Most scenes together: L.B. Jeffries & Lisa Carol Fremont (16), L.B. Jeffries & Stella (6), L.B. Jeffries & Tom (4)
Reading from top to bottom: [She turns on one lamp light.] Lisa. [She turns on a second lamp.] Carol. [She turns on a third lamp.] Fremont.
Is this the Lisa Fremont who never wears the same dress twice?
Only because it's expected of her. It's right off the Paris plane. You think it will sell?...A steal at $1,100 dollars.
Eleven hundred? They ought to list that dress on the Stock Exchange.
Someday you may want to open up a studio of your own here.
How would I run it, from say, Pakistan?
Jeff, isn't it time you came home? You could pick your assignment.
Well, I wish there was one I wanted.
Make the one you want.
You mean leave the magazine?
Yes.
For what?
For yourself and me. I could get you a dozen assignments tomorrow - fashions, portraits. Well now, don't laugh, I could do it.
That's what I'm afraid of. Can you see me driving down to the fashion salon in a jeep wearing combat boots and a three-day beard? Will that make a hit?
I could see you looking very handsome and successful in a dark blue flannel suit.
Let's stop talking nonsense, shall we, hmm?
The last thing Mrs. Thorwald would leave behind would be her wedding ring. Stella, do you ever leave yours at home?
The only way somebody would get that would be to chop off my - finger. Let's go down to the garden and find out what's buried there.
Why not? I always wanted to meet Mrs. Thorwald.
We have all night...I'm going to stay with you.
Well, you'll have to clear that with my landlord.
I have the whole weekend off.
Well, that's very nice, but I just have one bed.
If you say anything else, I'll stay tomorrow night, too.
I won't be able to give you any pajamas.
...
You said I'll have to live out of one suitcase. I'll bet yours isn't this small?
This is a suitcase?
Well, a Mark Cross overnight case anyway. Compact, but, uh, ample enough. [She pulls her frilly lingerie from inside.]]
Looks like you packed in a hurry. Look at this. Isn't that amazing?
I'll trade you. My feminine intuition for a bed for the night.
I'll go along with that.
What's he doing? Cleaning house?
He's washing and scrubbing down the bathroom walls.
Must've splattered a lot.
Come on, that's what were all thinkin'. He killed her in there, now he has to clean up those stains before he leaves.
Stella... your choice of words!
Nobody ever invented a polite word for a killin' yet.
Where does a girl have to go before you notice her ?
Well if she's pretty enough, she doesn't have to go anywhere. She just has to be.
Well, ain't I? Pay attention to me.
Well, I'm, I'm not exactly on the other side of the room.
Your mind is. When I want a man, I want all of you.
I got a nose for trouble. I can smell it ten miles away...I can smell trouble right here in this apartment. First you smash your leg. Then you get to lookin' out the window. See things you shouldn't see. Trouble. I can see you in court now, surrounded by a bunch of lawyers in double-breasted suits. You're pleading: 'Judge, it was only a little bit of innocent fun. I love my neighbors like a father.' And the Judge says, 'Well, congratulations, you've just given birth to three years in Dannemora.'
Yeah, right now I'd welcome trouble...You know, I think you're right. I think there is going to be trouble around here.
...What kind of trouble?
Lisa Fremont.
Are you kidding? She's a beautiful young girl and you're a reasonably healthy young man.
She expects me to marry her.
That's normal.
I don't want to.
That's abnormal.
I'm just not ready for marriage.
Every man's ready for marriage when the right girl comes along. And Lisa Fremont is the right girl for any man with half a brain who can get one eye open.
Oh, she's all right.
What did you do? Have a fight?
No.
Her father loading up the shotgun?
What? Please, Stella.
It's happened before you know. Some of the world's happiest marriages have, uh, started under the gun, as you might say.
No, she's just not the girl for me.
Yeah, she's only perfect.
She's too perfect. She's too talented, she's too beautiful. She's too sophisticated. She's too everything but what I want.
Is, um, what you want something you can discuss?
Well, it's very simple, Stella. She belongs to that rarified atmosphere of Park Avenue, you know. Expensive restaurants, literary cocktail parties...Can you imagine her tramping around the world with a camera bum who never has more than a week's salary in the bank? If she was only ordinary.
You ever gonna get married?
I'll probably get married one of these days, and when I do, it's gonna be to someone who thinks of life not just as a new dress, and a lobster dinner, the latest scandal. I need a woman who's willing...to go anywhere and do anything and love it. So the honest thing for me to do is just to call the whole thing off and let her find somebody else.
