Die seltsame Gräfin (1961)

The young secretary Margaret Reedle wants to take a position at the castle of Countess Eleanora Moron. One evening, she receives mysterious threatening calls from an unknown person who threatens to kill her. Margaret and her friend Lizzy ignore them. A short time later, Margaret is nearly hit by a wheelbarrow tumbling down near a construction site. Only with the help of the mysterious Mike Dorn does she manage to escape. Meanwhile, the murderess Mary Pinder is due to be released from prison. Years earlier, she supposedly poisoned her husband. Because she was pregnant, her death sentence was commuted to a prison term. At the request of her employer, the lawyer Shaddle, Margaret is supposed to get Mary Pinder to sign a power of attorney for her release. During the drive, she again only narrowly escapes an attack, with Mike Dorn’s help. The threatening calls continue, too. That night, Dorn breaks into her room to steal a box of poisoned chocolates. Mike Dorn turns out to be a Scotland Yard inspector whom Shaddle has hired to keep an eye on Margaret. In the meantime, Margaret starts work for Countess Moron, who runs a charity for released prisoners. Meanwhile, Margaret’s friend Lizzy receives another threatening call. Lizzy meets the mysterious stranger and is nearly strangled by him. Completely distraught, Margaret discovers that Mary Pinder is her biological mother. To her delight, however, her current, enigmatic employer wants to hire her mother as a housekeeper. But the castle and its strange inhabitants offer no adequate protection from the mysterious events, either. The butler Adams, who is actually one of Dorn’s detectives, dies from an electric shock. To prevent Margaret from suffering a complete nervous breakdown, the Countess brings in Dr. Tappat, a doctor, to help her. But Margaret asks to be dismissed. The Countess explains that she is reluctant to dismiss Margaret because she fears her family and those around her, and asks Margaret to stay. Meanwhile, Dorn discovers that Selwyn, the Countess’s son, is the heir to the estate. The rightful heir should have been the Countess’s brother, but he is believed to have disappeared about twenty years ago. After Dorn briefly arrests Margaret, she ends up at Dr. Tappat’s sanatorium, where her mother has also been taken. There she also meets the insane Stuart Bresset, who, on Dr. Tappat’s orders, had been threatening her with his calls. Chesney Praye, a friend of the Countess, offers to have her released if she marries him. After Dorn frees himself from the criminals at the sanatorium, he confronts Praye, who is then shot dead by Dr. Tappat. Dorn and Margaret pursue Tappat to the castle. By then, Mary Pinder has been welcomed there by Countess Moron. Twenty years earlier, Mary had secretly married the Countess’s brother. She is said to have murdered him, although it was actually the Countess who was responsible for his death, in order to secure the inheritance, while the innocent Mary sits in prison. The Countess now offers her an annuity and a life in South America so that she will disappear from sight. But Mary, certain of the Countess’s guilt, rejects the offer. Margaret, who is the Count’s daughter, was also supposed to be eliminated by the Countess’s accomplices. When Dorn arrives at the castle, he tries to overpower Tappat, until Selwyn shoots Tappat. Realizing what she has done, the Countess kills herself with the same poisoned needle she used to murder her brother.