Secrets

Her name is Cecily. Sophisticated, well-liked, and dangerous, as Maggie Forbes finds out when she makes enquiries at the woman's elegant flat. But behind the polished surface of Cecily's life sits a grim secret, and the flat is where it hides. The neighbours think well of her, which is exactly what makes her so difficult to read.

What begins as routine questioning shifts into alarm as the pieces of Cecily's life stop matching. Thorne, James and Jessy, the people who move around her, each add a little more weight to the impression that the woman the neighbours like is not the woman Maggie is meeting. Each visit to the flat closes one question and opens another. The squad works the case around her, but this is Maggie's case. The truth, when it comes, is worse than the gossip, which is usually how these things work.

The show likes this kind of story: a respectable front hiding a locked room, and a detective who refuses to be charmed. The contrast between drawing-room elegance and what is hidden inside it is the whole game, and the script plays it straight. There is a locked-room neatness to the plot, even if the room is a sitting room rather than a cell.

Peter Hammond and Terence Feely wrote it, Jonathan Wright-Miller directed. Jill Gascoine is Maggie, with William Marlowe's Russell, Paul Moriarty as Jake Barratt and Kevin O'Shea as Peter Phillips. Bernard Holley plays Mike Turnbull, Nigel Rathbone appears as Steve Forbes, Malcolm Tierney is Thorne, Amanda Boxer plays the dangerous Cecily herself, Patrick Newell is James and Viv Alex Rochester appears as Jessy. The supporting cast do a lot with small roles, and the flat itself is nearly a character.

Cecily is the sort of villain the show does well. She never shouts; her charm is a locked door. The secrets stay buried about as long as Maggie lets them. It is one of the show's quietest hours, and one of its most effective.