Season 09 Episode 07

Geordie finds Cathy's medication while he is fetching the first aid kit for Dora, who has cut her knee. Cathy says Dr Bennett told her to try the pills for a month and asks whether he prefers the quieter house. They talk about her mother and about the day Cathy watched her being taken away, which she calls the worst day of her life, and Geordie says he will not let that happen to Cathy. Afterwards he goes to Mrs Chapman to ask her to come back to the house and help, and tells her about the pills and that they are masking the problem.

Larry tells Geordie that a woman has been reported missing. She is a student at Girton, and when Alphy sees her photograph he recognises her: she is the woman he spent the night with, who introduced herself to him as Petra. Her real name is Caroline Stansham, and her father Hugh, who is in plastics, says she has been missing for a fortnight, though Alphy was with her a week earlier. Geordie and Alphy search her room and find she writes for a satirical student newspaper, The Honest Duck. Its editor is a tutor called Eric Delgado, and its staff are two students, Nigel Rivers and Innes Clark. Nigel and Innes say they last saw Caroline a month ago, when they sent her out to bring in a story and she never came back. They describe their method as humour aimed at the establishment, and Nigel names their targets, the dean's deviancy, the bursar's bigamy, gossip about gonorrhoea at Girton, and calls Larry an idiot on the way out.

By the following day Innes Clark has been found with his throat cut. There are printing letters on the ground with footprints on them, and a roll of film that has been exposed to destroy its contents except for three frames. Geordie and Alphy take the film to Daniel Marlowe to develop, but Daniel is not at the halfway house, so Leonard comes with them to look for him. Leonard has by now discovered that Daniel is asking Jack Chapman for money for Sam White's work and putting his own money and his own time into it as well, and while Daniel develops the film in his house, which Leonard finds is on the market, they argue. The film shows Eric Delgado with a man, and Daniel refuses to print the images, unwilling to be the means by which a man's private life becomes public.

Delgado, questioned, admits the affair and names the man as his alibi, and Geordie keeps his word and confirms it, then hands him the developed photographs to dispose of as he chooses. Delgado also tells them that he used to see Caroline everywhere until he noticed her with Sam and has not seen her since. Caroline is not missing. Alphy and Geordie find her at the halfway house on Sam White's arm, and Geordie interviews her alone because of the awkwardness. She says she has been with Sam for a month, that she is both helping and funding his work, and that she came across him while looking for a story and was inspired. She tells Alphy privately that she is in love with Sam and points him towards Nigel, who she says often argued with Innes.

Nigel's motive is examined through the tapes he and Innes made of themselves trying out comedy sketches, one of which contains a jealous quarrel in which Nigel tells Innes he has been dragging him down for years. Before he is brought in, Nigel publishes a new edition of the paper mocking Larry as a defective constable, and Miss Scott cannot suppress a laugh. Interviewed, Nigel says the Larry piece was filler because Innes had a story he was keeping to himself, that he does not know what it was about, and that he does not recognise the photographs of Delgado, because the paper received submissions separately and often anonymously. Released, he offers Miss Scott work at the paper, and she points out his typos, defends Larry and shows him out.

Sam holds a party at the halfway house for his group, which now calls itself the Way Finders. The group has taken the house over to the point where Leonard is turning away the men he set the place up for. Leonard argues with Daniel again and then tells Sam that he and his people can no longer use the house, and Sam calls him a pathetic little traitor and threatens him, then turns back to the room, puts an arm round him and commends him to Alphy. Leonard goes to stay with Mrs Chapman and Jack.

Cathy's thread turns. She tells Mrs Chapman how she feels, and Mrs Chapman recognises it, tells her it is the menopause and not a decline, describes how she went through it herself when Ronnie ran off, gives her a drink and says she will come out of it better than before. She also tells her to be angry if she wants to be angry, and the two of them break cups together. Geordie, worried about what he has seen, offers to take a sabbatical to be with her, and Cathy tells him he does not have to, that she loves him and that she is going to stop taking the pills, and thanks him for fetching Mrs Chapman.

Caroline killed Innes Clark. She had been tasked by Innes with finding something compromising on Delgado, and the photographs of Delgado with his partner were hers, since she had been following him, which is why he thought he saw her wherever he went, and she was carrying the camera when she was searched. She used the photographs and the existing bad blood between Nigel and Innes to point the investigation at other suspects. The printing letters found at the scene came from her shoes: dancing with Alphy she took her shoes off, he spilled beer on them, and cleaning them he found the letters set into the sole. Questioned, she says she killed Innes for Sam, because Innes was preparing a piece about Sam, Caroline and the Way Finders, and she destroyed the story with the man who wrote it. Sam denies knowing anything about the piece or the killing and says he gave her an alibi so that the police would not think badly of her.

The episode ends with Leonard telling Alphy what Sam said to him. They go to the halfway house and find it empty. There is a note on the table from Sam saying that he and his group will not be a hindrance to Leonard any more, and Daniel is gone as well. Leonard tells Alphy that Sam is a dangerous man.

The episode is a two-part story's first half and it is built to leave a church full of people who each want a different thing from the same man, with the satire paper supplying the murder and the religious group supplying the pressure. The printing letters in the shoe are the best clue of the series, since they are found by a man cleaning beer off a woman's shoes after a dance he has just confessed to Geordie. Caroline's photographs make her a murderer and a photographer at once, and the episode's final image of an empty house is the first time the series lets a villain simply leave.