Time Is My Enemy

Copper and family friend Duncan Lamont drops in at the home of Patrick Barr and Renee Asherson, to comment on the crime novel publisher Barr has asked him to vet. He says that sympathetic murderers are a bad thing, and there's no excuse. Asked what he would do if someone he loved committed a murder, he decides he would resign.

Little does he know that he is about to be put in that position. Miss Asherson had been married before, to Dennis Price, but he was in a house that was bombed and declared dead. In reality he had used the opportunity to go AWOL and forge a new life as a criminal. Now a robbery he did resulted in a man in critical condition. His usual sources of money dry up and he goes to Miss Asherson and blackmails her with the specter of bigamy.

Actually, I think the courts would be on her side, but this second feature has a lot of moments that are quite telling. Dennis Price had played cold men before, but in this one he's absolutely nasty and sneering.... and capable of any bad act.