![]() There are hints that Miss Fox is attracted to Eddie, but the social gulf between them is always clear and one may infer that the reason he is forced to walk up 14 flights of stairs to reach her apartment on his day off is because elevator boys are not welcome to use the elevator when they are not on duty. "Over There-Darkness" takes place in a specific location: West 23rd Street, in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood. When the doorman finds her corpse, she has five one-hundred dollar bills in her hand. Again, a man attacks her from behind, this time killing her. That night, she heads outside to walk Vanessa. Miss Fox attempts to pay off her feelings of guilt by giving Eddie an envelope containing $500. He no longer needs extra money his fiance died. Miss Fox asks him to walk her dog, but he refuses. Eddie is released from prison and resumes his job. Late that fall, Sergeant Kirby tells Miss Fox that her ring was found in the room of the man whom she refused to identify at the police station. Eddie is tried, convicted, and sent to prison. Eddie does not realize that she suspects him, and later that day she tells Sergeant Kirby that Eddie was the thief. The next day, she calls Eddie to her apartment and suggests that she will pay $500 for the return of her ring. Summoned later that night to the police station, she denies that another young man was her assailant. ![]() Police sergeant Kirby questions Miss Fox, who convinces herself that Eddie must be the thief. She is attacked from behind and left unconscious on the sidewalk, her ring and money stolen. That night, she takes Vanessa for a walk, following the dog past the lighted area in front of her building and into the "sinister" darkness in front of a row of neighboring brownstones. He asks her to loan him $50, explaining that his girl is in a sanitarium and that he pays half of her medical bills. One April day, Eddie appears unexpectedly at her apartment on his day off, out of uniform and out of breath after having climbed fourteen flights of stairs. She has been alone since her fiancee, a military man, died in 1943, and she treasures the diamond engagement ring her gave her. "Her favorite elevator boy," handsome Eddie McMahon, walks her dog six nights a week. The story concerns a wealthy, middle-aged woman named Miss Fox, who lives alone in a Manhattan apartment with her dog, Vanessa. Schoenfeld adapted it for Alfred Hitchcock Presents and today it is probably O'Farrell's best-known work. "Over There-Darkness" won the Edgar Award for Best Short Story in 1959 and was collected in Best Detective Stories of the Year and again in Best of the Best Detective Stories. In addition, the first episode of Thriller was based on one of his novels. He wrote three teleplays himself, including "The Kind Waitress" for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Two movies were adapted from his novels and, once TV became a viable market in the 1950s, he had two stories and three novels adapted for television from his works. At the same time, he was busy writing novels, 15 of which were published between 19, two of them under the pseudonym of William Grew. His stories appeared in the slicks from 1941 to 1947 and in the digests from 1955 to 1962. The story's author, William O'Farrell (1904-1962), wrote short stories and novels from 1941 to 1962. This was the first of only two issues of this periodical, which was published in cooperation with the Mystery Writers of America. "Over There-Darkness" was first published in the October 1958 issue of a digest called Sleuth Mystery Magazine.
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