Season 03 Episode 03

Leonard Finch takes Hilary Franklin into Cambridge, where she wants to buy him a present. They stop at the post office, where the clerk Wendy Parker serves them before hanging a poster on the door. A masked gunman comes in and holds up the shop. Leonard talks to him, telling him that Wendy has a bad heart, and is struck across the face and then shot at, and the bullet goes into the ceiling.

Sidney, Geordie and Phil Wilkinson attend. Wendy's father Cyril Parker, who runs the post office, gives them the routine of the money deliveries. Leonard, shown photographs of known criminals, picks out a man in the same coat as the robber, and Geordie identifies him as Walter Dunn, a garage owner with a record. Geordie and Phil raid the garage. They find Dunn's mechanic Frank Camber and a young woman, Martha Bennett, and go upstairs, where Phil fires at a figure sitting in a chair by the window. Walter Dunn is already dead, and has been for some twelve hours, longer than the robbery, and his gun is missing.

Geordie's first arrests are Alice Dunn, Walter's wife, and Frank. A bloodstained shirt is found at Alice's house and she admits she had an abortion, which she had not wanted to tell her husband about; both she and Frank say Walter was violent and that the shirt could belong to Martha. A second robbery follows, at the Ellsworth post office, in which Cyril is shot and wounded, though he survives and admits he lied earlier about how much money was in the till, for insurance. Amanda's husband Guy offers to arrange a divorce with himself as the adulterer so that she can escape the marriage without scandal. Leonard proposes to Hilary and is accepted; Sidney accuses him of lying to himself and Leonard answers back. A bingo event at the church raises money, and Sidney preaches about living in the present. That night he goes to Amanda's house and the affair starts again.

Two Eiffel Tower figurines, one in Martha's possession and one in a drawer at the post office, link the robberies, because Wendy had bought one for Martha and Martha one for Wendy. The poster Wendy hung on the door was the signal that the till was full. Martha Bennett and Wendy Parker robbed the post offices together. Martha had been assaulted by Walter Dunn repeatedly, and she shot him with his own gun; Wendy found out, helped clean the scene, took the gun, and used her father's post office and her knowledge of the money deliveries to plan the robberies. They intended to leave England for Paris together. Both are arrested as they stop the money van, and both are taken into custody. Wendy says Walter deserved to die. Leonard tells Hilary he thinks of her often and asks her to marry him; she accepts at once. Sidney's sermon on living for the moment is what sends him to Amanda's door.

The episode's interest is the pair at its centre, because the robbery is planned out of a post office counter by the clerk who works behind it and the man shot in the chair was killed by a woman he had beaten. The figurines are the device that links the crimes and the poster on the door is the signal, which makes the whole scheme visible on a single afternoon's visit. Leonard's proposal and Sidney's sermon in the same hour set up the arrangement the rest of the series runs on, since the two men choose opposite things for the same reason.