Murder Through Time: A Whodunit Across the Centuries

Case #5: The Canary Room

·19 min·1 clip

A single gunshot, an open safe, and a missing set of ledgers turn Arthur Bell’s office into a locked-room puzzle.

1. Murder Through Time: A Whodunit Across the Centuries sets Case #5, “The Canary Room,” in Chicago, 1923, inside a prohibition-era club with jazz, speakeasies, and hidden staircases. 2. Host Carissa guides the case as a historical whodunit, and Arthur Bell matters because he runs the Canary Room and keeps its records in a steel safe. 3. The episode’s central hook is a locked office, an open safe, and a missing set of ledgers after Bell is found dead behind his desk. 4. Carissa describes the club at midnight with Eddie Two-Step Donnelly at the piano, Clara Hastings singing, and Thomas Hale bartending while envelopes and liquor move through the room. 5. Bell’s wartime background in France and Clara Hastings’s service as a Red Cross nurse in 1918 connect the club’s present to their shared past. 6. Louis Marconi’s delivery truck, which officially carries produce and unofficially carries Canadian whiskey, gives the case a bootlegging route and a possible back-alley connection. 7. Investigators focus on the open safe, the untouched cash, the .32 automatic pistol, and the spent casing near the doorway as physical clues. 8. Eddie Donnelly says he left around 2.15, but he also heard the office door open behind him, which keeps his timeline in play. 9. A faint citrus perfume and a porcelain teacup with a lipstick mark become the episode’s most telling sensory clues, because Clara Hastings wore that scent on stage. 10. Listeners who like historical mysteries and clue-driven whodunits.

As heard by us

A Prohibition-era Chicago murder built from music, timing, and carefully placed details.

Case #5 places a murder in Chicago in 1923 and lets Carissa move through Prohibition, hidden staircases, and the Canary Room's guarded world. The writing stays tied to concrete detail, from Hale closing the bar and spotting Eddie Donnelly at the piano to Clara Hastings staying…

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Why you'd press play

For nights when you want Chicago jazz, hidden rooms, and a 1923 whodunit after midnight.

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