The Berlin Matter

Originally Aired: March 16, 1954Johnny Dollar #206, "The Berlin Matter," finds the freelance insurance investigator traveling to post-war Berlin to look into the suspicious death of Sam Harvey, an American consulting engineer. Harvey had recently increased his life insurance policy from ten to fifty thousand dollars and changed the beneficiary from his mother to his new German wife, Elsa. When Berlin police cable that Harvey's body has been found in the Rhine River near Spandau in the British zone, Camden Life of Fidelity dispatches Johnny to determine whether this was an accident or murder.Working with German police Lieutenant Wilhelm Meissner, Johnny learns that Harvey's body was likely dumped upstream in the dangerous French zone and carried by the current to where it was discovered. Johnny tracks down Paul Turner, Harvey's friend who identified the body and notified the widow. Turner insists Harvey simply got drunk at a beer festival and fell in, but Johnny's skepticism grows when he discovers that Elsa Harvey has delayed her arrival from Vienna for four days, citing illness. As Johnny accompanies Turner to meet the newly widowed Mrs. Harvey at Tempelhof Airport, the pieces of a potentially deadly insurance scheme begin to emerge.