Jack Lyons (a 30-year old Denholm Elliott (Marcus Brody from  every prime-numbered Indiana Jones movie)) stops on a deserted road, blocking the car behind him.  As the other driver gets out of his car to investigate, Lyons kills him.  Lyons looks in the other car.  He sees the titular crocodile dressing-case with the dreaded initials P.C. but leaves it in the car.

That night at a party, Phyllis Chaundry is wondering where her husband is.  Lyons gallantly offers to drive her and her sister home.  When Lyons and Phyllis reach the Chaundry estate — literally an estate at this point — Phyllis sees that her husband is not home and we see that she and Lyons are having an affair.  Lyons quickly tells Phyllis that he killed her husband; wow, he is gallant!  He insinuates incorrectly that her asking her husband to pick her up makes her an accessory.  Kind of a goofus thing to do, really.

The police show up and Phyllis makes a good show of feigning distress over her husband’s death. However, she does suspiciously seem a little more concerned when she learns that the crocodile case has gone missing.

After the murder is officially ruled a murder, Lyons wisely keeps his distance from Phyllis; actually if she had any sense, it would be the other way around.  Phyllis is upset that they aren’t going out and that he hasn’t called.  She drags her sister to a restaurant where it is likely they will bump into Lyons.

Patricia Hitchcock is cast as the sister, once again in her standard “homely girl” niche. Note the picture below where she is deliberately framed between two attractive specimens of greater stature.  I wish I had something clever to say about nepotism; or anything else.

Sending her sister off to their table, she begins complaining to Lyons again.  He finally convinces her to take a trip and not to write him.  She is still fixated on the dressing-case, even having her sister write a letter to the police chiding them for their failure to crack the crocodile case; or the crocodile case case.

Later, after they are married, she takes the problem to Scotland Yard. The local police find the case, though, and determine that the case was stolen by an employee of Lyons. Through a clever twist, Lyons implicates himself.

Great story and performances.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Only Patricia Hitchcock is hanging in there.
• Hulu, which charges me by forcing commercials into my eyeballs, deemed episode 33 to be unstreamable for some reason.  Why can’t I have a problem like that with Ray Bradbury Theater?
• 30 seconds of commercials . . . Hitchcock’s introduction . . . another 130 seconds of commercials.  You Tube is brilliant in making their commercials skippable after a few seconds.  I actually see the products there; on Hulu, I just go to another window and do some surfing.
• Hulu sucks.