Season 10 Episode 07

Cathy Keating and Mrs Chapman have taken a shop for their new business and have days to clean it, prepare it and produce advertising photographs for the local paper. They have a photographer, Tony Parker; two models, Pheline Meyer and Grace Tuffit; and clothes by a designer, Kate Ashley, which Kate has supplied in a more modern style than Cathy asked for, because she wanted to stand out. Cathy sends Kate home for the clothes she ordered, but the models are booked only for the morning and have to be persuaded to stay.

Geordie is on a day off and has found something to investigate. He has noticed the impression of a word on the letter from Alphy's mother and shades it to read Annie's. Alphy does not want it pursued, since knowing his mother loved him is enough, but Geordie calls in a favour and finds an address. At the police station he also tries to advise Larry on the theft of a diamond from a jeweller, though Larry is already working on it, and David Keating is suspected of having taken a feather boa from the shop.

The next morning Tony's body is found at CeCe's Boutique. His wallet is missing and there is a bullet from a rifle or revolver in the wall. A neighbour heard a loud crash around ten the previous night. Tony had promised to develop the photographs overnight and there is a stack of them in his pocket, but they are artsy and unusable for advertisements. Everyone left the shop around six, and only Cathy and Mrs Chapman hold keys, besides the spare Tony was given.

Alphy and Geordie question Kate, who argued with Tony during the shoot and is wearing an eyepatch over a black eye she says came from a fall. When they notice a roll of film she exposes it to the light to ruin it. She hated his photographs and had taken her own while he was on a cigarette break, swapping the rolls during the shoot, so the photographs on Tony's body are hers. When Tony developed them and understood what she had done he went to her house around nine and hit her. She says she did not kill him, though she has no alibi and is a hunter who can use a rifle.

With the shop a crime scene and no usable photographs, Cathy and Mrs Chapman ask Daniel to shoot new advertising pictures, and the shoot moves to the meadow by his house. Pheline arrives in person to say she cannot stay, and Cathy has already taken a statement from Grace to save Geordie the trouble of questioning her, but Geordie insists on speaking to her himself. Grace says Tony took her for a drink after the shoot and told her he would call her the following night and take her to London to find modelling work. Tony had photographed the stolen diamond Larry is investigating, so Alphy and Geordie go to his house, where they find Pheline arguing with a man named Brian Halliday. Brian pretends to have a gun, and when he is taken by a coughing fit Geordie asks Alphy to fetch them glasses of ice water, sips his own and pretends to spit out a diamond. Pheline and Brian scramble to look for it and are detained. Brian fences stolen goods, and Tony had sent him odds and ends taken from shoots and had recently telephoned about a big score, a diamond, with a meeting set for that morning. Pheline had paid Tony to buy photographs from the shoot for her portfolio and had gone to his house for them after hearing he was dead.

The published recap's account is that Pheline is lying, having avoided Daniel's shoot because she had worked with him before, when he took less respectable photographs as a sideline, and he recognised her under a different name, Phyllis, rather than the German Pheline. She had heard Tony arranging to meet Brian to sell the diamond and went to him around seven to charm it off him, but he was upset about the ruined photographs, and her alibi holds because she waited tables from eight until closing. The killer is Grace Tuffit. Brian had mentioned that Tony was planning to go somewhere, and a travel agent confirms that he had booked a weekend away for himself alone, not for Grace. Grace was eager to leave a family farm that had gone into debt after her father left. A comparison of Kate's photographs with Daniel's from a day later shows that a coat Grace was modelling was ripped overnight, which would be a place to hide a rifle, confirmed by forensics as the murder weapon, and there is a registered rifle at Grace's farm. She denies it and plays the innocent, so the detectives leave the diamond out where she can see it and she tries to take it while unobserved. She admits that she went for a drink with Tony to charm the diamond from him, that when that failed she went to CeCe's with the rifle to threaten him, and that after killing him she took his wallet to make it look like a robbery.

The shop opens on time with a fashion show, with Pheline and Esme Keating wearing Kate's clothes, and the stolen diamond is found in the pocket of one of the outfits. Mrs Chapman stages the show after Cathy takes her suggestion as criticism and is reminded by her daughter Esme of what she is capable of. Geordie learns that David took the boa for the feathers, to use as a fishing lure, and that they share an interest, and he tells him they should talk more. Alphy, meanwhile, invites Meg to the opening as a friend, and they arrange a future date as friends. Cathy congratulates him on having found his mother, and Alphy realises Geordie has traced an address for her without telling him and against his wishes. The two argue and are deliberately cruel about each other's failures, Geordie about Meg and Alphy about David, and Alphy goes home and tears up his mother's letter.

The episode is a fashion shoot that turns into a murder and then into a second fashion shoot run by the two women who own the shop, which is the tidiest expression of what Series 10 has been about. The ripped coat is the clue, and it is found by putting two sets of photographs side by side a day apart. The diamond left on the table for a suspect to reach for is the oldest trick in the book and it works, and the ruined letter at the end is the first time the series lets Alphy behave badly without explaining it away.