Miriam sees the housekeeper trying to take Charlotte out of the house. Miriam fires Velma, who later returns to discover that Charlotte is being drugged. Willis ( Cecil Kellaway), an insurance investigator who is still interested in the Mayhew case and has visited Mayhew's ailing widow, Jewel ( Mary Astor). Suspecting that Miriam and Drew are after Charlotte's money, Velma seeks help from Mr. Miriam renews her relationship with Drew Bayliss ( Joseph Cotten), a local doctor who jilted her after the murder.Ĭharlotte's sanity deteriorates with Miriam's arrival, her nights haunted by a mysterious harpsichord playing the song Mayhew wrote for her and by the appearance of Mayhew's disembodied hand and head. Seeking help in her fight against the Highway Commission, she calls upon Miriam ( Olivia de Havilland), a poor cousin who lived with the family as a girl who has since moved to New York City and has become wealthy herself. They temporarily give up and leave.Ĭharlotte is living alone as a virtual recluse in the Hollis mansion, tended by Velma ( Agnes Moorehead) her housekeeper. She keeps the foreman ( George Kennedy), his demolition crew, and the bulldozer away by shooting at them with a rifle. Charlotte is vehemently against this and ignores the eviction notice, refusing to leave. The Louisiana Highway Commission intends to demolish her house and build a new highway through the plantation. Everyone else assumes that Charlotte, the crazy recluse, decapitated her lover. All these years, Charlotte has believed that her father killed John Mayhew. Charlotte's father died the year after Mayhew's murder, believing his daughter guilty. Charlotte is now a wealthy spinster, still living on the Ascension Parish plantation that has been in her family for generations. She returns traumatized to the party in a bloody dress, and most of the guests assume Charlotte is the murderer. John is then brutally murdered and decapitated in the summerhouse with a cleaver, with one hand severed. John pretends he no longer loves Charlotte and tells her they must part.
Charlotte's father confronts John over the affair and intimidates him with the news that John's wife, Jewel, visited the day before and revealed the affair. In 1927, young Southern belle Charlotte Hollis ( Bette Davis) and her married lover, John Mayhew ( Bruce Dern), plan to elope during a party at the Hollis family's antebellum mansion in Ascension Parish, Louisiana.
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