Yeah, I can hear you now. Get out of my life. You're a perfectly wonderful woman - you're too good for me. Look, Mr. Jefferies, I'm not an educated woman, but I can tell you one thing. When a man and a woman see each other and like each other they ought to come together - wham! Like a couple of taxis on Broadway, not sit around analyzing each other like two specimens in a bottle.
There's an intelligent way to approach marriage.
Intelligence! Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence. Hah! Modern marriage!
I got a nose for trouble. I can smell it ten miles away...I can smell trouble right here in this apartment. First you smash your leg. Then you get to lookin' out the window. See things you shouldn't see. Trouble. I can see you in court now, surrounded by a bunch of lawyers in double-breasted suits. You're pleading: 'Judge, it was only a little bit of innocent fun. I love my neighbors like a father.' And the Judge says, 'Well, congratulations, you've just given birth to three years in...'
Yeah, right now I'd welcome trouble...You know, I think you're right. I think there is going to be trouble around here.
...What kind of trouble?
Lisa Fremont.
Are you kidding? She's a beautiful young girl and you're a reasonably healthy young man.
She expects me to marry her.
That's normal.
I don't want to.
That's abnormal.
I'm just not ready for marriage.
Every man's ready for marriage when the right girl comes along. And Lisa Fremont is the right girl for any man with half a brain who can get one eye open.
Oh, she's all right.
What did you do? Have a fight?
No.
Her father loading up the shotgun?
What? Please, Stella.
It's happened before you know. Some of the world's happiest marriages have, uh, started under the gun, as you might say.
I was nursing a director of General Motors ... When General Motors has to go to the bathroom 10 times a day, the whole country's ready to let go.
In economics, a kidney ailment has nothing whatsoever to do with the stock market.
Musta splattered alot. Well why not, that's what we're all thinkin'. He killed her in there. He has to clean up those stains before he leaves.
Oh Stella, your choice of words.
Nobody ever invented a polite word for a killin' yet.
You've got a hormone deficiency.
How can you tell from a thermometer ?
Those bathing beauties you've been watching haven't raised your temperature one degree in a month.
What do you want from me? Your friend, the girl, could have turned me in. Why didn't she? What is it you want? A lot of money? I don't have any money. Say something. Say something. Tell me what you want! Can you get me that ring back?
No!
Tell her to bring it back.
I can't. The police have it by now.
Didn't see the killing or the body. How do you know there was a murder?
Because everything this fella's done has been suspicious. Trips at night in the rain, and knives and saws and trunks with rope, and now this wife that isn't there anymore.
I admit it all has a mysterious sound. Could be any number of things - murder's the least possible.
Well, don't tell me he's an unemployed magician amusing the neighborhood with his sleight-of-hand. Now don't tell me that.
It's too obvious, a stupid way to commit murder in full view of fifty windows? Then sit over there smoking a cigar, waiting for the police to come and pick him up?
Officer, go do your duty. Go pick him up!
Jeff, you've got a lot to learn about homicide. Why, morons have committed murder so shrewdly it's taken a hundred trained police minds to catch them. That salesman wouldn't just knock his wife off after dinner and toss her in the trunk and put her in storage.
I'll bet it's been done.
Most everything's been done - under PANIC. This is a thousand to one shot. He's still sitting around the apartment. That man's not panicked.
You think I made all this up, huh?
Lars Thorwald is no more a murderer than I am.
You mean to say you can explain everything that's gone on over there and is still going on?
No, and neither can you. That's a secret, private world you're looking into out there. People do a lot of things in private that they couldn't possibly explain in public.
Like disposing of their wives.
Get that idea out of your mind. It will only lead in the wrong direction.
What about the knife and the saw?
Did you ever own a saw?
At home in the garage, I had...
How many people did you cut up with it? Or with the couple of hundred knives you probably owned in your life? Your logic is backward.
You can't ignore the wife disappearing and the trunk and the jewelry.
I checked the railroad station. He bought a ticket. Ten minutes later, he put his wife on the train. Destination? Meritsville. The witnesses are that deep.
That might have been a woman, but it couldn't have been Mrs. Thorwald. That jewelry...
Look, Miss Fremont. That uh, feminine intuition stuff sells magazines but in real life, it's still a fairy tale. I don't know how many wasted years I've spent tracking down leads based on female intuition.
That's no ordinary look. That's the kind of a look a man gives when he's afraid somebody might be watching him.
