Season 02 Episode 04

Gary Bell is awaiting trial for Abigail Redmond's murder. Sidney visits him in prison and tells him to tell the truth and trust the jury, and Geordie tells Sidney his evidence will be a scandal if Gary is acquitted. Gary's mother Phyllis is shunned by the village. Sidney is bringing Margaret Ward to his sister Jennifer's party in London, a first outing as a couple.

Sidney finds Reggie Lawson, a wealthy horse breeder, at his wife's grave. Anna Lawson died by hanging in her own stables, and Reggie says she haunts the house and yards, that her perfume is in the air, that a painting fell from the wall by itself, and that a horse was spooked and kicked out. He asks Sidney to come to Kingsbrook and perform an exorcism. At the estate Sidney meets Reggie's new wife Kitty, married four months after Anna's death, the housekeeper Mrs Elton, and Anna's brother Laszlo Herzl, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz who limps. Sidney prays with the family and leaves. That night Geordie calls him back, because Reggie has hanged himself in the same stable, facing away from the horses, where Anna died.

Sidney finds a scratch under the painting and works through the details. Anna was full of sleeping pills, her previous attempts were known, and the noose measured out on the beam would not have worked for her height. Reggie's champion horse, Devil's Banquet, was certain to win and Reggie had bet on it, which is inconsistent with a man about to kill himself. The other horse, Sospiro, was put down after a leg injury although the door of the stall showed no mark, and the stable master Mr Greaves says Reggie broke the animal's leg himself for the insurance, arranged by Laszlo. The haunting was manufactured by Laszlo Herzl as a test of Reggie's guilt, and Laszlo killed Reggie. In Sidney's account Reggie was responsible for Anna's death. When Sidney confronts him, Laszlo is without remorse, saying everyone involved is already dead. Sidney does not hand him over, and tells Geordie the case is Geordie's to work, and leaves.

At the trial Geordie gives evidence that Gary was the father of Abigail's child and killed her to end the pregnancy. Sidney then gives evidence for the defence, says the child was Sam Milburn's, and tells the court what he knows. The two men give evidence against each other in the same courtroom, which is the end of the arrangement they have worked on since the first episode.

The episode is the first of the two-part trial story and the point at which the case that has been running since Series 2 opened reaches a courtroom. Its construction is unusual for the series, because the mystery is a haunting at a country estate while the real pressure is in the witness box, and the exorcism is the only investigation in the run that Sidney conducts as a clergyman rather than as an amateur detective. Laszlo's testing of Reggie is the strongest idea in the episode, since the ghost is a survivor's way of asking a man whether he did it, and the answer is supplied by a horse's leg and an insurance policy.