The Norwood Builder

A retired builder named Jonas Oldacre has died in a fire, and the police have the perfect suspect already. John Hector McFarlane, a young solicitor, had recently learned he was Oldacre's heir, and a man who stands to inherit is a man with a motive. The will was made only recently, which is the sort of timing solicitors dread. McFarlane says he is innocent, and he gets to Holmes before the case hardens into a conviction.

Holmes does not believe in perfect suspects. But he starts looking for another motive and another killer, and to get the truth about the Oldacre household he does something he enjoys far too much. He dresses as a tramp and sits where people talk. The disguise does its work, and the answer he brings back is stranger than the fire. Oldacre is not exactly dead, and the whole business starts to smell like a scheme rather than a tragedy.

Matthew Solon plays McFarlane with the right note of panic, and Jonathan Adams makes Oldacre thoroughly unpleasant in a part that mostly consists of being presumed dead. Rosalie Crutchley, Helen Ryan and Rosalie Williams hold the domestic edges. The episode also marks the first appearance of Colin Jeavons as Inspector Lestrade, and the later series would keep him; he settles into the part as if he had always been there. Ken Grieve directs, with the script by Arthur Conan Doyle, John Hawkesworth and Richard Harris. Michael Cox produced, with music by Patrick Gowers and cinematography by Michael B. Popley.

The pleasure here is watching Holmes refuse the easy answer. Everyone wants the solicitor hanged, and he keeps asking who benefits from the suspicion. The fire is what makes the case feel like a tragedy, until it turns out to be something else entirely. The tramp disguise is the highlight, a reminder that the world's greatest detective is also its greatest actor.