Black Widows Night

Peter Denver, a renowned Broadway producer, is attending a cocktail party hosted by the viciously haughty and celebrated actress Carlotta "Lottie" Marin and her quiet husband Brian Mullen when he meets Nancy "Nanny" Ordway. The seemingly naïve Nanny, a 20-year-old aspiring writer, says she hopes to make it big in New York. She convinces a reluctant Peter to persuade his wife, Iris—another famous actress, who is temporarily out of town—to agree to Nanny's use of the couple's apartment to write in during the day. After the Denvers return from the airport and find Nanny hanging dead in their bathroom, a variety of people Nanny has recently met in New York begin to reveal deeper and darker connections with her. Lt. Bruce, the detective assigned to the case, soon discovers that this apparent suicide was in fact a homicide. Further, he believes that Peter, who is suspected of having had an affair with Nanny, is the murderer. Peter evades arrest and seeks clues to discover the real murderer. The case becomes further complicated when he and Lt. Bruce independently realize that Nanny's dealings in New York belie her apparent innocence. Nanny had recently stayed for a time with her uncle and then moved in with a woman roommate, whose brother she evidently had agreed to marry. A series of flashbacks reveal that Nanny was craftily piecing together a scheme that would help her both to climb the social ladder and to later conceal the identity of her secret lover by falsely implicating Peter. This mysterious romance is confirmed by an autopsy, which reveals that Nanny was pregnant at the time of her death. Everyone Nanny knows is suddenly a suspect in the murder case, including Lottie and Brian, who live in the same apartment building as the Denvers. In the end, Brian can no longer keep silent and reveals to his friend Peter that he was Nanny's secret lover, but swears that he did not kill her. Having bugged Brian's apartment, Lt. Bruce barges in and charges Brian with the homicide. Lottie finally admits that she murdered Nanny for having had the affair with her husband, whom she later intended to blackmail. Lottie staged the death as a suicide.