Crazy for You

Dawn Malvern is murdered while her husband is out walking the dog. That is the kind of detail that sticks: a man comes home to find his wife dead and the police already there. Sam Malvern is a psychiatrist, he stands to gain nothing from Dawn's death, and he offers himself to the investigation as a profiler. Which is convenient, and exactly what Wycliffe, in his quiet way, is suspicious of. A man who loses his wife and immediately offers his professional opinion on her death is, at the very least, worth a second look.

One of the detectives is sure the killer is a woman, and the evidence does seem to point that way. The disturbed neighbour, Annabel Naylor, fits the profile almost too well, and the case against her is almost too tidy. But Wycliffe, who has never trusted a suspect who fits this neatly, keeps looking. He thinks Naylor was handed her motive by somebody else, and the rest of the episode is the slow work of proving it. It happens through patience and the kind of questions that get asked twice.

W.J. Burley and Tom Needham wrote it, Martyn Friend directed. Aired in July 1996, it was the fifth episode of the third series. John Shrapnel is Sam Malvern, Gregory Chisholm is David Wycliffe, and Jacqueline Phillips's Janice does the SOCO legwork. Helen Masters, Jimmy Yuill, Adam Barker, Tim Wylton, Aaron Harris and Alan Penn complete the ranks behind Jack Shepherd's Wycliffe.

The episode is really about the why of it. Finding the killer turns out to be the easy part; explaining them is where the work happens. A motive is a story someone tells about themselves, and the best detective is the one who listens to it twice. This one earns its patience, and then some.