Hush... hush, sweet Charlotte

Whenever a headless corpse turns up in my neighborhood, it usually that means
that some serious questions need to be asked. Oddly, those questions never do get
asked in the land of Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Instead, the father of the prime
suspect ships the adolescent Charlotte Hollis off to London where she manages
to pull off an "OJ Simpson": avoiding jail time and legal prosecution.

Her freedom comes at a price however, decades later, when we again rejoin the
ageing Charlotte (Bette Davis) we find her eking out a reclusive existence along with
her loyal and eccentric housemaid (captivatingly portrayed by Agnes Moorehead) in
the estate of her belated father.
But did Charlotte really decapitate her lover in a fit of rage and passion? Everyone in her small town seems to think so, and some people seem extraordinarily determined on making her suffer.

Everything seems to fit into place until Charlotte's cousin (Olivia deHavilland) arrives to "assist" Charlotte when progress threatens to tear down her Civil War era estate. People start dying, and their ghosts seem to haunt the mansion that is slated for destruction. Finally, after forty years, all of the scandals are uncovered and the circumstances surrounding the murder are revealed.