The Suspect (1944)

Philip Marshall (Charles Laughton) is a kind but henpecked accountant who strikes up an innocent friendship with a young stenographer (played by Ella Raines) who had approached him looking for work. He gradually finds himself falling in love with her, but keeps the relationship platonic.

His wife Cora (Rosalind Ivan), who has also alieniated their son with her shrewish ways, suspects the worst and threatens a scandal. Cora dies after a fall down the stairs at home, and it is left to the viewer to decide whether Marshall arranged the fall or not. It is strongly hinted that he did, although the death appears accidental.

A Scotland Yard inspector (Stanley Ridges) suspects that Marshall murdered his wife but is unable to prove anything. An impoverished, drunken, wife-beating neighbour (Henry Daniell) is very interested to learn of the inspector's suspicions, and relishes the chance to blackmail Marshall, whose respectability he envies. He threatens to invent a story about an argument between Marshall and his wife, which would appear to prove that Marshall had killed his wife.

Marshall kills his neighbour. When the Inspector hears of this second death, he sets a trap in which he pretends to frame his neighbour's long-suffering innocent wife for the murder. The success of the trap depends on Marshall's coming forward, rather than letting the innocent woman hang. The inspector believes that, in spite of everything, Marshall has never lost his innate decency.

In 1955, The Suspect was dramatised for television on Lux Video Theatre, and starred Robert Newton.