The Letter

Leslie Crosbie, the wife of a British rubber plantation manager in Malaya, shoots dead Geoffrey Hammond, a well-known member of the expatriate community. Leslie tells the servant to send for the new district officer and her husband Robert, who is loading rubber for shipment. Crosbie returns, delivered by his attorney, a close family friend. Leslie claims that she killed Hammond to save her honor. She is placed under arrest, jailed in Singapore, and charged with murder. Her eventual acquittal seems a foregone conclusion, as the white community not only believes her story but feels she had acted heroically. Only the attorney, Howard Joyce, harbors suspicion. His clerk, Ong Chi Seng, tells him a letter exists that Leslie wrote to Hammond the day of the shooting, imploring him to come that night while Robert was away.