The Naval Treaty

Percy Phelps is a Foreign Office clerk with a career about to end. A treaty has been stolen from his rooms, a naval treaty between the British Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, and if it surfaces in the wrong hands the scandal will be international and Phelps will be ruined. He comes to Holmes with the desperate look of a man who has already rehearsed his resignation. The document went missing from his rooms, and in Whitehall that kind of thing is never forgiven.

But the investigation is a proper paper chase. Holmes has to work out who got into the building and who knew the treaty was there, and the household closes ranks around Joseph Harrison, the brother-in-law who is supposed to be helping, his sister Annie, and Lord Holdhurst at the Foreign Office. David Gwillim gives Phelps the right blend of panic and hope, and Gareth Thomas, late of Blake's 7, makes Harrison a solid, believable suspect. Alison Skilbeck, Ronald Russell, Nicholas Geake, Pamela Pitchford, John Malcolm and David Rodigan fill the rest. Inspector Forbes, one of Scotland Yard's better men, hovers helpfully on the edges.

Alan Grint directs, and the writing credit goes to Arthur Conan Doyle, John Hawkesworth and Jeremy Paul. Michael B. Popley's cinematography makes the corridors of power look suitably chilly, and Patrick Gowers supplies the music. Michael Cox produced.

It is a quieter sort of Holmes story, more about embarrassment than murder, and the series handles it well. There are no bodies, just a career hanging by a thread and a document that could start a diplomatic war. Holmes solves it with patience rather than fireworks, and the show trusts the material enough to let him work. The treaty itself is almost a MacGuffin, and the episode is honest about that. It is a patient, grown-up story, and the series is the better for it.