At the turn of the century, a murder scandal shocked the peaceful city of Glasgow, Scotland. A girl in her early twenties, the eldest daughter of a socially prominent citizen was indicted for poisoning a young Frenchman who had been her secret lover.

The affair, the arsenic poisoning of the man, and trial of the girl and all filmed with careful reference to actual facts. In itself, the story is only moderately absorbing. It is the fine acting of Ann Todd (Madeleine) and Ivan Desny (her lover) that make the movie unusually interesting.

Miss Todd is good because her characterization blends the qualities of the adolescent girl and the ruthless woman. In one scene, we see her primping like a vain child before her large oval mirror; in another, she is the inscrutable defendant sitting stiffly on a bench at her own nerve-racking trial. Could this girl have put arsenic in her lover's cocoa?

This question might be easier to answer were it not for the performance of Ivan Desny. He projects the high-strung lover so clearly that we can never discard the possibility of his having committed suicide out of jealousy of Madeleine's other suitor.

At Madeleine's trial, therefore, the jury must balance her character against the Frenchman's. The prosecutor tries to convince them that Madeleine was sufficiently cunning and ruthless to have committed the crime, while the attorney for the defense raises the suicide theory.

In the trial scenes, the summations of the prosecutor and defense are punctuated by a series of concise flashbacks which show the various witnesses testifying. Step by step, they lead to the inevitable but still surprising verdict which is delivered at the close of the film.