Soon after Steven retires to his room, Christine appears at the hotel and offers to help him write her husband's story, and they arrange to meet the following day at her house. As Steven drives back to the hotel, his talkative cab driver, Orion Peabody, gossips about the animosity that existed between Forrest and Christine's cousin, Geoffrey Midford. After Christine refuses to help Steven write his "memorial to her late husband's memory," Kerndon privately rebukes her and warns her to cooperate lest Steven become suspicious of her behavior. There, Steven watches as Christine reverently arranges a bouquet of flowers in front of her late husband's portrait. After Steven consoles Jeb and explains his mission, the boy agrees to lead him along a secret path to the Forrest house. As Steven walks away, he notices a sobbing little boy, Jason's son Jeb, who blames himself for his idol Forrest's death because he failed to warn him about the precarious state of the bridge that collapsed under the weight of Forrest's car, sending him crashing to his death in the river below. Determined to win an interview with Forrest's widow Christine, Steven takes a taxi to the estate but is turned away by the gatekeeper, Jason Rickards, an embittered man who cryptically states that he was Forrest's top sergeant until a war wound relegated him to gatekeeper. As Freddie questions the police report of Forrest's death, Steven maintains that he wants to write the story of Forrest's life as an inspiration for the "dark days ahead." To placate the journalists, Forrest's private secretary, Clive Kerndon, holds a press conference. Just returned from Berlin, esteemed war correspondent Steven O'Malley joins his peers Freddie Ridges and Jane Harding, but remains aloof from the pack. When venerated World War I hero Robert Forrest dies in an automobile accident, the nation mourns his loss and the press congregates outside the gates of his estate in pursuit of a story.
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