The Letter (1940 Film) - Plot

Plot

On a moonlit, tropical night, the native workers are asleep in their outdoor barracks. A shot is heard; the door of a house opens and a man stumbles out of it, followed by a woman who calmly shoots him several more times, the last few while standing over his body. The woman is Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis), the wife of a British rubber plantation manager in Malaya; the man whom she shot her manservant recognizes as Geoff Hammond (David Newell), a well-regarded member of the European community. Leslie tells the servant to send for her husband Robert (Herbert Marshall), who is working at one of the plantations. Her husband returns, having summoned his attorney and a British police inspector. Leslie tells them that Geoff Hammond "tried to make love to me" and that she killed him to save her honor.

Leslie is placed under arrest and put in jail in Singapore to await trial for murder; that she killed a man makes such a trial inevitable, even though the white community accepts her story and believes she acted heroically. Only her attorney, Howard Joyce (James Stephenson), is rather suspicious. Howard's suspicions seem justified when his clerk, Ong Chi Seng (Victor Sen Yung), shows him a copy of a letter Leslie wrote to Hammond the day she killed him, telling him that her husband would be away that evening, and pleading with him to come--implicitly threatening him if he did not come. Ong Chi Seng tells Howard that the original letter is in the possession of Hammond's widow (Gale Sondergaard), a Eurasian woman who lives in the Chinese quarter of town. The letter is for sale, and Ong himself, whom Howard had believed to be impeccable, stands to receive a substantial cut of the price. Howard then confronts Leslie with the damning evidence and she breaks down and confesses to Hammond's cold-blooded killing. Yet Leslie cleverly manipulates the attorney into agreeing to buy back the letter, even though in doing so he will risk his own freedom.

Because the couple's bank account is in Robert's name, Howard obtains Robert's consent to buy the letter, but he does so deceitfully, lying about and trivializing its content, leaving out the true circumstances, and giving the man no idea that the price is equivalent to almost all the money he has in the bank. Robert, depicted as a decent man thoroughly in love with Leslie and somewhat gullible, is readily persuaded. Hammond's widow demands that Leslie come personally to hand over the $10,000 for the letter (she has been released into her attorney's custody) and requires Leslie to debase herself by picking up the letter at the widow's feet. With the letter suppressed, Leslie is easily acquitted.

During a celebration after the trial, when Robert announces that he plans to draw his savings out of his account in order to buy a rubber plantation in Sumatra, Howard and Leslie are forced to tell him that his savings are gone, that the impact of the letter would have hanged Leslie and its price was accordingly high. After demanding to see the letter, Robert is devastated to learn from Leslie that Hammond was her lover for years and that she killed him out of jealousy, but he offers to forgive her if she can swear that she loves him. Leslie at first agrees and tells him she loves him, but she then breaks down and confesses, "With all my heart, I still love the man I killed!"

In a dazed state after the pressure of the trial and her confrontation with Robert, Leslie wanders out into the moonlight and outside the gate. There she is confronted by Mrs. Hammond and her henchman, a man who had worked for Leslie, a native not seen since the first scene of the film. The henchman overpowers Leslie and Mrs. Hammond stabs her. As the two attempt to silently slip out, they are confronted by a policeman. The clouds blot out the moonlight and darken the area where Leslie was killed; then the clouds open and the moon's rays shine where her body lies, but no one is there to see it.