Season 10 Episode 06

It is Alphy's birthday and he still has not decided whether to open the letter his mother left with him as a baby. He plans to spend the evening alone. Geordie instead arranges a surprise: a gig by a local band, the Velvet Jacks, with the whole group of friends present and Meg invited as well. Under the group's eyes Alphy is pushed into asking her out again. Meg gives him a hat. He is not a hat man, and admits to himself and to her that he has been avoiding her because he is nervous, and that she had concluded he was no longer interested. She agrees to another date.

As the others leave the club they notice a young woman being sick in the bushes, who had been arguing with the band's bassist. Alphy goes back for his hat and sees the drummer rowing with the band's manager, then hears a scream and finds the guitarist dead on the floor with the bassist standing over him. Arun Darji, the bassist, says he found Eric already dead and heard raised voices, one male and one female, but saw nobody else in the room. There is a wound to the back of Eric's head with no weapon, and a bottle of pills on the floor.

Eric had been criticising the manager, Laurel, for failing to book a London gig and saying the band should never have hired a woman. Laurel says her argument with Aidan, the drummer, was about something he had taken from her. At Aidan's home, Alphy and Geordie find him leaving with a bag of cash, which he says is what Laurel owes him and Arun, since she has not paid them in months, and he says they meant to quit after the gig but that Arun went back for his guitar and found the body. A bloody ashtray is found hidden in Arun's guitar case. Arun says he did not kill Eric and did not like the way Eric treated people, describing him as a womaniser who slept with fans. Arun's parents arrive at the station insisting their son would never hurt anyone and implying that he is under suspicion because he is Indian. At a fundraising vigil for Eric, Alphy notices the young woman who had been sick, realises she is pregnant, and hears Laurel say she has probably been with all three members of the band. The woman, Iris, leaves and Arun follows her.

Laboratory results show the pills by Eric's body treat pregnancy nausea, and Arun's parents are pharmacists. Questioned in front of them, Arun admits he took the pills for Iris and that she is carrying his baby, and his parents warn that an overdose of the drug can be fatal. Arun says Eric also flirted with Iris and led her on. Iris tells the detectives she took none of the pills and claims the baby as hers to raise alone, saying she will do anything for it.

The published recap's account of the killing is that Iris killed Eric. The baby was Eric's, not Arun's, and Arun lied to protect her. She had gone to tell Eric she was keeping the child, he said she would use it to blackmail him, shouted at her and attacked her, and she pushed him off to protect the baby and then struck him with the ashtray in a surge of rage for her child. Arun found her with the body and hid the ashtray while she ran.

The subplots are given equal weight. Mrs Chapman and Cathy secure the loan for their business, CeCe's Boutique, by presenting years of budgets from the vicarage and from Cathy's department store job and then grudgingly introducing Jack as a cousin to sign for them. The loan officer recognises Jack and they make their case directly, and the loan is granted without a male signature. Larry and Miss Scott plan a quiet civil ceremony during working hours, which Geordie discovers when he finds a bridal magazine in her desk while looking for a case file. He and Alphy catch them at the register office and insist the wedding be done properly, and they marry at the vicarage, with Geordie giving Miss Scott away and acting as Larry's best man, Alphy officiating, and a dress provided by Cathy and Mrs Chapman.

Leonard's drinking is confronted. He tries to stay off alcohol and Mrs Chapman tells him he cannot do it alone, and she has paid for Daniel to come home from his parents without telling him why Leonard needs him. Daniel's visit went well and his parents say they are proud of him and want to visit, but he told them Leonard was a lodger. Leonard is nearly pushed back to the bottle, admits to Daniel that his drinking is bound up with his father's death, and says he is hurt that Daniel will not tell his parents he loves him, and Daniel embraces him and agrees to tell them. Preoccupied by the letter, Alphy forgets his date with Meg, and she tells him they do not have to see each other while he is in this state. He takes the letter to the vicarage and asks Geordie to read it aloud. His mother wrote that she could not give him a happy life because she had nothing and nobody, and that she would always think of him. Alphy cries.

The episode puts a murder at a gig and then spends most of its attention on a wedding, a business loan and a letter, which is what the series has become and what it does best. The pills in the dead man's hand are the clue that turns a jealous bandmate into a pregnant woman protecting herself, and the ashtray hidden in a guitar case is the false trail that nearly works. Alphy asking his friend to read his mother's letter out loud is the strongest scene of Series 10, because he cannot make himself do it alone and he does not pretend otherwise.