On the Night of the Fire, released in the United States as The Fugitive, is a 1939 British thriller film, directed by Brian Desmond Hurst and starring Ralph Richardson and Diana Wynyard.

With its sustained doom-laden atmosphere, Krampf’s expressive cinematography, its adroit mixture of location shooting and Gothic compositions and Richardson’s wonderful performance as a lower middle-class Everyman, On the Night of the Fire clearly shows that an achieved mastery of film noir existed in British cinema".

His hopes are dashed when Kit confesses to being in debt to the local draper, Pilleger (Henry Oscar), who has been pressuring her to settle it.

The police suspect that Kobling is involved and use psychological tactics to break him down, but he remains grimly silent and sends Kit and their baby to stay with her sister.

Kobling was seen at Pilleger's store on the night of his murder by Lizzie Crane (Mary Clare), a well-known eccentric, who talks about what she saw.