Tales from the Riverbank

Tales from the Riverbank puts Ken's new yacht at the bottom of the river. It starts with a jealous fiancé, Lawrence Varlish, who asks Ken to look into his fiancée because he suspects she is having an affair with her hypnotherapist, Geoffrey Phillips. Harry goes to see Phillips posing as an anxious patient and soon decides that Varlish has nothing to worry about.

The real business is happening outside the newly opened CBS offices. Two South African men wait in the car park, anxious to collect something from a boat on the river. Nearby a suave man named Hobson and a Scotsman, Dilkes, take over a narrowboat belonging to a Mrs Walters at gunpoint because their own boat has broken down. That night Ken, asleep on his yacht, hears heavy objects splashing into the water, peers out, sees nothing and goes back to sleep.

The calls begin to arrive. Mrs Walters rings in secret and asks Ken to deliver a letter. He does, and its recipient, John Losely, asks furiously where the boat is, which means nothing to Ken. Losely's heavies, the South Africans, sink the yacht and threaten him. A scruffy private detective, Don Speed, offers help and is caught snooping through Ken's files; he is a CID officer watching Losely.

Harry suggests that Phillips hypnotise Ken to bring back the night noise, and under hypnosis Ken remembers a boat on the opposite bank with "Tramp" in its name. Rocky finds the Chaste Tramp, and on board is Mrs Walters, holding Dilkes prisoner.

The story emerges. Dilkes had agreed to carry a load of stolen German silk for thieves, to be landed at Trent Wharf, the site of the CBS offices. When his boat broke down, they took Mrs Walters's and kidnapped her landlord, Roberts, who had come to collect the rent. They left Dilkes to guard her, and she overpowered him.

Harry recovers the silk from the riverbed. Mrs Walters offers the thieves a swap, Roberts for the silk, and when Losely produces a gun she expertly disarms him. The police close in. With the reward, Ken buys the Chaste Tramp from Mrs Walters, to replace the yacht the thieves sank.

Nick Whitby wrote the episode and Christopher Baker directs, with Ann Firbank as Mrs Walters and George Rossi as Dilkes.

The strength is Mrs Walters, who is presented first as a frightened woman needing help and who turns out to have the situation under control long before Ken reaches her. The hypnosis scene is a convenient way of recovering the clue, but it gives Harry's earlier subplot a use. It is a lively opening to life on the water.