An Unwanted Woman: Part Two

A ninety-two-year-old woman dies, and Wexford refuses to accept that old age is the whole story. His suspicion opens an investigation into the small, slightly sinister retired community that surrounded her, a world of respectable bungalows and watchful neighbours where the polite surface is doing a great deal of work. The elderly network closes ranks in its own way, and the episode's atmosphere is the quiet dread of a place where everyone knows everyone else's business and nobody will say it aloud.

The investigation draws Wexford through the community one careful conversation at a time. The regulars orbit the enquiry: Louie Ramsay's Dora, Diane Keen's Jenny, Georgina Cates' Sophie Stacey, Susan Wooldridge's Hilary Stacey, Eileen Page's Ann Waterton, Marjorie Sommerville's Elsie Parrish, John Conroy's Desmond Stacey and Terry John's car salesman, with George Baker and Christopher Ravenscroft at the centre. Ruth Rendell, Rosemary Anne Sisson and John Davies shared the writing, and Jenny Wilkes directed. Broadcast on the 8th of November 1992, it closed the two-part story, and the second half lets the suspicion settle before the answers arrive. The hour earns its chill by doing nothing flashy, which is the show at its most confident.

The episode works because it takes the setting seriously. Retirement communities are supposed to be the reward for a life of work, and this one hums with unspoken rules and long memories, the kind of place where a death is discussed at length and mourned briefly. Wexford, a man of a certain age himself, moves through it with a detective's eye and something like recognition.

The mystery resolves with the community's secret brought into the open, and the hour leaves a lingering chill. The dead woman was ninety-two, which should have made her death unremarkable. Instead it made her a target, and the episode's quiet insistence on that point is what stays with you after the credits.