The Three Gables

Douglas Maberley dies young, and the trouble starts almost before the funeral. He had been having an affair with Isadora Klein, a beautiful widow of the sort who collects admirers the way other people collect stamps. Now his grandmother's house, The Three Gables, is being circled by odd characters with odd offers, and the manuscript of Douglas's newly finished book has gone missing. Someone wants to buy the place, and the contents, and the memory of the man who lived there.

The house is the heart of the story. Mary Maberley, the grandmother, is old and alone and suddenly frightened in her own home, and Holmes, who rarely shows much warmth, takes her seriously. The theft of the manuscript and the strange proposal to buy everything the house contains, the way every offer seems aimed at something specific rather than the property itself. But it all points in one direction, and Holmes follows it happily.

His methods here are closer to gossip than to science, and he is not ashamed of it. Langdale Pike, the man who knows everyone's secrets and sells them in instalments, proves more useful than any microscope. The identity of the buyer and the fate of the manuscript turn out to be one and the same question, and the answer involves a widow with a great deal to lose. Holmes enjoys that sort of parcel.

Jeremy Paul wrote it, Peter Hammond directed. Claudine Auger is Isadora Klein, cool and dangerous, and Gary Cady is Douglas Maberley, whose brief affair with her sets the whole thing going. Ben Pullen is the Duke of Lomond, Caroline Blakiston the Dowager Duchess, Mary Ellis the grandmother, and Peter Wyngarde brings his particular style to Langdale Pike. Michael Graham is Haines-Johnson, with Rosalie Williams as Mrs Hudson and Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke as the pair from Baker Street.

The Three Gables is a story about reputations, which are the only currency that matters in this world. Klein gambles hers on getting rid of the truth. Holmes gambles his on finding it. Only one of them is any good at gambling.