Season 04 Episode 06

Will learns the terms of his father's will: after the debts are cleared he inherits most of the estate, which he cannot afford. His mother Amelia wants him to give up the parish and run the house, and he tells her the church is his calling. Geordie, having learned what Anthony Hobbs did to Cathy, has begun following him and beat a young man he arrested for being drunk. Will apologises to Leonard, who is staying at Daniel's, and cannot reach him. Geordie and Cathy argue about whether Esme may go to a dance at her school. Esme drops what looks like a love letter and Will says nothing.

Outside the dance hall the next morning the body of a boy is found in an abandoned car, with a pack of matches and alcohol. He was Donald Clark, a pupil at Esme's school, and there is a photograph of Esme in his pocket. The two boys who reported the body are rude to Geordie, who has them locked up for a few hours as a lesson. Esme insists she barely knew Donald. His classmates say he had no friends. The hall's janitor says Donald was in a fight on the night of the dance, and Donald's teacher, Mr Pope, suggests suicide, describing his own methods as strength through discipline. Will finds Leonard crying in the church and tells him God loves him as he is; Daniel, an atheist, tells him to leave the church and accuses him of enjoying the pain, and Leonard turns on him.

Esme comes to the vicarage and tells Will the truth: she and Donald had been writing to each other, and the afternoon before the dance he tried to kiss her, was seen and mocked by one of the boys who later found the body, and fought him. Esme is afraid he died because of her. Geordie takes the news of the fight as confirmation and turns on the boy in the cells, refusing to believe him, and the post-mortem then says Donald was drunk and choked on his own vomit, proving Will right. Geordie apologises to Will and tells him about Cathy, which is why he has been angry. Will remembers the janitor saying something about being sworn in.

A girl at the school, Wendy, says she belongs to an underground group called the Fourth Realm and that everyone in the class has lied. Geordie frightens another boy into naming Kevin Moran, who admits locking Donald in the closet and gagging him as a punishment for planning to leave the group and talk about it. It was meant to last half an hour. Donald was sick into the gag and suffocated, and Kevin dragged the body to the car to hide what he had done.

Will points out that Kevin cannot be in charge, because Wendy said the whole class lied and Kevin is lying about leading them. The founder is Mr Pope, the teacher, who set the group up to improve results through rewards and punishments and who ordered the boys to punish Donald. They find his daughter Wendy gagged and tied up in a shed behind the house, a punishment he had used before, and arrest him. Mrs Chapman and Cathy get Anthony Hobbs dismissed from the store: Mrs Chapman arrives dressed for a large purchase and makes his removal the condition, and Cathy, told by Hobbs that it is her fault, answers that it is nobody's fault but his. Mrs Chapman returns to the vicarage on the condition that Daniel never visits, and Leonard agrees. Will tells his mother the estate must be sold. Geordie and Cathy arrange a second dance so Esme can go, and Will asks Esme's teacher, Miss Reynolds, for a drink.

The finale is the best of Series 4 and one of the strongest of the run, because the school's system of rewards and punishments turns out to be the murder and the teacher who explains it as discipline is in charge of it. The two false answers, suicide and the fight, are disposed of in turn, and the real one is found because a girl says the whole class has lied. Mrs Chapman and Cathy dealing with Hobbs between them gives both women the resolution the police cannot provide, and the gagged child in the shed behind the house is the image the series leaves with the audience.