Noose for a Lady

Noose for a Lady is a 1953 British crime film directed by Wolf Rilla and starring Dennis Price, Rona Anderson and Ronald Howard. It is based on the novel Whispering Woman by Gerald Verner.

Plot
The plot concerns an amateur detective Simon Gale (Price) who races against time to clear the name of his cousin, who is accused of murdering her husband.

Simon meets the murdered man's daughter, Jill, who had earlier promised her stepmother that she would continue to try to prove her innocence, and Simon offers to help. He begins questioning local people, and learns that the husband was a thoroughly unpleasant man who enjoyed holding people's secrets over their heads, not for monetary gain, but for the pleasure of seeing them squirm - and several local people had secrets. More deaths occur before Gale discovers the truth. He assembles all the suspects in a single room in a large house and announces that one of them is a murderer. He manoeuvres the real killer into making a mistake, then explains who the murderer is and how he reached that conclusion.

Critical reception
TV Guide called the film "Overly chatty"; Cinema Retro found it "A quaint, cliché ridden drama," concluding more positively, "yes, of course it creaks a little, but if nothing else it’s guaranteed to hold your attention for its succinct 70-minute runtime"; and DVD Beaver saluted "A taut, complex whodunit with a brilliantly nerve-racking climax."