A Dark Blue Perfume

Some crimes get solved with evidence and shoe leather. This one runs on memory. A middle-aged man is still haunted by a love affair from his youth, a passion that came close to ending in murder and has never quite loosened its grip. The dark blue perfume of the title is the smell of that time, the one detail that brings the whole business rushing back to him.

The story keeps circling back to that earlier time, when the lovers were young. Charlotte Avery and Mark Mordue play them as Katherine and Mark, and even then the feelings between them were already running ahead of good sense. In the present, the people who share the memory move through the man's life: Bill, Liz and Mark, played by David Ryall, Susannah York and John Castle, with Sarah, Sheila, the Removal Man and the Cleaner drifting around the edges. Nobody here is free of the past, and the episode lets that pressure build without ever raising its voice.

Peter Ransley wrote it and Sandy Johnson directed, and it first aired on 15 August 1997. David Ryall plays Bill, Susannah York is Liz and John Castle takes Mark. Peter Helmer appears as the Removal Man, Sara Markland as Sarah, Rowena Cooper as Sheila, Linda Quinn as the Cleaner and Tina Marian as the Doctor. It is a story built on small, careful performances rather than big set pieces, which suits the material.

What this one does well is trust the memories. The plotting stays simple, and the suspense comes from watching people sit with a past they cannot put down, from knowing how close that old affair came to violence. And the perfume is the key to the whole thing. A scent, a face from years ago, and the past is back in the room. Some people never get the chance to walk away from it, and this episode never pretends they do.