Season 06 Episode 08

Will is preparing a speech for the Bishop's visit on the reform of the indecency laws, but Bishop Aubrey Gray tells him issues of sexual morality are not on the agenda this year, that Will will not be speaking, and that Henry Jones has already reported on the household.

At the station, Miss Scott reports a woman asking for Geordie by name about an attack by her husband. The call is from Rita Daltrey, a jazz singer married to the music producer Gene Daltrey. The house has an alarm system Gene operates and that the household is not allowed to set off. Rita has a black eye, which Gene says she got falling on the stairs and she confirms, and the doctor, Harvey, a friend of Gene's, dismisses the injury as another accident and gives her two pills. The maid, Dorie James, returns Geordie's hat and slips him a card: Johnny Richards's business card. Johnny explains that Rita has been trying to leave Gene for years, that Gene keeps her drunk and drugged until he needs another record out of her, and that the alarm was set up to hold her in the house. He asks Geordie for the alarm schedule so he can get her out, and Geordie looks up the timings and shows them to him.

The next day Gene is found shot dead at home. Dorie called the police when the alarm went off and then called Harvey, who arrived first, and Gene has been dead several hours though nobody heard the shot. The investigation looks like a burglary gone wrong, with drawers pulled out and items taken, and Larry Peters works the entry points. Will asks for samples of the drinks in the house to be tested for sedatives, on the theory that the doctor drugged the household so that he could deal with Gene. Geordie is unenthusiastic, tells Larry to run the tests, then countermands it.

Johnny confesses privately to Geordie: he came in through the back door, Gene came at him, he had brought his old service revolver, and he shot him. He pulled out drawers and took items to make it look like a robbery, and says Gene deserved it. He says Rita did not know, because she could not have kept it from him, and does not deny she is more than a client, reminding Geordie that they did this together. Geordie tells him he cannot let him get away with it and that they will tell the truth together, the charge being manslaughter on the grounds of self-defence rather than murder, and Johnny will not hear it.

Will goes to the Daltrey house, repeats his theory about the doctor, and Dorie and Harvey both deny it, saying Gene loved Rita and protected her, perhaps too much. Will then takes the last step without either of them: Gene never hurt Rita. She drugged Gene and Dorie to put them to sleep and shot her husband herself, and Johnny, told a version of events by Rita, acted as her accomplice by staging the robbery. Geordie and Will find Rita with Johnny, who has told her Geordie knows he did it to protect her. She thanks Geordie for intervening and says she and Johnny only want what Geordie has, including his family. Will tells Geordie he owes Johnny nothing and that Rita is using Johnny the way Johnny has used Geordie. Johnny tells Rita he loves her; she slaps his hand away and says they are only words to a song, that she made Gene's money and that he was never going to let her go, and pulls out a gun. She tries to shoot Will, Johnny pushes the gun away, and Geordie moves in and arrests her for the murder and Johnny for conspiracy to cover it up. Johnny co-operates.

Leonard's sentence has been reduced by the prison board for his part in exposing the chaplain. Jack Chapman collects him and Sylvia is at home. Leonard finds the obscene book hidden in Henry's room and the collar with Sylvia's lipstick on it, teases her about it, and tells her she has to accept the room is not his any more without that meaning he loves her less, and he tells Henry that Mrs Chapman is a rite of passage. Bishop Gray waits at the vicarage to reprimand Will about his absences until Henry intervenes, saying what he had taken for a distraction from the work was a fight against injustice and that he is looking forward to learning from Will, and Will says he can learn from Henry too.

Geordie goes home to find Cathy has packed his luggage and is asking for time apart. He pleads and promises to do better and she does not change her mind. He goes to the church and prays for forgiveness, and Will joins him. Geordie says he is not all right but that he knows it now, takes Will's hand, and says he does not want to think less of him for not having served, because he is glad he did not, since it means Will can see the world as it should be. Will says men like Geordie and Johnny are the reason he did not have to, and Geordie says he is going to get Cathy back. He then shows Will the folded list he carries in his cap: the names of the men in the camp and how they died, which he kept because the last man out was the one who had to write to the families. At the end of the war the guards began taking a prisoner out every two days to be shot, without pattern, and by then the men were broken. Geordie and Johnny were the last two left, and both had said they wished they were the one chosen. Geordie rolled over in the night and prayed for his friend to die; in the morning Johnny was gone, and Geordie heard several shots because the Americans had armed the Burmese and the camp was liberated. He went home, lost Johnny deliberately after demobilisation, and did not see him again until he reappeared in Grantchester, and he tells Will that he asked God for his friend's death and that this is who he is. Will says God heard it as fear and desperation, not as a request to die.

The series closes with Geordie's confession at its centre and the last piece of a thread running since the third series. The trap in the case is that the obvious wronged wife is the killer and the obvious killer is the accomplice, and the two are held together by the exact thing Geordie has been circling, a debt owed to a friend from the camp. Johnny's use to the plot is that he tells the truth about almost everything, and his lie about who fired the shot is the one Geordie wants to believe. The last image is a man showing his friend a list of the dead he has carried in his cap for twenty years.