Wolf to the Slaughter: Part Three

Part three finally hands the investigation a piece of physical evidence, and it arrives in the shape of a gold lighter. The inscription reads 'For the girl who lights up my life', which sounds romantic until you start asking which girl. The dedication is ambiguous, the body is still missing, and Wexford is left holding an object that could point anywhere. It is a lovely little puzzle object: personal, intimate, and completely unhelpful without context.

The lighter forces the case back to the question of the girl herself. Wexford and his team work through the people who might have given such a thing, or received it, while the whereabouts of the victim stays the thread running under everything. The episode is content to be procedural in the best sense, watching the detectives test the small object against the larger mystery and finding that it fits nowhere yet. Every interview circles back to the inscription, and the script keeps the two questions the object raises in front of the viewer the whole way through.

The familiar faces return in force. George Baker's Wexford anchors the inquiry, Christopher Ravenscroft's Burden works alongside him, and Carmel McSharry's Ruby Branch, Russell Hunter's Monkey Matthews and Kim Thomson's Linda Grover orbit the pair. Christopher Ellison and Stephanie Fayerman are the Kirkpatricks, Donald Hewlett is Russell Cawthorne, and Robert Reynolds and Louie Ramsay round out the ranks as Mark Drayton and Dora Wexford.

Ruth Rendell and Clive Exton wrote it, with John Davies directing. The hour went out in August 1987 as the closing chapter of the story that launched the series. The episode understands that a clue is only as good as the person holding it, and Wexford holds this one with proper suspicion. Even the sentiment engraved on the lighter feels like a taunt once you think about it. The mystery of who the girl was, and what happened to her, tightens a notch, and the viewer is left with the same two questions the detectives have: which girl, and where is the body?