The Illustrious Client

Violet Merville is about to marry Baron Gruner, and the only people unhappy about it are the ones who know him. Sir James Damery brings the matter to Baker Street with the sort of delicacy that usually precedes bad news. Gruner is Austrian, wealthy and charming. He is also a murderer, and Holmes knows it, because one of Gruner's wives is already dead at his hands. Violet, being young and in love, has been persuaded that the rumours are slander, and nobody has the proof to talk her out of it.

The trouble is that nothing illegal has happened yet. There is only an engagement and a reputation, with a wedding date attached. Gruner is the sort of man whose past follows him in whispers and in blood, but he has been careful, and his future bride refuses to look. So the campaign begins quietly: Shinwell Johnson goes out to gather what the underworld knows, Kitty Winter hovers at the edges of the story, and Holmes starts pulling at a seam that has been very well stitched.

But the seam bursts eventually, because it always does. Violet gets her eyes opened before the vows are said, and Gruner learns that a man who collects enemies the way he collects admirers has to pay for them sooner or later. This is a case fought in drawing rooms rather than alleys, which suits Holmes, whose methods here run to applied pressure and a well-timed revelation.

Robin Chapman wrote it, Tim Sullivan directed. Jeremy Brett is Holmes and Edward Hardwicke is Watson, while Anthony Valentine gives Gruner a silky menace that makes the drawing rooms feel cold. Carol Noakes plays the Baroness, David Langton the client, Abigail Cruttenden the bride-to-be, with John Pickles, Kim Thomson and Roy Holder in support. Rosalie Williams keeps Baker Street running as Mrs Hudson.

The Illustrious Client is a reminder that Holmes could do his deadliest work over tea. Sometimes the worst villain in the room is the one who never raises his voice.