The Dead Flautist

Amateur flautist Tony Miller is found shot with his own gun on the secluded grounds of the Bottrell estate. A man who plays the flute is an odd candidate for a shooting, and the scene is arranged very tidily. The first verdict is suicide. An easier case has rarely been handed to anyone. But Wycliffe refuses it. He starts pulling at the edges of the dead man's last days, and that is where the trouble starts: one of the household's maids has vanished.

The vanished maid would be enough on its own. Then a second body turns up, and the case stops being about one man's despair and becomes something the Bottrells would rather keep buried. There are feuds and old money in this story, plus at least one affair the family would rather not discuss, and Wycliffe picks through all of it in the polite, probing way that makes him so hard to lie to.

Jack Shepherd carries the episode as Wycliffe, with Helen Masters and Jimmy Yuill alongside as DI Lane and DI Kersey. Emily Hamilton is Jean Lander, Ben Mangham is Paul Bottrell, and Susan Fleetwood's Lady Cynthia Bottrell holds the line for the old guard. Kenneth Watson is Carter, Ian Keith is Fox, Gerry Scanlon is Jed, and Mary Wimbush is Mrs Christopher.

W.J. Burley and Steve Trafford wrote it, Martyn Friend directed, and it went out in July 1994, early in the first run of the series.

The Dead Flautist keeps its promise. The death looks like despair and the house looks respectable, and the whole episode is built to test how much of either story you believe. Suicide is a convenient verdict for everyone concerned, which is exactly why Wycliffe distrusts it. The most dangerous secrets here live in a well-appointed country house rather than a back alley, which is a very Wycliffe sort of crime.