Ok I've watched it carefully. The countess is slightly wounded in the arm and dies of an infection only a few hours later?
That never made any sense to me. Hovever the stories about Ava Gardner seem to support the idea that her scenes were cut or never filmed which may explain the odd and untimely death scene.
Rumor has it Ava Gardner was SO unpleasant to work with that they killed off her character to get her out of the movie. She had a long-running nervous breakdown, she showed up drunk on set, was cursing out the director, constantly demanding script rewrites and ruined a day's shoot because an extra took her photograph, and she wouldn't come out of her trailer afterwards.
..Joe