An insurance investigator is killed. His partner, Jack Raine, calls on his widow and daughter from his previous matter to discuss the matter and his intention to make sure the head of the criminal syndicate that did him in doesn't get away with it.
This movie makes an elementary error in pacing: it starts with a tension-filled episode of a meeting of the crooks, and then cuts to the mourning household with Raine, the widow (played by Joyce Kennedy), her stepdaughter (played by Kathleen Kelly), the butler (Gordon Begg), and Malcolm Keen, who makes love to Miss Kennedy in hushed tones, while Raine and Miss Kelly flirt in funereal tones.
It's clear from the structure that one of them in the murderer, but instead of much of interest happening, we get twenty-five minutes of dull, self-deprecatory banter in evening clothes that makes it hard to maintain interest. By the time anything starts to happen, everything is explained in advance. And yet the entire thing takes only 63 minutes. Perhaps it might have taken longer, but it's an early editing job by David Lean. At its unedited length, it would undoubtedly have been even duller.
