The Lady Confesses

After she is paid a surprise visit by a woman claiming to be her fiancé Larry Craig's long-lost wife Norma, Vicki McGuire makes a desperate call to Larry at the Club 7-11. Larry shows up at the club a few minutes after Vicki's call, roaring drunk, and has a drink in club owner Lucky Brandon's office. Larry then is cajoled into lying down on singer Lucille Compton's dressing room couch and soon passes out. Two hours later, Larry is roused to answer a second call from Vicki, and on his way to the phone, he sees Lucky, a notorious playboy, slipping in through the back door. Despite the late hour, an anxious Vicki meets Larry to discuss Norma, who had disappeared almost seven years before, on the day that her divorce from Larry was to become final. After Larry assures Vicki that Norma's threat to refuse him a divorce is merely a jealous whim, they drive to the house where Norma now is living. They find the house swarming with policemen and are told by homicide detective Capt. Brown that, earlier that evening, Norma was strangled to death. Larry and Vicki give Brown separate alibis, and Brown accompanies Larry to Club 7-11 to verify his. Gladys, the hat check girl, Steve, the bartender, and Lucy all support Larry's alibi, but Lucky refuses to admit he saw Larry. The next day, while Larry and Vicki are at a restaurant, Brown stops by their table and questions Larry about a $10,000 loan that Norma had made to Lucky ten years before. Larry insists that he did not care how the independently wealthy Norma spent her money and was not jealous. After Brown leaves, Vicki, fearful that the persistent detective is somehow going to implicate them, volunteers to spy on Lucky, who has never met her. At the Club 7-11, Vicki bribes the club photographer, Marge, into taking a vacation so that she can pose as her replacement. Lucky immediately is suspicious of the bumbling Vicki, but allows her to stay. Vicki finds out from darkroom attendant Bill that Lucy had been romantically involved with Lucky until Norma, a former flame, reappeared at the club a few days before. Vicki then overhears an argument between Lucy and Lucky, in which Lucy screams that she knows that Lucky went to Norma's the night of her murder. The next day, Lucky sees Larry and Vicki having lunch together, and later at the club, catches her in his office. After advising Vicki to "be careful," Lucky realizes that something is missing from his desk and hurriedly leaves the club. Vicki, who found an apparently incriminating receipt in Lucky's desk, follows him in a cab to Norma's house and spies on him as he retrieves his monogrammed fountain pen from her couch. Upon returning to the club, Lucky is confronted by a gun-wielding Lucy, and while he tries to disarm her, the gun fires. Lucky assures his employees that the gun accidentally discharged and asks Vicki to escort the distraught Lucy home. As she is about to leave, Lucy notices someone lurking outside, writes a hasty note to Brown and places it on her dressing table. Once at her apartment, Lucy dismisses Vicki and starts to pack a suitcase. Moments later, Larry appears in her bedroom and demands that she reveal what "she told Vicki about him." Even though Lucy, who willingly lied for Larry because she was jealous of Norma, denies having said anything incriminating, Larry strangles her with a wire. Outside Lucy's apartment building, Vicki, meanwhile, runs into Brown and shows him the receipt from Lucky's office, which indicates that he paid Norma $10,000 on the day of her murder. Brown and Vicki return to Lucy's apartment and discover her body. Later, Larry drives the unsuspecting Vicki to the beach and there questions her about Lucy. Despite her assurances that Lucy revealed nothing about him, Larry prepares to strangle Vicki, but is interrupted by a passing policeman. After Larry drops her at home, the still unaware Vicki goes to the club to retrieve Lucy's letter to Brown. When Vicki learns that Brown is not available, she calls Larry and arranges to meet him at his place. Brown, meanwhile, picks up Lucky, whose fingerprints, along with Larry's, were found in Lucy's apartment, and then heads for Larry's. There, Larry has Vicki read Lucy's confessional letter and tells Vicki that he killed Norma to keep her from ruining their future, then killed the talkative Lucy. Just as Larry is about to strangle Vicki, he is shot and killed by Brown. Afterward, Lucky admits that he lied about seeing Larry at the club so that the police would not know he had been to Norma's that night to repay his loan. Satisfied that Lucky is innocent, Brown orders him to escort the grieving Vicki home.