The Unguarded Hour 1936

Barrister Sir Alan Dearden Franchot Tone is tipped to be Britain’s next and youngest ever Attorney General. Shortly before he leaves for holiday on the Continent, his wife Lady Helen Dearden Loretta Young is approached by a man claiming to have love letters written by her husband to his own estranged wife. Although these pre-date their marriage, Lady Helen worries that scandal would ruin her husband’s career and reluctantly agrees to pay the blackmail demand of £2,000. The following day, she draws the money out of the bank and meets the blackmailer in Dover, eventually leaving the money on the White Cliffs. While she is recovering the love letters, she sees a middle-aged man warning his wife not to go too near the edge.

She is enjoying her holiday with her husband when he is urgently called back to London to take over a murder case at the Old Bailey. A man named Samuel Metford Dudley Digges stands accused of pushing his wife over a cliff. A shocked Helen realises that she is the key witness in the case but elects to remain silent. During cross-examination, Dearden hounds Metford over his claims that there was a female witness who saw him warning his wife to take care by pointing out a nationwide hunt has not produced this supposed witness. Helen does what she can to persuade her husband that Metford is innocent and that people often make poor witnesses when they are telling the truth, but he is unmoved.

Then, during the trial, Dearden is approached by his former flame — Diana Roggers Aileen Pringle — encouraged by her estranged husband — who demands blackmail money from him. When shortly afterwards she is found murdered, Scotland Yard investigate and find suspicion is pointed at Dearden. While he has a genuine excuse of how she spent the “unguarded hour”, his story sounds as unbelievable as Metford’s.

In a sensational development, Lady Helen is subpoenaed by the defence in order to clear the accused, which she does. She then manages to entrap the original blackmailer into revealing that he was the man who killed Samuel Metford’s wife Dudley Digges.