Helen decided to lie about committing the murder after she was told that the ballistics expert said the gun found in their apartment fired the shots that killed Otto.
This was never resolved. IMO, Helen was right to lie about doing the crime because there was no other way to explain the ballistics. I wish the movie had an explanation for why the gun that killed Otto was found in Helen's apartment.
[deleted]
It was at least partially resolved by the statement in court that Helen had taken the gun along in order to pawn it to buy lunch. She left her purse behind when she fled Otto's place. We apparently believe Charlie's final confession that his brother-in-law is the murderer, a theft who might natural go through any purse he found in Otto's house. As a final speculation, after the murder the brother-in-law might naturally have returned the gun to the owner's house--he had the purse with, we assume, identification inside--in order to divert suspicion from himself. No where is it stated that he used the same gun in the subsequent, careless robbery attempt that ended in is death a few days after Otto's murder.
shareI don't remember this gun ever being mentioned to exist before the police mention it. And I don't remember anything about the gun taken to be pawned until she mentions it in the trial (which made the pawn shop story seem like a complete fabrication). Weak screenplay to not mention the gun, make it vitally important, and then forget all about it. You put a lot of thought into your guesswork; a lot more than you should have to.
Further, Barrymore served virtually no purpose what with all the buildup and then he just crawls away after mentioning a brother-in-law out of the blue for no apparent reason other than to satisfy the Hays code. It makes me wonder if anything ended up on the cutting room floor. Because, as it was, the film was a pathetically confused mess.
After the brother-in-law used the gun to kill Otto, he put it back in the purse. When Helen recovered her belongings, she put the gun back where it was always kept. The hole in this is why the police didn't search her purse at the time and find the gun then.
I think it was a little bad screenwriting here.
This positively infantile preoccupation with bosoms!Terry-Thomas about US 1963.Hasnt changed much!
I know this is five years after the original post, but someone else might happen upon this and thought the explanation (above) was right. It wasn't.
Ballistics then wasn't what it was now...Carole Lombard's character even states all they have to do is get their own expert to counter what the other says. What it probably was is that the guns used the same type of bullets. Even Carole states that she had taken it out in the back yard some time ago and fired two shots at a tree...Una's character says all they have to do to prove that was to show the cops where the two bullets in the tree were, but Carole states that she didn't hit the tree...to prove her innocence. She states she put the gun back in her drawer after she tried to hit the tree where the cops later found it.
So, she never took a gun to his house and no one ever found her gun in her purse as it was never in it to start with.