A Sleeping Life: Part Three

The final part of the Rhoda Comfrey case is a French excursion with a purpose. Wexford's trip across the Channel, the opulent oyster dinner and a visit to the theatre all turn out to be doing real work, and the decisive hint comes from an unexpected quarter: his wife Dora. One quiet observation from her sets him on the right track at last, and the pieces of Rhoda's silent life finally fall into formation. The theatre visit is the story's oddest detail, a detective taking in a play in the middle of a murder enquiry.

The conclusion, when it arrives, is startling enough to leave Wexford's superior officer temporarily without words. That is the hallmark of a good Rendell solution, one that reorders everything the viewer thought they knew without cheating. The woman in the hedge, the novelist, the virgin in her mid-forties, the French connection: it all resolves into a single story that was hiding in plain sight all along.

George Baker is at his best here, the detective who needed his wife to point at the obvious, and the ensemble around him does fine work: Christopher Ravenscroft's Burden, Imelda Staunton's Polly Flinders, Dave Hill's Dep Chief Constable Freeborn, Patrick Drury's Howard Fortune, Louie Ramsay's Dora, Ken Kitson's D.S. Martin, William Simons' Det Insp Michael Baker, Mamta Kash's Malina Patel and Olivier Pierre's Commissaire Laquin. Roger Marshall and Ruth Rendell wrote it, and Bill Hays directed. The hour went out in November 1989 as the final part of the story, directed by the same hand as the earlier parts, which keeps the tone steady throughout.

The episode ends with the case closed and the oysters digested, and it leaves a warm aftertaste. There is something pleasing about a murder solved over dinner in France, with the answer coming from the detective's own marriage rather than the usual parade of confessions and forensics. Rhoda Comfrey's life was a secret, and it took a holiday to uncover it.