Josie Lawrence credited as playing...
Mrs. Grant
- Donovan: [confessing his crime] I wanted a divorce. I begged Ernestine, but she refused. She said she'll never let me free. After I fell in love with Pat, Ernestine started hounding me. Telephone me everyday, held it over me, threatening to tell Pat everything! Drove. Me. Mad.
- [pause]
- Donovan: And then, she phoned me to tell me that she moved into the flat beneath Pat's. I couldn't believe it. By then, I knew she was crazy enough to do anything.
- Hercule Poirot: Tell me, what happened yesterday evening?
- Donovan: Ernestine called me in the afternoon...
- [Flashback; Donovan exists out of the elevator, looks around and walks towards the 36B flat]
- Donovan: [voiceover] She had written to Pat to arrange to see her; to tell her the truth about us. Normally, I assumed the worst. I knew I had to do something once and for all.
- [Donovan rings the doorbell of the flat]
- Donovan: [voiceover cont] I called into her flat around six.
- Mrs. Grant: [opening the door] Oh, it's you! You better come in.
- [She lets Donovan in, she walks over to the liquor cabinet]
- Mrs. Grant: [offering Donovan a drink of Sherry] Drink?
- Donovan: [sternly] You have no right to go around hounding Pat.
- Mrs. Grant: [chuckles; as she pours sherry into a shot glass] I'm not hounding her my darling, I just going to tell what a rotten bound you are. Promising to marry her when you're *already* married to *me*.
- Donovan: We were married in Switzerland, Ernestine. If you remember... It doesn't count under the British law.
- Mrs. Grant: [dismissively] So you keep telling me.
- Mrs. Grant: I've decided to test your little theory. I asked my solicitor a copy of our marriage certificate. He's telephoned me to say it is completely valid. And he's mailed me a letter to confirm it.
- Donovan: Show me.
- Mrs. Grant: I haven't received his letter yet, It might arrive in the evening post I expect.
- Mrs. Grant: [she giggles deviously]
- Mrs. Grant: It's going to be all a shock for poor Miss Matthews.
- Donovan: [gravely] I warning you Ernestine. If you approach Pat, so God help me, I'll kill you! I swear it!
- Mrs. Grant: [laughing; then spitefully] Oh, Donovan! Don't make me laugh. Now run along and try to *impress* somebody else will you?Poor Miss Matthews. You really have let her down, Donovan.
- [She smiles haughtily and triumphantly; two gun shots ring out; Ernestine drops her shot glass that crashes and breaks on the floor as her smile is replaced with a look of slight alarm. She looks down to see two bullet wounds in her chest. She feels the spot where she has been hit, she looks at Donovan who is holding the revolver that shot her and she falls forward on the table, dead]
- Donovan: [in present] I warned her, you see... But she wouldn't listen. Afterwords, I went home and changed for the theater. I couldn't let her hurt Pat like that, could I?