Murder Being Once Done: Part One

Wexford collapses from overwork, and the doctor's orders are precise: complete rest and nothing but water. He is installed in London with his nephew Howard, a police superintendent, supposedly convalescing. It lasts as long as you would expect, which is to say not long at all. Boredom is a more powerful enemy than exhaustion, and his nephew happens to be dealing with a fascinating murder case.

The body of a young woman, Loveday Morgan, was found in Kenbourne Vale Cemetery, strangled with a silk scarf. Her handbag held a photograph and two telephone numbers, nothing else. She had no money to speak of and was living under a false name, which raises the usual questions and then some. Wexford, officially on leave and unofficially everywhere, is drawn in, and his unofficial investigation uncovers a story about adoption and parental love that runs far beneath the cemetery's neat rows. Wexford's dreams, the story tells us, are what first pull him toward the case, and the detail matters: the man is being led by something beneath his own reasoning. The body had been left in a vault rather than buried, a small choice that adds to the oddness of the whole business. The hour first aired on the 20th of October 1991.

George Baker is a pleasure as a man pretending to rest, and Christopher Ravenscroft's Mike Burden, seconded to London, provides the official excuse for all the unofficial detecting. The supporting cast is a gift: Philip Glenister as Brian Gregson, John Forgeham's Det Insp Baker, George Sweeney's Sgt Clements, Ian McNeice's Ivan Teal, John Burgess' Dr Len Crocker and Derek Hicks' Postman, with Louie Ramsay's Dora and Diane Keen's Jenny keeping the home fires visible. Matthew Jacobs wrote it, and John Gorrie directed.

The episode's neatest trick is making a convalescence feel like a chase. Wexford is meant to be drinking water and sleeping; instead he is picking at a strangling and a false identity, and the contrast between the prescribed rest and the actual behaviour is quietly very funny. The silk scarf is around a throat, and the case has its hooks in him before the hour is out.