The Mouse in the Corner: Part One

Tom Peterlee is murdered, and the case is a study in families closing ranks. He came from a large family living in three adjoining cottages, and his death puts a spotlight on the people who shared his walls. Eva, his mother, strikes Wexford as quite cavalier about the whole business, which is the sort of reaction that makes a detective's ears prick up. The rest of the family is no more helpful. Heather, the widow, seems dumb with grief, and the brother and his meek sister-in-law are evasive in that particular way that says they have already decided what to say.

A family friend named Carol is more forthcoming and provides Heather with an alibi. Wexford accepts the alibi and keeps his opinion to himself: he is sure one of the Peterlees is the killer. The household closes round its secret, and the episode's pleasure is watching the cottages give up their inhabitants' stories one awkward conversation at a time.

Burden, meanwhile, has problems of his own. His daughter has started dating a married man, which is the sort of thing that keeps a father awake, and a series of ramraids across Kingsmarkham adds to the general mayhem. The domestic and professional threads run alongside the murder enquiry, giving the hour the texture of a real police station rather than a crime-solving machine.

Elizabeth Spriggs is wonderful as Eva Peterlee, all briskness and no mourning, and Victoria Fairbrother's Heather, Ken Kitson's Sgt Martin, John Burgess' Dr Len Crocker, Emma Smith's Pat Burden and Katrina Levon's Arlene Heddon fill out the picture. Louie Ramsay's Dora and Diane Keen's Jenny are also present, keeping the Wexford and Burden households in view, and the episode went out on the 18th of October 1992. George Baker wrote the episode himself, which is a treat, and Rob Walker directed. The case ends with the family still buttoned up, and Wexford's certainty that the answer is in the cottages growing stronger by the minute.