The Copper Beeches

Violet Hunter has been offered a job as governess at a Hampshire estate, and she cannot quite say yes. The wages are good and the house is fine, but the employer wants her to cut her hair short before she starts, and he will not take no for an answer on the subject. It is such a strange condition that she takes it to Holmes, who listens and immediately starts taking the matter seriously. A man who insists on your hair is a man with a plan. The offer is generous enough to be worth a second thought, and the hair condition is strange enough to cancel it out.

But the plan turns out to be as nasty as Holmes suspects. Joss Ackland plays Rucastle as a smiling bully, all hospitality and menace, and the house at Copper Beeches explains the hair condition in a way nobody would guess. The episode gives Natasha Richardson an early screen role, and she holds the centre of it nicely, sensible where other governesses would be frightened witless. Lottie Ward's Mrs Rucastle, Patience Collier's Miss Stoper, Angela Browne and Peter Jonfield as the Tollers, Michael Loney and Rachel Ambler complete the household.

Paul Annett directs, and the script is credited to John Hawkesworth, Bill Craig and Arthur Conan Doyle. The cinematography of Ray Goode gives the house a faintly wrong feeling, exactly right for the story. Michael Cox produced, and the music is by Patrick Gowers.

The hair business sounds silly in summary, and the episode knows it. That is the point. Holmes takes the detail seriously, follows it, and finds a crime that only makes sense once you stop laughing at the condition of employment. Violet Hunter is one of the best of Holmes's clients, sensible enough to be suspicious and brave enough to act on it. It is the kind of case that shows how the great detective earns his fee by noticing what polite people dismiss.