Season 10 Episode 08

Geordie and Alphy apologise to each other quickly, Geordie for tracing Alphy's mother without permission and Alphy for doubting Geordie as a father, and Geordie says he will support whatever Alphy decides about his mother. Then a case arrives. The student union at the university has invited the fascist Wilbur Church to speak, on the invitation of Eve de Beauchamp-Berenet-Vaux, and the police are called when a Union Jack is burned outside the hall in protest. A poetry-writing student, Simeon Jones, is protesting more quietly by sitting in the entrance, and he and Eve trade insults. Geordie asks Simeon not to attend the talk.

Church arrives with his wife Maude, his son Julian and a bodyguard, Eddie, and assumes Alphy burned the flag, first because he is Indian and then, on correction, because he is a priest. Alphy takes it and says everyone has a right to speak. Shortly after they arrive an explosion goes off in the building and Maude is killed. Wilbur still wants to give the speech and Geordie refuses to allow it. A package had been delivered for Wilbur and handed by Eve to Eddie, who passed it to Maude. Wilbur has received many death threats and Eddie should have checked it, and he admits the failure and is devastated, describing Maude as virtuous. She was wearing a fleur-de-lis bracelet. A trigger from a train set is found in the remains of the package, which had no return address or postmark and was delivered by hand. Alphy recognises the handwriting on the parcel from Simeon's journal of poetry. Simeon denies it and admits he had written letters of admonishment to Church but nothing more, and his handwriting turns out to have been cut from a letter and taped to the package, so he may have been set up.

The superintendent orders Geordie to let the speech proceed, with police protection, and Church says he does not care whether he dies. Every ticket sells, since the bombing is good publicity. Miss Scott and Larry tell Alphy how much work Geordie has put into finding his mother, and Miss Scott worries about Larry being at the speech.

Daniel's mother, Clara, is visiting. She is polite to everyone and then, alone in the kitchen with Leonard, tells him that she and her husband blame him for corrupting Daniel. Jack overhears the end of it and insists that Leonard tell Daniel, and Leonard does not want to spoil the visit, so Jack tells him himself. Daniel confronts his mother, defends Leonard, and tells her he does not want to see her again if she will not accept them both, and after she leaves he smashes his grandmother's teapot, which Clara had given him.

Records show Simeon was once arrested for throwing tomatoes at a fascist and Eve for attacking one. Simeon explains that Eve had been his friend and a communist, apparently committed, until a Christmas break after which she returned a right-winger, and he thinks she was trying to get the attention of wealthy parents and changed sides when the left failed to win it. A telephone call to the station warns that more people will die, and the earlier threats against Church have all turned out to be dead ends, which raises the question of why this one was carried out. At the university a student throws an egg at Church. Examining the hall the detectives notice a photograph of the Church family with a train set. Julian says he does not like trains and does not like his father, and that his mother neither loved Wilbur nor believed in his cause, and that he hated her for not stopping him. Miss Scott attends the speech despite the danger. Larry notices a box beside the stage, Simeon runs past the windows throwing a firecracker, which makes Geordie evacuate the hall, and Larry opens the box and finds a bomb with a timer still running. Alphy catches Simeon, who says it was all for show and that he is not a real threat.

The published recap's account is that Alphy works out that Wilbur is behind the bombing. Wilbur tries to trigger the second bomb and finds that Larry has already disarmed it, and Eddie attacks him, saying he did not deserve Maude. Wilbur had meant to kill Eddie, who had grown close to Maude and who had given her the fleur-de-lis bracelet as a symbol of virtue. Wilbur expected Eddie to take the parcel, but Eddie knew that none of the threats against him had been real, Simeon being the proof of it, and handed the package on to Maude. Wilbur also wanted to seem more dangerous and more controversial by having a genuine attempt on his life. In the interview room he tells Alphy he will never be a true Englishman, and Geordie reacts and Alphy stops him, saying Wilbur is not worth his anger.

The subplots close. Mrs Chapman, whose shop is doing well, has bought presents, including a box for the letter from Alphy's mother, which she had retrieved from the bin after he tore it up and taped back together. Alphy tells her he is afraid his mother will not love him and she tells him that nobody could fail to. Geordie takes David fishing, tells him he will always be proud of him and says he loves him. Daniel tells Alphy he does not regret having tried to rebuild the relationship with his mother, for all that it ended as it did. Alphy sets off to the address Geordie found, and the episode ends with him approaching his mother's front door.

The episode makes its killer the man whose cause everyone else in the building is arguing about, which is the correct answer to a story where the victim is the one person who did not believe in it either. The train-set trigger is the detail that points at the family, since only a household with the set in it would have the component to hand, and the fleur-de-lis bracelet explains the substitution that killed the wrong woman. Mrs Chapman taping a torn letter back together and buying a box for it is the best ending the series has given her.