Faith

A dead baby found in a cardboard box on the church steps. The image is brutal, and the investigation starts off chasing something stranger than grief. Chris Matthews comes forward to say he has seen a pagan sect at work, led by the unsympathetic Dr. Dayton, heard chanting "Bring forth the child" at a midnight ritual. Lane takes charge of the sect, and for a while the case looks like it might belong to the darkest corner of the county.

But Wycliffe, as ever, keeps his eye on the ordinary. His friend Bill is staying at the Wycliffe house, recently left by his wife, with a teenage daughter who has retreated so far into herself she barely speaks. Bill drinks too much, mostly because he has nothing else going for him at the moment. And the more the ritual business refuses to add up, the more the answer seems to be sitting in Wycliffe's own spare room. The secrets around the baby turn out to have less to do with paganism than with the failures people keep quiet about.

W.J. Burley and Sian Orrells wrote it, Martyn Friend directed. Aired in July 1996, it was the sixth episode of the third series. Richard Durden is Dr. Dayton, Phil Rowlands is Chris Matthews, and Harri Alexander's Nikki and Kate Reynolds's Leanne circle the edges of the sect. Hugh Munro's Swift and John Gregor's P.C. Deane fill out the supporting cast, with Jimmy Yuill, Tim Wylton and Helen Masters working around Jack Shepherd's Wycliffe.

It is a reminder that the most unsettling mysteries are rarely the ones whispered in circles. They are the ones unfolding quietly in houses you know, between people you like. Faith is one of the show's gentler episodes, and its horror is all the more effective for being domestic.