Task: Story Composition
Input (English): Fact1: married lover elope during party at Hollis family 's antebellum mansion in Ascension Parish, Fact2: Charlotte 's father confronts John over affair, Fact3: John 's wife revealed affair, Fact4: John returns traumatized to party, Fact5: Miriam sees housekeeper trying to take Charlotte out of house
Output (English): In 1927, young Southern belle Charlotte Hollis Bette Davis and her married lover, John Mayhew Bruce Dern, plan to elope during a party at the Hollis familys antebellum mansion in Ascension Parish, Louisiana. Charlottes father Victor Buono confronts John over the affair and intimidates him with the news that Johns wife, Jewel Mary Astor, visited the day before and revealed the affair. John pretends he no longer loves Charlotte and tells her they must part. John is then brutally murdered and decapitated in the summerhouse with a cleaver, with one hand severed. Charlotte discovers his body. She returns traumatized to the party in a bloody dress, and most of the guests assume Charlotte is the murderer. The story jumps to 1964. Charlotte is now a wealthy spinster, still living on the Ascension Parish plantation that has been in her family for generations. Charlottes father died the year after Mayhews murder, believing his daughter guilty. All these years, Charlotte has believed that her father killed John Mayhew. Everyone else assumes that Charlotte, the crazy recluse, decapitated her lover. The Louisiana Highway Commission intends to demolish her house and build a new highway through the plantation. Charlotte is vehemently against this and ignores the eviction notice, refusing to leave. She keeps the foreman George Kennedy, his demolition crew, and the bulldozer away by shooting at them with a rifle. They temporarily give up and leave. Charlotte is living alone as a virtual recluse in the Hollis mansion, tended by Velma Agnes Moorehead, her housekeeper. Seeking help in her fight against the Highway Commission, she calls upon Miriam Olivia de Havilland, a poor cousin who lived with the family as a girl, but who has since moved to New York City and has become wealthy herself. Miriam renews her relationship with Drew Bayliss Joseph Cotten, a local doctor who jilted her after the murder. Charlottes sanity deteriorates with Miriams arrival, her nights haunted by a mysterious harpsichord playing the song Mayhew wrote for her and by the appearance of Mayhews disembodied hand and head. Suspecting that Miriam and Drew are after Charlottes money, Velma seeks help from Mr. Willis Cecil Kellaway, an insurance investigator who is still interested in the Mayhew case and has visited Mayhews ailing widow, Jewel. Miriam fires Velma, who later returns to discover that Charlotte is being drugged. Miriam sees the housekeeper trying to take Charlotte out of the house. The two argue at the top of the stairs. Velma tries to escape, but knowing that Velma has discovered the drugs, Miriam smashes a chair over her head. Velma falls down the stairs to her death. One night, a drugged Charlotte runs downstairs in the grip of a hallucination, believing John has returned to her. Miriam and Drew decide to trick Charlotte into shooting Drew with a gun loaded with blanks, after which Miriam helps dispose of the body in a swamp. Charlotte returns to the house and sees the supposedly dead Drew at the top of the stairs, reducing her to whimpering insanity. Now believing Charlotte completely mad and secure in her room, Miriam and Drew go into the garden to discuss their plan: to drive Charlotte insane in order to get her money. Miriam also tells Drew that back in 1927 she saw Jewel murder her husband. Shes been using this knowledge to blackmail Jewel for all these years, while plotting to gain possession of Charlottes wealth. Charlotte overhears all. She moves toward a huge stone urn on the ledge of the balcony, almost directly over the lovers heads. Miriam embraces Drew, then she looks up and is paralyzed by the sight of Charlotte tipping the stone urn off the ledge, crushing both to death. The next morning the authorities take Charlotte away, presumably to an insane asylum. Many neighbors and locals gather at the Hollis home to watch the proceedings, believing that crazy Charlotte has murdered again. But some are very complimentary and sympathetic towards her. Willis hands her an envelope from the nowdead Jewel Mayhew, who has had a stroke after hearing of the incident the previous night. The envelope contains Jewels confession to the murder of her husband. As the authorities drive Charlotte away, she looks back at her beloved plantation.