging, she also tells him that she had taken the ring, which had Mayo's name inscribed inside of it.Chan identifies the typewriter as one in the hotel. He then checks an alibi for Tarnaverro, and finds that he had changed his name from Arthur Mayo many years ago. He and Denny were brothers, and the pictures had been removed to stop Chan from realizing it.Smith's girlfriend accuses Fyfe of shooting him. At Smith's bedside, Smith reveals that Shelah had confessed to Tarnaverro that she had murdered Denny Mayo. Then Fyfe, who had known of that murder, tells Chan that Mayo had had a wife already and Shelah had shot him in a jealous rage. Smith also cops to stealing a tiara from Shelah and gives Chan the bullet with which he had been shot. Chan arrests Fyfe.Chan's chief of police wants to arrest Tarnaverro right away, but Chan suggests that the the heel that had crushed the orchids might provide a vital clue. At Shelah's house, they find a knife and scratches under a chair that show that the pin from the orchids had stuck in the murderer's shoe and then the murderer had sat in the chair.Chan convenes the suspects to reconstruct the crime. Tarnaverro sits in the chair, but still Chan thinks there is a mistake. He questions Jessop, who admits that he and Anna had rested in the chairs after the party. The telltale pin is found in Anna's shoe.Anna confesses to being Mrs. Denny Mayo. Tarnaverro had placed Anna, his sister-in-law, as a maid to Shelah to try to find evidence of her killing Denny Mayo. She killed Shelah in a rage after Shelah had torn up Denny's picture.As Chan attempts to place her under arrest, Jessop pulls a gun to try to free her. He is quickly subdued, but the gun turns out to be the one used to shoot Smith in an attempt to keep him quiet.
paranormal, revenge, murder