Opening with a quotation from Lewis Carroll to suggest that the heroine is like Alice in Wonderland, the film starts on a rainy autumn afternoon in a small resort on the south coast of France.
Mellie, newly married to Toni, an airline navigator who is away at work, sees a strange man get off a bus. In a shop trying on a dress to wear to a wedding the next day, she sees the man spying on her. When she goes home, he sneaks into the house, ties her up, and rapes her. Realizing after she has freed herself that he is still in the house, she gets out a shotgun and kills him. Then she drives the body to a cliff and tips it into the sea, saying nothing to her jealous husband when he returns.
Next day at the wedding, an uninvited American named Dobbs speaks to her. A body has been found, and he claims she killed him, which she denies. The day after that, when her husband is away again, Dobbs sneaks into their house and questions Mellie roughly. She begins to think that the rapist had business with Toni, possibly drug-related, and that is why Dobbs is so persistent. She goes with him to the bank and, drawing out all she has, offers it to him. But he doesn’t want money, just the truth.
The next morning, Mellie stumbles upon the rapist’s travel bag, which contains a staggering sum of 60,000 US dollars. Curious and determined, she stealthily enters Dobbs’ hotel room to search for clues. To her astonishment, she uncovers evidence that Dobbs is not just an ordinary individual but a US Army colonel involved in a covert mission.
In a dramatic turn of events, Dobbs unexpectedly appears and reveals that a woman employed at a Parisian restaurant has been apprehended for the murder. Overwhelmed by the injustice of an innocent woman facing charges, Mellie impulsively boards a plane to Paris, determined to uncover the truth. She heads to the restaurant but is redirected to the workplace of the arrested woman’s sister—an unexpected location: a brothel.
Within the confines of the brothel, Mellie finds herself subjected to intense interrogation by three criminals who are desperate for information about the deceased man. Just as the situation reaches a dangerous peak, Dobbs, who has been covertly following Mellie’s trail, forcefully intervenes and rescues her from harm’s way.
Taking her home, Dobbs reveals that the corpse is not that of the rapist but another man’s. The rapist was an escapee from a US military prison who had attacked three women in a similar fashion before Mellie. She then tells him where she tipped the body, which is found by police frogmen. For Dobbs, the case is closed, and he does not tell the police about Mellie. Nor does he mention the 60,000 dollars.
In a closing homage to Alfred Hitchcock, it is revealed that the rapist’s name was MacGuffin.
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