An Unwanted Woman: Part One

Wexford has two puzzles on his plate, and neither of them is behaving. An elderly woman has died, and he is immediately suspicious that her passing was not simply old age finally catching up. At the same time, somebody is pushing people off their bicycles at the local Castle, which sounds like a joke until you picture the injuries. The two cases could not be more different in scale, and the episode runs them side by side with a straight face.

The death points towards Harry and Doreen Betts of Kingsmarkham, suspected of murdering their own mother. But the case refuses to stay simple: did they do it, or have they been framed? The question hangs over the investigation, and Wexford has to weigh the evidence against the possibility that somebody else is using the Bettses as a convenient answer. The family at the centre of it is a knot of competing interests, and untangling it takes the whole hour.

Rosemary Anne Sisson wrote it, and Jenny Wilkes directed, with George Baker's Wexford and Christopher Ravenscroft's Burden leading the enquiry. Madeleine Christie's Ivy Wrangton, Georgina Cates' Sophie, Susan Wooldridge's Hilary Stacey, Diane Keen's Jenny and Louie Ramsay's Dora complete the main cast. The first part aired on the 1st of November 1992, and the hour ends with both mysteries still open, which is the honest state of affairs for an opening chapter.

The episode's neatest trick is how seriously it takes both mysteries. The bicycle-pushing at the Castle could have been played for comedy, and instead it is treated as the public nuisance it is, while the elderly woman's death gets the full weight of a suspicious mind. Wexford is a man who hates loose ends at every scale, and the hour shows him working the petty and the grave with the same careful irritation.