User Reviews

Whoever wrote the synopsis of this episode made some obvious errors. Hume Cronyn plays a solicitor in a small town in England during World War I who is informed by one of his major investors, an elderly lady named Miss Wilkinson, that she has decided to take all her money out of her account for another supposedly lucrative proposition. Unfortunately, Cronyn's had a bad year and he had to use up all her cash to stay afloat in his own business. Instead of telling the lady that he doesn't have her money, Cronyn decides to kill her. The fact that Cronyn doesn't seem to be the type to go around knocking off old ladies does nothing to disturb the plot. I guess that's why the episode title uses the phrase "An Impromptu Murder." Anyhow, Cronyn strangles her during the night and then buries her body neatly near the local cemetery. He also has a full-proof alibi regarding his presence during the time of her murder or "disappearance." The town's only detective (Robert Douglas)shows up to investigate Ms. Wilkinson's whereabouts and Cronyn does a great job faking sympathize regarding the plight of the poor missing woman. Douglas asks Cronyn a few questions about the lady's investments and doesn't seem satisfied with Cronyn's evasive answers. Also, there seems to be a stipulation in the contract that Cronyn can keep the money in the account until the owner shows up, one way or another. That rather unusual arrangement makes Douglas automatically suspicious of Cronyn. A few days later, while giving a speech to honor a WWI veteran near the cemetery, Cronyn hears some distressed cries from people on a nearby bridge overlooking a small river. There's a body of a woman floating by and the corpse is soon recovered. Cronyn immediately surmises that heavy rains from the previous evenings must have eroded Ms. Wilkinson's grave and washed her into the river. It's a revolting development to Cronyn's full-proof plans, to say the least. The next day, Detective Douglas asks Cronyn to help identify the body at the morgue and, after much arguing, he reluctantly agrees. But Cronyn, filled with remorse and guilt for his actions, can't bring himself to look directly on the dead body. He tells Douglas that it is not the missing woman---Douglas is not convinced. He takes Cronyn to task for not giving the corpse a good viewing and decides that others will have to be called in for a positive identification. "Usually a murderer can't look at his victim," he tells Cronyn with some authority. Douglas has been zoning in on Cronyn all along but still has no real proof at this point. He returns later to tell Cronyn that Ms. Wilkinson's brother has come up from London to check the body. But before he can add any further information, Cronyn admits that he killed the lady. He also tells the detective where and when he buried her and that the rains must've washed her into the river. What Cronyn doesn't know is that the old lady's brother had told the police that the corpse wasn't his sister. Cronyn's victim was still buried neatly away in the plot he had dug for her---so he didn't have to confess to her murder after all. When Douglas informs Cronyn that the body in the morgue isn't Ms. Wilkinson's, the expression on Hume's face is worth the price of admission.

"An Impromptu Murder" is standard Hitchcock fare, but actors of the caliber of Robert Douglas and Hume Cronyn bring up the level of the material a few notches. For those who don't remember Robert Douglas, he was the evil Duke DeLorca in "The Adventures of Don Juan" with Errol Flynn in the title role. Hume Cronyn, of course, was married to Jessica Tandy for years and appeared with her in many films and stage productions.

Usually, Alfred Hitchcock's introduction to these stories had at least a minimal connection to them, but this time he opted to talk about invading Martians, and brought out three women in outrageous outfits to support the claim. Very odd.

The story takes place in Swallowsbath, England in 1916 with World War I in progress. Henry Daw (Hume Cronyn) is an unscrupulous solicitor who has mishandled his clients' money, and is distressed to find he cannot return Miss Wilkinson's (Doris Lloyd) funds to her. So he decides to kill her and bury her near a river. I'm always astonished in these older pictures that businessmen with fine suits would never think of changing into knock around clothing before mucking around in the dirt. Seems kind of silly, doesn't it?

Anyway, a body turns up floating in a nearby river, and the local gendarme (Robert Douglas) questions Daw in connection with it. Daw profusely makes excuses why he or his sister shouldn't try to identify the body, arousing the inspector's suspicions even more. What's somewhat ironic is how Daw simply ups and confesses to the murder of the woman when he didn't have to. He learns too late that the corpse floating in the river was a different person. The thing is, he wasn't tricked into confessing nor did his guilt seem to be a factor. By comparison, it made Hitch's tales of Martian invasion almost believable.

Well done drama about fraud and murder in early 20th-century England, marred solely by Hume Cronyn's incomprehensible decision to play the role without an English accent, sounding like an American or a Canadian. Given that the rest of the cast is English, it is all the more jarring.

Cronyn was a fine Canadian stage and film actor married to an English actress (Jessica Tandy) so the notion that he could not do an English accent (as Robert Redford was unable to do in "Out of Africa (1985)", for instance), strains credulity. If Brooklynite Barbara Stanwyck could do one in "The Lady Eve (1941)", it is incomprehensible why Cronyn played the role that way, with no qualms from the director or from Hitchcock.

Otherwise, his performance was fine, as was that of the whole cast, especially Valerie Cossart as his delicate, neurasthenic but suspicious sister, the only person he seems to care about. The suspenseful end and his comeuppance are very well done.