Wisteria Lodge

Holmes is bored, which is always the moment to strike. The case that arrives is a good one. Scott Eccles, a guest at Wisteria Lodge, reports that his host, an amateur Spanish cartographer called Garcia, has vanished along with his servants. The night before, a mysterious note had arrived for Garcia, and by the following morning the house was empty, with the breakfast still on the table.

Holmes decides, on no evidence anyone else can see, to treat the affair as a murder investigation, and for a while it looks exactly like the wild goose chase Inspector Baynes suspects it is. Watson is allowed to wonder if they are wasting their time. Then the pattern starts to show: the vanished household had not been what it seemed, and the quiet country house was sitting on a secret with a very foreign accent. Baynes, a country policeman with a country policeman's patience, turns out to have been waiting for the same fish. It is also a reminder that Holmes is not the only patient man in England, just the most famous one.

Peter Hammond directed, from Jeremy Paul, John Hawkesworth and Conan Doyle. Freddie Jones's Inspector Baynes is a treat, all stolid competence and hidden amusement, and Kika Markham's Miss Burnet keeps her own counsel until it matters. Donald Churchill's Scott Eccles does baffled guest beautifully, with Basil Hoskins, Trader Faulkner, Arturo Venegas, Guido Adorni and Sonny Caldinez filling the Spanish side of the ledger.

The episode is one of the stranger ones, and the longer it goes on, the less like a simple disappearance it feels. That is exactly the point. The resolution comes in a rush at the end. And the wild goose chase turns out to have been leading somewhere very definite. It is the sort of case that rewards a second watch, because the clues are all there the first time, hiding in plain sight.