Sofie Winter is a wealthy widow that tries to control the life of her son Hubert. She misses her husband dearly and often thinks of him as waiting just across the threshold for her. She wants to talk to her husband wondering whether he is lonely and wants her to come to him. Hubert convinces his mother that he knows a medium. The "medium" is actually his girlfriend Irma. Irma tells Sofie that her dead husband is lonely and that he wants her to join them. Sofie agrees to take a fatal dose of medicine, but stalls. Hubert grows upset and gets himself a drink. He soon dies. His mother poisoned the drink. She wanted her son to join his parents in the afterlife.

Jimmy Dolan works for Goliath Studios. When star actress Betsy Blake drowns, he hopes to turn the publicity surrounding the murder into publicity for her last movie which was produced by Goliath Studios. When Betsy later turns up alive and seriously overweight, he drives her to the beach and drowns her. Later he is arrested. The police tell him he would kill his own mother if it served his purposes. He responds by asking how the police knew she was his real mother?