Season 11 Episode 02

Alphy is showing Mira around his church when a student tries to break in. Alphy catches him, and Norris Featherstone, in his first year, apologises at once and explains that he was stealing a Bible as part of an initiation. Alphy lends him his own Bible and makes him promise to return it. Mira tells Geordie that she and her son live in different worlds, since she is Hindu and he is an Anglican priest. Alphy decides to cook Indian food on her next visit and sends Leonard out for ingredients when Leonard comes to talk to him. Leonard wants to return to the church in some form, since the halfway house has been quiet and he has lost his sense of purpose, and he asks Alphy to put his case to the bishop. Alphy warns him it is a long shot.

Geordie's commander tells him he is retiring and suggests Geordie apply for the job, and the promotion would take him away from front-line cases. The same morning a group of brawling students is brought to the station. They are quiz teams from Cambridge and Oxford, preparing for the new television quiz University Challenge, and Norris is one of the Cambridge team. Its captain, Simon Bailey, taunts the Oxford team and the police, and Geordie keeps Simon in a cell overnight and releases the rest. In the morning Simon's professor, Adams, arrives to ask for his release.

Norris is then found dead in his room with a belt around his neck and an Oxford scarf tying his hands behind his back, and Alphy's Bible is in the room. There is no sign of forced entry, which suggests suicide, but the knot in the scarf would be hard to tie on himself. His ink blotter carries the words Barbara's tea room and a vial of stimulant drugs is in his pocket. Adams insists no member of his team could be responsible and mentions that he saw an Oxford student wandering the campus late at night. Geordie brings in Russell Tring, whose initials are on the scarf, and Russell says the scarf was stolen from him. At the station Adams speaks to Russell, who attacks him and accuses him of the murder.

Russell admits he and Norris were at school together and the police work out that they were more than friends, and Norris called him Martha in his diaries to conceal the relationship. Russell's parents found out and separated them, sending them to different colleges. Norris suggested they both join their college quiz teams so that they could see each other, but when Russell finally got to Cambridge, Norris avoided him, embarrassed in front of students like Simon Bailey. Norris's body shows bruising and cigarette burns, some older than the day he died. Russell says Norris wrote that Adams held expulsion over the team to make them work harder, after getting them so drunk at a chophouse that they were thrown out. Russell has burned the letters. Adams defends his methods and admits he suggested the drugs to Norris, and Miss Scott finds a report of a student-like figure stealing the stimulant from a pharmacist. The obvious reading is that Adams discovered Norris was gay and used it, along with the drugs, to drive him.

The writing from Norris's room that contained Barbara's tea room has not surfaced. Russell explains that he and Norris once spent time together in Southport, where they ate at a tea room called Barbara's. Alphy challenges Adams's team to a quiz and has Leonard slip in an extra question, and Simon blurts out Barbara's tea room in answer to a question about Southport, which places him in possession of whatever Norris wrote before he died. Simon's room is searched and a letter from Norris is found there. It is a suicide note addressed to Russell. Simon tormented Norris, physically and mentally, after Adams set the two of them against each other. Simon was using the drugs, and it was Simon who found out Norris was gay and blackmailed him into stealing more. Simon was in a police cell when Norris killed himself. He found the body, removed the suicide note to cover his own tracks, and tied Norris's hands with Russell's scarf to misdirect the investigation, and the scarf was in Norris's room because Norris had taken it during the brawl at the station, as his note to Russell says. Alphy gives Russell the letter.

Two threads run alongside. Alphy is still unsettled about Meg, with whom he agreed to be friends, and he runs into her while out with Mira, and Mira is alarmed by the warmth between them, worrying about how a priest seen with a woman will look even though his vows do not forbid marriage. Mira tells Geordie that she is afraid of hurting Alphy, and Geordie warns her that Alphy is in things for the long term, so she should tell him now if she is not. Alphy cooks the meal, Mira fails to arrive and leaves no message, and Mrs Chapman, Jack, Leonard and Daniel are at the table, not having realised they were not invited. Mrs Chapman tells Alphy to lower his expectations. He then asks Meg to lunch and sees another man already waiting for her.

The episode's clue is a place name that only two people in the country could connect to the dead man, and it is extracted by a vicar setting a quiz question rather than by an interview. The scarf on the wrists is the detail that turns a suicide into a staged one, since a man killing himself has no reason to tie his own hands. Adams is the most convincing red herring the series has run, because the case against him is real and the case against the boy in the cell is better.