I'm a fan of W. Somerset Maugham's short stories some of which have been made into movies. Just now I have obtained a copy of the 1940s movie "The Letter" with Bette Davis which is a dramatisation of a short story that first appeared in Maugham's 1926 collection "The Casuarina Tree".
The story is based on a real-life scandal involving the wife of the headmaster of a school in Kuala Lumpur who was convicted in a murder trial after shooting dead a male friend in April 1911. She was eventually pardoned.
In the story - and the movie - the action takes place in the house of a plantation owner, Robert Crosbie, and his wife Leslie in the then-British colony of Malaya, and later in the Chinese quarter of Singapore. With the husband away on business, the wife claims that she shot the mutual friend, Geoff Hammond, in self-defence, following an attempted rape.
But I don't want to give too much away. Read the whole story here.
