Slave of Duty

A dead man buried under wood that has been lying there for a hundred years. That is where the case starts, and it only gets stranger. The body is Jamie Yelland, shot through the head, found on land owned by Dan Hobden, with Jamie's house ransacked for good measure. Jamie had been a diver, and his obsession was a sunken treasure ship said to be carrying silver coins that nobody had ever found. Which makes you wonder what you shoot a man for, if not for something he found.

The trail leads to Donald Treloar, a local historian with a similar hunger for the past, and the same weapon that killed Jamie has been used on him too. Two men, one gun, and a shared obsession with silver that was supposed to be lost forever. But Wycliffe takes the view that the treasure was never lost at all, and that both men died because a third party wanted the secret kept buried for good. The village is full of people who know more than they say, and the episode enjoys watching them not say it.

W.J. Burley and Jonathan Rich wrote it, David Innes Edwards directed. Aired in July 1996, it was the third episode of the third series. Oliver Ford Davies is Treloar, John Bowler is Dan Hobden, Dione Inman is Sally Hobden, and Mike Grady is Michael Morva. Jimmy Yuill's Kersey and Chris MacDonnell's Murrish lead the uniform side, with Elaine Hallam's Fiona, Helen Masters's Lane, Tim Wylton's Franks and Aaron Harris's Dixon filling out the ranks.

The case is one long lesson in what obsession does to people. Silver at the bottom of the sea can sit there for centuries and hurt nobody; mention it to the wrong man and it becomes a motive. The episode lets the past and the present trip over each other, and the village never quite recovers. It is a quiet one, and all the better for it.