A Shot in the Dark

Josefa Lantenay, a good hearted and guileless child of nature is hauled before the magistrate on a charge of murder, having been found unconscious, nude, and clutching a gun, with her lover dead beside her. What is most shocking to the magistrate is the complete frankness with which she describes her life as a parlor maid and her affairs with both the dead chauffeur and her aristocratic employer. She is so ingenious that the magistrate, at the risk of his juridical neck, decides that she could not have committed the murder. The investigation expands to include both the aristocratic employer, who cannot answer yes or no in less than a paragraph and whose own polysyllables make him yawn, and his wife who descended in direct line from Attilla the Hun and looks it. She has been having an affair with her husband’s best friend. The magistrate finds the right culprit and the open hearted little parlor maid offers herself to him as a present.