A neurosurgeon relates to his students in medical school a story about an affair he had with a married woman and how after the affair was over, the woman fell out a window and died. The surgeon, suspecting that she was murdered, set out to find her killer -- but, instead of turning the suspect over to the police, he planned to take his own revenge on the murderer.
James Mason is both measured and potent in this crime story of a brain surgeon "Michael Joyce" who performs a life-saving operation on a young girl. He falls in love with the girl's (married) mother "Emma" (Rosamund John) and when she is found dead at the foot of her bedroom window one day, he begins to question the verdict of suicide and determines to get to the bottom of what really happened. It's told by way of a retrospective - he is lecturing his students about a "fictional" case of murder where the killer is sane and calculating - and that gives the story quite a bit of pace and menace. The plot isn't complex and the audience is left in little doubt about what happened/is going to happen - but Mason along with Pamela Mason as "Kate" - the rather odious sister-in-law, manage to create quite a cumulative effect as the story develops that left me in no doubt that right was done!