Dead Men Do Tell Tales

Monty Wiseman is a travel agent of the dodgy variety, and his proposition is simple: a coffin has come off a plane at the airport, and Terry can collect it and keep it in Arthur's lock-up. Money changes hands, the box goes in the lock-up, and everyone tries not to think about it. The job pays well, which should have been the warning. Nobody wants to ask what is inside, and nobody does. Then a coroner turns up asking to see the body for an autopsy, and the arrangement goes from merely odd to actively dreadful. A coffin is not a parcel, and everyone involved is pretending otherwise.

Arthur wants the coffin out of his lock-up and no part of the affair. Monty, against Arthur's shouted objections, moves the remains to Terry's flat instead. Terry's flat is not equipped for corpses, but nobody offered him a choice. So now a corpse is parked in Terry's home, and a day that began with a simple airport pickup has become a problem nobody wants to own. And the whole of the Winchester has an opinion about it, which makes things worse.

Tony Hoare and Leon Griffiths wrote it, Robert Young directed. Harry Fowler makes Monty Wiseman the sort of man who would sell you a holiday and a mystery in the same sentence. Patricia Maynard is Mrs Chambers, Derek Fowlds is Meadhurst, Harold Innocent is Incapable, Suzi Quatro is Nancy, Patrick Malahide is Chisholm, Michael Povey is DC Jones and Eileen Way is Mrs Chambers' mother. Suzi Quatro as Nancy is the sort of casting that only the early eighties could produce.

The title promises a story about the dead talking. The real joke is that the living won't shut up about this particular body, and none of them will take responsibility for it. Terry, as ever, is the one left holding the coffin.