The Speaker of Mandarin: Part Three

The final part of the story finds Wexford closing in on the mysterious, beautiful woman from China, the figure at the centre of the whole affair. Having interviewed everyone who travelled with him through Asia, he whittles the suspects down the slow way, one interview at a time, until the list has shrunk to the people who actually matter. It is an investigation built on patient elimination rather than dramatic confession, and it suits Wexford's particular brand of police work perfectly.

The episode is a quiet triumph of structure. Trevor Preston and Ruth Rendell wrote it, and Herbert Wise directed, and the result has the rhythm of a Rendell novel: character and atmosphere doing the work that other shows would hand to car chases. The audience is trusted to keep up, to notice who contradicted themselves and who went quiet at the wrong moment, and the resolution pays that attention back. Broadcast on the 11th of October 1992, it rounded off the three-part story, and the final conversations with the travellers carry the weight of everything that came before.

George Baker's Wexford guides the enquiry with his usual measured persistence, and Christopher Ravenscroft's Burden is the steady second. Fiona Walker joins the cast as Margery Bauman, adding her perspective to the closing stages, and the supporting players from the earlier parts settle into their final positions around the case.

The story ends with the process of elimination complete and the truth standing in the open, and it is the kind of ending that rewards viewers who have been paying attention all along. The mystery woman from China, the tour party's buried secrets, the death that followed everyone home: all of it resolves into a single, satisfying answer. Not every case needs fireworks. This one needed arithmetic, and Wexford is very good at arithmetic.