Season 09 Episode 08

Reverend David Lane arrives at the Grantchester vicarage to take Sunday service in front of Alphy's congregation. Alphy and Mrs Chapman receive him with as much politeness as they can manage, and Mrs Chapman has already decided that she will not like him. While the parish files in, Leonard reads a letter from Daniel, who has left with Sam White's group. Daniel says Sam told him it was best to go without a fuss, that he believes this is the start of something special, and that he is selling his house, and he asks Leonard not to try to find him and says that if Leonard loves him he will give him space.

A woman pushes a pram to the vicarage, posts a letter and hurries away. It reads: why have you given up. It is not the first such note. Alphy has been receiving pages torn from a Bible with passages circled, and there have been break-ins at the vicarage after each one. Geordie and Larry are called to a body. Fred Eccles, thirty-two, an accountant who worked for a publisher off Kingston Street, has fallen from the third-floor window of his rented room, and his landlady is certain he did not take his own life. Fred painted toy soldiers for relaxation, and the paint on some of them is still wet; he was careful about the arrangement of his armies, and the flag bearer is out of place. She also heard him arguing the previous night with the man from his church group over money, and although Fred never raised his voice it was clear he was accusing the man of stealing from him. The group calls itself the Way Finders, and the man is Sam White. Fred had recently thrown the group over and sold half his collection of figures to raise money for them.

Geordie questions Sam, who says he last saw Fred a week ago, and the landlady's account of the previous night contradicts him at once, so he changes his story, admits he was there, and says Fred had stolen fifty pounds from the group and had told him he was considering suicide. He also tells them that Daniel does not want to come back to Leonard. Released for want of anything to hold him, Sam offers to take Leonard to the house the group is refurbishing so Leonard can ask Daniel himself. At the house Sam introduces Roxy, his current girlfriend, and kisses her. Daniel is inside leading a Bible study, and he tells Leonard that he is happy, that he feels accepted, and that his life is no longer arranged around Leonard's friends. Leonard argues with him outside the house, then goes back in and searches Sam's room, where he finds a folder containing a draft of the article Innes Clark was writing about Sam, and puts it in his pocket. He also sees a rifle in a cupboard on his way out and is caught there by Sam, who closes the door, takes him upstairs and tells him to stay put and keep quiet if he wants to see Daniel again.

Larry, meanwhile, has kept a book from Sam's belongings, having noticed the amount of money Fred was said to have taken. It is not an accounts book at all but a war-games book with a slipcover over it, and the slipcover carries a fingerprint in blue paint. Fred, who painted in blue, must have swapped the slipcovers. Larry goes back to Fred's room, finds the book that really is the accounts, and takes the paint to match the fingerprint. The paint dries within the hour, and it was still wet when the police first arrived, which means the last person to touch the figures had left within the hour.

Miss Scott establishes that a man named Sam White did study theology at Corpus Christi and that he died in a house fire there in 1948. This Sam White cannot be him, so he is using a dead man's name, and Miss Scott finds that the real Sam White had a surviving housemate called John Amos. Geordie, at the same time, goes back to the woman with the pram. She is Rose Shirley, the teacher who abandoned her baby at the church, and she confirms that Sam is the baby's father: he finds something in a person and pulls it, she says, until they think they need him, and when she realised what he was he threatened that if she went near the vicarage again he would burn her and the baby and no one would ever know. The verses were her attempts to warn Alphy.

Alphy works out what the notes are. One carries the words Corpus Christi, another has passages circled, and together they give the citations Amos 5:7 and John 19:30, so the man's name is John Amos, and Rose's letters also carry his date of birth, 5 July 1930. He was the real Sam White's housemate at Corpus Christi and he survived the fire, and he took the dead man's name and has been using it ever since. His church is the scam, since the money raised from people like Daniel and Caroline, who have sold their houses and given him their savings, has been going to him. Fred Eccles, an accountant, worked that out from the accounts and told him so, and John Amos went to Fred's room, pushed him out of the window and took what he believed was the accounts book. Fred had swapped the slipcovers to hide it, so he took the war-games book instead and left the fingerprint that the wet paint exposed. The vicarage break-ins were him searching for Rose's letters. Caroline was put up to murdering Innes Clark, and she was also used to occupy Alphy on the night of a break-in.

Alphy goes to the Way Finders' house, tells the group who John Amos is, and is met with the claim that the real Sam White redeemed him and that he took the name so the man's work would continue. Daniel is sent away with the others. John Amos tells Alphy what he knows about him: no home, no family, never wanted. He also tells him that the Church calls Daniel an abomination and does not want Alphy either, which is the one part of it that the series has already shown to be true. Geordie and Larry arrive, John Amos takes the rifle, shoots Larry in the shoulder and hits the car, then barricades the house and tells the group inside that the police are shooting at them. Leonard, at the upstairs window, shouts a warning and is hit by a splinter of wood from the window frame, and Daniel finds him bleeding and the two of them reconcile there. Geordie sends Larry to hold pressure on his own wound and goes in alone, and Larry gets to a telephone box and calls Miss Scott, who keeps him talking while he weakens. Geordie reaches the room, finds the rifle pointed at Alphy, and takes John Amos down from behind, with an extra punch for Larry. Larry is taken to hospital in time and later returns to the station to applause, arm in a sling, and kisses Miss Scott.

At the vicarage, David Lane is measuring up the house for the merged parish, telling Alphy that the dog comes with the position and that he might be better suited to a mission post somewhere that feels more like home. He nearly throws out Mrs Chapman's apron, and Alphy tells him he will punch his lights out if he does. Alphy then goes to the church, where Bishop Aubrey Gray asks him whether he put his housekeeper up to writing all those letters. Mrs Chapman has written to the bishop once a week and then once a day, and dozens of parishioners have joined her, the correspondence has increased in number and venom, and she has written to the archbishop. The archbishop agrees that Alphy should stay, and the bishop tells him so in the church. Alphy's answer to the bishop's remark about not being able to remember the housekeeper's name is the closing argument of the season: her name is Mrs Chapman, Mrs Sylvia Chapman, and the bishop should try to remember that at least.

The episode ends with a Sunday lunch at the vicarage. Cathy is wearing the dress Geordie bought her and is back to herself, and Esme tells her parents she thinks she may be in love. Leonard arrives with a trifle and Daniel with an apology, and the company insists Daniel come in, on the grounds that he makes the best gravy. Daniel dances with Mrs Chapman. Geordie and Alphy wash up, listen to the noise from the other room, and take the dogs out instead of finishing the dishes. Geordie says they need to find Alphy a wife, and Alphy says he is happy as he is and that he is not alone, since he has Dickens, Mrs Chapman and Geordie.

The season ends by solving a murder with a Bible citation, since two verses give the killer's name and a birth date, which is the most Alphy-shaped answer the series could have arrived at. The wet paint is the clue that fixes the time of the killing to the hour, and the swapped slipcovers are what turn a stolen ledger into a fingerprint. Rose Shirley returning as the woman with the pram ties the season's first episode to its last, and the final line about Mrs Chapman's name is the programme's own summary of what the household has been for.