An Unkindness of Ravens: Part Two

The Rodney Williams investigation continues, and the mysteries around it keep multiplying rather than resolving. Every step Wexford takes clears one question and uncovers two more, and the episode is content to let the case sprawl, trusting that the pattern will eventually reveal itself. The community around the dead man gives up its secrets slowly and resentfully, and the detectives earn each one.

The cast settles into the rhythm of the enquiry. George Baker's Wexford and Christopher Ravenscroft's Burden do the legwork, and the supporting players keep the world alive: Diane Keen as Jenny Ireland, John Burgess' Dr Crocker, Charon Bourke's Sylvia Fairfax, Owen Scott's Edgar Ovington, Karen Westwood's Sara Williams, Chloë Victoria Annett's Jane Gardner and Deborah Poplett's Sheila Wexford, with Louie Ramsay's Dora in the background of it all. Ruth Rendell wrote the script, and John Gorrie directed. There is a quiet curiosity behind the production: the opening hour was written by Robert Smith, while Ruth Rendell herself supplied this middle chapter, and the two parts sit together without a seam. The episode went out on the 18th of November 1990, one week after its predecessor.

The title does a lot of work. An unkindness is the proper word for a flock of ravens, and the episode is full of people who behave like a flock: watchful, noisy, and capable of turning on one of their own. The more Wexford learns about Williams and the people around him, the more the case feels like a matter of the community closing ranks, with the dead man on the outside of the circle.

Part two is the middle stretch of a story that refuses to simplify itself, and that is its strength. The police work is patient, the secrets are layered, and the hour ends with more questions in the air than answers. It is the sort of instalment that asks you to trust the writer, and Ruth Rendell had earned that trust many times over.