Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A realistic mystery story about an investigation of a child suspected
of being poisoned to death by strychnine. Director-writer Andrew L. Stone
keeps the terse story tense despite the almost certainty that the murder
suspect is indeed the obvious guilty one, but he leaves open that it is
not absolutely certain who did it until the climactic last scene.
Whitney Cameron (Joseph Cotten) is the concerned uncle who rushes
to the NYC hospital from his home in Boston to see how his deceased brother’s
daughter Polly is doing after going into a convulsion. His brother recently
died and his wife Lynne (Jean Peters) is taking care of Polly and her younger
brother Doug, children from his former marriage. When Polly seems to have
recovered but goes into another convulsion late at night and suddenly dies
Dr. Stevenson, the one treating her, doesn’t understand how and wants an
autopsy performed, but Lynne refuses.
In a hurry to get back to work Cameron is about to leave but the
family lawyer Fred Sargent (Merrill) and his news reporter wife Maggie
(McLeod) become suspicious of the way the child died, suspecting that she’s
been poisoned. Maggie reminds Cameron that his brother died in the same
way while also saying, “Don’t touch my feet.” His brother’s death was classified
as caused by sleeping sickness, a virus infection, but there wasn’t an
autopsy performed. At first, Cameron is reluctant to believe that the very
loving, prim and pretty Lynne is capable of murder. But the motive soon
becomes clear when Fred says he drew up his brother’s will and it states
that his wife gets to inherit the entire estate if the two children are
deceased.
Behind Lynne’s back, Cameron has the police perform an autopsy on
Polly and they find enough strychnine in her to kill four horses. They
then call in for questioning all the servants and Lynne, and she becomes
the prime suspect. In their investigation they find that the child was
poisoned in the hospital and that her last medicine didn’t come from the
pharmacy but that Lynne brought it from her own pharmacy. When they try
to indict her on murder charges, the judge throws out the case for lack
of sufficient evidence. The pain on Cameron’s face relates to how helpless
he feels because the system doesn’t work. The fear now is that young Doug
will be killed next and he can’t do anything to prevent it.
Warning: spoiler to follow in the last two
paragraphs.
Lynne informs Cameron that she plans to take Doug by boat to Europe
for a year’s vacation to get him to forget the ordeal. Cameron is afraid
that she will get away with poisoning him, and therefore comes up with
an extreme plan to thwart her. He surprises her by joining the voyage and
trying to romance her so that she is not suspicious of his presence. His
ultimate plan is to poison her but when the time comes, he can’t. But while
having a last drink in her room he discovers in her bedroom a bottle of
aspirins, with a few pills having a different marking on them. He surmises
that those pills will be used to poison Doug. So he takes one of them and
puts it into her drink and has the ship’s detective there in case she confesses.
She has 5-10 minutes to get the doctor to help before the poison sets in
for the painful convulsions to begin. But she doesn’t call the doctor until
after that time period passes, as she tries to decide which of her two
choices is the better one: the electric chair or dying from the poison.
She decides to take her chances in court, where she will later on be convicted
and sentenced to life.
This is a well-acted thriller and it is directed with some nice touches,
as when Cotten is romancing Lynne on the deck but is disturbed as a door
opens to a burst of laughter from some party-goers–which indicates their
romance is only a joke. Also, in the climactic scene, when we are certain
of Lynne’s guilt, but under duress she manages to convincingly act indignant
toward Cotten for playing on her hospitality and deceptively using her
under false pretenses. We notice a doubt that creeps over Cotton, as she
questions what kind of man he is to poison her.