Tell Laura

She went away on a trip and then returned  home unannounced, with a police detective sitting in an armchair next to a portrait of her. She wanted to know why he was there and he admitted to trying to investigate her murder. That served as a twist in the tale to investigate who could have died and by whom, although when one comes to think of it, there could have been some clearer announcement as to identity of the other woman. She worked for a modelling agency and Dana Andrews could have snooped around wanting to find out who saw her last, but then I would be rewritting the script.

It starts with a rich tycoon hiring a girl to do some modelling advertisements. If ne can get ignoring the old clothes and habits of the day, than it is very much like a Hitchcock tale as clues accumulate and fall into place and the detective moves on trying to find the suspected killer. He combines careful tactics by interviewing each one separately and then together as they pop in announced, all to coincidental but the story had to be done in ninety minutes. The tycoon was always protective of Laura but since he enlisted the help of the detective one could not have suspected him at first.

There was the aunt who might have wanted to get away with Laura’s lover and in the beginning it could have her. Her lover played by Vincent Price was clever enough to lead the detective to a country home where he wanted to take a rifle away, the weaponused for the crime. That was evidence for the murder but again all that seem too soon. Laura could have orhestrated her own disappearance and eliminated the competing model but that would not have too clever if she wanted to keep herself open to return to previous entente with her lover and manager, Clifton Web.

Somebody soon shows up looking for the rifle in a grandfather clock that he wanted to take away probably because the clock hid that vital evidence. That was to eliminate his lover who was out of his control and he would not have wanted to lose her to someone else. Some adults can be rather immature in their motives and means but this was probably a good film noir detective drama back in the day.