Summary
A matrimonial chessboard set in pre-war New York: doting husband Augustus Phillips, convinced his placid wife Brinsley Shaw is a porcelain doll, never suspects she’s already three moves ahead. Into their velvet-curtained parlor drifts J.H. Lewis—velvet-voiced, bankrupt of morals—carrying debts and a gaze that strips varnish. Shaw, starved for tremor, bankrolls his escape from creditors in exchange for a clandestine waltz through rooftop gardens and pawn-shop trysts. William Bechtel’s family lawyer smells ink on post-dated checks; Edward MacKay’s doctor hears heartbeats that don’t belong to the legitimate spouse. Mignon Anderson, the silk-clad cousin, plants gossip like seeds in a hothouse while Sally Crute’s maid counts earrings that vanish at dawn. A forged telegram, a baby swapped for silence, a winter night on the Hudson where ice cracks louder than vows—every pawn lunges for queenhood. When Phillips finally confronts the pair in a candle-lit loft, Shaw’s confession detonates like a paper chandelier: she wed Lewis in a shadow-ceremony months prior, making the husband the interloper in his own home. Guns are drawn, but the film cuts to a silhouette on the bedroom wall: a woman walking out, coat over arm, as the men remain frozen in tableau, suddenly the décor of her life.
